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Election

Not Just Single Ladies: How Single Men Are Becoming An Important Part Of The Progressive Coalition

By Ruy Teixeira, Guest Blogger on Mar 6, 2013 at 12:43 pm

It’s common to observe that unmarried women are a key part of the progressive coalition these days. And it is true that Obama carried this group by a wide 67-31 margin in 2012, not far off his 70-29 margin in 2008. Unmarried women were also a larger share of voters, 23 percent vs. 21 percent in 2008. Pretty impressive.

But is far less widely noted that unmarried men have also become a significant part of the progressive coalition. Despite the unflattering portrayals in the media of single guys as aimless yahoos, they do in fact have some definite—and progressive—politics. In the 2012 election, unmarried men favored Obama by a healthy 56-40 margin, close to the 58-38 margin they gave him in 2008. And their share of voters went up even more than unmarried women, increasing by 4 points to 18 percent.

Unmarried men’s progressive leanings are not unique to the last two elections either. As the chart below shows, these voters supported Clinton twice, as well as Gore and Kerry. The last time they supported a Republican candidate was in 1988, when they gave George H.W. Bush a modest 3 point margin over Michael Dukakis:

The country has changed a lot since then….and so have single guys. Time to rethink our stereotypes.

Ruy Teixeira is a Senior Fellow at both The Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress, where he focuses on political demography. He is the author, with John Judis, of The Emerging Democratic Majority.

Climate Progress

In Sandy’s Wake, Bill Clinton Calls Out Mitt’s Mockery Of Climate Action

By Brad Johnson, Guest Blogger on Oct 30, 2012 at 6:14 pm

After his adoptive hometown of New York City was devastated by Hurricane Sandy, former president Bill Clinton railed against Mitt Romney for having mocked the idea of climate action. In a campaign stop in Minneapolis, MN, Clinton criticized Romney for having “ridiculed the president for his efforts to fight global warming in economically beneficial ways.” “In the real world,” Clinton concluded, “Barack Obama’s policies work better.”

Transcript:

I was actually listening closely to what the candidates said in these debates. In the first debate, the triumph of the moderate Mitt Romney. You remember what he did? He ridiculed the president. Ridiculed the president for his efforts to fight global warming in economically beneficial ways. He said, ‘Oh, you’re going to turn back the seas.’ In my part of America, we would like it if someone could’ve done that yesterday. All up and down the East Coast, there are mayors, many of them Republicans, who are being told, ‘You’ve got to move these houses back away from the ocean. You’ve got to lift them up. Climate change is going to raise the water levels on a permanent basis. If you want your town insured, you have to do this.’ In the real world, Barack Obama’s policies work better.

JR: Romney’s mockery of Obama was in his Republican National Convention speech, not the first debate. Sadly, climate never came up in any of the debates.

Security

Romney Will Increase Military Spending By $2.1 Trillion With No Plan To Pay For It

By Ben Armbruster on May 10, 2012 at 12:05 pm

Mitt Romney is campaigning for president on fiscal responsibility. “The mission to restore America begins with getting our fiscal house in order,” he says. At the same time, the presumptive GOP nominee says he wants to increase military spending. His campaign website claims that a President Romney will peg the Pentagon’s budget to Gross Domestic Product “at a floor of 4 percent of GDP.” What will that mean in dollars? CNNMoney reports that under Romney’s plan, “the additional spending really piles up in future years”:

With the Pentagon’s base budget — which does not include war costs — forecast to hit 3.5% of GDP in 2013, a jump to 4% would mean an increase of around $100 billion dollars in defense spending in 2013. [...]

Compared to the Pentagon’s current budget, Romney’s plan would lead to $2.1 trillion in additional spending over the next ten years, according to an analysis conducted for CNNMoney by Travis Sharp, a budget expert at the Center for a New American Security.

And that number assumes a gradual increase to 4% of GDP. The additional spending would hit $2.3 trillion over a decade if the Pentagon’s budget were to immediately jump to 4% of GDP.

CNN charts the numbers:

And Romney has not said how he’d pay for it. CNN notes that the “lack of detail means that Romney’s claim of moving toward a balanced budget requires a great deal of trust.” On top of increased military spending, Romney plans on expanding on the Bush tax cuts but has also not said how he would pay for them.

Budget experts criticized Romney’s defense plan. Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the plan for additional spending does not “reflect fiscal reality,” while Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said “spending should be determined by the security environment — not the size of your economy.”

“Romney’s plan might reduce military risk in some areas,” Sharp said. “But you can never eliminate all the risk — no matter how much you spend.”

