Virginia gave President Obama a fairly comfortable 4-point victory (51 percent-47 percent) victory in 2012.  Yet the Washington Post has just released a poll showing Democrat Terry McAuliffe trailing arch-conservative Republican Ken Cuccinelli by 5 points in the race for the 2013 Virginia governor’s office. Why the discrepancy?

Well, elections will always going to be harder for Virginia Democrats in off years like 2013 than in a Presidential election year due to turnout patterns that favor the other side. But on the evidence of the poll, McAuliffe’s problems may run deeper than just getting voters to the polls. He may also have trouble generating the kind of enthusiastic support Obama received from key demographic and geographic segments of his coalition.

Start with Obama’s minority support.  In 2012, Obama received overwhelming 83-16 support from Virginia’s minority voters, a 67 point margin. By comparison, McAuliffe’s margin among minority voters (57-21) is little more than half of Obama’s margin. This has a great deal to with McAuliffe’s performance among African-American voters, who only favor him by 69-10 in the poll, compared to Obama’s 93-6 in 2012.

Breaking McAuliffe’s support down geographically, he is dramatically underperforming in areas where Obama was strongest in 2012. In Northern Virginia, McAuliffe is only leading by 4 points, compared to Obama’s healthy margin of 16 points. That’s potentially fatal given that this area is Democrats’ strongest in the state and accounts for about a third of ballots statewide.

McAuliffe’s other big underperformance is in the Virginia Beach/Tidewater area. In the poll, McAuliffe is actually trailing Cuccinelli by 2 points, compared to Obama’s strong margin of 12 points. The Virgnia Beach/Tidewater area accounts for another fifth of the Virginia vote.

McAuliffe is not known as a Democrat with particularly strong ties to the base of the party, having functioned mostly at an elite level, particularly as a fundraiser. On the evidence of this poll, it may not be enough for him to call out Ken Cuccinelli as a right-wing extremist (as deserved as that criticism is). If he wants the Obama coalition to power him to victory in the state, they are likely to need a reason to vote for him as a representative of their interests, not those of elites.

If I told you what Elizabeth Colbert Busch was against – President Obama’s budget, many parts of Obamacare – you wouldn’t guess she’s a Democrat. But if I told you what she’s for – marriage equality, a woman’s right to choose, expanding Medicaid — you would never guess this is South Carolina.

Yet over the past few months, Colbert Busch has created a unique recipe for her congressional campaign: one part fiscally conservative, one part socially liberal, and a garnish of ethical problems surrounding Mark Sanford’s recent affair. It’s as if you threw Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi in a cocktail shaker and made sure the resulting candidate never set foot on the Appalachian Trail.

Next week, voters in South Carolina’s lowcountry will decide whether that’s the right mix to represent the first congressional district as Colbert Busch faces off against Sanford, former governor of the state who also held this seat for three terms in the late 1990s, to fill the vacancy left by now-Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC).

Colbert Busch has her work cut out for her. Mitt Romney cleaned up in the district last November, taking 58 percent of the vote. Just three Democrats currently represent redder districts in Congress, all of whom are white men.

If Colbert Busch has any hope of winning the May 7th vote, she’ll need to convince a lot of Romney voters that they want a Democrat as their next representative.

And where better to start currying favor with Republicans than by castigating Obamacare? It’s “expensive” and “extremely problematic” she said during a debate in Charleston this week, telling the crowd that it needs “an enormous fix.”

How about the always-contentious issue of labor unions in South Carolina? “I’m proud to live in and support a right-to-work state,” Colbert Busch argued, defending a state law that makes it significantly harder for unions to organize. She also attacked the National Labor Relations Board for fielding a complaint that Boeing had retaliated against striking workers in Washington state by moving a production line to South Carolina. “This is a right-to-work state and NLRB had no business telling Boeing where they can locate,” Colbert Busch said in language more frequently heard from the likes of Mitt Romney and Gov. Nikki Haley (R).

It might be surprising to hear Democrats applauding such lines, but remember the larger picture. Republicans have held this seat for more than 30 years. Desperation will do weird things to people. With polls showing Colbert Busch tantalizingly close to pulling off the upset, supporters can be forgiven for being intoxicated by the prospect of winning. Victory over ideology, at least for now.
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Alaska’s Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell is currently “exploring” a campaign for the 2014 Republican nomination against Sen. Mark Begich (D). With a history of working in the oil industry and a record of support for drilling at will, he would likely be one of the most extreme and environmentally irresponsible members of the Senate.

His far right conspiracy theories are eerily reminiscent of another Alaskan politician he has wholeheartedly embraced — former Gov. Sarah Palin (R).

Here are eight things voters should know about Treadwell:

1. He loves drilling. A founding member of the Yukon Pacific Corporation, the company that began the Alaska gas pipeline project. His 2010 campaign for Lt. Governor focused on a platform of “fighting the feds” to get more oil into Alaska’s pipeline, building a gas pipeline, and expanding exports. He complained that the federal government denies Alaskan drillers legal access to oil and gas sources purely because of “visual impact.”

2. He denies climate-change science and dismisses its dangers. In seeking the endorsement of the Conservative Patriots Group (an Alaskan Tea Party organization), Treadwell said he is unconvinced CO2 emissions drive climate change: “I challenge the argument that man made CO2 emissions are causing significant global warming and I will oppose any costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness.” Treadwell cheers the “accessible arctic” that would come from melting ice and suggests that declining cultural traditions are a bigger concern — telling a Republican group: “If you think climate’s changing in Alaska, glaciers are receding, sea ice is opening up, and all of that, one of the things that to me is very dramatic is that there are many, many Alaskan native youth today who do not speak the language of their grandparents.”

3. He opposed Obamacare and student loan reform, because he believed they created “death panels.” Echoing Palin’s widely-debunked claim, Treadwell widely mischaracterized President Obama’s health care reform law and student loan reform. At a 2010 debate, he argued: “Government’s job is to protect our liberties and to protect our property, not to take our rights away. It’s also to our job to come in and tell you, if you’re a doctor ‘you’re now a utility and whatever you charge and decide to do is subject to government regulation.’ Some other things in that bill [were] entirely nuts. They had a plan to try to reduce the cost of student loans by getting the banks out of the way, as middlemen. Instead they said, ‘no, let’s keep the same price, throw the banks out of business, and use that as a tax to help pay for this thing.” Noting his late wife’s struggle with brain cancer, he said “thank goodness there were not death panels… Sarah Palin was right on blowing the whistle on that issue.”

