State Research

Thumpers
Dodd-Frank thumps the link Sunumu 12/28
Protecting Fannie Mae By John E. Sununu - December 28, 2011 http://articles.philly.com/2011-12-28/news/30565434_1_fannie-mae-high-profile-trials-dodd-frank

The White House spent tremendous political capital passing the Dodd-Frank financial-regulation law, and missed no opportunity to demonize Wall Street for its role in the financial crisis. The administration has blamed big banks, rating agencies, and the derivatives market, and the massive bill itself was sold as a way to prevent future crises Guantanamo thumps the link The Hill 1/11
Obama promise to close Guantnamo prison unfulfilled By Jeremy Herb - 01/11/12 08:32 PM ET http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/203727-obama-promise-to-close-prison-at-guantanamo-still-unfulfilled The White House said the president continues to work to close Guantnamo in a difficult political environment. White House press secretary Jay Carney noted at Mondays press briefing that both President Bush and Obamas 2008 opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), have wanted to close the facility.

Obama has no political capital multiple warrants only a risk that winners win NYT 1/10
Obamas Challenge: Mobilization Wesley Lowery, a senior studying journalism and political science at Ohio University, is the student representative for the National Association of Black Journalists and formerly the national political editor of Scoop44. He is on Twitter. JANUARY 10, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/01/10/has-obama-lost-the-college-vote/obamas-challenge-will-bemobilization I know it's a clich, but let's be honest: it was the perfect storm. Fortunately for the president, none of the G.O.P. hopefuls have exhibited the energy to attract young voters. Young voters were disenchanted by a two-term G.O.P. presidency that championed unpopular wars and presided over an unproductive economy. They chose, eagerly, to throw their support behind a young, charismatic leader who decried partisan politics and promised to bring true change to the White House. President Obama carried nearly 65 percent of 18- to 33-year-old voters in his

2008 election, levels that will be impossible to match in 2012 as many young voters remain jobless, saddled with huge student loan debt and frustrated that, nearly four years later, thousands of U.S. troops are just now leaving Iraq and remain bunkered in Afghanistan. Three years of only partially realized promises has depressed Obamas once vibrant and vocal throngs of zealous young supporters. But fortunately for Obama, none of the Republican hopefuls have exhibited the energy, organization or moderate stances necessary to attract young voters, who hold largely independent leanings. The young masses remain Obamas to win or lose, with the primary challenge lying in mobilizing an otherwise disengaged demographic. To do that, Obama must resell young voters on universal health care and pray for any evidence of economic recovery. The president spent nearly all of this terms political capital on universal health care, but the tangible impact of the historic legislation remains both unexplained to and unrealized by young voters. Obama must reclaim health care reform as an accomplishment, disarming G.O.P. attacks that "Obamacare" is a step toward socialism. Any improvements in unemployment, foreclosures or other economic indicators could also win back young Obama supporters, but the key remains Obamas effectiveness in convincing voters that failing to re-elect him will undercut progress. Though less zealous than they once were, many young voters still have faith in Obama. He just needs to remind them that true change takes time.

Voter ID Laws thump the link and have drawn party lines in congress, state legislatures, and in the public CSM 1-11
Partisan feud escalates over voter ID laws in South Carolina, other states By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / January 11, 2012 http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2012/0111/Partisan-feud-escalates-over-voter-ID-laws-in-South-Carolina-other-states/(page)/2

The Obama administration's recent decision to block a new voter ID law in South Carolina is fueling one of the biggest partisan debates of the day: Do stronger state voter ID laws really curtail the minority franchise? States have been on a tear of late to enact tighter controls on voting, including in South Carolina. Last year, 34 approved or considered tougher voting regulations, in a bid to ensure that voters who show up at the polls on Election Day are who they say they are. Most of the new rules were approved by Republican-controlled legislatures, whose members say a crackdown on voter fraud is long overdue. But many Democrats decry the strictest rules which won't allow a ballot to be counted unless that voter presents a stateapproved photo ID as a conspiracy to suppress turnout of their party's constituency, namely the poor, minorities, and college students. Enter the US Department of Justice. It moved in dramatic fashion last month to block South Carolina's voter ID law,
refusing to give the state clearance to mandate that voters show a form of state-issued ID at the polls DOJ's first such objection to a state voter ID law since 1994. The department, moreover, is poised to decide the fate of Texas's new voter ID law. Both states want to put the revisions in effect in time for the 2012 election. At issue: Are the new laws retrogressive for minority voting rights under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to wit, do the costs to voters of securing state IDs amount to a "poll tax"? In announcing the South Carolina denial Dec. 23, Attorney General Eric Holder said federal oversight of voting in the South is still needed to "resist the temptation to suppress certain votes in the hope of attaining electoral success." Like most Southern states, South Carolina must get sign-off from DOJ's Voting Rights Section to change its voting laws because of past suppression of the minority vote. South Carolina has said it will appeal the Justice Department's action, and many legal analysts expect the case will quickly advance to the US Supreme Court. "South Carolina is claiming it needs to use voter identification in the upcoming election to preserve the integrity of its electoral process. DOJ is blocking the state's law. This almost perfectly tees up the issue of federalism and state sovereignty" and a potential fast-track vote by the Supreme Court ahead of the 2012 election, writes political scientist Richard Hasen at the University of California, Irvine, in an article for Slate. As recently as 2009, a majority of the justices stated in a Texas voting rights case that "the South has changed." In that case, Chief Justice John Roberts questioned assertions that Southerners are more tempted to discriminate at the polls than are Northerners. In the South Carolina case, the high court would be expected to weigh the interests of the federal government in protecting voting rights against the state's own sovereignty rights. In rejecting South Carolina's law, the Justice Department said the state failed to prove that it would not affect minority voters more than white ones, given that 10 percent of blacks don't carry government IDs, compared with 8.4 percent of whites. Whether that discrepancy amounts to an attack on minority voting rights is arguable for a state where an Indian-American, Nikki Haley, serves as governor and where a black conservative, Tim Scott, was elected to Congress in 2010 from a mostly white district, some say. Opponents of voter ID laws, however, cite studies that show voter fraud to be negligible. It makes no sense, they say, to risk disenfranchising people via tough new voter laws to fix a problem that is practically nonexistent. "There is almost no voting fraud in America," asserted a New York Times editorial in October. "None of the lawmakers who claim there is have ever been able to document any but the most isolated cases. The only reason Republicans are passing these laws is to give themselves a political edge by suppressing Democratic votes." The fear is that "voter ID laws ... can discourage and deter a lot of people, which is the exact opposite of what we should be doing," Katie O'Connor, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, recently told The Epoch Times. Still, a large majority of Americans support voter ID laws, according to a recent Rasmussen poll. Studies about the effects of voter ID laws are mixed: Some show dips in voter participation and others show a rise. In 2009, a study published in the Harvard Law and Policy Review found that the first generation of voter ID laws, enacted from 2002 to 2004, depressed turnout by 2.34 percent disenfranchising as many as 4.5 million people but that ID laws passed from 2004 to 2006 boosted turnout 1.95 percent. The author attributed the change to states' efforts to remind people to vote and bring ID. In Georgia, where a strict voter ID law went into effect in 2007 after Justice Department sign-off, turnout among African-Americans rose 42 percent from the 2006 midterm elections to the 2010 midterms, according to the Secretary of State's office. Asked if fears of disenfranchisement are legitimate, Secretary of State spokesman Matt Carrothers said, "We're getting to the

