The Answer to Partisan Gridlock

We've been seeing a lot of crap about bipartisanship lately. There's going to be a meeting next week

challenging the major-party contenders to spell out their plans for forming a "government of national unity" to end the gridlock in Washington.

Well, I have an answer to partisan gridlock, and it ain't a "government of national unity".

Follow me below the fold for the surprisingly simple answer...


The answer to partisan gridlock is pretty simple, really. Here it is:

ELECT MORE DEMOCRATS!

It's really not any more complicated than that. The Republicans certainly have not been looking to take the bipartisan road to solving our nation's problems. Consider this from the New York Times:

Now Republicans are in the minority, and they have been using skills honed while they were in charge, throwing up procedural roadblocks, forcing vulnerable Democrats to take difficult votes and just generally harrying members of the majority

does that sound bipartisan to you?

Matt Stoller also does a good job illustrating

what this bipartisanship is really about is undermining the public's ability to participate in policy-making.

Matt uses the famous 2003 $87 billion Iraq supplemental vote to make his point. Even though the public overwhelmingly opposed this funding, Congress , in a show of bipartisanship, passed this measure with huge, bipartisan majorities. This despite the fact that the public opposed the measure by a margin of 64% to 34% - 30 points!

In March of this year, The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007. The subheading for this report:

Political Landscape More Favorable To Democrats

On issue after issue, the trend of the American electorate is more and more progressive. This caused the good folks at Pew to write:

Increased public support for the social safety net, signs of growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished appetite for assertive national security policies have improved the political landscape for the Democrats as the 2008 presidential campaign gets underway.

Even more striking than the changes in some core political and social values is the dramatic shift in party identification that has occurred during the past five years... Today, half of the public (50%) either identifies as a Democrat or says they lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 35% who align with the GOP.

The American electorate wants the government to work to solve the problems that face our country today. And they see progressive solutions as the way to to this. In order to give the American people what they want, we need more Dems in Congress and particularly in the Senate where it has become necessary to get 60 votes to move legislation forward. And we need a Democratic President to sign progressive legislative solutions into law instead of vetoing them.

To undo the damage that George W Bush and the Roadblock Republicans have done to this country, we don't need bipartisanship. We need more Democrats.

And when we give the Democrats the ball, they are going to need to run with it!

The Face(s) of the Democratic Party

I purposely did not embed this as a YouTube link. That's because I just want you to focus on this picture.


What is remarkable about it? Is it the words that were said on this program? Follow me below the fold...


On Sunday, August 11, 2007, Markos Moulitsas and Harold Ford Jr. faced off on Meet the Press to talk about the future of the Democratic Party. The words that were spoken on this program have sparked dozens of diaries and probably thousands of comments by now.

That a conversation between the founder of DailyKos and the Chairman of the DLC would even be on Meet the Press is remarkable enough in and of itself. But take another look at this image. What do you see? I see a 37 year old black man (Harold Ford, Jr) and a 36 year old Hispanic / Greek man (Markos Moulitsas). I see the future (and the present) of the Democratic Party. This is the Democratic Party whose contenders for the Presidential nomination this cycle include a woman, an African American and an Hispanic.

This is the Democratic Party that always has and still does look more like America than the other guys. The values of the Democratic Party are the values of the vast majority of Americans. This is the Democratic Party that proudly displays its diversity. This is the Democratic Party that shares the values of The Progressive Majority in this country.

So take another look at that picture. While you are doing so, remember that the values that unite us are greater than the issues that divide us. If we can remember that, we will retake the White House in 2008 and expand our majorities in Congress.

George Bush: Democrats + Politics = Bad

You really have to hand it to these guys sometimes. After all this is the administration that has politicized everything from the CIA, to the Department of Justice to the Drug Czar. You think this might keep them from throwing rocks called politics. But no, it seems that it hasn't slowed them down one little teeny tiny bit.

So what does the Bush administration do when the Democrats are trying to move policy in a direction that Herr Bush doesn't want it to go? Why he accuses the Democrats of playing politics with (fill in the blank) serious issue.

How often have they done this? Why do they do it? And is it working? The answers to these and other questions are below the fold...