Perhaps Romney will take cues from his friends on the House Republican caucus, who want to cut programs that help the poor to prevent necessary reductions in military spending.

LGBT

Gay Bush Ambassador Slams Romney Campaign For Indifference To Anti-Gay Attacks On Grenell

By Josh Israel on May 5, 2012 at 12:12 pm

Bay Windows 1994 cover

1994's Moderate Mitt told Bay Windows He's Support Equality

Despite efforts by Mitt Romney and his campaign to put to bed the controversy over their roles in the resignation — which occurred under pressure from right-wing groups — of openly gay foreign policy spokesman Richard Grenell, the flap continues.

Yesterday, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Michael Guest, an openly gay diplomat who was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Romania by Republican President George W. Bush. Guest laments in the piece that the Republican Party’s leadership allows “principles of fairness and equality” to be “hollowed out.” While he dismisses the idea that Romney himself is to blame for the way Grenell was treated, he writes:

Romney’s slowness to comment amid the noise since Grenell’s resignation raises questions about his principles, as well as the quality and depth of his leadership. That’s what should concern us most in this sad affair. We should expect Romney to go further in making clear that issues of sexual orientation will have no bearing on any personnel decisions he makes, whether in his campaign or, should he be elected, in the administration he would lead.

Jimmy LaSalvia, executive director of GOProud — a group more focused on encouraging LGBT voters to back Republicans than on encouraging Republicans to back LGBT equality — echoed these criticisms. In a break from the group’s usual GOP unity message, he told the Post’s Greg Sargent on Thursday:

The Romney campaign should have spoken up publicly in defense of Rick against the attacks over the past two weeks… This was an opportunity to send an important message that Mitt Romney wants everybody to get behind him and to support his campaign. They let that opportunity pass.

Log Cabin Republican Executive Director R. Clarke Duncan and former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon have also called out the Romney campaign for not standing up for Grenell and have encouraged the apparent GOP nominee to take steps to stop employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.

In 1994, Moderate Mitt Romney promised to co-sponsor a federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act — and claimed he’d be a better advocate for gay and lesbian citizens than Sen. Ted Kennedy. But by 2007, Severe Conservative Mitt Romney etch a sketched his position and no longer saw a need for a federal employment non-discrimination law.

Now, Guest, LaSalvia, Duncan, and McKinnon are left lamenting that 2012 General Election Mitt Romney and his campaign’s cowardly handling of the Grenell situation is much more 2007 Mitt than 1994 Mitt.

Update

In a Sunday Washington Post opinion column, Virginia Log Cabin Republicans Political Director David Lampo joins the chorus of LGBT Republicans criticizing Romney’s record. Telling Romney to “stop pandering,” Lampo writes that while Romney needs to stake out pro-equality positions on at least some issues, his record “unfortunately, does not bode well for his doing not only the right thing, but the politically smart thing.”

Election

Why Ronald Reagan Didn’t Have To Hold A Single Reelection Fundraiser

By Josh Israel on May 3, 2012 at 6:30 pm

The Rise of the President's Permanent CampaignConservative media outlets have been abuzz this week with a misleading detail from a new book and the Republican National Committee (RNC) has been only too happy to add fuel to the fire.

“Barack Obama has already held more re-election fundraising events than every elected president since Richard Nixon combined,” the (UK) Daily Mail reported Sunday, based on Brendan J. Doherty’s new book The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign. The paper also observed that Ronald Reagan did not have a single fundraising event for his 1984 re-election.

Despite the GOP’s overt support for unlimited campaign fundraising, RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski blasted Obama for fundraising for his re-election:

It’s no surprise that the Campaigner-In-Chief has taken raising money for his re-election to a whole new level. The worst part is the American taxpayer has been footing the bill.

Though many on the right have gleefully repeated that President Obama has had more fundraising events than his five predecessors, they ignore something very important: context. President Obama is stuck spending so much time raising money for his re-election campaign for two major reasons.

First, the nation’s public financing system for presidential candidates, which went into effect in 1976 and was used by Presidents Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush for their re-elections, has fallen apart. The maximum $91.2 million available for the major parties’ nominees is insufficient for the costs of a modern national campaign. Neither Obama nor Mitt Romney will participate in the system this year. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who lost his presidential bid after accepting the funds and associated limits, said that “no Republican in his or her right mind is going to agree to public financing. I mean, that’s dead. That is over.” Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the 2004 loser, strongly discouraged his party’s 2008 nominee from accepting the grants, noting that it was insufficient to “adequately fund the campaigns.”

