Column: Democrats discover pot's political power

Two of the most well-known and politically savvy Democrats in the country —New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel— recently came out in favor of decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana. Gov. Cuomo stated his support for a bill that would end the widespread practice of arresting New Yorkers for possessing small amounts of marijuana in public view, and Mayor Emmanuel is supporting a local ordinance to make possession of small amounts of marijuana a ticketable rather than arrestable offense. In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly quickly got in line with the governor.

By Tim Roske, AP

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y., earlier this month. Cuomo is proposing the decriminalization of the possession of small amounts of marijuana in public view.

By Tim Roske, AP

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y., earlier this month. Cuomo is proposing the decriminalization of the possession of small amounts of marijuana in public view.

Columns

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes a variety of opinions from outside writers. On political and policy matters, we publish opinions from across the political spectrum.

Roughly half of our columns come from our Board of Contributors, a group whose interests range from education to religion to sports to the economy. Their charge is to chronicle American culture by telling the stories, large and small, that collectively make us what we are.

We also publish weekly columns by Al Neuharth, USA TODAY's founder, and DeWayne Wickham, who writes primarily on matters of race but on other subjects as well. That leaves plenty of room for other views from across the nation by well-known and lesser-known names alike.

In both New York and Chicago, while whites, blacks and Latinos possess and use marijuana at roughly equal rates, the people arrested for possession of pot are overwhelmingly black and Latino. The proposed changes would make an enormous difference in communities of color and in the lives of thousands of others. They would no longer face life-altering, dream-killing criminal charges for conduct that more than 40% of Americans have engaged in at one point in their lives.

But the larger significance of Cuomo's and Emmanuel's stance lies in what it says about the direction of the Democratic Party, national politics and mainstream acceptance of marijuana reform.

Andrew Cuomo is widely regarded as one of the most politically astute Democratic politicians of his generation. He very likely has his eye on a presidential run in 2016. Everything he does can be (and is, by those who pay close attention to these things) viewed in that light. When Cuomo staked out a position last year in favor of same-sex marriage, and went to the mat to make it happen in New York, it was seen as clear evidence that the national political tide had shifted on that key issue, at least for Democrats. No Democrat will ever again be able to secure the party's nomination for president while opposing marriage equality.

Rahm Emmanuel is also known as a savvy politician, who as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 led the Democrats to a 31-seat pickup that gave them back control of the House. He is nothing if not mindful of how the political winds are blowing. In fact, as President Obama's chief of staff, he was criticized by many on the left as being too conservative and cautious in his approach on a range of issues facing the administration.

So Cuomo's and Emmanuel's positions on marijuana decriminalization have a weather vane-like quality: they demonstrate that the national tide has turned on marijuana reform. If they have decided there is no political downside to decriminalizing marijuana, the debate has shifted significantly, and likely permanently.

To see the press that followed Cuomo's announcement, you'd think that the issue had never been controversial in New York (trust me, it was). The New York Daily News, not known as liberal on criminal justice issues, immediately editorialized in support of the reform and urged Senate Republicans to "get with the program."

Around the country, similar change is afoot. In a recent, hotly contested Democratic primary for Oregon attorney general, the state's medical marijuana law was a defining campaign issue. The candidate who supported the program and argued that marijuana enforcement should be a low law enforcement priority in general won big over a more traditional law-and-order candidate endorsed by prosecutors and sheriffs. In Texas last month, a first-time congressional candidate who endorsed marijuana legalization defeated an eight-term incumbent in El Paso's 16th congressional district.

Republicans remain more conservative on marijuana reform — at least in public (privately, many will say they think marijuana should be completely legal). But Americans in general have shifted on this issue: For the first time, support for marijuana legalization topped 50% nationwide last year, according to Gallup, and a recent Mason-Dixon poll found that 67% of Republicans believe that the federal government should get out of the way and let states enforce their own medical marijuana laws, rather than prosecute people complying with state law. And in another telling example of "weed-is-the-new-gay," young people, likely including Republicans as well as Democrats, overwhelmingly support complete marijuana legalization. As marijuana reform becomes a mainstream position, Republican candidates and elected officials will find it is less and less of a political third rail. Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Emmanuel are showing them the future.

Jill Harris is managing director of strategic initiatives for Drug Policy Action, the political arm of the Drug Policy Alliance.

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

View the original article here

All the President’s Privileges

That was quite some time ago. Last week the Obama White House invoked executive privilege to shield the Justice Department from a Congressional investigation into a botched gunrunning operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The previous week the White House invoked powers that President Obama himself had previously claimed to lack, unilaterally revising the nation’s immigration laws by promising to stop enforcing them against a particularly sympathetic population.

Both moves were entirely characteristic of this presidency. Obama campaigned as a consistent critic of the Bush administration’s understanding of executive power — and a critic with a background in constitutional law, no less. But apart from his disavowal of waterboarding (an interrogation practice the Bush White House had already abandoned), almost the entire Bush-era wartime architecture has endured: rendition is still with us, the Guantánamo detention center is still open, drone strikes have escalated dramatically, and the Obama White House has claimed the right — and, in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, followed through on it — to assassinate American citizens without trial.

These moves have met some principled opposition from the left. But the president’s liberal critics are usually academics, journalists and (occasionally) cable-TV hosts, with no real mass constituency behind them.

The majority of Democrats, polls suggest, have followed roughly the same path as the former Yale Law School dean Harold Koh, a staunch critic of Bush’s wartime policies who now serves as a legal adviser to the State Department, supplying constitutional justifications for Obama’s drone campaigns. What was outrageous under a Republican has become executive branch business-as-usual under a Democrat.

On domestic matters, the liberal silence is even more deafening. It was conservatives who pointed out the dubious constitutionality of Obama’s immigration gambit. Among liberals, it was taken for granted that the worthy ends were more important than the means.

Two forces are at work here. One is the intersection of power and partisanship, which produces predictable hypocrisies when one side passes from critiquing authority to embodying it.

These turnabouts can be quite startling. A progressive Web site noted the irony of liberal opinion’s shift on Gitmo: “Under the leadership of a President who campaigned with the promise to close the facility but reneged, support for the detention center may be at its highest level ever.”

But these turns are not always a bad thing. Sometimes it was the original partisan critique that was overdrawn, and sometimes power educates rather than corrupts. If the view from the State Department looks different from the view from Yale Law School, it isn’t necessarily the State Department that’s wrong.

What’s more perilous is the extent to which these sudden shifts reflect something unique to constitutional debates — namely that arguments for constitutional limits tend not to sway people who don’t already have a political incentive to support them.

Partisan about-faces are inevitable, but they’re arguably easier on constitutional matters. Change your mind on immigration, and your constituents may well revolt. Change your mind on whether a president has the power to do things on immigration policy that your constituents already support, though, and only your partisan critics and the occasional law professor will care.

This is why it’s so remarkable that our constitutional order has lasted so long, given the perpetual incentive — common to both parties, and all three branches of government — to abandon its safeguards in order to push a particular agenda.

Today those incentives are strongest for Democrats — visible in their support for Obama’s more dubiously constitutional forays, and also in the widespread liberal attempt to explain his struggles by casting him as a Gulliver tied down by an antiquated system of government.

Conservative pundits have noted that similar explanations were proferred to explain the failures of Jimmy Carter. That in and of itself isn’t proof that they’re wrong. But it suggests the possibility that some of the ways this president has been baffled, legislatively and perhaps soon in the courts, reflect the genius of our constitutional system rather than its failings. It’s a system that often lacks principled defenders, but that’s designed to defend itself.

View the original article here

With Three Spirited Primaries, Competitive Democracy Is Breaking Out in New York

She doesn’t call him, she doesn’t talk to him, Mr. Lopez says. It’s rude.

“I get a lot of agita as leader,” explains Mr. Lopez, a hulking fellow who is perhaps the city’s foremost practitioner of tomahawk-in-the-forehead politics.

