Oh, Massachusetts!

There’s sure been enough harsh talk around the health care bills coming out of the House and Senate – and I mean from people who support universal health insurance – forget the Tea Baggers and the Rush Limbaugh audience for the moment. On the one hand, you’ve got people calling for unseating Representative John Conyers because he voted for the final House bill – and he was the prime sponsor of the single payer bill! On the other, there’s people dismissing any objections to the bills’ shortcomings as the cavalier nitpickings of a privileged group that already has health insurance and doesn’t really care much about anyone else who doesn’t. But the hyperbole crown has got to go to the blogger who produced the headline “Raul Grijalva Flirting With History’s Greatest Monster Status.” And what crime did the Arizona Representative and Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair commit to join the ranks of Hitler, Stalin, and Attila? Why, he said that instead of passing the Senate bill as is, the House should send the Senate smaller individual bills that wouldn’t include items such a tax on pre-existing health insurance plans. Imagine that!

The voters of Massachusetts have lately become notorious for forcing a total tactical regrouping on the national health care debate by electing a Republican to finish Ted Kennedy’s Senate term. But the politics of that New England state also hold some interest in this debate in a largely unrelated way – the similarity between the ongoing quandary faced by advocates of expanded government services there and the dilemma that the current national health bills have posed for supporters of health insurance reform.

The “Massachusetts problem” stems from the fact that it is not only one of just seven states in the nation with a “flat” income tax but it also has a constitutional prohibition against establishing a graduated income tax – i.e., the kind we’re all familiar with on the federal level, with rates that climb in higher income brackets – and numerous efforts to amend the state constitution have failed. The flat income tax, combined with the state’s sales tax, has the effect of making the state’s overall tax structure regressive, which seriously hinders any attempted redirection of resources within the state. You may be able to steer services and goods to the poor, but the money to do so will come from the middle rungs on the economic ladder and not the top. The Massachusetts dilemma, then, has generally boiled down to this: Do you ignore real needs or do you address them in a manner likely to eventually lead to a “middle class” taxpayer revolt such as the state’s 1980 “Proposition 2 ½” property tax limitation or California’s more famous Proposition 13.

The national health care debate has faced no similar constitutional barriers, but the political barriers have proven every bit as formidable. The President and congressional leaders could have put forth a bill offering a more serious solution to the problem – whether single payer, another type of universal nonprofit health insurance, a government-run health care system, or something else entirely – but they chose not to. The $20 million in campaign contributions the health care industry gave Barack Obama (nearly three times the amount given John McCain) may not have in themselves bought a non-health insurance industry-threatening proposal, but it was probably at least a good predictor of the type of bill we would ultimately see.

So far as the debate within the left goes, both sides might do well to simply concede the other’s central point: It is both true that the bills that came out of Congress would expand health insurance coverage significantly, although not universally, and that they would not fundamentally alter the expensive and wasteful private for-profit health insurance industry that lies at the root of the problem – except to further entrench it by mandating the purchase of its services.

If we’re willing to grant the significance of both the bills’ strengths and their weaknesses, we might find ourselves then able to sympathize with the votes of both of the individuals who are arguably the most left-wing members of each congressional branch, even though they voted the opposite way: Senator Bernie Sanders was a “Yes” when one more “No” would have brought the Senate discussion to a halt, while Representative Dennis Kucinich voted “No” when there were a few House votes to spare and he could thereby highlight the vast gulf between the bill as it was and what it ought to be.

Just a couple of weeks ago, concern about the potential downside of passing the Senate or House bill as currently written might have been dismissed as academic, but it can’t be now – or at least it shouldn’t be. And for the fact that we now know that, we are indebted to MoveOn.org and Democracy for America for having the foresight and wherewithal to secure the services of the Research 2000 polling company to ask a few questions of the Massachusetts electorate. What they found was so at odds with the general “anti-big government” or “anti-insider” interpretations that dominate the mainstream media as to demand the closest attention from anyone with a serious interest in finding a real solution to America’s health care problems.

The poll’s target group was people who had voted for Barack Obama for President but did not vote for Martha Coakley, the Democrats’ Senate nominee; and further divided into those who had actually voted for Scott Brown, the Republican winner, and those who stayed home. When asked if they favored or opposed “the health care reform proposal recently passed by the U.S. Senate,” not terribly surprisingly, both groups opposed it – the Brown voters by a 48–32% margin and the non-voters by a 43-34%. And here’s where things veered from the accepted norms of political discourse: when those opposed were asked if they thought the Senate bill “goes too far or doesn’t go far enough,” the 2008 Obama voters who’d taken a pass on the Massachusetts election said it didn’t go not far enough, by 53-8% margin. And so did those who voted for Obama in 2008 and Brown in 2010 – by a 36-23% margin!

And just so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding as to what going “far enough” might mean, the pollsters also posed the question “Would you favor or oppose the national government offering everyone the choice of a government administered health insurance plan — something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get — that would compete with private health insurance plans?” Both groups said yes – the Obama voters who stayed at home by a 86-7% margin and those who came out and voted for Brown by 82-14%.