point of the discussion where you exit the realm of math and get into ideology, and at that point someone is basically telling you their opinion." The opinion in many conservative circles is that the Obama administration is using voter ID laws to play politics, by painting itself as protector of minority voting rights against an allegedly racist Southern power structure. "The political upside is that you keep your civil rights constituency happy," says James Guth, a political scientist at Furman University, in Greenville, S.C. "That's not to suggest Holder doesn't believe in what he's doing, but it also has that political effect." But there's a risk for the Justice Department, too, if the Supreme Court steps into the fray. "The Supreme Court is not going to tolerate purist fantasies where an unwillingness to examine mitigating evidence justifies intrusion into state laws," says J. Christian Adams, a former civil rights attorney at DOJ and the author of "Injustice: Exposing
the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department."

Even if they win that political capital is high you have to spend political capital as soon as you can it dissipates over time The Hill 1/11
Santorum gambles, and loses, in NH By Cameron Joseph - 01/11/12 05:00 AM ET http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-primaries/203483-santorum-gambles-and-loses-in-nh Rick Santorum gambled, and lost, by campaigning in New Hampshire following his strong second-place showing in Iowa. A

lot of Santorums hard-earned Iowa momentum has been lost after a rough week in New Hampshire, a libertarian-leaning state that was always going to be an uphill battle for the social conservative. After campaigning hard in the Granite State rather

than heading straight for the redder state of South Carolina, Santorum managed just a fifth-place finish with 9.3 percent of the vote, with 95 percent of precincts reporting. The crowds were large for Santorum, as many voters gave him a second look. Yet, they

never warmed to him. Santorum was never expected to win New Hampshire, but many expected that he would secure between 10 percent and 20 percent, especially after making the state a top priority. In the wake of the Iowa results, the former Pennsylvania senator noted to various media outlets that he visited New Hampshire more than 30 times. But his strategy didn't work. [Santorum] should have gone straight to South Carolina knowing he had limited resources and that the profile of New Hampshire was unfavorable to him, said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. The momentum has dissipated. You cant save political capital, you have to spend it right away. He took his capital and let it dissipate."

Winners Win
Winners Win Morgan 1/9
The party without a candidate By SHANNON LUKE MORGAN | IDS POSTED AT 08:22 PM ON JAN. 9, 2012 (UPDATED AT 08:44 PM ON JAN. 9, 2012) http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=84754 President Barack Obama will win in 2012. There are two reasons why. First, Obama is a strong candidate. Second, the Republican candidates are not. The first argument is simple and best stated by 50 Cent: Losers lose, winners win. Politically, Obama is a winner. Despite taking political beatings at the hands of House Republicans this year, and despite a field of six major Republican candidates attacking him nonstop, Obamas poll numbers are resilient. Americans support Obama in relation to Congressional Republicans with a margin of 50 to 31. To be fair, Obamas numbers arent great. Theyll improve as he moves into campaigning in 2012, but there is a little cause for concern. The catch: Hes not operating in a vacuum. When voters vote, they arent asked to approve or disapprove of Obama. Theyre asked to pick between Obama and at least one other candidate all of whom are weaker.

Why winners win Under the theory of political capital, when Obama expends political capital to push legislation legislators had to spend political capital to block. Political capital is reciprocal and relative based on how the opposition managed to spin their policymaking. So if the plan would cost political capital to pass then Obamas opponents would be forced to spend their own political capital giving Obama a comparative advantage in the spin game and therefore allowing him to garner more influence. In short, every political action has an equal and opposite political reaction. The only thing that manners is the spin game Their DA is presumptuous no warrant why Obama will push the plan and why it will cost HIS political capital fiat guarantees the plan passes congressional supermajorities shield the link they can override an Obama veto.