“Why not say to me” — Mr. Lopez offers his closest possible approximation of a cheery tone — “ ‘Hi Vito’; ‘How are you, Vito?’; ‘Are you well, Mr. Democratic Leader?’ ”

He goes silent at the other end of the telephone line, to let the absurdity of her affronts sink in. (He persuaded City Councilman Erik Dilan to mount a tough challenge to Ms. Velázquez, a longtime reform Democrat.)

“If there is a tiger, you wouldn’t go around kicking it, would you?” he says. “That wouldn’t be very wise, would it?”

I allow that this sounds unwise.

We are deep into New York’s own curious Arab Spring, an almost disorienting outbreak of competitive democracy. Often a one-party town, New York will at least play host to three spirited and unusual congressional primaries on June 26.

In a race for an open congressional seat in Queens, the Democratic boss and Congressman Joseph Crowley, who rules that borough from his home in Virginia, passed over his cousin, Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, and endorsed Assemblywoman Grace Meng. In Manhattan, a remnant of a once-fabled Harlem machine, Representative Charles B. Rangel, faces an extinction-level challenge from State Senator Adriano Espaillat, whose victory would offer one more sign of Dominican political ascent.

Back in Brooklyn, Mr. Lopez carried out a little more home wrecking in the Eighth Congressional District, where he convinced the long-serving and near moribund Representative Edolphus Towns that retirement was preferable to leaving (metaphorically) feet first. “I made clear it was time to go,” Mr. Lopez notes. “That’s all the context you need.”

Mr. Lopez gave his nod in that district to Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who is bright and personable, a leader in the fight against police stop-and-frisk tactics and a touch too close to hedge fund donors and charter school champions for the comfort of some. He faces off with Charles Barron, a natural born politician whose enthusiasms range from rhetorically slapping Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to assailing stop-and-frisk tactics to celebrating the lives and legacies of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and Robert Mugabe.

Asked about the historical penchant of those two leaders for thuggery and torture , Mr. Barron replied that stop-and-frisk was no less a human rights issue. While it’s true that a federal judge recently held that the Police Department routinely violated constitutional protections, that is a radical stomp of an analogy. Our police officers do not hang suspected malefactors upside down, nor do they practice execution.

The scent of change may hang thick, but so do odors less edifying. In Brooklyn, Mr. Dilan is a dynastic product. His father, Martin, ran in 2001 for the State Senate and bequeathed his Council seat to his son. The Dilans, who run a small duchy in the shadow of Vito Lopez’s far grander operation, much admire the milk-cow of patronage known as Wyckoff Heights Medical Center. Not long ago, the hospital hired Jannitza Luna-Dilan, wife of the younger Mr. Dilan, as its $75,000-a-year director of public relations.

Mr. Lopez’s own Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council has proved a bountiful spring of jobs and campaign workers for decades. In Manhattan, Mr. Espaillat recently dissolved a nonprofit group that had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in state money and accomplished not so much.

(Before we rend cloth for Mr. Rangel, it’s worth remembering that the congressman sluiced tens of millions of dollars into Harlem, some of which produced admirable low-income housing and social services, and some of which produced jobs for his own formidable political machine).

In Queens, as the maverick consultant and journalist Gary Tilzer points out, the Democratic machine now wheezes but has not yet been eased into the crypt. Its phalanxes of campaign workers long ago disappeared — it’s instructive to recall David I. Weprin, a loyal if dead-eyed party soldier who ran for Congress last year. His consultant yammered about his field operation, which amounted to unenthused union workers who retired early for beers.

Mr. Weprin fell to a Republican businessman, Bob Turner.

The Queens Democratic machine’s legal soldiers offer more elite services. Although a striking number live in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, they are expert at knocking candidates off the ballot, or putting them on. Earlier this year, they stood accused of trying to tuck an extra Jewish candidate onto the ballot, to siphon support from Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman, who is Jewish.

In Brooklyn, democracy has agreed with Ms. Velázquez. After a couple of unspirited terms in Congress, she sounds like a woman revived. She paused recently to talk about Mr. Lopez.

“I advocate for cleaner politics, and he appoints cronies as judges.” She shrugs. “So be it. I will face the music and so will he.”

As for Mr. Barron, I caught up with him late last week. We talked foreign policy, sort of. I asked about Syria, he told me to ask about Africa. I asked about Sudan’s attacks on South Sudan, he replied by talking about the West’s recolonizing of Africa.

What about Syria?

“I’m not sure I will tell you,” he said, “but I’m sounding pretty good. You’ve convinced me to vote for myself.” As for Mr. Jeffries?

“He’s not part of our movement,” Mr. Barron replied.

That might be just as well.

E-mail: powellm@nytimes.com

Twitter: @powellnyt

View the original article here

Democratic Race in Queens Proffers Candidates but No Obvious Front-Runner

Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman acknowledges that he can strike some as arrogant, even irritating. But he notes that none of his financial-reform legislation could have passed in Albany without bipartisan support.

And City Councilwoman Elizabeth S. Crowley knows that politicos whisper that she lacks the intellectual horsepower to keep pace in Congress. But she brushes off such talk as elitist, and proudly promotes her working-class support from police officers, firefighters and construction workers.

In some ways, the major candidates vying in the Democratic primary next Tuesday in the Sixth Congressional District, which covers a diverse swath of central and eastern Queens, are all trying to prove that they are not what their reputations suggest.

After all, the candidates concede there are not major differences in their views on core issues like the economy, transportation and immigration. And they also know they cannot match the three decades of incumbency or the high name recognition of the retiring legislator they hope to replace, Representative Gary L. Ackerman.

So in a newly configured district, and anticipating a low-turnout election, the candidates are desperate to define who they are — and who they are not.

Bruce N. Gyory, who teaches political science at the State University at Albany, said he was riveted by the contest, because he could not think of a Congressional primary for an open seat that was as wide open, or as perplexing, since Herman Badillo eked out a win over Peter F. Vallone Sr. in 1970.

“I don’t think polling will be particularly helpful here,” he said. “I don’t think speculation is helpful here. I don’t see any reasonable prognostication about who will win. This is one that will be fascinating until you see the machines opened up Tuesday night.”

Turnout, everyone agrees, will be crucial, with perhaps 32,000 out of 186,000 registered Democrats expected to vote.

Ms. Meng, a fluent Mandarin speaker who has garnered much attention from the Asian-American media, needs a strong showing from Chinese, Korean and South Asian voters. Mr. Lancman, whose campaign believes he has the strongest field operation, is counting on support from Jewish and union voters, while Ms. Crowley, whose mailers have been praised as top-notch even by rival campaigns, is expected to run particularly well among white voters.

The winner of the primary election will most likely face Daniel J. Halloran III, a Republican member of the City Council, in the November general election.

The primary battle began in March, when Mr. Ackerman unexpectedly announced that he would not seek re-election. The Queens Democratic Party, led by its powerful chairman, Representative Joseph Crowley, tapped Ms. Meng, 36, to run; the reconfigured district is about 40 percent Asian-American, and if elected, she would be the first Asian-American member of Congress from New York.

But after Mr. Lancman, 43, announced that he would also seek the nomination, he picked up early momentum, collecting crucial endorsements from the Working Families Party, many unions and former Mayor Edward I. Koch. He also performed strongly in candidate debates.

Then came Ms. Crowley, 34, a cousin of Mr. Crowley. Despite speculation that she was a stalking-horse, urged by her cousin to siphon votes from Mr. Lancman, she insisted that she had contemplated running for higher office even before Mr. Ackerman announced his retirement.

There is also a fourth Democrat on the ballot, Dr. Robert Mittman, a libertarian-leaning family doctor, who has not attracted prominent endorsements or financial support.

In an interview, the low-key Ms. Meng vowed that she would be an independent force in Washington who would focus primarily on transportation, infrastructure and economic issues.

“When I’m drafting or supporting legislation, no one is whispering in my ear except constituents,” she said. “I’ve never had political rabbis.”

Mr. Lancman has vowed to focus on foreign policy and Wall Street reform in Washington, and has highlighted his legislative accomplishments, like helping homeowners recover legal fees in foreclosure cases. The most aggressive of the candidates, he sent out a mailer this week criticizing Ms. Meng and Ms. Crowley as being weak on counterterrorism.