Probably we shouldn’t entirely blame the mainstream pundits for the difficulty of incorporating the results of this poll into the national analysis. The fact is that the poll’s results are counterintuitive – people just don’t expect voters who felt the Senate health care bill did not go far enough to vote for a Republican. Counterintuitive, but true, however. Undoubtedly, some will simply reject the messenger like one woman who described her response to reading the MoveOn data thusly: “All I could do is roll my eyes. This is the second time I’ve been ready to unenroll.”

Others may find fault with the electorate itself, like one who thought, “I guess people do not measure the consequences of their vote.” But voters must deal with the choices they are presented as best they see fit (or stay at home) and the choices they have are not always logical. After all, there was no candidate on the Massachusetts ballot advocating going further than the Senate bill, now was there? It’s not just the voters who need to deal with the consequences of their actions – so do the members of Congress who gave us the bills currently at hand.

On January 1 of this year, a Rasmussen Reports poll found voters nationwide opposing the Congressional plans by a 58-39% margin. The poll also found a majority opposed to a single-payer health care system by a 52-34% margin. In other words, the spread against the Congressional plan – 19 points – was greater than the 18 point spread against a single payer plan, even though single payer has never had the benefit of so much as a single Congressional hearing or vote! Although it was dismissed as a non-starter from the outset, at this juncture it’s hard to see how the White House and Congressional leadership would have done worse if they’d had the political will to stand up to the insurance industry with a plan of which the President once said, “The truth is that unless you have a what’s called a single-payer system in which everybody is automatically covered, then you’re probably not going to reach every single individual.”

Opponents would have derided it as “big government,” to be sure, but it would have had the substantial asset of offering an actual solution to a major problem. Instead, the Democratic leadership chose to offer another type of “big government” solution, one that would involve ever more complex regulation of potential insurance company abuses, along with subsidies to allow lower income individuals to pay the bloated premiums those companies demand. And that’s big government that we can’t all believe in. As they’ve long known in Massachusetts, there’s consequences to these things.

Full disclosure: Tom Gallagher, Demockracy senior writer and columnist, served six years in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? California Supreme Court Upholds Prop 8; Rules Against Same-Sex Marriage

Well, it could be worse.

The California Supreme Court ruled today that Proposition 8, last November’s ballot initiative amending the California Constitution to forbid same-sex marriage, is legal. It also affirmed that marriages conducted between May 2008 (when the same court ruled that same-sex marriage was constitutional) and November were legal. Supporters of Prop. 8 had hoped for a one-two punch that included invalidation of the 18,000 so-called Rainbow Window marriages.

Prop. 8 opponents rested on the argument that Prop. 8’s stripping of extant rights from a “protected class” of people was such a gross alteration to the state Constitution that it constituted a revision, not an amendment, to the Constitution. Revisions require a completely separate process to be passed.

Does the “fundamental right” of the people to go to the polls and enact law by referendum supersede the “fundamental right” of a protected class to marry? Does the right of the people permit a majority of the electorate to remove rights from a minority? The ruling today suggests that, yes, a majority of the people can remove or limit the rights of a minority group. More on this later.

Let’s be clear: this is not a normal ballot initiative. The ballot measures we voted on last week? Those were standard-issue: permit the legislature to save more money; permit the legislature to redirect money. Prop. 8 was unlike any ballot initiative that California had seen before. It allowed a majority of voters to strip a minority of a right that majority already had. With today’s ruling, a dangerous precedent has been created: the referendum process and the right of the majority to make law through the ballot is officially more important than the rights of the minorities that the majority would seek to take away using the initiative process.

The court’s ruling is 185 pages long. Here’s a summary:

• The scope of the decision is limited to the question of whether or not Proposition 8 was an “amendment” or “revision” of California’s Constitution. The court did not rule on the legal legitimacy of same-sex marriage; that issue was decided last May.
• The marriages that occurred between last May and last November are still valid, since retroactively invalidating a lawfully-performed marriage would require due process and not merely the approval of voters.
• What is at stake here is not the fundamental rights of same-sex couples; the court affirmed that the rights are the same, but under Prop. 8, same-sex couples cannot have the word “marriage.”

That minority had better have a lot of money, because in order to get their rights back, they’ll have to mount a campaign to get another proposition on the ballot amending the Constitution to remove the previous amendment. Fortunately, that’s what they plan to do: Prop. 8 opponents plan to have another initiative on the ballot in 2010, this time repealing the amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Let’s be equally clear what the California Supreme Court is not saying. The court is not suggesting that same-sex marriage itself is inherently unconstitutional; it also is not suggesting that same-sex marriage itself is inherently constitutional. (Interestingly, the May 2008 decision already ruled that the language contained in Prop. 8 is discriminatory under the law; the statute in question contained exactly the same language found in Prop. 8, and back then, when it wasn’t an amendment, it was unconstitutional.) The court has merely adjudicated two issues: does Prop. 8 constitute an amendment, and does Prop. 8 apply retroactively? The majority opinion concluded by noting that, if Prop. 8 opponents are unhappy with today’s ruling, “if there is to be a change to the state constitutional rule embodied in that measure, it must ‘find its expression at the ballot box.’” The court has certainly not suggested that same-sex marriage can never be the law. In finding that Prop. 8 was an amendment, the court has said that the only proper way to invalidate an amendment is with another amendment; i.e., another ballot measure repealing the Prop. 8 amendment.