Winners Win Klain 1/11

A productive election year? By Ron Klain Posted: Wed, Jan. 11, 2012, 3:01 AM Ron Klain, a former chief of staff for Vice President Biden and senior adviser to President Obama, is a Bloomberg View columnist. http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20120111_A_productive_election_year_.html Newt Gingrich's return to prominence may not last, but it should stir memories of the last time he was a major national figure. Revisiting the events of 1996 allows us to imagine a different scenario than most expect this election year. Back in 1995, as in 2011, powerful Republican leaders (including Gingrich) faced a Democratic president who had been weakened by a stinging midterm defeat. They

blocked his initiatives and tried to use their power in Congress to bring him down. By the end of 1995, gridlock had reached a new high with the government shutdown and the failure of budget talks. Sound familiar? Most experts expected things to get even worse in 1996. Then a few things happened to change that. Bill Clinton regained his footing, sharpened his reelection message, and was buoyed by better economic news. Congress grew less popular as voters became dissatisfied with its obstructionism. There were mounting signs of another tidal-wave election, this one in Democrats' favor. And the party lost enthusiasm for its lackluster nominee, Bob Dole. The result: Gingrich and fellow Republican leaders in Congress decided to work with Clinton to pass a raft of important legislation. These included a balanced-budget deal, an extension of health-care coverage, and sweeping welfare reform. Republicans decided that working with the White House to improve Congress' standing was more important than continuing to obstruct the president's agenda and limiting him to one term. Mirror images Could the 2012 election year shape up the same way? Could the most do-nothing, gridlocked Congress in memory change direction and decide to save its own political hide? Might it choose to produce results by cooperating with President Obama, even if it undercuts the GOP front-runner for the presidential nomination, Mitt Romney? The odds are long. Yet in recent weeks, signs of a reversal have emerged. The payroll-tax standoff that the president won before Christmas was the first evidence that the laws of political gravity are finally taking hold: Congressional Republicans cannot defy public demands for action on the economy indefinitely without political cost. The Republicans who were blocking the extension of the tax cut in an attempt to weaken Obama couldn't withstand the damage to their own prospects. In the end, they decided to do what was in their political interests - and Obama's - rather than Romney's. There have been further developments that could result in a turnaround in congressional attitudes. Obama's approval rating has risen, while public perception of Congress remains at an all-time low. Better economic news - such as the recent report of a reduction in unemployment - reinforces this dynamic. Finally, the growing sense that Romney will be the tepidly accepted nominee by default - much as Dole was in 1996 - is forcing Republicans to reconsider what price they are prepared to pay for him. Different times True, the partnership of Clinton, Gingrich, and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott had some features that are
absent now, including a top presidential adviser who provided counsel to both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue (Dick Morris, who served as an important go-between for Clinton and Lott); Gingrich's ability to make his rank-and-file accept bipartisan bargains, which John Boehner lacks; and the absence of an aggressive, far-right, grassroots movement like today's tea party. In addition, reapportionment and redistricting (and the Senate seats that happen to be up for election) mean there are fewer Republicans at risk this year than in 1996. That may allow the party's lawmakers to withstand more heat from the public as they keep their nominee afloat. Even so, Obama has some assets that Clinton

lacked. First, the White House's "We Can't Wait" campaign has more effectively made congressional obstruction a central election issue. Second, Democrats have the majority in one of the two legislative chambers. As a result, they don't need Senate Republican leaders to make progress; they just need seven nervous Republican senators. Third, congressional Republicans have far less personally invested in Romney's candidacy than they did in that of their old friend and colleague Dole, a longtime Senate leader. The president's recent rhetoric and actions - the crisper stump speech, the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - don't endanger bipartisan cooperation. In fact, they make progress more likely because they show Republicans that the president can score points without them if need be. The Republicans' political dilemma grows more acute each time Obama wins a confrontation. Certainly, hard-core Republicans in the House and those with safe seats in the Senate are likely to block progress in 2012 and spend political capital to advance the Romney cause. But the president's higher standing, his sharper election-year instincts, his communications strategy, and signs of an improving economy will give his congressional opponents second thoughts about the slash-and-burn strategy they have followed for the past three years. Just as they caved to Obama on the payroll-tax extension to save their own skins, they could find it useful to hand him wins this year on energy policy, fiscal policy, and job creation as a way of enhancing their own standing with angry voters. Think it can't happen? Ask Gingrich.

Elections Econ bad

Thousands of jobs now skew employment statistics to create an inflated perception of unemployment Kills obama reelection CSM 1/10
Why good economic news can be bad for Obama By Robert Reich / January 10, 2012 http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/RobertReich/2012/0110/Why-good-economic-news-can-be-bad-for-Obama Two years ago the unemployment rate was 9.9 percent. Now its 8.5 percent. At first blush thats good news for the President. Actually it may not be. Voters pay more attention to the direction the economy is moving than to how bad or good it is. So if the positive trend continues in the months leading up to Election Day, Obamas prospects of being reelected improve. But if you consider

the number of working-age Americans who have stopped looking for work over the past two years because they couldnt find a job, and young people too discouraged even to start looking, you might worry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which measures the unemployment rate every month, counts people as unemployed only if theyre looking for work. If theyre too discouraged even to enter the job market, theyre not counted. If all the potential workers who have dropped out of the job market over the past two years were counted, todays unemployment rate wouldnt be 8.5 percent. It would be 9.5 percent. Thats only a bit down from the 9.9 percent unemployment rate two years ago. The genuinely good news, though, is the Bureau of Labor Statistics also tells us 200,000 new jobs were added in December. Granted, this doesnt put much of a dent in the 10 million jobs weve either lost since the recession began or needed to keep up with the growth of the workingage population (at this rate we wont return to our pre-recession level of employment until 2019) but, hey, its at least the right direction. But heres the political irony. This little bit of good news is likely to raise the hopes of the great army of the discouraged many of whom will now start looking for work. And what happens when they start looking? If they dont find a job (and, lets face it, the chances are still slim) theyll be counted as unemployed. Which means the unemployment rate will very likely edge upward in coming months. This will be bad for the President because it will look as though the trend is in the wrong direction again. A bit of good news will make voters overly optimistic, and when they realize the economy is still in poor shape, they will blame the president

Lew Link Shield

Lew is now Obamas chief of staff WP 1/10
What does Bill Daleys House exit mean for Obama in 2012? Published January 10 http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/what-does-bill-daleys-white-house-exit-mean-for-obama-in-2012/2012/01/10/gIQA08zIoP_story.html