“We all know there are Type A personalities, and maybe I’m a Type AA personality,” he said. “I will always be a very aggressive and prepared counterbalance to any of the crazy right-wing stuff that Republicans want to put forward.”

Ms. Crowley said she wanted to be a voice on women’s health issues in Washington, and dreamed of extending the No. 7 train to La Guardia Airport. She scoffed at the notion that she was a “spoiler” candidate, saying that “I guarantee I’m known better in my own district” than her opponents are in theirs.

“If somebody tries to poke fun at me, I don’t get distracted,” she said. “I always try to stay on message.”

View the original article here

With Few Real Choices, Some Just Sit Out Vote

Sometimes, even people in politics aren’t interested in elections.

In 13 of the state’s 254 counties, not a single Democrat voted in the May presidential primaries. That includes five counties with party chairmen, meaning the volunteer contact point for all Democratic activity there — the drum major for the Democrats — didn’t vote in their party’s presidential primary.

This isn’t one-sided. The state Republican Party makes promotional hay of the fact that it has chairmen in each of the state’s counties. But there are five counties in Texas where nobody voted in that party’s primary, which means the local leaders skipped the May vote.

Three of those five chairs are listed by their party at phone numbers that are no longer in service. Even in a state as red as Texas, you can find places that are politically inhospitable to Republicans.

Michael Yeary, Republican Party chairman in Zavala County, said his county did not turn in any votes because of “low interest.” They were interested on the other side of the fence, where nearly 3,000 Democrats were busy casting ballots.

Asked if he had voted in the Republican primary, he said, simply, “No.” He didn’t want to talk about it, but he did say he didn’t vote in the Democratic primary, either.

Wally De Los Santos, the nonvoting Democratic Party chairman in Hockley County, west of Lubbock, was downright loquacious.

“This is my first year. We were out of money, and there was nobody running,” he said of the local elections. “Everybody running in those races was a Republican.”

There were, of course, several statewide races that included Democrats. They didn’t draw any interest in and around Levelland. The election returns produced no evidence of Democrats in Cochran County, just to the west.

“This is very Republican country where we’re at,” Mr. De Los Santos said. He said they nearly had a Democratic candidate for sheriff, but “his petitions were full of holes” and he didn’t get on the ballot.

Lots of Texans didn’t vote at all. Combined turnout for the primaries was 15.5 percent of registered voters, with almost five Republicans for every two Democrats.

Four of the five Republican county shutouts were in South Texas, a region known for strong Democratic showings and anemic Republican turnouts. One was near the Oklahoma border, in sparsely populated Foard County. While nobody was voting for Republicans in those places, 9,265 were voting for Democratic presidential candidates.

The Democratic shutouts were, with one exception, in West Texas and the Panhandle. It’s odd to have no votes, but no surprise to find more Republicans than Democrats in that area.

In total, the primary election tally in those counties was Republicans 11,652, Democrats 0.

No Democrats voted in Roberts County, northeast of Amarillo. The party there doesn’t even have a chairman.

Steve Hale of Miami, the Republican Party chairman, said the last elected Democrats in the county have long since switched parties or retired, and all of the local races are decided in his primary. He said the Democrats haven’t had a chairman for years.

“As of right now, I think they’d be very hard-pressed for business,” he said.

Local races — particularly in the less populated areas of the state — are often the main attraction for voters. A voter might actually know the candidate for district attorney. Presidential candidates, who seldom stray far from major airports, seem like TV characters in comparison.

One Democratic candidate for the Texas House, Lanhon Odom of Bowie, voted in Throckmorton County’s Republican primary because, he said, that’s where the action was. Perhaps so, but that move disqualified him and left his party without a standard-bearer in that race. You can’t wear a blue jersey if you’re playing on the red team.

Mr. De Los Santos wasn’t a candidate, but faced a similar choice when it was time to vote. After all, there were four Republicans running for Hockley County sheriff, and one of them will get the job in January.

Did he vote in the Republican primary?

“Hell, no,” he said.

He didn’t vote at all.

View the original article here

The Great Divide Between the Political Parties

David Brooks argues, in answer to Democrats who frequently ask him why Republicans have become so extreme, that Republicans are not extreme but rather “have a viewpoint” (“What Republicans Think,” column, June 15). He then cogently describes the differences between Democrats and Republicans in how they see the problems we face.

What he says, however, has nothing whatsoever to do with what makes Democrats ask him why Republicans have become so extreme. That is caused by Republicans in the House voting to gut the Clean Air Act and the Clean Drinking Water Act, by Republicans attacking women’s right to birth control, by Republicans refusing to pass the normally overwhelmingly bipartisan transportation bill and by the Republicans’ single-minded focus on pushing more and more money to the most wealthy (this is just a partial list).

It has been noted by many Republicans that Ronald Reagan would be too liberal for the Republican Party today.

There are legitimate differences between Republicans and Democrats about the role of government and how best to move America forward, but those differences have always existed and Democrats have not viewed Republicans as a group as extreme.

What we’re dealing with now is altogether different; pretending it’s just a different viewpoint is disingenuous at best and simply wrong.

RUSSELL SCHWARTZ
Los Angeles, June 15, 2012

To the Editor:

David Brooks keeps coming up with elaborate ways to disguise the takeover of the Republican Party by the megawealthy. If the economic order of the second half of the 20th century is not coming back, it is because of Republican tax cuts to shift more wealth to the wealthy and squeeze the middle class.

As for comparisons with Europe’s “cosseted economies,” why cherry-pick basket cases? Some European countries with welfare states relatively much bigger than ours have been doing quite well compared with the rest of the developed world. Look at Scandinavia and Austria.

So, no, keeping and “rebalancing” a social and economic model based on public investment and progressive tax rates won’t turn us into Greece or Spain. Though perhaps, looking north in Europe, the lesson is that we should be investing more in our public sector and social supports, not less.

PAUL EPSTEIN
New York, June 15, 2012

To the Editor:

David Brooks argues that the source of G.O.P. extremism is a conviction that “the government model is obsolete.” The Republicans I know didn’t seem particularly bothered by the model during the 1990s, when a Democratic president occupied the White House, the economy was booming and productivity soared.

The context for the current wave of extremism, of course, is the severe recession brought on by the financial crisis of 2008-2009. But the “welfare-state model” wasn’t responsible for the steep downturn. Instead, it was a brand of capitalism that seemed to have run amok — one that allowed investment banks to make risky bets they ultimately lost and that caused nearly everyone to suffer the consequences.

In the eyes of many Democrats, Mitt Romney hardly represents “comprehensive systemic change.” He embodies a return to a style of governance that preaches greater efficiency, responsibility and fairness but practices the opposite. That’s what the 2012 election is all about.

NIELS AABOE
New York, June 15, 2012

View the original article here

Cuomo Endorses Rangel in Democratic Primary Race

Mr. Cuomo cited Mr. Rangel’s decades of service in Washington in arguing for his election to a 22nd term.

“He has seniority, he knows the system,” the governor, a fellow Democrat, said in an interview on “Capital Tonight,” a political program on the upstate cable network YNN.

Mr. Cuomo also said: “He’s been very good at bringing things back to the state of New York, which is a big part of what the Congress does.”

“And,” he added, “I think he is best suited not just for the district, but for his state. His seniority is a major asset for this state.”

For months, Mr. Cuomo told reporters that he would not talk about political subjects until after the conclusion of the legislative session. It ended on Thursday; the governor offered his endorsement of Mr. Rangel on Friday.

Mr. Cuomo also endorsed Assemblyman Hakeem S. Jeffries, who is running for the seat currently held by Representative Edolphus Towns of Brooklyn. Mr. Towns is retiring.

The governor has worked with Mr. Jeffries, most recently on a proposal to cut down on low-level marijuana arrests in New York City. The proposal died in the recently concluded legislative session, but Mr. Cuomo has said he will continue to pursue it.

Mr. Jeffries’s opponent, Councilman Charles Barron, ran for governor in 2010 to protest what he called a lack of diversity in state politics, and he heckled Mr. Cuomo at a dinner for minority lawmakers last year.