Only one judge dissented from the opinion. Judge Moreno expressed concern that a simple majority vote could unilaterally strip a minority group of its rights:

The rule the majority crafts today not only allows same-sex couples to be stripped of the right to marry that this court recognized in the Marriage Cases, it places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities. It weakens the status of our state Constitution as a bulwark of fundamental rights for minorities protected from the will of the majority.

Judge Moreno calls the Equal Protection Clause “inherently countermajoritarian,” meaning that its purpose is not to accede to the will of the majority, but rather to ensure that anything the majority does allows for the protection of minority groups. The Clause prevents what John Stuart Mill called “the tyranny of the majority,” one of the dangers inherent in democracy. Under a democratic system, the majority — by its sheer size — is presumed to be correct. As we have seen with Prop. 8, the fact that a majority believes something does not necessarily make that thing true.

There has been some talk of amending the state constitution to alter the amendment process. This would be a good step in the direction of eliminating the back-and-forth that we will see with ballot initiatives for the next few years. Here’s an idea: making a distinction between amendments that due mundane things like alter the budget process and amendments that alter the status of individual liberties.

Breaking News: A very odd couple — former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson (who argued for Bush in 2000’s Bush v. Gore) and David Boies (who argued for Gore in Bush v. Gore) have agreed to join forces and take up a federal court case challenging Prop. 8 under the Fourteenth Amendment’s “equal protection” clause. What else is interesting about this? Any case that adjudicates this issue would necessarily adjudicate both any other state law banning same-sex marriage and the federal ban on same-sex marriage. (The U.S. government currently does not recognize same-sex marriage as “marriage” for federal purposes.)

Labor Watch: New York Has a Better Idea

If the Department of Labor isn’t the most obscure Cabinet level agency in the federal government, it’s at least in the running.  So the fact that the confirmation vote of Obama’s Labor Secretary designee Hilda Solis drew even a little a bit of attention that way seems an opportunity not to be missed. Let’s, then, cast an eye upon something new in labor law enforcement that’s happening in the state of New York called Wage Watch.  And let’s also hope that Solis – and the labor officials of the other states – pay attention as well, because it’s a program that could change the way we conduct government.

With the current bailout regime having thawed our previously frozen national discussion of the economy to the point where the supposed immutable laws of the free market can now be challenged, the idea of limiting how much money the people at the highest levels of the corporate world can take home is finally seeing the light of day.  But the question of whether those at the other end of the economy are even getting what the law already demands remains as much in the dark as ever.  That would change in New York, however, if the month-old program that the state’s Labor Commissioner M. Patricia Smith, calls a “one-of-a-kind grass-roots tool in the fight against illegal labor practices” succeeds.

For its first six months Wage Watch will set in motion six local organizations in New York City and Long Island to spread knowledge about the basics of minimum wage and overtime law among the low wage earning communities they already work with.  The range of practices that New York’s Department of Labor refers to generally as “wage theft” also includes tip stealing.  The six groups, all with prior experience with labor issues, will receive training and materials, in Spanish or Chinese where appropriate; disseminate information to local employees and employers; and facilitate direct contact with the Labor Department for complaints as needed.

Given how hard many people find it to even imagine living on the minimum wage – which at New York’s $7.15 an hour minimum would give a 40 hour, 52 week worker $14,872 in annual gross wages (the $6.55 federal minimum totals to $13,624) – it might seem like the problem couldn’t be too widespread.  And yet the department reports that last year it collected $25 million in unpaid wages for 17,000 workers throughout the state.  With bailout and stimulus bills in the air that are nearing a trillion dollars, $25 million can itself start to seem like small potatoes.  But the fact is that the average minimum wage, small potatoes worker who was a beneficiary of this program recouped about ten percent of an annual minimum wage income, or about five weeks wages.

In some industries cheating is already known to be widespread – the agency found that 78% of New York City car washes were committed wage law violations.  But the problem is not confined to businesses that might be considered marginal – Yellow Rat Bastard, a SoHo retailer (named after a comic book) that New York magazine’s website calls “three rooms of name-brand sportswear and accessories with a punk edge” agreed to pay nearly $1.5 million to settle a wage theft lawsuit.  Nor are high profile institutions immune – the Saratoga Race Course underpaid its backstretch workers and Erie County Fair bathroom attendants worked only for tips and were even forced to give half of them back to a subcontractor.