Incoming White House chief of staff Jack Lew is well-liked and a perfect fit for no-drama Obama team in a key year. The aide would not expand on that critique. Some analysts see Jack Lews move to the White House as a strategic decision to reduce friction within the administration and in its relations with Congress. That Shields the link Lew controls the spin to make legislation bipartisan. Politico 11
Lew: A liberal GOP says it trusts By: Ben Smith June 27, 2011 11:29 PM EST http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=D3927ED5-63B0-48FE-B67E-2B045538C912 The morning after negotiations with congressional Republicans were suspended last week, White House Budget Director Jack Lew was loping down his old street in Forest Hills, Queens, pointing out the old second-floor office of the Adlai Stevenson Democratic Club where he used to stuff envelopes for Gene McCarthy. Lew, who has operated at the top level of Democratic fiscal policy since the early 1980s and tends to get cast as a kind of gray technocrat, was in the process of demonstrating to a reporter that he is, in fact, from somewhere. But over the years, he has also come to be recognized as one of the last of the pragmatic liberals in the spirit of his old boss, Tip ONeill, the late House speaker. Lews gift,

as he sees it, is for translating between politics and policy and being seen as an honest interpreter whose personal views have not cost him relationships with his Republican counterparts. Its a skill on which the administration will rely as it seeks to bring reluctant Republican House leaders to a compromise on raising the debt ceiling and, in the process, to save President Barack Obamas and Lews vision of a government with the resources to conduct nation building at home. No one was more prepared and more in tune with the numbers than Jack Lew, His sympathies are clearly progressive, but Ive never seem him spin the facts to meet his viewpoint, Schumer said. It has sometimes been, for Lew, a political asset to be cast as the budget guy tends to be as someone with no real agenda of his own. But he tired of Abzugs difficult personality and
her confrontational approach and soon found his way to a different kind of liberalism embodied by Rep. Joe Moakley, a regular machine Democrat from Boston. Working for Moakley, Lew found that he could occupy a particular intersection of politics and policy. The thing that I learned early on was theres a space in Washington that is not deeply populated, which is a bridge between the highly technical and the political, he said. You didnt have to be the best politician, and you didnt have to be the best numbers cruncher or analyst. But if you could be fluent in both worlds and respected enough in both worlds, you could have an opportunity to be a translator and to make a difference. I can lay out complicated ideas so that

people can see where they agree and where they disagree and not have fights that they dont agree on and see the things that they want to work together on and identify where the differences are, Lew said. That kind of civil discourse and that
translating between technical and political its not divorced from having a worldview. Lew solidified his reputation as an honest broker, and his confidence at the highest levels of government, in more than seven years working for ONeill. He then went into the Clinton administration, where he served in a series of roles before becoming director of the Office of Management and Budget for the first time in 1998. My mother could never understand how I became OMB director. Because Im not an economist, Im not a finance professional, he said. She was proud but a little puzzled. But budget arithmetic has given Lew, like many appropriators and budgeteers, a deep

appreciation of priorities and choices. It has long been his formal role to lay out the practical cost of ambitious foreign policy goals and other major choices he started out in the Obama administration as Secretary of State Hillary Clintons top deputy for budget and administration. Now, as a central player in the budget talks led by Vice President Joe
Biden, his memories of the anti-Vietnam War movement have led him to thinking, in particular, about defense spending. The parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam, he said, are exaggerated, but the importance of reining in defense spending remains on his mind. I sit in a room and I hear Republicans talking about how theres nothing to cut without sacrificing our national security, he said. I wish they could spend a day with me walking through and defending everything they see everywhere. They couldnt. You have to ask questions about defense spending with the same sensitivity to the consequences as you do about education spending and domestic spending, he said. Lew wasnt particularly perturbed by the dramatic abandonment of budget talks by Cantor, of whose seriousness he speaks highly. I think his decision to not participate is something that maybe he revisits, he said. There is clearly going to be a need to come together and finish the work. Lew expressed confidence that Democrats and Republicans will reach an honorable compromise on raising the debt ceiling, one that may infuriate partisans of both sides. In a

world where there are shared responsibilities, whether its a CR negotiation or the debt limit, theres going to have to be give in both directions, he said. You dont fundamentally resolve very dramatic differences in philosophy and policy without some give on each side.

Obama will win Romney is too insensitive Whitaker 1/12

Barack Obama Will Win the Presidential Election By Tim Whitaker 1/12/2012 http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2012/01/12/barack-obama-win-presidential-election/

I now know for certain therell be a second President Obama term. I knew it the moment Jon Stewart described Romney as looking like the guy who fired your dad. The imagery was unerring. And a knee slapper to boot. Its so easy to picture Romney firing your dad. Hed do it by the book too. Hed have Joanie, his longtime loyal assistant who juggles all his lunch dates at the club and who he
rewards every Christmas with a re-gift from a family friend, buzz dads cubicle. Hed of course be sure to have dads name on an index card along with a few brief bullet points on his desk in front of him. Hed have an associate in his office with him. Soon as dad sat down, hed hit him real quick with the carefully parsed dismissal points, none of them personal of course. Hed wish him luck and thank him for his 22 years of service. Then hed stand up. Contact HR about COBRA, hed say, feigning assurance. That should work out for you. It would all happen so fast, so bloodlessly, that before leaving dad would instinctively reach out and shake the outstretched mitt thrust in front of him. Later, when trying to tell mom what happened, dad would remember almost nothing about the encounter except the handshake. He wouldnt even remember driving home. You could chalk all this up to hyperbolic fantasy, to Romney-as-bloodless-prick Democratic spin, a parsed reality geared to appeal to the financially strapped middle class voter. You could, except that Romney keeps telling us himself how little he knows about the pain of joblessness. There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip, Romney cracked at a rally in New Hampshire, hoping to show us that he too can relate to hard times. The media whooped and quickly badgered Romneys aides for an example, please, of a time when their candidate worried about losing a job. No examples were forthcoming, but thats not really the point, is it? What would Romney do if he had been pink slipped? Heres what he wouldnt have to do: He wouldnt have to decline all invitations to have dinner at a restaurant with friends, or disconnect the cable, or keep the heat as low as possible, or bargain for time with the landlord and the bank, or start selling stuff on Craigs List, which is what losing a job means to a whole lot of people. And worse. I like being able to fire people, Romney said earlier this week, doubling down on his insensitivity quotient. Romney was talking about being able to fire his insurance company but that almost didnt matter. The rhetorical blind spot exposed what he couldnt feel: the anguish of the job-searching middle class. Mitt was talking about the individual citizens right to fire their insurance company, quipped Stephen Colbert. Which of course would hurt those companies profits, making them vulnerable to takeover, then Mitt could enjoy firing those people. Despite all this, its likely Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee. Which means four more years for President Obama. Dont believe me? Ask Dad who hes voting for.