Mr. Cuomo also urged the re-election of Representative Nydia M. Velázquez of Brooklyn, who was a co-chairwoman of both his campaign for governor in 2010 and his transition team.

Ms. Velázquez is being challenged by Councilman Erik M. Dilan, who is backed by the Brooklyn Democratic chairman, Vito J. Lopez, and two others.

View the original article here

Senate Move to Reverse Mercury Rule Fails

A Senate resolution seeking to reverse federal regulations limiting emissions of mercury and other toxic substances from coal-burning power plants failed to win passage on Wednesday. The resolution, introduced by Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, won support from 46 senators; 53 voted against it.

Associated PressSenator James M. Inhofe

The Environmental Protection Agency rules, issued late last year, have been criticized by some utilities, coal producers, Congressional Republicans and other foes as overly broad and potentially harmful to the economy. The Obama administration has defended the new regulations as critical to protecting public health.

Mr. Inhofe argued that the regulations amounted to a “war on coal” that would result in job losses and higher energy prices. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has also opposed the rule on economic grounds.

But President Obama cited the rule limiting emissions from power plants as a signal achievement in his State of the Union address in January, and the White House warned this week that he would veto the resolution if it landed on his desk.

Opposition from the Senate’s Democratic majority ensured that it wouldn’t come to that: only five Democratic senators supported the resolution, including Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia.

West Virginia’s other senator, Jay Rockefeller, also a Democrat, voted against the measure, saying it “moves us backward, not forward.”

View the original article here

Planned Parenthood’s Self-Destructive Behavior

PLANNED PARENTHOOD has a large target on its back. At no time in the organization’s history has it faced such a concerted Congressional challenge to its agenda. But most worrisome is the organization’s shrinking number of defenders, and Planned Parenthood has only itself to blame. It has adopted a strategy driven by blind partisanship, electing to burn bridges instead of building them. That strategy is damaging, and possibly imperiling, its mission.

Most of Planned Parenthood’s work focuses on health care for low-income women, things like screenings for breast cancer and diabetes, and family planning. Despite the claims of its opponents that it’s solely an abortion provider, abortions represent only 3 percent of its work. Almost half of the organization’s funding (46 percent) comes from the federal and state governments, making it imperative that it have friends in both parties. But that’s tough to do when Planned Parenthood sees ideological purity as so paramount that it permeates every aspect of its strategic planning. There is almost no room for even slight deviations. Those who are not in lock step with the organization are viewed as enemies to the cause.

This mind-set will doom Planned Parenthood to failure. When an organization is willing to support only lawmakers who are with it 100 percent of the time, it virtually guarantees that the debate will be bitterly partisan.

Gay rights supporters in New York offered an instructive lesson during last year’s battle for marriage equality. Gay marriage passed in New York because four Republican legislators crossed party lines. They did it in part because they had true bipartisan financial support. Chad Griffin, who heads the Human Rights Campaign and helped spearhead the effort, told me, “the experience in New York not only showed that we could reach across the aisle, but also that we could successfully make this a bipartisan issue.”

Planned Parenthood has taken the opposite approach. Take Senator Susan Collins of Maine as an example. She was one of five Republicans who fought off attempts last year to eliminate federal financing for the group. She is also one of the few Republicans who consistently break with the party and side with Planned Parenthood on abortion rights legislation. But it would be a mistake to believe her actions suggest a warm working relationship with the organization. She calls the group “infuriating” and now nothing more than “an arm of the Democratic National Committee.”

SENATOR COLLINS once had close ties to the group. Planned Parenthood endorsed her in 2002 because of her strong record of votes supporting abortion rights. Yet in her 2008 campaign, Planned Parenthood turned on her. The issue was her vote to confirm Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. While the vote was a challenging one for Senator Collins, she says she came to it after speaking with Mr. Alito about his respect for precedent and whether he considered Roe v. Wade settled law. (Senator Collins has since also voted to confirm Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.) Ms. Collins was acting in the traditional (and admirable) spirit of the Senate, which tends to confirm judicial nominees unless the person is clearly unqualified.

Yet because of her Alito vote, Planned Parenthood tried to defeat her. In 2008 it withdrew its support and endorsed and provided money for her opponent. This was shortsighted from a policy standpoint, since Ms. Collins agreed with the organization on almost all legislation. But it was also unwise from a political standpoint, since she was favored to win re-election, and did.

Today Ms. Collins says she is still disappointed in the organization and how it cut ties to her. “Why should I try to make their case in the Republican caucus? I can’t answer my colleagues when they say to me that Planned Parenthood is just a political party, because it is true,” she told me.

Planned Parenthood would barely acknowledge the break, answering my questions with a written statement from its policy director, Dawn Laguens, who said, “Though in recent years, we have disagreed on a few key pieces of legislation, we look forward to continuing to work with Senator Collins on issues that are mutually important to her and to Planned Parenthood.”

After losing such an important ally, you might think Planned Parenthood would have learned something. Instead it seems determined to repeat the mistake.

Representative Robert Dold of Illinois is a Republican abortion-rights advocate who is in a tough fight against a Democratic challenger. When funding for Planned Parenthood was under attack, Mr. Dold spoke out on the House floor, urging his colleagues to support the organization. He has even introduced legislation to try to stop the federal government from discriminating against groups like Planned Parenthood by ensuring their continuing access to Title X funds. He would love to have Planned Parenthood’s help with his re-election campaign, but so far the organization has opted to stayed out of the race. When I asked why, given his outspoken leadership on its behalf, a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman told me that Mr. Dold does not have a 100 percent voting record on all legislation that Planned Parenthood deems important to women.

Once again, Planned Parenthood is potentially making an enemy of someone who has failed to pass its purity test. It’s gotten to the point where, in this election cycle, the group’s political arm (while proudly claiming to be nonpartisan) has not endorsed or directly given money to a single Republican. As a person who believes abortions should be safe, legal and rare, I support many of Planned Parenthood’s goals. But the militancy must go. Demanding a perfect record from candidates it supports has already left Planned Parenthood marginalized. So does an attitude that doesn’t ever seem to take into account that abortion is a morally complicated matter or that those on the anti-abortion side are often decent and well-intentioned people.

President Ronald Reagan, while hardly a favorite of the abortion rights movement, did offer a brilliant lesson when he said, “the person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor.” Planned Parenthood needs allies, or it will continue to become rigid, calcified and increasingly ineffective.

Campbell Brown is a writer who was previously a television news reporter and anchor at CNN and NBC.

View the original article here

Vel�zquez and Dilan Clash in Debate Among Four Seeking House Seat

Ms. Velázquez and Mr. Dilan took part in a forum on NY1’s “Inside City Hall,” along with the two other candidates in the June 26 Democratic primary for New York’s redrawn Seventh Congressional District, which includes parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.

Dan O’Connor, an economist who is making his first bid for public office, criticized Ms. Velázquez for voting for the bank bailout and against auditing the Federal Reserve, noting that much of her campaign war chest came from the banking industry.

“At the end of the day, whoever writes the checks in Washington writes the policies,” said Mr. O’Connor, who called the role of money in politics a more pressing issue than the economy.

Ms. Velázquez responded that a watchdog group had said she was among the members of Congress least influenced by money.

The fourth candidate, George Martinez, a hip-hop artist and Occupy Wall Street activist, called his rivals “model politicians of a broken system.” He said Ms. Velázquez had been timid about pushing for progressive policies and asked Mr. Dilan about donations he has received from real estate developers.

“I’ve always voted the conscience of my district,” Mr. Dilan responded. Ms. Velázquez said she had secured federal money for public housing and small-business loans.

Ms. Velázquez was asked by the moderator to describe an instance in which she “broke with a political establishment.”

Ms. Velázquez, who was endorsed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Friday, replied: “I’ve been independent, I’ve been progressive, and basically, I have no relationship with the party boss from Brooklyn.”

Mr. Dilan has denied Ms. Velázquez’s accusations that he is challenging her at the behest of Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, the head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party.

Mr. Dilan accused Ms. Velázquez of being virtually “appointed” by party bosses when she was first elected 20 years ago.

View the original article here

State Senator Adriano Espaillat Runs for the House on Pride and Energy

Tired?