All in all, then, the Labor Department has reason to believe that there’s a lot more wage theft going on out there than it could ever hope to ferret out with its own staff resources, hence Wage Watch, which Stuart Appelbaum, President of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, one of the participating groups, calls “labor law enforcement at the purest, most grassroots level.” After the first six month trial period of working with these half dozen experienced organizations, the Labor Department plans to expand the program and recruit religious, student, union, business, neighborhood, and community organizations statewide, with no requirement of past labor law experience.

While the program’s relevance for wage law enforcement on the federal level and for other state labor agencies is obvious, its implications extend well beyond this one particular task.  For instance, in 2006, the United Nations’ International Labour Office (ILO) found the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) woefully understaffed for the responsibilities with which it is charged.  ILO standards call for one inspector for every 10,000 workers in industrialized nations like ours.  The US has 2,100 labor inspectors, or about one for every 70,000 workers, well below even the one-per-40,000 workers recommended for nations with relatively low levels of industrialization.

The AFL-CIO has analyzed this question by considering how many years it would take to inspect all of the job sites in each state with current levels of OSHA staffing.  They found only six states whose worksites could be covered in under fifty years.  Most would require from fifty to one hundred and fifty years, and in seven states it would take longer than that.  (About 16 American workers are fatally injured on the job each day while more than 11,000 are injured or made ill by workplace conditions.)

In order to reach the ILO’s recommended staffing level, OSHA would need to add more than 12,000 new inspectors at a cost in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion annually.  Given that the nation’s largest workers compensation insurer, Liberty Mutual, puts the direct cost of disabling workplace injuries at nearly $1 billion a week, this would be money well spent.  Yet we know all too well that over the next several years the government is going to face an unprecedentedly broad range of needs on which money could be well spent.  What then, if OSHA were directed to follow the lead of the New York Department of Labor and seek out and train organizations that would then train the workforce itself to identify and effectively call attention to conditions that threatened its well being?  It might well have a cheaper, less bureaucratic, and more effective operation.

Even this is relatively small compared to the potential impact of directing an institution like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to socialize its work.  There is probably no aspect of government currently enjoying greater support among the general public than environmental protection and the fight against global warming.  So it’s hard to imagine that an EPA foray into the world of community organizations would not turn up hundreds of them interested in training their members in methods of helping the government to help the environment.

According to Labor Commissioner Smith, the genesis of Wage Watch lies in an entirely other realm of government – the Neighborhood Watch schemes to assist police that started in Queens in the 1960s.  In fact, it’s hard to imagine that there is any branch of government that might not benefit from a perspective of expanding the public’s role in their work (although the CIA might disagree.)

If all of this talk about empowering workers and community organizations sounds a little, well, radical, don’t forget, we’re all socialists now – I read it on the cover of Newsweek.  And even if you’re a Time magazine reader, this development in New York has got to be considered good news because you know what they say – if they can make it work there, we can make it work anywhere.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Session in Order: Speakers and Old Tricks

Nobody does it like Texas. With appropriate pomp and circumstance, the 81^st session of the Texas Legislature has come to order. While all the vestigial parliamentary rituals went off with minimal incident, some drama came from unexpected quarters.

The House

The tension and intrigue preceding the installation of Joe Straus as the 84^th Speaker of the Texas House had largely played out about a week before commencement of the session. Tom Craddick, the Republican incumbent whose three reigns as speaker had been characterized and criticized as some of the most heavy-handed and partisan in Texas’ history, had dropped out of the race. Nine of the ten Democrats whose support he, ironically, relied upon for his reelection had jumped ship, thus irrevocably tipping the scales against him. Their change of heart had been motivated by a group of eleven Republicans, dubbed the ABC (Anyone But Craddick) gang, who had nominated Straus as a moderate alternative. In a narrowly divided house, 76 Republicans to 74 Democrats, Craddick just didn’t have the votes to win without the entirety of his party behind him, and when he lost the support of those few Democrats who embraced him, all hope was gone.

Apropos to both the spirit of bipartisanship and the re-consolidation of the heretofore fragmented Republican majority, Straus’ nominating speakers came from both sides of the aisle.

First to rise was Jose Menendez, a Democrat from Straus’ hometown of San Antonio. His selection to speak may have raised a few eyebrows from the anti-gambling conservatives in the House, suspicious of the new speaker from day one. Straus and his family have a big stake in a San Antonio pari-mutuel horse track, and have been long-time supporters of betting on the ponies. Menendez is in favor of legalizing Vegas-style poker in the state of Texas and has a bill before the house to make it so. Consequently, his appearance on the dais probably did little to quell the anti-gambling crowd’s concerns about Straus. They’re worried that he will abuse his influence as speaker to push through more relaxed legislation on gaming. Menendez praised Straus for his support of allocating funding to cord-blood banks, which is a big deal for the pro-stem-cell research crowd. A moderate, indeed.