Voter ID laws thump the link and mean Obama wont get elected NPR 1/12
Political Battle Brewing Over New Voter ID Laws by COREY DADE January 12, 2012 http://www.npr.org/2012/01/11/145044060/political-battle-brewing-over-new-voter-id-laws

As the presidential campaign kicks into high gear, a fight is brewing over stricter voting laws that could affect turnout and influence general election results in battleground states. New laws in several states will require millions of voters to show photo identification when they cast ballots this year, the result of a nationwide push mostly by Republicans who claim the measures will prevent election fraud. Democrats and voting rights activists oppose the laws, arguing that they are unnecessary because voter fraud is rare. Opponents also say the laws are part of a Republican strategy to suppress turnout among scores of eligible voters particularly young voters, poor voters and African-Americans who tend to favor
Democratic candidates. In 2008, the Supreme Court upheld a voter-identification law in Indiana, saying that requiring voters to produce photo identification is not unconstitutional and affirming that states have a "valid interest" in improving election procedures and deterring fraud. Now 31 states require voters to show some form of identification at the polls. Fifteen of them require photo IDs. (The rest require identification without photos, such as a voter registration card, Social Security card or other government-issued ID, or a utility bill or bank statement showing a home address.) Many of these states have passed other laws that scale back early voting periods which have often

benefited Democratic candidates or stop allowing people to register to vote on Election Day, a practice credited in 2008 with adding tens of thousands of new voters, the majority of whom voted for President Obama. A recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which opposes such laws, estimated that the new laws could harm 5 million voters. About 18 percent of seniors and 25 percent of African-Americans don't have photo identification, according to the study. Critics decrying the laws as purely politically motivated say the laws have been passed particularly in 2012 battleground states. The Brennan Center report found that states that have passed such laws hold 171 electoral votes, or 63 percent of the 270 votes needed to win the presidency. "These new restrictions fall most heavily on young, minority and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities," researchers Wendy R. Weiser and Lawrence Norden wrote in the study. "This wave of changes may sharply tilt the political terrain for the 2012 election." Opponents are fighting back. Groups such as the Brennan Center and the
American Civil Liberties Union are filing lawsuits to block such legislation, and have successfully scuttled voter ID bills in Ohio and elsewhere. Democratic governors in Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire and North Carolina vetoed strict new photo ID laws in 2011. In some cases, these are state battles. In others, the federal government plays a role: The 1965 Voting Rights Act mandates that the Justice Department approve any changes to the election laws proposed in nine southern states, including South Carolina and Texas, which have a history of racially discriminatory voting practices. Late last month, the Justice Department blocked South Carolina's new photo ID law, saying it would unduly harm thousands of minorities who don't have identification.

Tax Breaks thump the link Wolf 1/11

Obama to propose tax breaks for 'insourcing' jobs By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY Jan 11, 2012 http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2012/01/obama-to-propose-tax-breaks-for-insourcing-jobs/1?csp=34news President Obama will propose tax breaks for companies that bring jobs back to the United States as part of an effort to boost the economic recovery. Obama also will include $12 million in his proposed 2013 budget, to be released next month, to add staffing to a federal program that seeks to attract new businesses to the U.S. The president made those announcements Wednesday at a White House forum on 'insourcing' jobs -- bringing them back from overseas. He also said he will propose eliminating tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs to foreign countries. "I do not want America to be a nation known for financial speculation and outsourcing and racking up debt buying stuff from other nations," Obama said. "I want us to be known for making and selling products all over the world stamped with three proud words: 'Made in America.' "I don't want the next generation of

manufacturing jobs taking root in countries like China or Germany. I want them taking root in places like Michigan and Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina." Notably, those are all states that will be crucial to the president's re-election next year -- and which Mitt Romney, or whoever is the Republican nominee, will be trying to win back from 2008, when Obama won them all.

Recess appointments empirically thump the link even for popular legislation WP 1/12
Recess appointments cloud prospects for streamlining bill By Emily Heil | 02:01 PM ET, 01/12/2012 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in-the-loop/post/recess-appointments-cloud-prospects-for-streamlining bill/2012/01/12/gIQApVxxtP_blog.html President Obamas

decision last week to override the Senate and make recess appointments certainly ticked off plenty of Republicans and now, let the Hill aftershocks commence! One possible victim of the sour mood caused by the recess appointments is a heretofore innocuous, bipartisan bill that would streamline the Senate confirmation process. The bill,
which is aimed at making the notoriously laborious chamber more efficient by reducing the number of presidential appointees requiring a Senate vote, cleared the Senate back in July. Since then, its been languishing in the House. And now, were hearing that the

bill might never see the light of day. The subject of confirmations has turned toxic on Capitol Hill, where Republicans in both chambers are smarting from Obamas end-run around Senate Republicans gambit to keep the president from making recess appointments by technically keeping the chamber in session even though the sessions lasted mere seconds each day. The president pretty much poisoned the well on the whole subject matter, says one Republican staffer. If you bring that bill up now, youd get a big fight. Advocates for the bill were hoping for smoother sailing. They anticipated the House would simply pass the bill in deference to the Senate since Senate GOP leaders backed it, and because it deals solely with the business of the upper chamber. This should be the Senates prerogative, and we would
hope that the House would defer to that judgement, says Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a bipartisan goodgovernment group. While that might might have been the case just a few weeks ago, its certainly not now. Its a new ball game.