“Nah, I’m feeling good,” he said. “I just had a Power Bar.”

Mr. Espaillat, a Democratic state senator from Washington Heights, was on the last leg of a day that began inside an uptown subway station, asking commuters escaping the rain for their votes. He snatched a quick breakfast (a bagel with cream cheese and lox), shot downtown for a meeting, rode up to Albany while making campaign calls, and met lobbyists and legislators at the Capitol before returning to New York City to speak to constituents and check in at his office.

It is this combustible pace that Mr. Espaillat, 57, has been trying to sell as his greatest advantage over the four-decade incumbent, Representative Charles B. Rangel, in next week’s Democratic primary for Congress.

While Mr. Rangel, 82, has been arriving at campaign stops with the help of a walker and maintaining a relatively relaxed schedule, Mr. Espaillat has been feverishly bouncing around the Upper Manhattan and Bronx district, articulating a vision that focuses heavily on immigration reform, job creation, affordable housing and access to higher education.

“I’m going to bring a fresh new view and voice to the 13th Congressional District that I think is entirely needed,” Mr. Espaillat said. “New ideas, new energy.”

Mr. Espaillat, who is seeking to become the first Dominican-born congressman and expresses unabashed ethnic pride, is widely seen as Mr. Rangel’s most serious challenger since he won office in 1970 because the district is, for the first time, a majority Hispanic.

Until recently, Mr. Espaillat had avoided sharply criticizing Mr. Rangel in public. But during a televised debate with Mr. Rangel and the three other candidates last week, Mr. Espaillat took aim at the ethics charges that led to Mr. Rangel’s censure two years ago.

“As a result of that, we lost 60 Democratic seats in the Congress, and the Tea Party radicals invaded Congress and are pushing back on Obama,” Mr. Espaillat said. “So he became the poster child for dysfunction in Washington.”

Mr. Espaillat’s critics have accused him of overzealous campaign tactics. Moises Perez, Mr. Rangel’s campaign manager, said supporters of Mr. Espaillat had branded Mr. Perez and other Dominicans supporting Mr. Rangel as traitors. “That’s a very heavy-handed style of campaigning that turns people off,” Mr. Perez said.

And last month, Mr. Espaillat said he would not refuse the support of an anti-incumbent “super PAC” that is mostly funded by businessmen who back conservative causes. Asked to explain his position last week, Mr. Espaillat offered a different stance: he said he was “rejecting any super PACs from getting involved in this campaign.”

With a public-service career that started as a community organizer and crime victims’ rights advocate in Washington Heights, Mr. Espaillat has long held high political ambitions. He often invokes personal experiences when advocating for a cause or bill, supporters say.

“When he locks into an issue, he locks into an issue and he doesn’t let go until he gets resolution,” said Senator José Peralta, a Democrat of Queens.

Assemblyman Phil Ramos, a Democrat from Long Island, said that Mr. Espaillat taught him the art of compromise.

“He said that, as an elected official, if we can win 80 percent of what we want, then next year we live to fight for only 20 percent,” Mr. Ramos recalled. But if you “go for 100 percent, the end result could be that our community ends up with nothing.”

Mr. Espaillat says he is a descendant of one of the Dominican Republic’s most notable political figures — Ulises Francisco Espaillat, who held the presidency for about five months in 1876.

The family moved to Washington Heights in 1964, when Mr. Espaillat was 9, and one of the first things he did on American soil was to touch the snow on the airport tarmac. His father purchased a gas station in East New York, Brooklyn, where Mr. Espaillat helped out.

Mr. Espaillat was introduced to politics through a summer youth program run by a Baptist preacher. After graduating from Queens College, he worked in criminal justice, first for the city and then as a liaison between his community and the police.

“I remember Adriano walking up on the corner and talking to gang members and telling them to stop doing what they were doing,” said Roberto Lizardo, who worked closely in community activism with Mr. Espaillat.

Mr. Espaillat lost two races for City Council; the second, in 1991, was won by Guillermo Linares, who became New York’s first Dominican-born elected official. In 1996, he won election to the Assembly, and became the first Dominican to hold office in Albany; he was elected to the State Senate in 2010.

Mr. Espaillat, who dances bachata and merengue, decorated his Albany office with paintings from the Dominican Republic, including one of a twin-steeple church in Santiago and another of a broad-shouldered marchanta balancing a basket of flowers on her head. Two glittery, horned Carnival masks that Mr. Espaillat made hang from a wood-paneled wall.

He has been “very aggressive about Dominican pride, very aggressive about furthering the Dominican people, very aggressive about putting a focus on making sure that Dominicans get their fair share,” said Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, who has endorsed Mr. Rangel.

He also became a die-hard Yankees fan; so much so that years later, as a lawmaker, he put on a Yankees hat and professed his love for the team while he and other legislators were presenting a Mets player with an award.

Gregarious and blunt, Mr. Espaillat balances his days of nonstop politicking with levity.“How come you’re looking sad today?” Mr. Espaillat sang at a tollbooth agent (he refuses to get an EZ Pass).

There were also quiet moments, like when Mr. Espaillat made the sign of the cross when he got behind the wheel, or when he mumbled a song coming from the radio: “In the midnight hour, she cries more, more, more.”

View the original article here

New Jersey Democrats Call for Greater Oversight of Halfway-House System

Democrats in New Jersey’s Legislature called for stricter oversight of the state’s troubled system of halfway houses on Thursday, saying new disclosure requirements would lead to “better safety for our communities and the halfway house residents.”

The plan came in response to articles published this week in The New York Times that examined the privately run system, which has beds for roughly 3,500 state inmates and parolees. The articles detailed unchecked violence, gang activity, drug use and hundreds of escapes from the facilities every year.

Democratic lawmakers called for the Corrections Department to issue quarterly reports describing conditions inside the halfway houses, including the number of inmates, the number of escapes, incidences of violence and disciplinary measures taken.

In addition, every halfway-house operator that contracts with the Corrections Department would have to undergo a financial audit, said Senator Paul A. Sarlo, chairman of the Budget and Appropriations Committee.

The language was included in the latest version of the Democratic budget proposal. A final vote on the budget is expected Monday.

Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, has close ties to the company that dominates the network of halfway houses, Community Education Centers, as do some prominent Democrats. Mr. Christie’s close friend and political adviser William J. Palatucci is a senior executive of the company, and Mr. Christie has often visited and praised its facilities.

On Monday, Mr. Christie ordered new inspections of halfway houses. Democrats said more accountability was needed.

“Clearly, there’s reason to be concerned about the lack of transparency from the administration,” said Assemblyman Charles Mainor, a Democrat who is chairman of the Law and Public Safety Committee. “We’re taking a vital step toward improved disclosure and, hopefully, better safety for our communities and the halfway-house residents and employees.”

Since the 1990s, New Jersey has sent some state prison inmates finishing sentences to privately run halfway houses, many of which have hundreds of beds. State and county agencies now spend roughly $105 million a year on such placements. Community Education received about $71 million of that in the last fiscal year, according to company records.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 23, 2012

Because of an editing error, an article in some editions on Friday about Democrats in New Jersey’s Legislature who have called for stricter oversight of the state’s troubled system of halfway houses misstated, in some editions, the day they announced their plan. It was Thursday, not Monday.

View the original article here

Canaries in the Coal Mine

Over the past few decades, working class whites – loosely defined as those without college degrees – have been a strikingly reliable indicator of the strength of the two main political parties. These voters are highly volatile and their shifting loyalties are a powerful factor in determining control of Congress and of the White House, according to recently re-analyzed exit poll data provided to the Times by Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, and Sam Best, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut.

Take a look at the fluctuating level of support white non-college voters gave to Democratic congressional candidates between 1984, when exit polls first asked respondents about their level of education, and 2010:

Thomas B. Edsall

In effect, the white working class vote is a barometer.