4. He opposes not just marijuana legalization but even medical marijuana. Though he claims to be an advocate of privacy and a “liberty agenda,” Treadwell takes a hard line on even medical marijuana. At a 2010 debate — two years before Colorado voted to legalize and regulate marijuana — Treadwell criticized it and other states that allowed those with a medical need to access the drug. “I believe we should have solid drug laws,” he argued, “I don’t like the situation in CO and CA right now that has basically meant you can get pot in a store as easily as you can get a pizza. I don’t think that makes sense.”

5. He opposes all new revenue, but pushed for more government spending. Treadwell signed Grover Norquist’s iron-clad oath against ever increasing taxes of any kind. In a 2010 debate, he pushed other candidates to do the same. While he opposing ever seeking new revenue, he boasted of his efforts to “dramatically” increase Alaska’s infrastructure through “joint federal and state investment in sanitation, health, and energy facilities.” Last month, he actually criticized the draconian Paul Ryan House Republican budget plan for not balancing the budget quickly enough.

6. He opposed an bill that made ballot initiative funding more transparent, citing his support for parental notification legislation. In 2010, Alaska’s Republican-controlled legislature enacted HB 36, the Open and Transparent Initiative Act, to make it easier for votes to know who is behind ballot initiatives and who is paying for them. As a 2010 Lt. Governor candidate forum, Treadwell explained that he would have opposed the law. His reasoning was that “the constitution did set up a process that hasn’t really happened with the legislation. You go around, get lots and lots of signatures, they made it harder to get the signatures, and the legislature is supposed to respond.” He then complained, “I’m also very sad and upset that we have to go to a ballot initiative to keep the rights of parents to know what their daughter is doing,” as the legislature did not enact a law preventing pregnant minors from obtaining an abortion without parental notification.

7. He loved the late Sen. Ted Stevens because he was “anti-Communist” and brought home pork. In a memorial post for the National Review, Treadwell wrote that the late Senator was a hero: “Stevens was labeled a big spender; conservative circles hung a “bridge to nowhere” around his neck in the year or so before he left. But he was a staunch anti-Communist when it counted, and he supported Ronald Reagan’s efforts to bring down the Soviet Union. He constantly pushed back against environmental extremism, but was a realist about supporting science and technology to address environmental and health problems. … Even conservatives fail us sometimes: Stevens’s natural allies in pushing to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, for instance, were often the same folks who broke with him when he sought to replace a national icebreaker fleet that can hardly handle the reduced conditions of the Arctic. Thus, in his latter days, just as he’d accrued the seniority to guide appropriations, Stevens’s practice of ‘earmarks’ became a target. Since Congress wouldn’t let us drill for new oil, we were told, we had decided to ‘drill’ in the federal budget.” Treadwell, who once served as a page for Stevens, continues the late Senator’s push for federal money for icrebreaking ships.

8. Like Palin, he has connections to the controversial Alaskan Independence Party. In 1990, Alaskans elected Gov. Walter Hickel and Lt. Gov. Jack Coghill on the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP) ticket. Hickel, who had served a term as a Republican in the 1960s, was Treadwell’s “longtime mentor and close friend.” Coghill, who went on to chair the AIP, headlined Treadwell’s 2010 Fairbanks campaign kickoff event. The platform of the AIP under Coghill called for “privatization of government services,” “complete abolition of the concept of sovereign or governmental immunity, so as to restore accountability for public servants,” and “the rights of parents to privately or home school their children and to provide them individually the right to access to a proportional share of all money provided for educational purposes as an unrestricted grant for such purposes.” Historically, the AIP has advocated for a referendum on whether the state should secede from the United States.

Watch Treadwell repeat Sarah Palin’s “death panels” myth:

Treadwell received the Conservative Patriots Group’s Tea Party endorsement in 2010, but lost it when the group discovered he had contributed to Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R) re-election campaign.

CHARLESTON, SC — Almost from the minute Elizabeth Colbert Busch won the Democratic primary to fill the vacant congressional seat here in South Carolina’s first district, Republicans began a demeaning campaign to dismiss her significant business accomplishments by equating her political experience to that of her famous brother, comedian Stephen Colbert.

Moments before Monday’s debate between the two candidates, ThinkProgress spoke with Chad Connelly, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, to get his take on Sanford’s special election opponent, and he too similarly dismissed Colbert Busch as little more than a famous name:

CONNELLY: We’re voting for somebody for Congress. So being a comedian or a famous person’s sister isn’t a whole lot of a qualification for what the vote is. I think our voters know Governor Sanford is a reliable vote for conservatism and less spending, and that’s what on people’s minds.
[...]
KEYES: So main claim to fame is a good last name then?

CONNELLY: Yeah, that’s kind of what it’s boiled down to.

Listen:

Connelly’s remarks echo similar statements made by Sanford himself over the last few weeks. During an appearance on Morning Joe last month, Sanford told host Joe Scarborough that “Stephen Colbert is a very popular, well-regarded comedian, but at the end of the day he’s not on the ticket.”

Researchers at William & Mary and the University of California-Davis somehow convinced nearly 12,000 FreedomWorks members to take a survey exploring their ideological and policy positions in order to analyze how the attitudes of the most ardent members of the Tea Party compare to those of other non-Tea Party aligned Republicans. The results must be sobering to the establishment GOP-types like Karl Rove and Eric Cantor trying to re-brand the party as slightly right-of-sane.

First, as the authors point out, Tea Party members and supporters now constitute a majority of the current Republican Party, not a minority faction.  Their study finds that two-thirds of Republican identifiers strongly support or support the Tea Party, slightly higher than the roughly half of Republicans who say they support the Tea Party in other public polling from NBC/Wall Street Journal.

Second, Tea Party supporters are much more politically active than other Republicans:

For example, in 2008 Tea Party Republicans performed 1.42 activities for the presidential and congressional tickets on average, compared with only .41 activities by non-Tea Party Republicans. In 2010, with only congressional races at the national level, Tea Party Republicans performed on average 0.68 activities versus only 0.12 by non-Tea Party Republicans. Tea Party supporters are responsible for almost all of the total campaign activity performed by party supporters on the Republican side.

Third, on every contentious issue from reducing environmental regulations and repealing Obamacare to taxes and even banning abortion, Tea Party supporters are far more right-wing than other Republicans. In fact, the authors of this study find that on some issues — “imports, abolishing the Department of Education, giving vouchers, and environmental regulation” – the ideological positions of non-Tea Party Republicans are actually closer to those of Democrats than they are to Tea Party Republicans. On top of these policy positions, Tea Party Republicans also reported much more favorable attitudes towards eccentric and extremist 2012 presidential candidates such as Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum than non-Tea Party Republicans, who viewed these candidates negatively.

You can see why this is likely to cause problems in a nation that voted twice to elect Barack Obama.  When you look at what the most active and passionate members of the Republican Party want in terms of policy and candidates, they are way outside of the mainstream of the political opinions of the rising majority of Americans who determine national elections.