Obama Lose now - Polls Weil 12/19

The Hill Poll: Obama Wont Win Re-Election By Dan Weil Monday, 19 Dec 2011 11:52 AM http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/TheHillpoll-Obama-economy/2011/12/19/id/421439

A plurality of likely voters believes President Barack Obama will lose his re-election bid next year, according to a new
poll by The Hill. The survey showed 46 percent of respondents think Obama will lose, while 41 percent believe he will win. Among independents, who will likely determine the elections outcome, 43 percent see Obama getting re-elected and 40 percent dont. That 3percentage-point gap matches the polls margin of error. Given those numbers, its not too surprising that voters dont give the president high marks for his first term. A majority 51 percent of respondents regard Obama as either a failure (37 percent) or not very successful (14 percent). Meanwhile, 48 percent say he was either very successful (16 percent) or somewhat successful (32 percent). Among the key category of independents, 54 percent view the presidents first-term performance as unsuccessful, with 36 percent saying it has been a failure and 18 percent saying it hasnt been very successful. Meanwhile, 45 percent of independents see Obama as a success, with 11 percent saying he has been very successful and 34 percent saying he has been somewhat successful. Perhaps Obamas strongest support comes from African-American and female voters. A hefty 79 percent of blacks believe hell be reelected, and 94 percent view his tenure in the White House as a success. As for gender, 52 percent of women say Obama has been successful, compared with only 44 percent of men who feel the same way. In another piece of bad news for Obama, a whopping 92 percent of likely voters view the choice of president as important in determining the countrys economic strength, with 66 percent saying its very important, and 26 percent saying its somewhat important. Given that other polls show voters are unhappy with Obamas handling of the economy, that has to be a discomforting sign for the president. The poll shows a divided view among voters when asked about their sense of optimism, with 41 percent saying Americas best days are in the past and 40 percent saying the best lies ahead. Young voters are more optimistic than older voters: In the 18-39 demographic, 42 percent say our best days lie ahead, while 35 percent say theyre over. Among those in the 40-64 group, 39 percent say the best is yet to come, and 45 percent say our best days are behind us.

Obama lose now multiple warrants CBS 12/20

Beating a very beatable president in 2012 By Jay Cost December 20, 2011 8:48 AM http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-215_16257345495/beating-a-very-beatable-president-in-2012/
We are a little over 10 months from Election Day, and the Christmas hope of many conservatives is that voters next Obviously, a lot can happen in 10 months. Nevertheless,

November will deliver a decisive rebuke to President Barack Obama. many of the fundamentals of the race are already in place. And the news is not good for the

. Next year is shaping up as the least favorable for an incumbent president since 1992. Horse race polls are of limited value this far from Election Day. The 10 to 15 percent of the electorate in the middle--the slice of voters who swing elections--aren't paying much attention. Sometimes these voters do not make a decision until the very last minute, as was the case in the 1980 campaign between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Still, the polls offer some guidance. The RealClearPolitics.com average of them shows Obama earning just 43 percent when