Seconding the nomination was Houston Democrat Senfronia Thompson. Her own pre-session bid for speaker was only symbolic as she was in the minority party, but the fact that she got up to speak in support of Straus was poignant. Consider that Straus’ claim to the speakership was solidified when he got the pledges of 70 of the 74 House Democrats and 15 Republicans compared to Tom “Mr. Partisan” Craddick’s 87 Republicans to 15 Democrats in 2002.

In total, six representatives rose in support of Straus as the new speaker. Extolling his virtues were four Democrats, and two Republicans, including John Smithee who represented the waning vestiges of the Craddick camp. He had taken up the conservative mantle for speaker after Craddick’s abandonment of the race, hoping to form a coalition of now-freed Craddick supporters and bring both Republicans and Democrats crossovers back into the fold. That didn’t happen, and he too dropped out. His subsequent open support of Straus seems to have mended fences for the time being within Republican circles.

All in all, it was a smooth transition of power and a good start to business within the House of Representatives. Too bad it isn’t going as smoothly over in the East Wing.

The Senate

In short, the Senate Republicans are taking their cues from the Tom DeLay playbook chapter entitled “When We Don’t Like the Rules, We Just Change Them.”

As the Senate rules stand, it takes the approval of two-thirds of the Senators, the exact number is presently 21, to open up a measure to debate. Senator Dan Patrick, R-Houston, wants to change that to a three-fifths rule, which would lower the absolute number to 19. Guess what the Republican to Democrat ratio in the Texas Senate is: 19 Rs to 12 Ds.

The most pressing issue relevant to the rule change is a forthcoming voter ID bill that was passed in the House during the previous session, but died on the floor in the Senate because the Republicans couldn’t meet the two-thirds rule. It is likely to be reintroduced this session and is staunchly opposed by Democrats who fear the disenfranchisement of many traditionally Democratic voters by such a bill. Without the rule change, the Republicans would most likely be out of luck on passing this bill.

The subject of redistricting is even more nefarious. Some longtime followers of Texas politics may remember Senate Democrats leaving the state in 2003 to prevent a quorum, and thus a vote, on the gerrymandering of congressional maps. The Dems eventually came back and lost the issue, and the redistricting that ensued significantly favored Republicans in the federal House races that followed. While Texas is not presently up for redistricting, it’s not unreasonable to presume that many GOP senators want the state Senate voting rules changed now while they still hold a slight majority in the face of a state that is trending Democrat.

What’s Ahead

As always, the most looming issue facing the legislature this session is the budget. On this issue, the news this year is particularly bleak. Comptroller Susan Combs has announced a projected $9 billion drop in revenue over the next two years. She cites significant declines in car and cigarette sales tax revenue and lowered lottery earnings as the main culprits.

Legislators use the Comptroller’s numbers when writing spending and appropriations bills, and Combs’ figures represent about a 10.5% drop in available money from two years ago. Granted, there is the proverbial “Rainy Day Fund” of about $6.7 billion. Yes, it’s a lot of money, but to get at it, a super majority of both houses needs to approve, and its use would be sure to breed contention. In addition, in hard economic times, once the money is gone, replenishing it would be no easy task.

Expectations

With a House that is now seemingly united behind a young, charismatic moderate, many Texans echo Rep. Jim McReynolds’ sentiments that “we in this chamber want a workhorse, not a show pony.” The state Senate needs to take its cues from the “lower” chamber and intelligently set aside corrosive partisanship. It’s time to get down to the business of the state. With the gloomiest economic climate in decades, the decisions made by this legislature will bear heavily on the fiscal fitness of Texas through the coming financial tempest.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Lone Star Rumblings: So Goes the Party

Top to bottom, the GOP in Texas seems to be foundering in a sea of disillusionment and infighting. Not just nationally, but in the Lone Star State as well, the Republican flock that gave rise to the Bush dynasty seems to have lost its faith.

The State of the Electorate

If a recent poll from Hill Research Consultants, entitled “Beyond Bush: Texas Republicans in an Obama Era,” is to be believed, Texas voters suffer from “Bush fatigue,” believe that the GOP is “arrogant, racist, corrupt, and unwelcoming” when compared to its Democrat counterparts. A generic R vs. D gubernatorial ballot gives Democrats a clear advantage at both the state representative and gubernatorial levels.

Generic Ballot Preferences	Republicans	Democrats
Governor	31%	44%
State Representative	31%	45%

Other points of interest note that “multiple deceased Democrats handily beat still living Republican office-holders in favorability,” and “Republicans are also failing to connect with younger voters and the Hispanic community.” Considering the state of Texas is growing younger and more Hispanic by the day, the Texas GOP seems to be on the wrong side of demographic trends.

So goes the opinion of the electorate in Texas, once the bread and butter of the Republican Party. They seem disillusioned and wavering in their support of the GOP and its direction. Hill, et al., warn that what happened in Colorado, a decidedly red state in 2000 whose governor, both chambers of the legislature, and both U.S. senators are now all Democratic, could happen in Texas. “The time to ring the alarm bell, if necessary, is now,” declares Hill.