Yesterday a majority of the U.S. Senate voted to strengthen background checks at gun shows and crack down on “straw purchases” of guns which allows criminals to get weapons through other people.  Yet according to the anti-democratic rules of the Senate — which require a 60-vote super-majority for anything to go ahead — neither of these amendments will move forward (as well as some other more conservative measures that progressives do not like).

News reports in the aftermath will talk of the President’s “failure” to get gun violence reduction measures passed but in reality this is nothing more than another by-product of a dysfunctional U.S. constitutional system that gives more weight to votes in opposition to measures than to those in support.

The theoretical defense of majority rule rests on the simple proposition that under a system of guaranteed political equality, one person’s vote is equal to every other person’s vote and the side with the most votes wins in a given election or legislative tally.  Under the current abused filibuster rules in the Senate, this reasonable logic is replaced by a system of unequal voting power where proponents of a particular amendment must find additional votes to advance the bill while opponents must simply muster a plurality to block the measure.   Thus, measures like the background check provisions fail to move forward even when they garner the support of a majority of senators as they did yesterday.

Since, the courts have basically ruled that the Senate is free to adopt whatever rules it wants under Article 1, Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution — as Ian Milhiser has written about here on TP — let’s hypothetically reverse the current arrangements and see how it might work.  (This is a thought experiment, not an actual proposal.)

There’s nothing unconstitutional (apparently) with the Senate adopting rules that say it takes 60 votes to prevent – not allow – a vote on a given amendment.  This would mean legislative amendments with only plurality support would regularly advance in the Senate.   The public outcry would be deafening as the ideological measures of a minority — some potentially good and many bad — flew through the Senate and got attached to all sorts of legislation with no recourse for the majority.   Conservatives in a hypothetical majority would go ballistic as a minority of progressives could attach single payer health care, increased taxes on the rich, massive Pentagon cuts, and drug legalization onto legislative measures that would then allow these measures to go forward for a majority vote.  Conversely, a progressive majority would be apoplectic about conservatives attaching provisions to bills to implement a flat tax, eliminate abortion rights, or privatize Social Security and Medicare.  The American public would have little recourse in elections as their votes would be essentially meaningless in the face of Senate rules that favor a motivated minority over the majority.

Sounds ludicrous, right?  But this is not unlike the current situation in the U.S. Senate.  Under real rules, not hypothetical ones, the votes of a minority in opposition to a measure count more than the votes of those in favor in determining which ideas go forward, even when the pro-votes constitute a majority of the legislative body.

Under what principles of democracy is this at all justifiable?

 

Normal people who screw up at work or in their personal lives – be it an ethical transgression, general selfishness, or other direct failure – expect to be fired, cut off socially, or face other serious consequences that alter their lives.    But politicians (and other rich and famous people more broadly) always seem to get another chance.  And amazingly, the public usually finds a way to encourage or reward this kind of behavior.  The “fall, apology, redemption” story in politics is almost as common as the sappy campaign scripts about humble origins and hard work among the political one percent.  Think Mark Sanford, David Vitter, Eliot Spitzer, Barney Frank, and Bill Clinton – none of them seem to be doing too bad in their personal and professional lives after humiliating scandals.

The most recent case in point is Anthony Weiner, the former congressman who resigned after sending sexually explicit pictures of himself to young women over Twitter and then denying he’d done any such thing before admitting his moral failure:  “I have not been honest with myself, my family, my constituents, my friends and supporters and the media.”

One would think that a sexting scandal might permanently end or at least seriously cripple someone’s political future.  But after a carefully orchestrated rollout into the public limelight last weekend, Weiner has sent some pretty strong signals that he’s ready to get back into the ring.  And lo and behold, it looks like New Yorkers may be open to his Phoenix-like return to politics.  An NBC News/Marist poll out this week shows Weiner in second place in the Democratic mayoral primary, trailing the front-runner and current Speaker of the NYC City Council, Christine Quinn, 26 to 15 percent. 

If in fact Weiner is able to rehabilitate his political fortunes — and that’s far from given — one might ask whether voters today have any objective moral or ethical standards that they use to evaluate politicians.  Forgiveness and second chances play a large role in our personal and religious lives, but when it comes to politics, there’s always someone else to vote for or support, so why not have some stronger standards of accountability?

Obviously, not every fallen leader asks for or expects a real second chance in politics and not all second act attempts end up successful.  So what types of politicians are likely to fail to make it out from under the disgrace of scandal?  Here’s a partial taxonomy:
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Nothing is more important to the future of American politics than the minority vote.  Here’s a primer on what to expect from these voters for the rest of the decade.

One thing that’s certain about the future of the minority vote is its continued growth, which has averaged about half a percentage point a year or two points over a Presidential cycle.  Given the latest Census population projections, we would expect growth to continue at roughly that level in the future.  If it does, the share of minority voters in the 2016 election should be around 30 percent and, in the 2020 election, around 32 percent.  In the immediate future, maintaining these levels of voter growth will depend on preventing a minority turnout dropoff, particularly among blacks, and continued mobilization of new voters, particularly among Latinos and Asians.

But how certain is it that minority voters will continue to lean so heavily Democratic?  Change is always possible, but at this point those leanings look very solid. Consider black voters: besides their historic ties to the party, they are strong supporters of active government, both to combat discrimination and to provide services and opportunity.  In a mid-2012 Pew analysis, their party identification was overwhelmingly Democratic: 87 percent of black registered voters identified with or leaned toward the Democrats, compared to just 8 percent who identified with or leaned towards the Republicans, a yawning 79 point gap.

Hispanics also have historic ties to the Democrats, if not quite so strong as those among blacks.  But they are as strong or stronger in their support for active government, the safety net and generous provision of services.  And the issue of immigration looms large, with Democrats viewed overwhelmingly as the party most favorable to immigrants.  In the same Pew analysis, party identification among Hispanic registered voters was 61 percent Democratic to 29 percent Republican, a 32 point pro-Democratic gap.

Asians, perhaps surprisingly, are now almost as Democratic-oriented as Hispanics, showing strong support for Democratic stands on active government and immigration.  In a detailed 2012 Pew study of Asian-Americans, Asians’ party identification favored Democrats by 50-28, a 22 point margin.  In addition, self-identified liberals (31 percent) outnumber self-identified conservatives (24 percent) among this group, a gap that’s more significant that it seems given that conservatives typically outweigh liberals by a substantial margin in the general population.

Republicans have tried to argue that today’s GOP has considerable appeal to minorities and that, if they can just get their message out, Democratic support will be substantially eroded over time.  Of course, that’s also what they said after the 2004 election, when Bush received 40 percent of the Hispanic vote.  Bush’s dawn turned out to be false — Democratic dominance today is clear and overwhelming.