How often does the Bush administration accuse the Dems of playing politics with an issue? A Google search of

george bush democrats playing politics

produced 1,950,000 hits. That's right. Nearly two million hits. George Bush has accused the Democrats of playing politics with Iraq, Social Security, homeland security, supporting our troops, trade, terrorism, the federal budget and just about anything else you can imagine. 1,950,000 is a lot of Google hits, particularly for just a 6 1/2 year span. That's roughly 300,000 hits per year of the Bush Administration.

Why do they do this? Is there a method to this madness? The Pew Research Center has been polling on Trends in Political Attitudes and Core Values for 20 years. Over that time period, when Republicans have been in the White House, the number of people agreeing that when something is run by the government it is usually inefficient and wasteful went up. When Bill Clinton was President that number went down. When Bush 41 finished the 12 year Republican run in the White House in 1992, 69% of respondents agreed about government run deals being inefficient and wasteful. By the time Bill Clinton left the White House, that number was down to 53%.

That number is now back up to 62%. Republicans create the self fulfilling prophecy about government being inherently bad. They run government into the ground when they are in charge (See Iraq and Katrina) and then they go

see, we told you government was bad.

They also equate government with politics. So whenever the Dems are trying to do something they don't want to happen, they accuse the Dems of just "playing politics", which is bad.

Who is their target audience for this continuous ranting that Dems are "just playing politics"? Not suprisingly, it is the independent voter. The quintessential "persuadable" voter. Again from Pew:

Republicans, Democrats and independents are all more likely today than five years ago to see the government as wasteful, and less likely to say that elected officials care about what regular people think.

61% of Independents now agree with the proposition that government is inefficient and wasteful (remember - government is run by people playing politics). Less than 1/3 of Independents agree with the proposition

Most elected officials care what people like me think

Elected officials. You know those nasty people who "play politics".

How is all this working for the Republicans? Finally, some good news for us, bad news for the Gopers. Here's what Pew has to say:

the Republican Party ... has rapidly lost public support, particularly among political independents. Faced with an unpopular president who is waging an increasingly unpopular war, the proportion of Americans who hold a favorable view of the Republican Party stands at 41%, down 15 points since January 2001.

And who is leading the charge in this change in attitude towards the GOP? Pew has this to say:

perceptions of the GOP have fallen dramatically among political independents: Among voters with no firm ties to either party, favorable views of the GOP have declined from 55% in 2001, to 46% in 2004, to 40% in the current survey.

Despite the Bushco's desperate attempt to paint the Dems as "bad politicians", the independent voters are just not buying it. Good spin can not make up for bad policy forever.

There is a danger here for the Dems however, and Pew spells it out quite clearly:

ratings of the Democratic Party have remained relatively stable. Despite their significant electoral gains in the 2006 midterms, public ratings of the Democratic Party are nearly identical to where they were in 1994, when they lost 52 House seats to the Republicans. And the GOP’s deteriorating image since Bush’s reelection – down 11 points since December 2004 – has not been mirrored by an improved image of the Democratic Party. The 54% favorability rating Democrats receive today is virtually identical to their 53% rating in December 2004.

If the Democrats want to maintain this advantage that the Gopers have handed to us, it is time to stand and deliver.

Reflections on SD-3

I have read all the excellent posts put up around the state about the results of the SD-3 race. Ken's piece on What Went Wrong on the Florida Progressive Coalition raised many excellent questions and provides some insightful thoughts. Ray's Postmortem for SD-3 pointed out a lot of hard lessons learned. There are always lessons to be learned from any election. They are just easier to take if you win. OK, small correction already. I've been trying to read Why Calling Supervoters is Dumb on Grassroots Brevard but something over there keeps crashing my browser. And I have read Tally's piece More Thoughts on SD3, which is a good segue to where I am going.


The first three pieces, including what I could read of the Grassroots Brevard post before my browser crashed, are what I would call tactical reviews, for the most part. Tally's piece comes closer to what I would call a strategic reflection. And that is the direction that I am going to try to go.


If we are going to attempt to play the Florida version of the 50 state strategy, we are going to have to be strategic about it. There are three legs to the successful campaign stool. The legs are the Candidate, the Issues, and the Money. We all know what happens to a stool with less than three legs, don't we. So let's review the SD-3 race with a strategic eye towards these three legs.