But this was not always true. The five previous presidents needed to raise money for only their primary campaign, as public financing would kick in for the general. Reagan, meanwhile, was able to avoid raising any money entirely because he faced no primary and thus automatically received the Republican nomination and the the public financing that came with it. (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also escaped re-nomination contests, but opted to use some primary funds to boost their standing for the general.)

Second, President Obama is the first president to run for re-election in the post-Citizens United world. While other Presidents ran against opponents whose fundraising was limited by individual contribution limits, Obama has to keep pace with not just the Romney campaign, but also with outside groups that can raise and spend unlimited sums of money raised from wealthy donors and big corporations, which on balance support Republicans. Karl Rove’s American Crossroads Super PAC and Crossroads GPS 501(c)(4) alone may have $200 million or more to spend on television attack ads, and numerous other right-wing organizations are also getting into the act.

Also, unlike most of his predecessors and Mitt Romney, Obama has vowed to not accept PAC money, accept donations from lobbyists, or allow any registered lobbyists to “bundle” contributions for his campaign. That leaves fundraising from generous donors as the only way to afford a modern presidential campaign.

Election

GOP Rep. Joe Walsh Says The Country Only Elected President Obama Because He’s Black

By Scott Keyes on Apr 30, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) minced no words at a town hall over the weekend, telling constituents that the only reason President Obama was elected in 2008 was because “he’s our first African-American president.”

Speaking at a town hall in Wheeling, Illinois on Sunday, Walsh gave his view on how to win the upcoming presidential election before launching into his take on the previous one. The House Republican said the country only voted for Obama because “he was a historic figure… our first African-American president.” Walsh noted that other factors helped, including McCain’s age, but argued that Obama “never would have gotten there without his historic nature.”

WALSH: He was a historic figure. He’s our first African-American president. The country voted for him because of that. It made us feel good about [our]self. I’ve said it before, it helped that John McCain was about 142 years old. It helped that the economy was tanking. A lot of these things helped. But he never would have gotten there without his historic nature.

Watch it:

To say that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama benefited from latent prejudices is absurd.

Yet Walsh is using this view to undermine the president’s legitimacy and argue that he was elected not on his merits, but because of his race. Earlier in the town hall, Walsh criticized Obama for not being able to “understand this stuff” (speaking about government spending) because “he was an accidental president.”

Still, Walsh isn’t the only one to espouse this worldview. A recent survey found that “white Americans feel they are more discriminated against than blacks.”

Economy

Romney Adviser Now Claims Auto Rescue Was Actually Romney’s Idea

By Josh Israel on Apr 30, 2012 at 10:57 am

Romney Etch a Sketch "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt"For months, Mitt Romney has been dogged by a 2008 New York Times op-ed he wrote entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But now, the same adviser who claimed Romney’s extreme views wouldn’t matter in the general election because it will be “almost like an Etch a Sketch” is doing some serious Etch a Sketch-shaking of his own.

Romney strongly opposed the “bailout” of General Motors, writing: “If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.” He doubled down on that in February, saying that his “managed bankruptcy” proposals would have been vastly superior to the Obama administration’s “crony capitalism plan.” Now that the federal intervention by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations has proven a huge success, the Romney campaign is trying desperately to change its tune.

On Saturday, Romney’s senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said:

[Romney's] position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed. I know it infuriates them to hear that… The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice. … The fact that the auto companies today are profitable is because they’ve shed costs. The reason they shed those costs and have got their employee labor contracts less expensive is because they went through that managed bankruptcy process. It is exactly what Mitt Romney told them to do.

Fehrnstrom has made the same claim before. “Mitt Romney had the idea first,” he said last May. “Mitt Romney argued that instead of a bailout, we should let the car companies go through a restructuring under the bankruptcy laws.” This, of course, flatly contradicts Romney’s February editorial, in which he wrote of Obama’s efforts: “I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.”

As industry experts have noted, however, exactly following Romney’s plan would have led to the collapse of the auto industry, since the private sector wasn’t willing to lend GM and Chrysler the money they needed to get to managed bankruptcy. “There was no one that was willing to come up not only with the cash to keep them afloat but also to serve the warranties of everyone, you and I that drive all these cars,” Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), a Romney endorser, said in February. “There was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government.”

Climate Progress

American Petroleum Institute Ads Targeting Senators For Re-Election ‘Not Related To Campaign Activities’

By Josh Israel on Mar 29, 2012 at 3:00 pm

Image from American Petroleum Institute issue ad

Image from American Petroleum Institute issue ad

The American Petroleum Institute (API), the trade association for the oil and gas industry, has launched a new radio and print ad campaign in seven states opposing Democratic efforts to eliminate subsidies for the petroleum companies and then urge voters to call key home-state senators.