Consider the various approaches Republicans have taken to getting their message out, particularly to Hispanics whom they believe (correctly) are a much better target for conversion than blacks.  A longtime favorite has been the idea that Hispanics are socially conservative and can be induced to vote for the GOP by emphasizing “values” issues like abortion or gay marriage.  This has not been effective so far and there are no indications it will succeed in the future.  Hispanics, it turns out, are actually much less likely than whites to vote on the basis of cultural issues.  In addition, Hispanics overall are not nearly as socially conservative as many believe.  On the specific issue of gay marriage, for example, surveys have repeatedly shown that Hispanics are no more conservative on this issue than whites are.  And younger Hispanics are typically more progressive than their older counterparts on social issues, so generational replacement will make the tomorrow’s Hispanic population less socially conservative than today’s.

Another favored approach is to cast GOP economic policy in terms Republicans believe would resonate among minority constituencies. Republicans have argued for years that Latinos should be naturally attracted to their tax and regulatory policies because of the high number of small-business owners among them. They’ve also noted that, while there are differences among various groups, Asians on the whole have the highest average educational level and median household income of any racial or ethnic group in the United States, including whites.

Latino and Asian self-interest and material aspirations, on this approach, suggest that they should hate taxes and despise big government. But most Latinos and Asians do not despise government or desire more libertarian economic policies, as confirmed repeatedly by a wide variety of survey data.

These findings suggest that there is really only one way for the GOP to effectively compete for minority voters: the party must, quite simply, become less conservative.  They will have to jettison their bitter hostility to active government, spending on social services and immigration reform and develop their own approach in these areas that minorities might find appealing. It is a way that, so far, Republicans have rejected. But if they continue down this path, it seems likely that Democrats will continue to get 75-80 percent, leaning toward the high side of that range, of the minority vote.

Scott Brown, the Republican who served for two years as a Massachusetts senator, told Fox News Sunday he hasn’t ruled out retooling his senate ambitions to focus on the seat from the neighboring state of New Hampshire. Brown originally won the Massachusetts seat held by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) in a 2010 special election after Kennedy passed away, but was booted from office two years later with the election of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

Brown said “nothing’s off the table and nothing’s on the table” when he was asked about a possible New Hampshire run this morning by Chris Wallace, but not before fellow panelist Karl Rove was able to slip in an attempt to justify Brown’s dual-state loyalties:

CHRIS WALLACE Senator Brown, there is talk that you mighty make Senate run again in 2014. But not in Massachusetts, in New Hampshire. Why new Hampshire?

SCOTT BROWN: I’m not gonna comment on that obviously. I think it’s important to continue to do my job here and challenge people to do things better.

WALLACE: But you did say nothing’s off the table.

BROWN: Nothing’s off the table and nothing’s on the table. Right now I’m recharging the batteries and working hard.

KARL ROVE: This guy is a ninth generation New Hampshirite. That’s the dirty little secret. His mother lives there.

Brown’s current job is counsel and de facto provider of Washington contacts for the law and lobbying firm Nixon Peabody. (Senators may not engage in out-and-out lobbying for two years after leaving office, under United States law.) Among their clients is the Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs, which gave Brown $10,000 in PAC donations for the 2012 campaign cycle, along with over $100,000 more in contributions from the bank’s individual employees.

During his short stay in the Senate, Brown worked to water down and weaken the financial regulatory law Dodd-Frank, and earned the moniker of one of “Wall Street’s Favorite Congressmen” from Forbes Magazine.

Brown has since joined Fox News Channel as a contributor, and according to The Hill he owns a house in New Hampshire and has emphasized his family ties to the state.

Towards the end of a backpacking trip in the Smokies last week, I encountered a large SUV plastered with bumper stickers extolling the virtues of private property rights and decrying eminent domain – sitting in a public parking lot next to a public waterway in a national park.

My first somewhat cynical thought was of the infamous Tea Party banner, “Keep government out of my Medicare!”  It seemed incongruous for this person to bumper-lecture others about the abuses of government condemnation while enjoying the beautiful surroundings of more than 500,000 acres in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, land acquired through a mix of private donations and state and federal government use of eminent domain that displaced thousands of people and private businesses  from the area in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee in the 1930’s.  A conservative might have a similar reaction, for example, encountering a liberal parent dropping off their kid at a private school with their foreign-made car covered in Obama stickers and end inequality and racism banners.  “Yeah pal, keep up the fight,” they might be thinking.

But thinking through it a bit, the scene made more sense.  I’m no libertarian but I sure would not want the government to take my home even with compensation.  Yet I love hiking the national park system on a regular basis.   Maybe the libertarian driver I encountered recently had a fight with a local government over their own land and needed to unwind away in a peaceful spot by the river, government owned or not.

Understanding that this is just a small anecdote, it’s fair to ask whether people on the whole are ideologically blinded or just plain confused about what they believe.

In highly polarized political times, we often overlook the fact that few Americans are ideologically consistent.  In 2009, we conducted a large-scale study of political ideology that explored reactions to 40 different statements split evenly between progressive and conservative ideas.  The survey asked people to rank their level of agreement or disagreement on a scale of 0-10 with progressive statements such as, “The gap between rich and poor should be reduced even if it means higher taxes for the wealthy,” and conservative ones like, “Government spending is almost always wasteful and inefficient.”  Combining responses to each of the 40 statements, we determined a composite score for various groups (you can determine your own ideological score by taking this quick quiz based on the survey):

As the chart above highlights, American ideological attitudes basically converge in the middle.  “Although there is a substantial range of ideological positions (from conservative Republicans at 160.6 to liberal Democrats at 247.1), no one group approaches the most extreme poles on either the progressive or conservative side of the continuum. Second, this middle convergence implies that Americans are not fully convinced of many ideological positions on their own side are open to ideological positions that may be different than their own.”

We also found that people’s self-described ideological labels (liberal, progressive, moderate, conservative, and libertarian) did not correspond directly to attitudes about government and society and often overlapped with beliefs typically ascribed to different ideological views:

Case in point: Majorities of self-identified conservatives agree with four out of five progressive perspectives on the role of government while majorities of self-identified progressives and liberals agree with conservative economic positions on things like trade and Social Security.

Additionally, self-identified progressives and liberals share many views and beliefs about government and the economy but hold somewhat differing beliefs on cultural and international concerns. Likewise, although conservatives and libertarians are frequently considered to be part of the same tribe, our research finds that self-identified conservatives look rather poorly upon the libertarian approach (only 35 percent of conservatives rate “libertarian” favorably).