I don't know Suzan Franks. Never have had the opportunity to meet her. I do know some folks who worked very hard for her. I plan on knocking back more than a few beers with one of them very soon. So what I am about to say is not about Suzan Franks. I am sure there are a number of Senate Districts in this state where Suzan would have been able to put up better results. But SD-3?. What I am really trying to say here is that we need to match the candidate to the district. This particular district might have looked attractive because the previous incumbent was known as a "moderate". But this is really, with the exception of Leon, a pretty conservative district, and we needed a conservative Democratic candidate here. The best example I can give you of this is the SD-10 race last year. Steve Gorham was a candidate hand made for this very conservative Senate seat. Steve is a great guy and made a terrific showing against an incumbent county commissioner, Rhonda Storms. I think we'll be hearing more from Steve in the future. Another example is Alan Boyd in FL-02. Only a Blue dog could win as a Dem in that district. The R's tried very hard to unseat Boyd in 2004 and lost. The result? Boyd was unopposed in 2006.

Another problem that Suzan Franks had in SD-3 was her relative newcomer status in that district. Running against Charlie Dean, formerly the long time sheriff in Citrus County, put Suzan at a huge disadvantage in the County with the most voters in SD-3. So what do these two things tell us strategically? They both point to the need for Dems to build our bench from the ground up. If we had been able to field a candidate who was a long time office holder and resident of SD-3, whose political philosophy was more suited to the district, I am sure we would have had a much better showing. I believe this is particularly true in a seat like SD-3, but it is also more or less true in any other senate seat.

Democrats win when we can clearly articulate that are values put us on the side of the voters on the issues. The top 3 issues to voters in Florida are property taxes, insurance and education. The property tax issue was the issue in play during this special election. Instead of leading with a statement on how her values led her to support equitable and just tax reform, Franks spends the first half of her issue page on property taxes on attacks on Charlie Dean. That violates what I call the General Grant Rule. Grant wanted to know what his commanders were going to do to Robert E. lee, and not hear about what Robert E. Lee had done and was going to do to them.

On property insurance reform, Franks totally missed the boat. Again she leads with an attack on Dean. Her only substantive proposal is to support a national catastrophe fund, something as a Florida state senator, she would have absolutely no control over. Franks missed a great opportunity here to lay out a values based plan for true property insurance reform that could be implemented by state action alone.

Education is clearly the issue closes to Suzan Franks heart. Her issue page on education is considerably longer than either of the other two issues. and here she says this:

I will continue to fight for the values embodied in a quality education

The problem is, she says this in the last sentence of her lengthy statement on education. If you lead voters with your values they will see that you are on their side on the issues. The quote above is a good one in closing. it would have been a great one as an opening.


So what does this tell us about issue strategically? Believe it or not, we actually won in 2006 by being closer to the voters on our values. Voters need to believe that you share their values. If you make voters believe that you will always be guided by your clearly expressed values, even if they disagree with you on an issue, they will know that you are making a principled stand and will respect you for it. The alpha and omega of positions on issues are your values, values, values.

The third leg of our stool is all about the money. In 2006, the R's outspent us by better than 3 to 1 in the governors race. The final numbers are not in on this race, but it looks like that ratio is going to be hugely larger. Money has been rightly called the mothers milk of politics. In state races money is needed for mailers. Mailings are both the most effective and most efficient mass media tool in state an local races. Winning any election requires you to get more of your voters to the polls than the other guy. This is especially true in special elections. In this race, we missed our opportunity to put on a statewide full court fund raising push the moment that a special election was going to be called.

In general we should be raising money the day after an election and keep on raising money right up until the fund raising blackout before an election. This money should go to the state party for use in absentee ballot and other ongoing strategic outreach efforts. It should also be available as seed money for general elections so that our nominee is ready to roll on the first day after the primary. In 2004, Senator Bill Nelson led an effort to do exactly that for our eventual US Senate nominee. While she ultimately lost that very close election, Betty Castor was in much better shape to campaign after the primary than was Jim Davis. Davis was off the air for an entire month after the primary. This gave Charlie Crist an advantage that could not be made up.

In Florida, there are 164 state races. Four of those are statewide, including the Governor. the other 160 are legislative districts. We must think strategically about building our bench and matching our candidates to the districts. We must make values our strategic weapon of choice. Most Americans actually share the progressive values espoused by most Democratic candidates. Once we get individual voters to recognize that fact, getting voters to agree with you on an issue, or agreeing to disagree with respect becomes infinitely easier. And we must do a better job raising money strategically.

Once we get those three legs on our strategic stool shored up, we will be much more likely to write about our electoral victories instead of lamenting on our electoral defeats. Winning is much more fun than losing. I am ready for some big time fun!