The Washington Post reported that API spokesman Reid Porter said the ad campaign was “based on public policy currently being debated before the U.S. Senate” and “not related to campaign activities.”

The ads are running in Missouri, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Maine and Nevada from March 24-27. Six of those states will see fiercely-contested Senate races this November. The seventh, North Carolina, will likely see a close Senate race in 2014. The 2012 races are:

– MA: Sen. Scott Brown (R) won a 2010 special election and is seeking a full term
– ME: Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) is retiring, leaving an open seat
– MO: Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) is seeking re-election
– NE: Sen. Dean Heller (R) is seeking a full term
– VA: Sen. Jim Webb (D) is retiring, leaving an open seat
– WV: Sen. Joe Manchin (D) won a 2010 special election and is seeking a full term

Some of the ads mention both of the state’s senators, but others mention only one senator.

In the four states that have an incumbent running for re-election — Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, and West Virginia — the API ads mention that senator alone. And the North Carolina ads mention only Sen. Kay Hagan (D), the incumbent up for re-election in two years. In the two states with an open-seat election — Maine and Virginia — the ads mention both senators.

Sen. Brown’s campaign conceded the ads have an effect on the Massachusetts senate campaign, in his favor. The Massachusetts Republican will make a donation to a charity of his opponent’s choosing, in accordance with an agreement between their two campaigns.

Politics

Romney Offers False Explanation Of Cross-Party Primary Vote In 1992

By Josh Israel on Feb 28, 2012 at 10:57 am

Mitt RomneyIn 1992, Republican Mitt Romney voted in a Democratic primary, backing former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas for the Democratic presidential nomination. He said he did so because he wanted to “vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican.”

Romney is now railing against the Santorum campaign for trying to get traditional Democratic voters to cross-over and vote in the Republican primary. Romney has called this a “terrible dirty trick” and an “attempt to kidnap the primary process.”

In a press conference in Livonia, Michigan, moments ago, Romney was asked how we squared this criticism with his earlier admission that his 1992 primary vote had been a “vote for the person who [he] thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican.”

Romney responded with a new explanation:

In my case, I was certainly voting against the Democrat who I thought was the person I thought would be the worst leader of our nation. In this case, as I recall, it was Bill Clinton. I wanted someone other than Bill Clinton. I voted against Ted Kennedy, Tip O’Neill, and Bill Clinton. Seemed like a good group to be against.

Watch the video:

While to conservatives, that trio would indeed seem a “good group to be against,” there is no way Romney could have voted against all three that year.

While then-Governor Clinton was indeed on the primary ballot in 1992, Sen. Ted Kennedy was not up for re-election until 1994. Romney should know that, given he ran against Kennedy that year and often brags about the fact that he forced the late Democrat to “take a mortgage out on his house.”

And House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr.? His final campaign for the U.S. House had been eight years earlier, in 1984.

It’s odd that Romney claims to remember events that happened nine months before his birth, but cannot seem remember the 1990s.

Politics

Romney For Sale: Mitt Hosts $10K ‘Policy Roundtables’

By Josh Israel on Feb 11, 2012 at 9:20 am

Giving a preview of how he would govern as president, Mitt Romney hosted a series of “policy roundtables” with top dollar donors Thursday at the JW Marriott hotel in Washington, DC. Once again demonstrating that he is much more concerned with helping the very rich than the very poor, the panels were open to all interested parties — who were willing and able to raise $10,000 for his campaign, each.

The roundtable topics included education, energy, financial institutions and markets, defense/homeland security/foreign policy, health care, and infrastructure. Unsurprisingly, the panels were chaired and hosted by a few prominent Republican politicians and several wealthy investors and industry insiders. They roundtable leaders and industry finance chairs included:

– L.E. Simmons (energy), who has has “guided the investment of over $1.6 billion in private equity capital used to build energy service and equipment companies.”

– Patrick Durkin, managing director of Barclay’s Capital and a top Romney lobbyist-bundler.

– Richard Breeden, a hedge fund manager and a former SEC chairman under President George H. W. Bush.

– Tom Farrell, president and CEO of Dominion Power.

– Former Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO) (infrastructure), now a “distinguished fellow” at the right-wing Heritage Foundation.

– Former HHS Secretary and ex-Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt (R), now head of a “health care intelligence business.”

If the number $10,000 seems familiar, perhaps it was because he offered to make a bet with then-primary opponent Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) for that amount in a disagreement over his previous positions on federal health insurance mandates. Now, Romney is asking the wealthiest 1 percent to make a similar-sized bet on him. And, according to one of the event’s co-chairs, the event raised $1.5 million for Romney’s campaign.

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