Finally, it must be noted that the poll referenced in detail above was taken November 15-17^th, right on the heels of the general election. It’s not unreasonable to speculate that the voters surveyed were encircled by the “Obama halo,” a feel-good sentiment that seemed to wash over much of the country, proud of itself for electing its first African-American president. In general, polls taken in the weeks immediately after an election are not as reliable. Many moderate voters often have a confirmation bias toward the winning candidate or party. However, with that said, the Texas GOP should ignore the results of this poll at their own peril.

Gubernatorial and Senatorial Implications

With the laity in such disarray, it’s no surprise that the Republican Party leadership is struggling to maintain order within its own ranks. Two key Texas Republicans are looking vulnerable, and not necessarily just from Democratic vectors.

Sitting Governor Rick Perry, who won reelection in 2006 with only 39.3% of the vote, announced in April his intention to run again in 2010. Texas does not place limits on reelecting its governor, but a third term would be unprecedented and apparently not necessarily welcomed by some of the Republican elite.

On December 4^th,Kay Bailey Hutchison, the senior U.S. Senator from Texas, filed paperwork with the Texas Ethics Commission to form an exploratory committee for the office of governor. The filing was not revelatory, as she’s been dodgy for months about directly answering the “would she or wouldn’t she run” question, and noises were even made about her running against Perry in 2006 and 2002. What was surprising was the speed with which the two camps traded barbs after her filing.

Hutchison initially remarked that there’s “too much bitterness, too much anger, too little trust, too little consensus and too much infighting” in Austin. Mark Miner, a Perry spokesman, replied “Kay Bailout has been talking about running for governor and passing legislation for years, and neither has ever happened.”

It will be an interesting gubernatorial primary in 2010, indeed.

Other Political Rumblings

Hutchison’s U.S. Senate seat does not come up for re-election until 2012. Should she vacate the Senate before then (she doesn’t have to in order to run for state office), the governor has the power to appoint a replacement. The word around the campfire is that sitting Lt. Governor,David Dewhurst, would be at the top of Perry’s short list.

Third behind the governor and lieutenant governor in power, the Speaker of the Texas House is elected at the beginning of each new congressional session, the next one beginning January 13, 2009. Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, whose leadership style has been likened to that of Vlad the Impaler, has held the Speakership since 2003.

He has caused controversy and consternation among both Democrats and Republicans by his heavy-handed use, some would say abuse, of the powers given him as speaker by the Texas Constitution. Not only has he refused to recognize representatives motioning for house rules changes that may challenge his power, he has even refused to allow direct votes to remove him from power brought before the House by half a dozen of his fellow Republicans at the end of the last session. He thought it would set a bad precedent.  Those who have challenged him from his own party have found themselves being passed over for desirable positions that their seniority may have given them dibs on.

No less than eleven representatives, seven of which are from his own party, will challenge Craddick for the Speakership for the next legislative session. On Friday, December 12^th, Rep. Dan Gattis, R-Georgetown, filed a constitutional proposition that would allow the removal of a speaker in mid-session with the approval of 100 of the 150 representatives. Obviously, Craddick is not a popular guy, even among his own people.

Overall Lone Star Outlook

With a core constituency that no longer seems to trust its leadership or the direction the party is taking, the GOP in Texas is a rudderless mess. Its captains can’t decide who should be at the helm, and Texas Democrats are eagerly waiting in the wings to stage a mutiny the scale of which would be rivaled only by the 1994 “Republican Revolution.” In 2010, it looks like they’ll have their chance.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Illinois Senate Replacements: Part 2

Previously we looked at the initial front runners for the appointment to President-elect Obama’s senate seat. We focused on Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky.

Today, we’ll look at two other front runners who are getting a lot of buzz lately:

1. State Senate President Emil Jones, 73, Chicago

Senator Jones is a legend in Illinois politics and was a strong mentor to Barack Obama in his days as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago and later as a fellow state senator. Senator Jones is also very close to Governor Rod Blagojevich, making him an instant front runner. Considering his age, Senator Jones may figure to be a “placeholder” selection. In other words, Jones would get the honor of a lifetime, a two-year appointment as only the fourth African American United States Senator post-Reconstruction (the third to come from the state of Illinois), but would not be expected to seek reelection in 2010. This would leave the long-term replacement in the hands of Illinois voters in 2010. This makes a lot of sense and is the most democratic option. Appointing anyone else would not only allow him or her to serve the next two years, but also give them a big advantage as the incumbent candidate in 2010. Having a truly open primary in 2010 would allow someone like Barack Obama (who emerged out of nowhere in the 2004 primary) a chance. The more I think about it, the more I favor this option. It would likely set up an epic primary battle between the likes of Jackson, Schakowsky, Gutierrez, etc. In addition, Jones would serve very capably for the next two years and be an aide to his former mentee who will reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