When this once reliably Democratic constituency moves away from the party by large margins, Democrats lose. In 1984, when Ronald Reagan crushed Walter Mondale, working-class whites backed Republican House candidates over Democrats by 57.1 to 41.9, a 15.2 point difference. In 1994, when Republicans swept to power in both the House and Senate, the Republican margin of support among working class white voters was 21.2 points, 60.6 to 39.4. In 2010, another Republican landslide year in House elections, the margin among whites without college degrees was 20.6 points, 55.3 to 34.7.

Conversely, when working class whites view Republican House candidates less favorably, Democrats do well. In 1986, Democrats regained control of the Senate when they split the votes of whites without college degrees, 49.4-50.6, a difference of just 1.2 percentage points. In 1990, when Democrats picked up seven House seats and one Senate seat, the white working class cast a relatively strong 7.8 point majority for Democratic House candidates, 53.9-46.1. In 1992, with Bill Clinton at the top of the ticket, a majority of these voters again supported House Democratic candidates, 52.7-47.3.

The correlation between support from working class whites and Democratic victory suggests that the party takes a great risk when it downplays the importance of this segment of the electorate, as some strategists are wont to do.

Interestingly, the same barometer effect is not apparent in the voting pattern of whites with college degrees. For 13 elections over 26 years, according to the data provided by Abramowitz and Cash, these college-educated voters have stayed within the 40 to 50 percent range: the Democratic – Republican split in House voting among whites with college degrees scarcely changes over time, and is far less determinative than the gyrations among the white working class.

Thomas B. Edsall

Although firmly Democratic, African American voters can also shift sharply. The Democratic Party depends heavily on black support, of course, but its electoral success or failure does not correlate with black margins in the same way that it does with those of the white working class. Black Democratic margins were high in two disastrous years, 1984 and 1994 — perhaps in response to the threat of Republican ascendance — and in the victorious election of Obama in 2008. Black margins of support for Democratic House candidates were at their lowest in two relatively good years for the party, 1990 and 1996 – perhaps because Democratic victory seemed secure.

Thomas B. Edsall

Exit poll and related data also reveals that the Democratic Party has shown a tendency to pick presidential nominees who run relatively poorly among white working class voters. These candidates include Adlai Stevenson, Walter F. Mondale, Michael S. Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, and, famously, Barack Obama.

Regarding Stevenson, who lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower twice in 1952 and 1956 (in the last pair of consecutive elections to feature the same candidates for both parties), Larry Bartels, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University, collected data that tracks presidential voting by whites without college degrees in elections from 1952 to 1980. Stevenson lost decisively among these voters, in contrast to John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter (in 1976), who all did well. Another Democrat who helped boost House Democratic voting among working class whites was Bill Clinton, both times around.

Obviously, the rejection of many Democratic presidential nominees by whites without college degrees is relevant to Obama’s prospects on Nov. 6. In 2008, Obama lost white working class voters by a landslide, 18 points, although he did 5 points better than Kerry. For Obama, the trick will be to avoid falling into the Stevenson-Mondale-Dukakis trap, and to place himself more in the tradition of Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton. It will not be easy.

The white working class has become the lynchpin constituency of conservative Republicanism. As a group, they can be often be relied upon to vote for the candidate on the right by far higher margins than college-educated whites.

Abramowitz included the following chart in his recent book, “The Polarized Public? Why Our Government Is So Dysfunctional.” It shows the decline, over time, of Democratic loyalties and the parallel rise in Republican allegiance among three core New Deal constituencies: southern whites, northern white working class voters and northern white Catholics.

Courtesy of Alan I. Abramowitz

Could it be any clearer? These trends would clearly be disastrous for the Democratic Party — except for two well-documented counter-developments: first, the white working class is declining steadily as a share of the electorate; and second, Democrats have made huge gains in a previously Republican constituency, well-educated white professionals, many with advanced degrees.

“America in 1940 was an overwhelmingly white working class country,” Abramowitz and Ruy Teixeira wrote in a 2008 Brookings Institution report, “The Decline of the White Working Class and the Rise of a Mass Upper Middle Class:”

In that year, 86 percent of adults 25 and over were whites without a four year college degree. By 2007, with the dramatic rise in educational attainment and the decline in the white population, that percentage was down to 48 percent.

But just as the white working class is now a smaller share of the electorate, Republican margins in this cohort have been getting larger, compensating for the decline in group size. In the five congressional elections of the 1990s, the Republican Party won an average of 52.3 percent of the House vote; in the six elections from 2000 to 2010, Republicans won 58.7 percent.

The defection of these voters was crucial to the ability of the Republican Party to enact legislation – especially tax laws – that favor the affluent; working class support gave the Republican Party protection from charges that it advocated only for the rich and for the material interests of corporate America.

At the same time, the loss of white non-college voters has diminished pressure within the Democratic Party to address the dislocations resulting from globalization and automation, especially the loss of low-to-medium-skill jobs that paid high wages to workers without college degrees.

The result is that the Democratic Party has failed to develop a coherent or consistent set of policies to address what is now the dominant issue of the day, the violent restructuring of the American economy, which can be seen from many angles: in the continuing after effects of the financial collapse of 2008; in the rise of inequality; in the decline of social and economic mobility; and in the devastating $49,100 drop in average family wealth, from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010, a 39 percent drop of net assets in just three years.

Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the book “The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics,” which was published in January.

View the original article here

Democrats Mock Scott Brown's Claim of Secret Meetings with Royalty

That Senate campaign in Massachusetts that is supposed to be the premier Senate race in the country? Its highlight this week was a gaffe by Senator Scott P. Brown in which he said he had been busy holding secret meetings with kings and queens.

In a radio interview in which Mr. Brown responded to criticism that he was not focused on substantive issues, he said: “Each and every day that I’ve been a United States senator, I’ve been either discussing issues, meeting on issues, and secret meetings with kings and queens and prime ministers and business leaders and military leaders. Talking, voting, working on issues every single day. So I don’t quite know what to say.”

Democrats demanded a list of the royal confabs; a Brown spokesman said later that Mr. Brown had misspoken when he said kings and queens.

Mr. Brown, a Republican, is locked in an intense campaign against Elizabeth Warren, his Democratic challenger, whom his campaign and its allies have pummeled for several weeks over her claims to having Native American ancestry.

On Friday, the Massachusetts Democratic Party put out a new video in which Mr. Brown is seen on several occasions referring to meetings with kings and queens. The video is set to Abba’s “Dancing Queen” and mock him as a lightweight living in a fairy tale.

Follow Katharine Q. Seelye on Twitter at @kseelye.

View the original article here

Democratic Super PAC Gifts Rise

Priorities USA Action, which is run by two former White House aides, reported raising $4 million in May, more than a twofold increase over its collections a month earlier. Officials at the group said fund-raising in June had already exceeded May’s haul.

The seven-figure contributions came from Barbara Stiefel, a longtime Democratic fund-raiser from Florida; Franklin L. Haney, a real estate developer from Tennessee, and Steve Mostyn, a trial lawyer in Texas.

The three helped Priorities draw almost even — at least for the month — with Restore Our Future, the primary super PAC backing Mitt Romney, which reported raising about $5 million in May.

The spike in donations comes as top campaign officials for Mr. Obama traveled to Washington to give reporters an update on the race. The advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity so that they could frankly discuss their strategy, predicted that Mr. Romney and groups backing him would spend $1.25 billion on television advertising.

“Republicans are betting they can win this thing on the air,” one senior adviser said. “Make no mistake, we will be outspent.”

That worry was underscored by the groups backing Mr. Romney’s presidential bid, who on Wednesday reported large hauls in May. Restore Our Future reportedly received a $10 million pledge in June from Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate who donated millions to Newt Gingrich’s presidential bid during the primaries.

Mr. Obama also is facing millions of dollars in advertisements against him from American Crossroads, a super PAC, and its sister organization, Crossroads GPS, an advocacy group that does not disclose its donors.

Mr. Obama’s campaign filed a complaint on Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission demanding that Crossroads GPS disclose its donors, citing a recent court case. In response, a spokesman for Crossroads noted that Priorities USA also has a sister organization that does not disclose its donors.

The issue of disclosure has hampered fund-raising on the Democratic side in the past. For much of 2011, Priorities USA Action operated without the blessing of Mr. Obama, who had repeatedly lambasted the flow of undisclosed money into campaigns after the Citizens United Supreme Court Case in 2010.