Values Based Foreign Policy

As the 110th Congress is getting ready to come into session, I have been thinking quite a bit about a Values Based Foreign Policy. The Democrats in Congress have been shut out of any meaningful role in US foreign policy for six long years. Now, with the advent of Democrats in control of Congress seems to me a good a time as any to write about how we define our foreign policy parameters.

I will confess first that I have been thinking about this in terms of Values Based Decision Making, but otherwise within the vacumn of my own little noggin. A little research quickly showed me that, once again, I have not come up with anything particularly original. But I still believe a discussion of this topic is particularly timely. So, here we go...


I had intended to start this diary off with a discussion of the famous "Long Telegram" by George Keenan which was published in Foreign Affairs in July 1947 as The Sources of Soviet Conduct by X. It was in this article that the policy of "Containment" of the Soviet Union was first and most famously espoused. I was, in fact, all set to blame Keenan for all the sins against "values based foreign policy" committed in the name of "containment". Imagine my surprise then upon re-reading this article and discovering this:

It is rather a question of the degree to which the United States can create among the peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the problems of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a world power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the major ideological currents of the time. (Emphasis mine)

And this, the conclusion of the article:

Thus the decision will really fall in large measure on this country itself. The issue of Soviet-American relations is in essence a test of the overall worth of the United States as a nation among nations. To avoid destruction the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of preservation as a great nation.

Surely, there was never a fairer test of national quality than this. In the light of these circumstances, the thoughtful observer of Russian-American relations will find no cause for complaint in the Kremlin's challenge to American society. He will rather experience a certain gratitude to a Providence which, by providing the American people with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear.

In essence, Keenan was saying that we only had to live up to our values to ultimately prevail. Forty years later, in 1987, Keenan had this to say about "containment":

There are many other sources of instability and trouble. There are local danger spots scattered about in the Third World. There is the dreadful situation in southern Africa. There is the grim phenomenon of a rise in several parts of the world of a fanatical and wildly destructive religious fundamentalism, and there is the terrorism to which that sort of fundamentalism so often resorts. There is the worldwide environmental crisis, the rapid depletion of the world's nonrenewable energy resources, the steady pollution of its atmosphere and its waters -- the general deterioration of its environment as a support system for civilized living.

And finally, there is much in our own life, here in this country, that needs early containment. It could, in fact, be said that the first thing we Americans need to learn to contain is, in some ways, ourselves: our own environmental destructiveness, our tendency to live beyond our means and to borrow ourselves into disaster, our apparent inability to reduce a devastating budgetary deficit, our comparable inability to control the immigration into our midst of great masses of people of wholly different cultural and political traditions.

At this juncture, I was going to launch into my own discussion of the pitfalls of the so called "pragmatic approach" to foreign policy versus the "values based" model. I still intend to do so in future diaries. I would be entirely remiss if, at this time, I did not offer my apologies to the late George Keenan, a man who 60 years ago typed these words on his typewriter:

gratitude to a Providence which, by providing the American people with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership

How to Talk to Small Business People

Today we are back on track. The last two weeks have been spent on How to Talk to the Main Stream Media. While I personally thought they would be very useful, they did not get overwhelming responses. That's OK though, it was good exercise for me to run through my own personal do's and don'ts when dealing with the media.

How to Talk to Small Business People has a more "traditional" goal. Once again we will be trying to convince people who should be agreeing with us that we have the better ideas, and that our candidates are the better ones because they espouse these ideas and values. We need to do this in such a way as that our subjects will not be immediately turned off to our arguments before we even get started.

Speaking of getting started....

Cross Posted at Florida Kossacks


Small businesses create more jobs and are the sources of more innovations than any other segment of our society. They have a very strong sense of self reliance and personal accountability. Community is highly valued by Small Business People. The operate their businesses and employ people in our communities. They raise their families and worship together with us in our communities. They give back to their communities by serving in Kiwanis, Optimists, and all other manner of civic organizations, both international and local in scope.

Small Business People also vote overwhelmingly Republican. They are mistaken in their understanding of what the Republican Party stands for (by its deeds, not by its words). Most Small Business People are moderate by nature - they want their products and services to be sought out by the widest range of potential customers possible. Time and again, that has been shown to be in the "broad middle".