This research shows the highly fluid nature of political ideology and suggests that people can hold seemingly contradictory political ideas in their heads without undermining their overall political identity.    The libertarian driver by the river in the national park was being reasonable if not entirely consistent with his bumper sticker views — something that affects most of us based on this data.

There are two keys to achieving real political dominance for the Obama coalition.  First, the Obama coalition must be mobilized beyond Presidential elections.  That means between elections in the struggle to achieve legislative victories and in Congressional elections, where turnout patterns must align more closely with Presidential elections.  Second, the Obama coalition must be widened to take in a larger share of the white working class.  Otherwise, the hostility of these voters will undercut public support for the President’s agenda, as well as remaining a lurking threat in every election, particularly Congressional ones.

Both of these objectives will be seriously compromised if strong growth does not return to the American economy and soon.  Take white working class voters.  These voters are primarily looking for material improvements in their lives, improvements that are not possible without strong economic growth and the jobs, tight labor markets and rising incomes such growth would bring.  In a low growth environment, these voters will remain exceptionally pessimistic and inclined to blame Democrats and government for their lack of upward mobility.

Even more serious, core groups of the Obama coalition will be weakened by continued slow growth.  Obama was well-supported by these groups in 2012, but a sluggish economic environment, where unemployment continues pushing 8 percent will try these voters’ patience.  How much enthusiasm will Hispanics, blacks, youth, single women, etc., whose unemployment rates are considerably above the national average, continue to have for a party that cannot do more to improve economic conditions?  Attrition in support will be inevitable in such a scenario and the opportunity to consolidate a dominant coalition will be lost.

So the stakes in the battle for more and faster growth are high.  But you would not guess that from the issues preoccupying Washington.  Instead, in the very same week when we received a dreadful jobs report—just 88,000 jobs were added to the economy—President Obama has made yet another attempt to revive a Grand Bargain with Republicans by outlining a budget plan that replaces the automatic sequestered spending cuts with other spending cuts while also raising $580 billion in revenue and making cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Whatever the other merits of this proposal may be, it will do nothing for economic growth and, in fact, will continue the ongoing pattern of spending cuts that are undermining our recovery and thereby the future prospects of the Obama coalition.  Grand Bargains are no substitute for growth and both consumers and voters know the difference.

There has been a flurry of discussion on the web about whether the Obama’s demographically-driven majority is likely to have any staying power.  Or put another way, do current demographics give Democrats a natural advantage and Republicans a natural disadvantage— one that will require them to “reboot” their party?  Political scientist John Sides says emphatically “no” — elections are determined by “fundamentals,” especially the state of the economy, and demographics are only of marginal importance.  So no need for heavy lifting by the GOP, they can just wait for fundamentals to turn in their favor and — voila! — they’ll be back.

Eric Schickler disagrees, citing among other evidence, the widening party identification gap between Democrats and Republicans.

And so does Jonathan Chait, who argues that:

The Republican Party appears to be caught in a double bind, in which the electorate is growingly progressively less white, and even younger white voters hold less conservative views than older ones. What’s more, evidence suggests that voters maintain the partisan allegiances they form at a young age. The picture looks grim for the GOP.

Finally, Sean Trende — who has written an interesting book arguing that no party ever has a natural advantage in American politics — backs up Sides. He sees no evidence that the 2012 election represented anything more than fundamentals that disfavored the GOP and, in that sense, put Republicans “on the wrong side of the coin toss.”

Unsurprisingly, I tend to side with Chait and Schickler in this dispute.  My book with John Judis, The Emerging Democratic Majority, launched the current school of thought about a demographically-driven Democratic majority and I am disinclined to back away from it now, given the 2012 election results.

However, rather than just choose up sides, I wanted to take a slightly different angle on the dispute that synthesizes the approaches of both sides.  Start with the idea of electoral realignment.
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The radical British filmmaker Ken Loach has called for the creation of a new political party ideologically to the left of the current Labour Party and more in line with what he and his co-authors see as Labour’s true socialist roots.  Building on the themes of his new documentary about the creation of the modern British welfare state after WWII, The Spirit of ’45, Loach and his colleagues argue that a new party is necessary to fully reject the austerity policies of the Tories and to avoid the fecklessness of Labour in challenging this consensus.

The likelihood of this new party (a) taking off and being successful and (b) being politically attractive to enough voters seems low, given that the “first past the post” system for U.K. parliamentary elections ensures a small, leftish party will lack real power.  Putting the wisdom of this venture aside, it does raise an interesting question about the stability and attractiveness of the major political parties going forward.

In the U.S., our electoral system forces people to choose between two parties that many voters clearly do not like.   What might the American left look if we had a proportional system similar to much of continental Europe?   There’s no way to tell for certain, but based on attitudes and groupings it’s quite possible to see the current Democratic coalition fracturing into three parts – not unlike the breakdown of greens, social democrats, and liberals in Europe.

The biggest part of this center-left coalition would emerge from the traditional base of the Democratic Party represented by labor, African Americans, Latinos, women, and the many constituent groups that have built up around the party over the decades.  Ideologically, this remaining Democratic Party would be all over the map as it is today, basically pursuing center-left policies and values that fit the needs of the component parts.  A second more-ideologically left party (call it a revamped Green Party) composed of environmentalists, progressives, and other social movement types would likely emerge to advocate more forcefully for social justice, civil rights, anti-poverty efforts, sustainability and climate change reduction, steeper progressive taxation, and greater public investment.    A third, even smaller component of centrist types (call it the Moderate Party) would also likely emerge to scoop up the remnants of anti-deficit, pro-business, and socially moderate-to-conservative Democrats.

Assuming that the right would also splinter into three components — a hard core libertarian element, a mainstream GOP arm, and a group of socially conservative, Tea Party-types — one could see how a “grand coalition” of center left and center right parties might coalesce under this electoral scenario to advance the “radical centrism” that many of today’s elites advocate.

As it stands, the American left has figured out how to coexist fairly peacefully within one party, thus keeping our politics more progressive than they might be otherwise under a proportional system.  Given the dim long term prospects of the GOP at the national level, don’t be surprised if we start hearing more mainstream conservatives supporting a move towards a more proportional voting system in the U.S.

My previous post on the GOP’s problem with projecting a love of diversity when they don’t live it focused on the Republican House caucus and the heavily white districts they tend to represent.  Another way to illustrate this point is to look at where GOP support tends to come from by population density.  The denser an area, the more cosmopolitan and diverse it is likely to be. And that’s precisely where Republicans tend not to be.

Start with the states that Governor Romney won in 2012.  By and large, they tended to be rural and lightly populated.  Fourteen out of 26 states carried by President Obama this year had 10 or more electoral votes, while just six of 24 states carried by Romney had 10 or more electoral votes. Obama also carried seven of the eight most populous states: California, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. Only Texas went for Romney.