The campaign altered course in February, embracing the Democratic super PAC and sending some of its top advisers to help with fund-raising. Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr. Obama’s campaign, said Wednesday that the campaign helps raise money only for Priorities USA Action, the part of the group that discloses its donors, though he acknowledged that the group has a sister organization that does not.

“We were 100 percent clear that we weren’t supporting any” group that does not disclose, Mr. LaBolt said.

The two campaigns revealed their May fund-raising totals this month. Mr. Romney and the Republican National Committee raised about $78 million in contrast to $60 million from Mr. Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

On Wednesday, the campaigns provided details about their fund-raising in filings with the Federal Election Commission. The D.N.C. totals included a virtual who’s who from Hollywood, including: Kirk Douglas, Billy Crystal, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Salma Hayek and Burt Bacharach.

The Obama campaign increased spending, particularly in advertising but also in polling and focus groups. Mr. Obama’s campaign detailed its spending on television commercials, including a $25 million ad campaign it had announced earlier. The reports show Mr. Obama spent $28.9 million on television ads in May and an additional $5.4 million on online ads.

Mr. Romney more than doubled his fund-raising total from April by collecting $23.4 million in May, and he ended the month with $17 million in cash on hand. A joint committee with the Republican National Committee brought in $7.1 million of Romney’s total.

View the original article here

Some Democrats Make Student Loans a Campaign Issue

With federal college loan rates set to double in less than two weeks unless Congress takes action, some Democrats are using the time until then to draw political capital from the hot-button issue.

The government-funded Stafford loans that are in limbo currently have an interest rate of 3.4 percent; the rate is set to go to 6.8 percent on July 1. Although many Democrats and Republicans agree that the rate should remain where it is, the parties haven’t been able to reach consensus about how to offset the cost.

Republicans have proposed taking money from the health care law and passed a bill in the House to that effect, in spite of warnings by President Obama that he would veto it. Democrats have proposed eliminating a loophole in Social Security and Medicare taxes for some high earners. Each side has accused the other of obstruction.

With progress stalled on Capitol Hill, some Democratic candidates have, in the same vein as Mr. Obama, taken the fight to the campaign trail to raise money and curry favor with voters.

Representative Tammy Baldwin, of Wisconsin, spoke about the issue at a stop in Madison, which is home to the University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus. Representative John F. Tierney of Massachusetts, who sponsored a version of the college-loan legislation in the House, e-mailed a video to constituents. And Paul Hirschbiel, a Democrat who is challenging Representative Scott Rigell in Virginia, appealed to supporters to “tell Congress to stop playing games with our children’s future” by donating to his campaign.

Republicans, meanwhile, have chided Democrats, saying that they defend the health care law at any cost.

Andrea Bozek, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the student-loan debate was an example of how policies backed by Democrats, like the health care overhaul, ultimately “have left college students with fewer job opportunities and more student loan debt.”

The underlying issue is not trivial: According to the most recent numbers released by the Department of Education, 46 percent of undergraduate students in the 2007-8 school year had at some point turned to the government for a college loan. More students are taking out loans, too: In 1989-90, just 27 percent of undergraduates borrowed money for school from the government.

View the original article here

Demographic shifts upend president race

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll highlighted just how much the coalitions of the two political parties have changed over time and continue to shift during Barack Obama's presidency. What advisers to the president and Mitt Romney are trying to calculate is how that may affect the Electoral College.

The poll's results were not truly surprising, but they captured something that reflects current social realities. The survey found that the most economically stressed White voters in this country view Mitt Romney far more favorably than the president when it comes to handling the economy.

A labor official sent an e-mail to the Washington Post the day its story appeared, saying, "A Democratic president is losing the jobless. …FDR must be spinning in his grave."

The truth is that Democratic presidential candidates have been losing among White voters, particularly those without college degrees, for years. Obama wasn't the first, but he has clearly struggled as much as, or more than, any of his predecessors in attracting support from that group.

That fact was underscored by Democratic primaries in Kentucky and Arkansas this week. Obama lost roughly 40 percent of the Democratic vote in essentially uncontested events, just as he had in Oklahoma earlier in the year. Although those results drew attention and commentary, they, too, were hardly a surprise.

Four years ago, Obama was wiped out in those states during his nomination battle against Hillary Clinton. In the general election, he fared worse than the 2004 Democratic nominee, John Kerry, had in an arc of heavily White counties running south and west from West Virginia through Arkansas to Oklahoma, even though virtually all other counties in the country gave him a higher percentage of the vote than the Democrats got in 2004. The disaffection with Obama among voters in those counties is no doubt mostly cultural, although race probably plays a role as well.

Another aspect of these shifts is more important: Obama is winning a declining share of what is a steadily declining share of the electorate. In the long run, the changing electorate is a far bigger problem for Republicans, who remain overwhelmingly White in their makeup.

The coalition that Obama began to assemble in his first campaign and continues to focus on in his re-election bid depends less on maintaining his share of the White working-class vote and more on maximizing his support among the rising share of the electorate accounted for by minorities.

The shifting balance is well-known and closely tracked by Obama loyalists -- both the national trends and the changes in the handful of states where the election will be decided.

The macro numbers, set out over time, tell the story graphically. When Bill Clinton was re-elected in 1996, White voters made up 83 percent of the electorate. When Obama was elected four years ago, they accounted for 74 percent. This fall, Whites may make up only 72 percent of the vote.

Where he is weakest, of course, is with White voters who were once core members of the Democratic coalition, working-class Americans whose support was consolidated by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and who formed the backbone of both the nation's economy and the Democratic Party for years. Today, those voters -- generally Whites without college degrees -- tilt Republican.

That could be problematic for Obama in at least a few of the battleground states in the industrial Midwest. William Frey of the Brookings Institution, a leading demographer who closely tracks changes in the population, noted that in some of those Midwest states, older White workers without college degrees are actually a rising share of the population.

One thing that is important to remember is that despite his poor performance among White working-class voters in the 2008 primaries in Pennsylvania and Ohio, Obama came back to win both states in the general election.

The president cannot afford a true collapse in White working-class support, but it's possible he can overcome some further slippage if he is as successful this time in drawing sizable numbers of African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities to the polls -- and if he can continue to build support among Whites with college degrees.

That's not yet guaranteed, although the ingredients are there for him to continue to remake the party's coalition. But three states where Obama and Romney will be battling this fall -- Florida, Nevada and North Carolina -- offer insights into how the changing electorate could affect political fortunes.

Republicans already have put North Carolina into Romney's column. Obama carried the state by just three-tenths of a percentage point in 2008, and Republicans see virtually no way for him to replicate that success in November. Still, the Obama team holds out hope of winning by getting an overwhelming share of the African-American vote again.

But they also see enough White voters as potential Obama supporters to carry him to victory. That's because North Carolina continues to attract White voters from other parts of the country, and those new residents, many of them well-educated, are more likely to support Obama.

In Florida, population changes continue to shift in Obama's favor, largely because the Cuban-American share of the Hispanic population, which votes Republican, continues to fall as the non-Cuban Hispanic share rises. Today, non-Cuban Hispanics represent a majority of the Latino vote in the state.

In Nevada, the big shift has been the increase in Latino voters. That helped Obama win a comfortable victory in 2008. However, the state's economic woes virtually guarantee a close race this year. Obama will need a strong Latino vote to win the state.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

Posted

View the original article here

We should cut Pakistan aid for 33 years

(PNI) A Senate panel voted to reduce aid to Pakistan by $33million to express our outrage at the 33-year prison sentence given to the doctor who helped us find Osama bin Laden.

This may not survive a full congressional vote or presidential veto.

Even if it does, it is a total joke as this is a little over 3 percent of the total dollars we send to Pakistan yearly. I doubt it will suffer much from this action.

I would prefer that we abolish all aid to Pakistan for 33 years. That might send a stronger message.

--David H. Holmes, Sun City West

Did Obama learn Economics 101?

According to John Taft, head of RBC Wealth Management in the United States, the purpose of financial managers is "to connect people who have capital with people who can deploy capital in such a way that everyone is better off."