president

This is bad for the president because public opinion about an incumbent is pretty firm and difficult--though not impossible--to move, absent shifts in the broader political context. And what to make of that context? Each presidential election is fought over a series of shifting national concerns, and the issues of the 2012 cycle are the least favorable for an incumbent president since 1992, and maybe even since 1980. And we know what happened to the incumbents in those elections. Three issues in particular dominate the discussion, and none of them favors Obama. The most important is the economy, which has been struggling through a decade of weak growth. Consider that between 1951 and 2000, the American economy grew by an average of 37 percent every decade. Between 2001 and 2010, the pace of growth was less than half that, at just 15 percent. This has generated an enormous "output gap"--the difference between what the economy would ideally produce and what it has actually done. Over the last decade, the size of this gap is a yawning $2.5 trillion. The average American has felt the effects in stubbornly high unemployment and stagnant real incomes, and the effort of the Federal Reserve to generate growth by cutting interest rates to the bone means that people who save their pennies earn virtually no interest for their scrimping. Barack Obama certainly doesn't deserve all the blame, but he will pay a high political price for three reasons. First, he overpromised to an absurd degree when he entered office. He claimed that the stimulus bill would reignite the American growth machine and keep unemployment under 8 percent. Neither happened, so Obama will pay for his unjustified optimism. Second, he failed to form a bipartisan coalition to tackle the economic problem. The many comparisons made between Barack Obama and Franklin Roosevelt in the heady days of winter 2009 always seemed to overlook the fact that FDR's New Deal, at least in its early stages, was bipartisan, framed as a national response to a national emergency. Obama's approach was to breezily tell congressional Republicans, "I won." Because the stimulus manifestly failed to deliver the growth that the president promised, Obama and congressional Democrats must bear the weight of that failure all by themselves. Third, Obama turned his attention away from the economy far too quickly. This points to another difference between Obama and Roosevelt. FDR essentially threw everything at the Depression, including the kitchen sink; the legislating of 1933 and 1934 was relentlessly focused on the economy, and voters had no choice but to conclude that Roosevelt was, at the very least, doing everything he could think of. Not so with Obama. Having passed their stimulus, this president and his allies in Congress turned their attention to grander social welfare ambitions, something FDR did not begin to do until 1935, when the economy had already started growing at a robust rate. Thus, the only real question is how big a price Obama will pay. The December survey of economists by the Wall Street Journal found that, on average, they expect 2012 annual GDP to come in at 2.3 percent, far below the postwar average, unemployment to be stuck at or above 8.5 percent for the whole year, and home prices to be flat. No incumbent president since FDR has been reelected when the economy still has so much slack. Obama's record on the economy is so dismal that, all by itself, it should be sufficient for an able Republican to defeat him. Yet this president faces other daunting challenges. The next big one is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. It contributed mightily to the GOP wave of 2010, and if the Republicans play their cards right, it will defeat Obama next year. The reason is reducible to a simple calculation of costs and benefits. The president and his allies in Congress advertised their bill as a cost-reduction package, framing it as a win-win-win: People without insurance would get coverage, people with insurance would see their premiums reduced, and taxpayers would eventually enjoy a lower bill for it all. However, this argument was a smokescreen. Obamacare focuses almost entirely on coverage expansion. The cost-reducing mechanisms are either very weak, politically impractical, or will eventually hit the middle class square in the jaw. The bill is in fact a win-lose-lose: Those without insurance definitely win, but only because of a transfer of wealth from people with insurance as well as from taxpayers. Since most Americans already have insurance, this establishes an easy goal for the Republican nominee: Convince the average American that he will be worse off because of the bill. This should not be a difficult task. Credible, nonpartisan reports, many from government agencies, spell out in great detail how millions of Americans will be made worse off by Obamacare. What's more, Obamacare continues to poll very poorly, mainly because of the messy process that produced it. Most Americans believe that the political system is broken, and that the effort of congressional Democrats in 2009-2010 to pass Obamacare is the prime example of what's going wrong in Washington. Thus, it should be relatively easy for the GOP to convince voters they are bound to lose because bad process produces bad policy. The final issue Obama will confront is the deficit. Like the economy, this is an issue that Obama owns politically, even if he is only partly responsible for it. Reduced tax revenues and greater demand for social welfare programs make deficits boom in a recession. And the long-term deficit is almost entirely a function of the runaway cost of Medicare. Still, the president is politically vulnerable for good reason: He never really tried to forge a bipartisan coalition to tackle deficit reduction. His own deficit commission offered him a sensible, bipartisan plan--the "Simpson-Bowles" plan--that he summarily rejected. And make no mistake: The deficit is a powerful political issue. The federal budget is massively complex--Rep. Paul Ryan and a handful of wonks at the Congressional Budget Office might be the only people in the country who begin to understand it. Yet most people grasp that money borrowed by the federal government must one day be paid back, with interest, by the taxpayer. Thus, as with health care, the Republican job on the deficit will come down to convincing voters that their intuitions are correct: They are losers because Obama raided the Treasury to pay off Democratic client groups, leaving the average taxpayer to foot the bill. All in all, this election will be fought more on bread-and-butter issues than any since at least 1992. Ronald Reagan's question to the nation in the final debate against Jimmy Carter--"Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"--will be the GOP's mantra in 2012. The answer is obviously no, and the Republicans will use the economy, Obamacare, and the deficit to pin the blame squarely on the president. How will the Obama team counter? The Obama campaign has already telegraphed its
matched against an unnamed Republican, and only 46 percent when matched against Mitt Romney. strategy for 2012, and it is worth reviewing in some detail, beginning with the demographics of the electorate. Obama's election in 2008 depended largely on an unprecedented haul among nonwhite voters, and Obama's campaign gurus believe that demography can trump economics in the Mountain West swing states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico as well as the "New South" states of Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. Additionally, they are counting on another monumental haul from the youth vote, hoping that massive turnout at colleges like Ohio State and the University of Michigan will keep those important Rust Belt states in the Democratic column. There is little doubt that Barack Obama will win a majority of the non-white vote and the young next year. Even so,

the president and his team are being wildly optimistic (assuming they believe their own spin). For starters, large majorities among minorities and kids

are built into every Democratic candidate's campaign. Obama cannot just win these groups; he has to win them by such overwhelming margins that they cover his massive losses among older white voters. Proponents of a so-called emerging Democratic majority, who
argue that the nonwhite vote will eventually transform the Democrats into permanent occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., consistently make a category error when they discuss these voters. African Americans, no doubt, are solid Democrats who support their party year in, year out, regardless of the national climate. Yet

Hispanics are not Democratic loyalists. They are swing voters who tilt Democratic. The difference between these two groups is Obama's numbers among Hispanics and other nonblack minority groups are less than stellar. The most recent reading from Gallup shows the president earning 52 percent approval from Hispanics, which compares unfavorably to his 67 percent
like the difference between Massachusetts and Pennsylvania--the Bay State almost never votes Republican for president, while the Keystone State does so in a reasonably good year for the GOP. And

share of the Hispanic vote in 2008. The same goes for the youth vote--again, a swing group with a Democratic tilt. Gallup finds Obama with just 50 percent approval from adults aged 18 to 29, down from 66 percent among these voters in 2008. So if demographics will not save Obama, what about his message? His campaign team has already made fairly clear their approach to the 2012 election. The president will focus relentlessly on inputs. Obama is going to gloss over the weak performance of the economy to emphasize all of the "important" things he has done to fix the problem. We see this in the daily drumbeat out of the White House: The "do-nothing" Congress has not acted to fix the economy, so Obama will. The idea is to emphasize the energy and vigor of the president in tackling the problem, so people will at least believe he is trying. FDR benefited from this appearance, but that was in large part because he was actually doing everything he could. With Obama, it is mostly a posture he adopted after the 2010 election. The other major message will be pure demagoguery: The Republicans are the party of extremists who threaten the republic. This message is reminiscent of the Herbert Hoover reelection effort; in late October 1932, the beleaguered president said: We are told by the opposition that we must have a change, that we must have a new deal. It is not the change that comes from normal development of national life to which I object, but the proposal to alter the whole foundations of our national life which have been builded through generations of testing and struggle, and of the principles upon which we have builded the nation. . . . Our people should consider [carefully] whether they will support changes which radically affect the whole system which has been builded up by a hundred and fifty years of the toil of the fathers. Team Obama will basically make the same case: The Republican program is at its core radical and anti-American. Will it work for them? The best way to answer this question is with another question: Did it work for Hoover?