But the population density pattern can be seen most clearly by looking at the types of areas that Obama and Romney did well in. Obama ran strongest in large metropolitan areas (those with more than 1 million in population), winning these areas by 56 percent to 42 percent. Well over half (54 percent) of the U.S. population lives in these 51 large metropolitan areas.

Obama and Romney tied, 49 percent-49 percent, in medium metropolitan areas (those with 250,000 to 1 million in population).  Medium metros contain another 20 percent of the U.S. population.

In small metro areas (nine percent of the country), where the population dips below 250,000, Romney was finally able to build a vote margin over Obama.  Romney carried these areas 55 percent-43 percent.  And outside of metro areas, where population density continues to fall, Romney did even better. In micropolitan areas — think of these areas as the small town sections of rural America — Romney beat Obama by 18 percentage points, 58 percent-40 percent. Micropolitans are another 10 percent of the U.S. population. And in the rest of rural America, the part that is most isolated from population centers and the most spread out, Gov. Romney bested Obama by 23 points, 61 percent-38 percent. These areas, despite the vast land area they cover, contain only 6 percent of the population (which is why, if you look at county maps of election returns, so much of it is colored red despite President Obama’s solid victory).

The same density-related patterns of support for Obama and Gov. Romney can be observed within large metropolitan areas. Here we can use a typology developed by Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Institute and Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program to break these areas down by density and distance from the urban core. In large metro areas Obama did best in densely populated urban cores (9 percent of the country), carrying counties in this classification by a whopping 55 points (77 percent to 22 percent). Moving out from pure urban core counties to the densest, closest-in suburban counties—classified as inner-suburban in the typology—Obama carried these counties by a wide 25-point margin (62 percent-37 percent).  Almost a fifth (19 percent) of the nation’s population is contained in these inner-suburban counties.

President Obama also carried mature suburban counties (16 percent of the nation’s population)—counties that are somewhat less dense than inner-suburbs and typically contain no portion of the central city—by 13 points (56 percent-43 percent.

Moving out to the emerging suburbs, it is important to distinguish between these areas and true exurbs, which together constitute what people usually think of as “exurbia.” Today’s true exurbs contain only 3 percent of the nation’s population. That is where Gov. Romney did the best, carrying these counties by 24 points (61 percent-37 percent).

In contrast, emerging suburbs contain 8 percent of the nation’s population and tend to be faster-growing and denser than true exurbs. Emerging suburbs include such well-known counties as Loudoun County, VA, just outside of Washington, DC;  Scott County, MN, outside of Minneapolis; Warren County, OH, outside of Cincinnati;  and Douglas County, CO, outside of Denver.  In this category of counties Gov. Romney also did well (53 percent-45 percent) though not nearly as well as he did in the true exurbs, where population density is lowest and concentration of white voters is highest.

Living where they ain’t: that’s today’s Republican party.  It’s a problem that is not amenable to a quick GOP image makeover, as the party is currently finding out.

Welcome to National Marriage Equality Week. After today’s Supreme Court hearing on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, marriage equality has been the topic du jour, and will remain so after tomorrow’s companion hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). I certainly hope the Court sees these discriminatory laws for what they are, but even if it doesn’t, the battle for marriage equality has been won: public opinion has swung strongly and, given the numbers among young Americans, likely irreversibly in favor of marriage equality.

Anti-equality advocates, like Princeton professor Robert George and his co-authors, are attempting to cast this movement as an attack on the venerable institution of marriage. While these arguments don’t pass the smell test, more level-headed conservatives are right to point to a battery of statistics to suggest that the institution of marriage is in crisis for reasons quite independent of marriage equality.

The “marriage in crisis” framing generally leads to discussions about what could be done to save marriage as it exists today. But there’s a prior question: is the dominant, traditional vision of marriage really something we want to save? And if not, what would replace it?

If we assume that deep cultural forces are eroding the traditional, one-size fits marriage model based around norms like permanence and exclusivity, we should start talking about alternatives. That starts by imagining a way to preserve marriage’s social benefits while making it a more fundamentally freeing institution; developing a liberal vision of married life oriented around free choice and equal, mutually life-defining partnership. This move will require a shift in both government policy and social norms, but if we think the marriage crisis is, in fact, a crisis in need of addressing, developing an attractive vision of the institution is a necessary first step.

Taking philosophical stock of marriage requires first figuring out what, in fact, individuals and society need out of marriage. From the point of view of individual adults looking to get married, that’s clear: a defining relationship that allows them to chart the course of their life with a person they cannot imagine living without. According to a 2011 Pew survey, love is almost universally (93 percent) cited as a reason that people get married. A similarly large number of Americans cited a “lifelong commitment” (87 percent) and “companionship” (81 percent) as reasons to get married, suggesting love’s bond is seen as something more thoroughgoing than an emotional connection. Marriage, it seems, is something more like a fundamental and encompassing commitment to another person, a statement that two people want to be partners in all of life’s most important and difficult endeavors, ideally forever. It’s a loving tie, but one beyond mere love — call it commitment, for lack of more emotionally accurate word.

But the strong, seemingly innate human desire for commitment in this sense alone isn’t a good reason for the state to legally recognize marriages and sanction them with special tax benefits and legal privileges. The only plausible defense of civil marriage is that it promotes the health of children by giving them a stable environment to grow in. There’s some extremely strong evidence that, all things being equal, children raised in married homes are more likely to be better off; the American Association of Pediatrics (which recently endorsed marriage equality) believes the bulk of the evidence suggests marriage makes adult life less risk-prone, as a consequence creating a safer, healthier environment for kids to grow up in. There’s even some evidence that marriage lowers violent crime and gender inequality. This body of research makes me leery of calls to get rid of marriage outright or de-couple it from the state. Absent a clear idea of what would replace marriage, reform rather than outright replacement seems like the safer bet.

So to make marriage work, we need to develop a vision that allows adults to define their partnership in the way that matters to them while at the same time keeping home life solid and stable for children. How might that work?

Absolute free choice and open communication should be our lodestars. Instead of defining marriage by a specific set of norms, we should see it as an institution where two adults develop a shared, uncoerced vision of the good life, working out a mutually agreed upon ideal life on terms that both partners find fulfilling. This liberal view of marriage encourages marriage to be a place for, in John Stuart Mill’s memorable phrase, “experiments in living,” where couples chart their own course as equal partners, burdened only by social expectations that 1) neither partner forces the other to live on unacceptable terms and 2) that, if they choose to have children, they make sure to place the kids’ welfare first.

You might think that this liberal view is generally how people see marriage today. That may or may not be true, but making this ideal explicit in the public marriage debate (which it certainly isn’t now) helps us see just how far we are in terms of public policy and social norms from making it a reality.