2. Congressman Luis Gutiérrez, 54, Chicago

Congressman Gutiérrez is actively seeking this appointment. Congressman Gutiérrez, the only Latino representative in the entire Midwest, is a well-known national voice for immigration reform and a very influential representative. Gutiérrez also comes very humble roots. Prior to serving in Congress, not only was he a city councilman and social worker, but also a cab driver. If appointed, Gutiérrez would become the first Puerto Rican Senator in United States history. Gutiérrez has flirted with retirement before and is rumored to have his eye on the Chicago mayor’s office. However, with an Olympic bid brewing, I doubt the current Mayor Daley is retiring anytime soon (he’s been mayor since 1989).  Although I don’t see Gutiérrez as being Blagojevich’s number one choice at the moment, there seems to be good evidence that he is definitely on the short list.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Illinois Senate Replacements: The Front Runners

As Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009, it is important to consider who will be replacing him as the junior senator from the state of Illinois. Under Illinois law, the replacement will be named by Governor Rod Blagojevich and will serve the remaining two years of Obama’s term.

Who are some of the candidates?

Today, we’ll look at two of the front runners:

1. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., 43, Chicago

Jackson, Jr. has been mentioned for several months as someone who is actively seeking this position.

Positives: Jackson, Jr is the only African American front runner. His appointment would ensure that there wasn’t a 100% decline in the number of African Americans serving in the upper chamber. Jackson is also very popular on the south side of Chicago, is a charismatic up and coming leader in the Democratic Party, and was one of Obama’s national co-chairs.

Negatives: Largely because of conservative attacks on his father, Jesse Jackson, Sr., the Jackson name has high negatives in conservative areas outside of Chicago, which some claim may make it difficult for Jackson, Jr. to be reelected statewide in 2010.

2. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, 64, Evanston

Schakowsky, a member of the House Democratic Leadership, also has also been campaigning actively for the position. I had the honor of doing some political work with members of her staff this past year, and they were very much positioning themselves for a possible future in the Senate.

Positives: Schakowsky’s district, which includes parts of Chicago’s north side and inner suburbs such as Evanston and Skokie, neighbors Rod Blagojevich’s old district, and the two are apparently fairly close politically. In addition, Schakowsky was one of the first representatives to endorse then state-senator Obama when he ran in the 2004 Illinois Senate primary. What goes around comes around in Illinois politics, and Congresswoman Schakowsky is in better with Obama and Blagojevich than anyone else.

Negatives: Schakowsky’s husband Robert Creamer, former director of the Illinois Public Action Fund, was convicted of one count of failure to collect withholding tax and of bank fraud for writing checks with insufficient funds in 2005. In fairness, it should be noted that the judge said that Creamer acted not out of greed but in an effort to keep his community action group going without cutting programs. Also, Schakowsky had no wrongdoing in this situation. In addition, some commentators claim that Schakowsky’s liberal voting record might not play well in some more conservative areas outside of Chicago.

Full disclosure: Jan Schakowsky is my Congresswoman, and I have had the honor of meeting her on a couple occasions. She is my personal favorite for Obama’s seat.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Battleground Snapshot: Florida

Of all the states that are still realistically in play, pride-of-place belongs once again to the Sunshine State–at least in terms of electoral votes. A person would have to have been living on Mars (or, at the very least, not involved enough in the unfolding political drama to be reading these words) not to know that Florida’s 27 electoral votes constitute a whopping ten percent of the total necessary to secure the White House. So why aren’t both campaigns running more exclusively in such a plum target?
The short answer is, all other things being equal, that it would indeed make a lot more sense to follow Hillary Clinton’s leftover advice from the primary campaigns and focus on fewer, riper targets like Florida and Ohio (for the Democrats) and Pennsylvania (for the Republicans). Trouble is, all things are not equal–especially in Florida. Most people who don’t live in the state (as does this author) think of it in understandably thumbnailed terms as a place disproportionately represented by seniors, Hispanics, and the hospitality industry.

By those metrics, of course, it should be a ripe state for Democratic plucking. However, there are some small problems with this. First, the term “Hispanic” (always offensive, but perhaps nowhere more so than here) would presume to lump citrus farm laborers and light industrial employees in the central portions of the state together with the large and growing population of more Republican-friendly expatriates from Cuba. Mr. McCain’s high-profile waffling on immigration reform probably hurts him with both camps, but the shocking bellicosity of his foreign policy stance probably wins back most of the latter group.

Second, the senior vote, which normally leans Democratic, is complicated by the obvious demographic (not to say ethnic) disparities between the candidates. However, Mr. Obama’s choice of Joe Biden for his running mate, and Mr. McCain’s failure to pick either Charlie Crist or Joe Lieberman, have both tilted the senior vote back toward Obama. In addition, the Obama campaign has recently done a much better job of targeting McCain’s senior-unfriendly positions on Social Security and health care.

Next, the heart-of-Dixie voters are, of course, solidly pro-McCain, and make no mistake: they constitute nearly as sizable a voting bloc here as in other, more demonstrably “southern” states nearby. According to a recently published demographic breakdown, Florida ranks 13th in the nation for military veterans and seventeenth in the nation for both self-identifying “Evangelical Christians” and the percentage of voters registered as Republican. All of these statistics may be attributed to the Dixie vote.