The Obama strategy as it has developed is insufficient to produce reelection. The president is going to need assistance, either from more robust growth or a fumble by the Republicans. Bad demographic math, phony activism, and Hooveresque demagoguery is not enough to win. Add all this up, and we're left with this conclusion: If things continue on the same trajectory as they have over the last three years, the president will face a near insuperable challenge for reelection. Provided that the GOP nominates a reasonably attractive candidate, it will truly be one for the history books if Obama can be reelected with a terribly weak economy, a massively unpopular health care bill, an obscenely large deficit, and no compelling case for a second term. It could happen, obviously, but I would not bet my money on it. Not in this economy!

Obamas reelection strategy will force him to not push any legislation AP 1/12
SPIN METER: Obama's pose: Disinterest in politics By ERICA WERNER The Associated Press 4:11 p.m. Thursday, January 12, 2012 http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/spin-meter-obamas-pose-1300244.html WASHINGTON To hear the White House tell it, President Barack Obama has scant interest in politics as Republicans battle each other for the right to challenge him. But in reality, Obama is increasingly involved in his re-election, staying in regular contact with his campaign staff, raising money and evaluating Republican debate performances. Throughout the White House, Obama's aides are knee-deep in the re-election business. There are daily conference calls between top aides in the White House and campaign staff at the Chicago re-election headquarters and close consultation on message and travel. His pose of indifference allows Obama to try to position himself above the sometimes-ugly fray of the campaign, leaving the political back-and-forth to others as he focuses instead on the loftier work of governing. But as with any incumbent president seeking re-election, political concerns weigh heavily as the election approaches. It's just smarter politics, for now, to pretend otherwise. "Presidents like to act like they're not paying attention to every little detail of every little thing, when I suspect they all do," said Ari Fleischer, press secretary under President George W. Bush. "The job requires you to act like you're above all the less important stuff of the world especially if the less important stuff is the guy who wants to take your job." White House press secretary Jay Carney said the president spends only about 5 percent of his time on the campaign, and there will be plenty of opportunity to get more involved once the election is closer. "Because he does not need to now, he is not engaging particularly aggressively in his re-election campaign. It's only January," Carney said this week. But the president's schedule and sometimes even his own words paint another picture: of a White House increasingly driven by politics. On Wednesday, a day after GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney solidified his front-runner status with a win in the New Hampshire primary, Obama hosted

a White House event on job creation a way of countering Republicans' attacks on the president's economic stewardship. Similar White House counter-programming was on display last week, a day after the Iowa caucuses, when Obama announced he was going around congressional Republicans to appoint a new consumer protection chief. And
take travel, a good barometer of priorities because it requires that most precious commodity: the president's time. Of a half-dozen domestic day trips Obama made in November, December and so far in January, five were to politically important states both parties will be contesting this fall North Carolina, Ohio, New Hampshire and, twice, Pennsylvania. Obama also visited his hometown of Chicago Wednesday, but in reliably Democratic Illinois he didn't bother with any official presidential events; he just dropped by his campaign headquarters and hit a few fundraisers before coming back to Washington. Carney downplays politics as the motivation behind Obama's travel. "Every president ought to be able to travel everywhere in the country. It's part of his responsibility," the presidential spokesman said ahead of one Pennsylvania trip. But Chris Lehane, an aide in Bill Clinton's White House, said the president's travel schedule reflects campaign imperatives. "The White House scheduling office is going to know that there are certain targeted states, and in those states targeted markets, and in those markets targeted districts you're going to want to spend time in," Lehane said. The president is also turning to his wife, the popular first lady, to make his case. Michelle Obama touted her husband's accomplishments at events in Virginia on Wednesday, telling a crowd in Richmond, "We are blessed to have him." The message Obama delivers while at home or on the road is discussed among campaign staff and White House officials on daily conference calls involving White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, senior adviser David Plouffe and campaign officials in Chicago, according to a senior administration official. Campaign manager Jim Messina and senior adviser David Axelrod also travel from Chicago to meet with Obama at the White House fairly regularly, the official said, speaking anonymously to discuss private deliberations. Federal law broadly bars federal officials from using government resources on campaign work, aiming to separate campaign functions such as fundraising from the official government apparatus. But the president and his senior staff are largely exempt and permitted to conduct political functions from within the White House and use government phones and computers to do so as long as the cost to taxpayers is minimal. So there's nothing stopping Pfeiffer and Plouffe from consulting regularly with their counterparts in Chicago. Former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs, who still speaks with the White House and the campaign, said Obama spends little time paying attention to the Republicans vying for his job, partly because there's no need for him to. "The message that you're hearing in Iowa or New Hampshire is a carbon copy of what you're hearing on Capitol Hill," Gibbs said, so Obama can get his fill of GOP rhetoric listening to House Republicans. It's a linkage Obama's begun making himself, telling

supporters at a Chicago fundraiser Wednesday that the Republicans running against him are no different from the unpopular GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill. That comes after Obama's spent months honing attacks against the congressional GOP while campaigning for his economic agenda attacks he's now starting to turn against his potential presidential opponents as well, in an example of how the business of governing can be hard to distinguish from the business of politics. Obama's also made clear that he is paying attention to the Republicans, at least sometimes, taking swipes at the rhetoric coming from the GOP candidates at their debates. At a fundraiser Monday, he told his audience that the consequences of
the coming election are profound, adding, "Don't take my word for it, watch some of these debates that have been going on up in New Hampshire." As usual, Obama avoided mentioning his opponents by name. "You never want your opponent to think you're paying attention to them, right?" said Karen Finney, who worked in the Clinton White House. "It's a little bit like when you like somebody, but you don't want them to know that you like them. So you ignore them." EDITOR'S NOTE _ An occasional look behind political rhetoric. ___ January 12, 2012 04:11 PM EST