The political barrier towards realizing the liberal marriage ideal is the most obvious: the fundamentally patriarchal character of contemporary heterosexual union, a reality sustained by public policy. It’s a point feminists have been making since the women’s movement began, but it still hasn’t been solved. Hangover social norms from the bad old days put a disproportionate onus on women to raise children, limiting both women’s ability to work outside the home and men’s ability to work inside it. This disparity, together with broader workplace sexisms like unequal pay, combine to put women in an economically weaker position, putting the marriage on unchosen, unequal terms. This creates what feminist philosopher Susan Moller Okin calls “a cycle of socially caused and distinctly asymmetric vulnerability” wherein women are, through neither partner’s free choice, funneled into an economically subordinate position.

This vulnerability limits the ability of heterosexual couples to define their relationship on their own terms, forcing them to live in socially defined boxes rather than negotiating the contours of their work/life balance on their own terms. This is a place where government policy can help: equal pay legislation and universal childcare are strong first steps towards freeing marriage.

But another aspect of marriage that requires rethinking is more of a cultural than political issue: sexual exclusivity. There’s good reason to believe that sexual exclusivity isn’t what all humans are naturally inclined towards; that while lifelong commitment, or “social monogamy,” is a basic human need, many people feel an equally basic need for a diverse set of sexual partners. If that’s true, then non-monogamy could be good for some (not all) couples for two reasons: 1) if both partners prefer non-monogamy, then it’s wrong for society to coerce them into being monogamous; 2) socially sanctioned non-monogamy could lower rates of infidelity and hence divorces caused by the breach of trust created by cheating.

Instead of shaming couples who choose non-exclusivity, we should recognize that, under conditions of clear and free consent, it’s healthier for some (not all) marriages to remain sexually open while emotionally closed. The majority of couples (I suspect) who find sexual monogamy integral to a meaningful relationship will remain free to do so, but those who feel the reverse should be equally liberated to live life on their terms.

This matters not because most marriages *should* be non-monogamous: to be clear, I actually think the vast majority of couples would, given the choice, remain monogamous. Rather, it’s that partners who feel like their marriage would be on better footing if they could have honest conversations about non-monogamy should be able to do so without fear of social pressure. Given rising adultery rates, there’s at least some reason to think more openness would address one cause of divorce.

But more importantly, it’s a matter of principle. If marriage really is about mutual self-definition, then partners should feel free to define the terms of their relationship in whatever way they see fit as long as they don’t hurt each other or their children. We should stop shaming non-monogamy not because we see it as our social ideal, but because it’s some people’s individual ideal. If marriage is to broadly be a Millian “experiment in living,” then non-monogamy should be one of the individual tests.

There’s a seemingly obvious contradiction here: if heterosexual marriages are currently unequal power relations, it might seem that lowering the level of shame surrounding non-exclusivity simply frees up men to coerce women into accepting their “need” to sleep around. That’s a real concern, and it’s why we need to retain social norms around marriage, but center them on consent rather than a defined set of rules. Social shaming should be directed towards people that coerce and bully their partners. Non-consent must be made into be the foremost marital ill in society’s eyes.

These suggestions only skim the surface of the ocean of questions surrounding marriage. But advancing the liberal marriage ideal is a critical task in making our society a better, freer place. Hopefully, a Court ruling in favor of marriage equality will help point the way.

People often ask what, exactly, do progressives believe?  Over the past few years, we’ve worked with a great group called the American Values Project, representing a cross section of leaders from think tanks, philanthropic organizations, and environmental, labor, youth, civil rights, and other progressive groups, to try to distill progressive beliefs and values into clear language in one digestible resource.

The result of this collective effort is called Progressive Thinking: A Synthesis of Progressive Values, Beliefs, and Positions.  The document is free and we encourage you to read, review, critique, and pass it around to others.  As the handbook states, the central progressive message is one of fairness and equality:

Our approach is simple to summarize and is built upon the ideas of generations of progressives from Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama:  everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does his or her fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules. As progressives, we believe that everyone deserves a fair shot at a decent, fulfilling, and economically secure life.  We believe that everyone should do his or her fair share to build this life through education and hard work and through active participation in public life.   And we believe that everyone should play by the same set of rules with no special privileges for the well-connected or wealthy.

The book is divided into sections outlining the overall progressive story, foundational beliefs about government, the economy, and national security, and the application of this framework to contemporary issues.  It also includes a number of useful speeches and essays that show progressive values and beliefs in action throughout our nation’s history.
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In conservatives’ preferred vision of America, we are a white Christian nation. And it is true that in the not too far distant past, we were, at least in numerical terms, an overwhelmingly white Christian nation.  In 1944, 80 percent of adults were white Christians.  But things have changed a lot since then.  Today only about 52 percent of adults are white Christians. By 2024, that figure will be down to 45 percent. That means that by the election of 2016, the United States will have ceased to be a white Christian nation. Looking even farther down the road, by 2040 white Christians will be only around 35 percent of the population and conservative white Christians, who have been such a critical part of the GOP base, only about a third of that—a minority within a minority.

Part of this of course is the inexorable march of race-ethnic change.  The white share of the population is declining at a rate of about a half percentage point a year and is expected to continue to do so for the next several decades.  But the other part of the shift away from white Christians is less well-understood: the rise of religious diversity.

There are two components to the rise of religious diversity: (1) increasing numbers of Americans who practice a non-Christian faith; and (2) increasing numbers of Americans who are secular or unaffiliated with any religion.  A recent Pew report sheds light on these important trends.

The Pew report aggregates data from their surveys between 2007 and 2012.  They found that those of non-Christian faiths have gone up from 4 to 6 percent over the time period, while those who are religiously unaffiliated have gone from 15 to nearly 20 percent of adults.  This is an astonishing rate of change, particularly for the unaffiliated who, according to some projections, were only supposed to hit 20 percent around the middle of the next decade.  This group’s growth is clearly way ahead of expectations.

Part of the reason for this rapid growth is generational.  Pew’s study notes that, among the youngest Millennial adults—those born 1990-1994, over a third (34 percent) have no religious affiliation.

There are significant social and political implications to these trends.  Pew and other data consistently show how liberal the unaffiliated are, particularly on social issues.  And they vote that way: in the 2012 exit poll, the unaffiliated supported Obama over Romney, 70-26.  In addition, those of non-Christian faiths supported Obama by 72-27.  To add to conservatives’ woes, their strongest group, white evangelical protestants (78-21 Romney) actually declined by 2 percentage points in the 2007-2012 time period.

Even conservatives should be able to do the math.  It’s time to give up on America as a white Christian nation and fully embrace its diversity–race-ethnic and religious.