In a “normal” election (is there any such thing?), the three most heavily populated counties in the state, down in the southeastern corner–Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach–are supposed to go heavily for the Democrat (together with the counties containing Daytona, Gainesville, and Tallahassee). The bulk of the state is supposed to go heavily for the Republican, and the gigantic, monolithic suburb that stretches from Tampa Bay to the Atlantic Ocean along the Interstate 4 corridor is supposed to decide who wins. But this year there are signs that the normal coalitions may be significantly more fluid. For example, a ballot initiative that would constitutionally prohibit gay marriage seems to have had little traction in pitching up the culture wars, particularly against the backdrop of a recent story ranking the state third in the country for foreclosures. By contrast, the Jewish senior vote has been comparatively cool in its support for Senator Obama, even after his selection of the wildly popular Joe Biden to be his running mate.

It’s possible to find good news for both candidates in the literal state of the race here as well: One recent report indicated that the in-person early voting has been breaking by an improbably large 2:1 margin for Obama, and a second has suggested that Obama’s lead in this department has already surpassed the built-in advantage that Republicans always enjoy with mail-in absentee ballots. By contrast, the polling for the state has been improbably volatile in the same time period that so many other places seem to be in the middle of a clear blue trend. In addition, the McCain/Palin team is hopeful that the Mahoney scandal, coupled with the emergence of the campaign’s latest narrative–“Obama the redistributor”–will rally their demoralized troops on Election Day.

Under any scenario, Florida may be an unusually big plum (or would that be a big orange?), but it is also an unusually difficult one for either party to count on. With so many factions, so many media markets, so many contradicting agendas and galvanized constituencies, with such high-profile voting irregularities and clunky machines, and no scientifically repeatable metric for anticipating who will turn out and who won’t from race to race (compare 2000 to 2004), it would seem that any candidate basing his or her electoral fortunes on Florida is making an enormous, not to say reckless, gamble.

And if one needs further proof of Mr. Obama’s command of the electoral map, consider that he and he alone may comfortably reach the 270 electoral vote total without the need to recount hanging chads.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Senate Spotlight: Georgia

Up to a few weeks ago, no one envisioned that the state of Georgia would have a competitive Senate race this fall. However, Saxby Chambliss’s seemingly safe GOP safe seat recently has become close to a true tossup. Senator Chambliss is a first term senator who defeated incumbent Democrat Max Cleland in 2002. Chambliss’s 2008 opponent is former state representative, Vietnam veteran, and 2006 Lieutenant Governor nominee Jim Martin.

During the 2002 race, Chambliss became famous for his television ads that questioned the patriotism of Senator Cleland by attempting to link him with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Cleland lost both legs in Vietnam, while Chambliss, like Dick Cheney, had multiple deferments that kept him out of the war. As such, many Democrats across the country would like nothing more than to defeat Senator Chambliss.

Here’s a look at the race over the last six or seven months:

One of the biggest factors that could influence this particular race is the potential surge in African American turnout for Senator Obama in the state of Georgia. While probably not enough for Obama to carry the state, a large increase in African American turnout could be enough to put Jim Martin over the top in the Peach state.

The bottom line is that if this seat goes blue, the Democrats will have at least 60 or 61 seats in the Senate come January.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Senate Spotlight: Minnesota

In days when we don’t report the trackers, we will occasionally focus on a Senate or House race. Today, we’ll take a look at the Senate race in Minnesota.

This race features one-term incumbent Senator Norm Coleman and comedian Al Franken. You probably best remember Al Franken for his role as Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s. Norm Coleman, while certainly not a celebrity among those who don’t TiVo CSPAN 3, has been a fairly popular Senator. He was elected in 2002 over replacement candidate and former Vice President Fritz Mondale, who was a last minute ballot stand in after the tragic death of legendary Senator Paul Wellstone in a airplane crash.

Unfortunately for Coleman, he has been the victim of his own party affiliation in recent years. Minnesota, although technically a moderate swing state, has always titled a bit to the left. This aspect goes back to the days of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Senator Eugene McCarthy, and Fritz Mondale himself. This situation is greatly intensified by the recent anemic popularity of George W. Bush in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

In this environment, is Franken the favorite? Not necessarily. While famous, Franken has a penchant for controversy, including a 25,000 dollar fine for failing to pay workers compensation benefits in New York state. On the other hand, Minnesota also has a history of electing unconventional politicians, such as former governor Jesse “The Body” (later “The Mind”) Ventura. Also relevant is the relative popularity of third party candidate Dean Barkley, who is getting near 20 percent of the vote in recent polls.

Where does this race stand?

Coleman has had a small, but significant lead in the polls for the last several months. However, in the last couple of weeks, Franken seems to have tied or even overtaken Coleman. Two polls released in the last two days have Franken up by 4 and 6 points, respectively. Here’s a look at the Pollster trends:

Although we had this race as Lean Republican in our last Senate forecast, this race is definitely now a true tossup.

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