Define the Overarching Strategy

What is the best strategy to use when deciding How to Talk to Small Business People? It is not much different than in talking to any other segment of society you wish to persuade. The first thing to do is to identify which among your values is most applicable to this subject. Emphasize those values that are shared by the subjects, in this case Small Business People. Any facilitator of conflict resolution worth his or her own salt will first seek to identify areas of common agreement. We should view this exercise no differently.

Small Business People value personal accountability. They know full well that given an even chance, they and they alone, are responsible for their own success or failure. Small business people value community. They raise their families, worship and run their businesses in their communities. They are the backbone of the Kiwanis, the Optimists and other civic organizations. They run for City Council, belong to the Chamber of Commerce and support their churches and local charities.

Small Business People value independence and freedom from over burdensome governmental regulations. Their trade group is the National Federation of Independent Businesses. The issues that are important to them include competition, government and regulatory reform and tax relief. The NFIB website proudly proclaims:

Advocacy is a top priority for NFIB.

Their list of legislative accomplishments includes tax relief and "tort reform" amongst others.


Define the Terminology

Small Business People tend to self identify as Republicans because they believe the Republican Party is the party of business. They are only partially correct. The Republican Party is the party of big business. The Gopers give a lot of lip service to small business but that's about all they really give them. All the major legislative efforts of the Republicans have been centered on benefiting big business. Very little is actually done with small business people as the major focus.

Tax rollbacks on the very wealthy are a good example. The Republicans claimed that rolling back the tax cuts for the very wealthy would negatively impact small business people, and therefore hurt job creation, the economy, mother hood and apple pie. The truth of the matter is that most small business people are able to arrange their financial affairs in such a way as to not show very high taxable incomes. Where they are running into real problems is with the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) . This is a tax scheme that was devised to keep the super rich from avoiding paying taxes at all. It has not been modified to keep up with the times, however. So now it is going to ensnare people it was never meant to cover. We can go a long way to getting small business people on our side by making AMT reform a priority.

Fair competition is another area that small business people are getting lied to by the Republicans. I am going to use Wal Mart as an example only here. Small business people don't like the idea of welfare or government subsidies. Because of their sense of community, most of them want to provide and many do, health and other benefits for their employees. What they don't realize is that companies that hire primarily part time employees and pay them no benefits and low wages are getting subsidized by the government. These part time employees get free health care from the government when they get sick. Many of them are on food stamps and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Even though they are working, many work 2 or more jobs, their incomes are still low enough to qualify for government assistance.

When you explain to a small business person that the big company he is competing with is getting these subsidies from the government, they tend to get very unhappy. Usually when they think about welfare, they only think about the Welfare Queens ripping off the government. They don't stop to think that their competition is benefiting from the welfare system by having the government pick up the spread between a living wage and what they are actually paying their employees. When you explain that to a small business person, the idea of a living wage begins to look a whole lot more reasonable to them.

The other argument that Republican use against raising the minimum wage or a living wage is that it will cost jobs and put small business people out of business. Many states have a higher minimum wage than the Federal Minimum Wage. In Florida, we passed a State Constitutional Amendment raising the minimum wage and indexing it for inflation. Florida is still leading the nation in job creation. Scratch that argument. Small business people understand economics. After they get that the government is subsidizing below living wage paying employers, they are susceptible to another argument. That is that if you can't afford to pay a living wage ( not get the government to subsidize you), economically you should not be in that business. A truly free market would force you out of business without the government subsidies. Small Business People really get that argument.

Mangle the Memes

You are not going to get through to Small business People unless you can get past the memes that they have bee indoctrinated on since birth. Use examples to show them that the Republican Party is not the party of rugged individualists, but is instead the party of corporate welfare.

Small Business People tend to be on the patriotic side. Be ready to show them that Dems are competent to keep us safe from terrorists and will otherwise protect our national security. After all, most people now get that Dumbya did not make us safer by invading Iraq.

Don't let them get away with calling us "tax and spend" Dems. Remind them that it was a Dem President who balanced the budget and left office with a surplus. Also, it is the Dems in Congress who are bringing back pay - go budgeting. That's something small business people really understand.

We have more in common with the Small business community than most people think. We have a lot more in common with them than the Republicans really do. The Gopers have just done a better job of convincing the small business community that they share their values. In fact, we share more values in practice than the Gopers do.

If you can remember to speak to small business people in terms of our shared values, you have a very good chance to get them away from the Dark Side. You will at least have made them think about it.

And that's a start.