In mid-2009, I published a report called The Coming End of the Culture Wars.  Four years on, how is my prediction holding up?

First, let’s review some history.  The term “culture wars” dates back to a 1991 book by academic James Davison Hunter who argued that cultural issues touching on family and religious values, feminism, gay rights, race, guns and abortion had redefined American politics.  Going forward, bitter conflicts around these issues would be the fulcrum of politics in a polarized nation.

For a while, it did look like he might have a point.  Conservatives especially seemed happy to take a culture wars approach, reasoning that political debate around these issues would both mobilize their base and make it more difficult for progressives to benefit from their edge on domestic policy issues like the economy and health care.  This approach played an important role in conservative gains in the early part of the Clinton administration, the impeachment drama of the late 1990’s, which undercut progressive legislative strategies, and, of course, the 2000 and 2004 victories of conservative George W. Bush.

Lately, though, these issues have been conspicuous by their absence.  Looking back on Barack Obama’s historic victory in 2008, culture wars issues not only had a very low profile in the campaign, but, where conservatives did attempt to raise them, these issues did them little good.  Indeed, they were probably more hurt than helped by such attempts–witness the effect of the Sarah Palin nomination.

Since then, attempts to revive the culture wars have been similarly unsuccessful.  Sarah Palin’s bizarre trajectory, culminating in her surprise resignation from the Alaska governership, only made culture wars politics appear even more out of touch.  And culture warriors’ shrill attacks on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor conspicuously failed to turn public opinion against her.

More recently, the air has been running even faster out of the culture wars balloon.  Take the culture warriors’ signature issue of opposition to same sex marriage.  Back in 2009, I noted that support for same sex marriage, while a minority position, was increasing steadily at a rate of about a percentage point a year.  In the last four years, that rate of change has accelerated to more than 2 points a year, so that we now see plurality and frequently majority support for same sex marriage in public polling.  Indeed, the 2012 exit poll found a 49-46 plurality in favor of legalizing same sex marriage, support that extended, as a recent report has noted, across a wide range of demographic groups.

Of course, in the actual 2012 campaign, culture wars issues were “the dog that didn’t bark” as candidate Romney attempted to stay far, far away from these issues.  This was despite President Obama’s historic decision to come out in support of legalizing same sex marriage. Romney, despite his party’s continued opposition to freedom to marry, did not feel he could safely push that opposition in a general election context.

The culture wars as we have known them are therefore likely coming to an end.  Demographic change is undercutting both the level and salience of conservative cultural views, thereby reducing the effectiveness of such politics. And no, abortion rights is not an exception: in the 2012 exit poll, 18-29 year olds were 2:1 pro-choice on abortion, the highest of any age group.

These changes will not prevent conservative activists around particular culture wars issues from continuing to press their case.  Indeed, reaction to their current desperate plight may lead them to intensify their efforts in some states, especially where demographic change has been slow or where local right wing culture wars institutions retain strength.  But there will be diminishing incentives for politicians to take up these causes for the very simple reason that they are losers.

The winding down of the culture wars will also not end the clustering of those with progressive and conservative cultural views at the progressive and conservative ends of politics.  It will still be the case that voters will be attracted to the political “home” where they feel culturally most comfortable.  Conservatives will attempt to capitalize on this by giving a cultural overtone to non-cultural issues like taxes and government spending.

Sound familiar?  That, of course, has been the conservative playbook for the last several years.  But the aggressive use of specifically cultural issues to divide voters will become less and less common.  And the country will be a better place for it.

This is part 2 of a series on RFK and the Obama coalition.  Part 1 is here.

The potential of the new Obama coalition is truly impressive, given its 2012 performance and how many of its constituent parts are likely to grow in numbers over the course of the decade.  But the word “potential” should be stressed.  There is no guarantee that turnout and support levels will stay as high as they have been going forward.  And there is definitely no guarantee that these constituencies will remain active and involved in the legislative battles that must be fought to turn progressive policies into law.  Thus, implementing a progressive agenda will, to a large extent, be dependent on the mobilization level of the Obama coalition both in future elections and between those elections.

This is a big challenge, but Obama and his team have taken some significant steps to address it.  These steps have been driven by the recognition that the best way to maintain enthusiasm and support is to deliver for the groups that put you in office.  Thus, the administration has been aggressively pushing a number of policy priorities that resonate with the concerns of different groups in the coalition:  immigration reform, curbing gun violence, same sex marriage, climate change and universal pre-K.

This strategy is a good one.  These fights are all substantively important in policy terms and may, with luck, result in some important victories.  And they should indeed pump up enthusiasm levels as different groups in the coalition see how strongly Obama is willing to fight for their priorities.  Nor does it seem likely that a big political price will be paid for touching on issues that have a social dimension; the country has moved rapidly in a progressive direction on most of these issues and these issues lack the power they once had to elicit a backlash.

However, the strategy has to be supplemented by efforts not just to mobilize the Obama coalition but to expand it.    And among the chief targets here is the white working class, just as it was for Bobby Kennedy in 1968.

The white working class was the key force behind the Republican landslide in 2010 — Democrats lost the group by 30 points.  And they were a glaring weakness for Obama in 2012, when he lost them by only a slightly more modest 26 points.  These voters, despite their declining numbers, will be an ever-present threat to progressives in elections and to progressive governance as long as they remain so hostile to progressive principles and policies.

The solution is to bring a significant segment of these voters over to the progressive side.  It does not have to be a majority of these voters.  The Bobby Kennedy coalition can be dominant with a strong minority of the white working class, but one that is committed to progressive policies and large enough to derail the super-majorities among the voters that conservatives rely on.

Such a coalition would make the task of progressive governance far easier by breaking up the mass base for conservative counter-mobilization.  And it should greatly reduce the threat white working class voters pose to progressive fortunes when rising constituencies falter or fail to turn out at high levels.

But how can this be done?  It is no doubt a substantial challenge, but one that can and must be addressed.  At CAP, we are launching a project—the Bobby Kennedy Project—to do just that.  The goal is to figure out how to reach both the white working class and more progressive-leaning demographic groups through unifying values, policies and messages.

Our initial work suggests that a successful approach will require a relentless focus on social opportunity for all people and an economic agenda that puts the interests of working- and middle-class families first.  In particular, the burgeoning research and policy agenda around “equity and growth” provides a good model for policies that can successfully unite a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, cross-class coalition.  The evidence is increasingly strong that rising inequality has inhibited growth and that higher growth in the future is more likely with policies that broadly diffuse opportunity.  These policies are America’s future and also perhaps the glue that can finally join a critical segment of the white working class to America’s rising demographic groups.

The rise of the Obama coalition has already changed American politics.  Expanding this rising coalition into a Bobby Kennedy coalition could transform our politics for a generation.