When I read and hear the president saying that Wall Street is concerned only about profit and not employment, frankly, I wonder whether he audited Economics 101 instead of taking the class for grade. Isn't it obvious that if the deployment of capital is not beneficial, there will be little or no profit or employment, and if it is beneficial, there will be both?

Given the common-sense fact above, the president must feel that government bureaucrats are the better financial stewards of the nation's wealth. Do people really believe this?

--Jerome Glazer, Scottsdale

Cat hoarder, 81, should be pitied

When an 81-year-old woman takes in 64 cats and makes soup out of those that die, she is to be pitied not prosecuted ("Wittmann cat hoarder arrested in new cruelty case," Valley & State, Thursday).

Ironically, her acts were probably motivated by love of animals, not a desire to be cruel to them.

We can't say for certain that those cats had worse lives than they otherwise would have.

Feral cats have high death rates and live in bad conditions. Many of them are run over by cars. Many of them are killed by coyotes. Many of them starve or die of disease, not better fates than those that were under her care.

Lucienne Touboul's behavior was clearly dysfunctional, but it was not depraved or evil. She is a sick, old woman who belongs in a nursing home, not a criminal who belongs in jail.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's decision to treat her like a criminal is the real cruelty.

The proper way to address this issue is to have Touboul declared incapacitated and placed in guardianship, not to have her prosecuted and placed in jail.

--Kevin Walsh, Phoenix

Legislative supermajority perilous

When we gave one party a supermajority in the Arizona Legisalture, it sent a signal that its members could do anything they wanted and still get re-elected. We removed the checks and balances of "other thinking."

Remember, "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The Republican-controlled House, Senate and administration have done very well proving it over the past few years.

Hopefully, in the elections this year, we will correct our error and spread the power so that some debate, negotiation and compromise will take place, and rather than extremism, we will have some moderation and negotiated legislation coming out of our elected officials next year.

On second thought, the ideal situation would be to send enough independents, Libertarians and Democrats to the state Capitol so that the Republicans would have to build coalitions to get bills passed.

In today's political "my way or the highway" atmosphere, nothing would get done and the people of Arizona would be safe from stupidity for two years.

--Mike Saari, Peoria

Many ex-offenders deserve a job

Regarding a recent letter about ex- offenders being good hires:

I was waiting for a relative to finish up a mentoring session conducted through Arizona Women's Education and Employment (AWEE), an agency that helps ex-offenders (both men and women) gain education and employment.

I sat outside the meeting door listening to them discuss the emotions of trying to get a job, the excitement of getting a lead or call back and the feeling of failure when they were told "no" again.

Their eyes are mixed with hope and fear. They want to support their children, earn the community's respect, mentor others one day. They just need a chance.

Even when the economy bounces back, these folks still carry the mark of an ex- offender.

Our community is generous through all the donations and volunteer time provided to non-profit agencies dedicated to feeding hungry children, providing housing assistance to the poor, and many other valuable services.

But can't we also be generous and give them a chance through employment?

Not every ex-offender is serious about changing his or her life, but the faces I saw at AWEE were.

Maybe folks could take their generosity further and give an ex-offender a chance.

--Susan Robustelli,Glendale

How I could become a Democrat

I support the Democratic Party on many issues, including reduced military spending, progressive taxation (the rich pay more), minimum wages for laborers, more gun control, programs for the poor, etc.

However, there are two planks to the Democratic Party platform that cause me to no longer be a member: abortion and gay rights.

Democrats say they believe abortion should be a personal choice, but they want me to approve and pay for others abortions. They say they believe in separation of church and state, but they want me to violate my church's doctrine on homosexuality and not only condone but approve the gay lifestyle.

Neither of these two issues should be addressed by Congress or the president. These issues should be left to our conscience and the courts to decide.

Then, I could be a Democrat!

--Dan McMahon, Chandler

Hey, 'sell crazy somewhere else'

In response to Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett checking on the issue of President Barack Obama's birth certificate:

I thought of a line from the movie "As Good as It Gets."

Jack Nicholson said, "Sell crazy somewhere else. We're all stocked up here."

--Casey Franzen, Chandler

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

Posted

View the original article here

Romney, GOP spring ahead in fundraising

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON Mitt Romney outraised President Barack Obama in May, the first time the Republican presidential challenger has jumped ahead of Obama and his prodigious fundraising apparatus. The numbers illustrate how Romney and the Republican Party have jelled as a force after a protracted GOP primary.

Other developments

Automatic defense cutslooming in January would be more devastating than previously feared and make it impossible for President Barack Obama to refocus his national-security strategy, a bipartisan group of former lawmakers and retired military officers said Thursday. Members of the Bipartisan Policy Center painted a dire picture for the nation's economy, the military and large and small defense contractors if the automatic reductions occurred on Jan. 2, 2013. Based on a special task force's calculations, the group said the cuts would mean an indiscriminate, across-the-board 15 percent reduction in programs and activities within the military, not the 10 percent that had been estimated.

Scoffing at a White House veto threat, the House voted Thursday to repeal a tax on medical-device makers that Republicans cast as a job-killing levy that would stifle an innovative industry. Lawmakers approved the measure 270-146, with 37 Democrats from states with a heavy presence of medical- equipment makers like Minnesota, New York and California joining all 233 voting Republicans. Most Democrats said the bill was yet another GOP attempt to weaken President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul, which created the tax to help pay for that law's expansion of health-care coverage to 30million Americans.

A group seeking to recall Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced Thursday that it has ended the effort following Gov. Scott Walker's victory in Wisconsin's recall election. The group called Michigan Rising said it will stop collecting signatures, noting it already was short of its own gathering goals. Instead, the group said it will focus on a long-term effort to form a progressive think tank, develop progressive leaders and support current progressive legislators.

-- Wire services

Romney and his party raised more than $76 million last month, the campaign said Thursday. Obama's campaign reported that it and the Democratic Party raised $60 million for the month.

Obama, forced onto the defensive by lackluster employment numbers, launched a television ad Thursday in nine key election-year states targeting Congress and blaming lawmakers for not acting on his job proposals. The approach represents an expanded ad focus for Obama, who had been going after Romney.

The fundraising numbers and Obama's new ad signal a new stage in the campaign as a resurgent Romney capitalizes on his emergence as the GOP's standard-bearer and as Obama is forced to confront the political implications of a weak economic recovery.

"We got beat," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina wrote bluntly in an e-mail to supporters, urging contributors to step up their giving.

For Romney, the latest figure represents a significant jump in fundraising. He and the GOP brought in $40 million in April, just short of the $43.6 million the Democratic president and his party raised that month. What's more, Romney is getting a significant boost from Republican-leaning super PACs that have raised far more and spent far more than their Democratic-leaning counterparts.

Romney, stepping up his criticism of Obama, campaigned and was raising money Thursday in Missouri. In a speech at a factory in St. Louis, Romney accused Obama not only of a failure of policy but of "a moral failure of tragic proportions."

Citing millions of unemployed or underemployed Americans, Romney said that Obama nevertheless claimed he was doing a great job.

"I will not be that president of doubt and deception," he said.

Asked afterward to comment on topping Obama in fundraising, Romney said only: "Long way to go."

Obama was mixing more fundraising with official business Thursday as he wrapped up a two-day West Coast trip that included four fundraisers on Wednesday. He started the day under a sweltering sun in the Los Angeles area at a breakfast fundraiser for about 300 people. Tickets started at $2,500.

Later, addressing about 2,500 college students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Obama picked up on the theme of his latest campaign ad and blamed congressional inaction for the lack of additional job growth.

"If they had taken all the steps I was pushing for back in September, we could have put even more Americans back to work. We could have sliced through these headwinds more easily," Obama said.

Obama campaign officials noted that Romney's fundraising surge could be temporary and that it reflects his recently sealed standing as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, which allows him to raise more general election money. It also lets him raise money jointly for his campaign and for the Republican Party.

The Obama officials pointed out that Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry briefly experienced a similar surge in fundraising over President George W. Bush in the spring of 2004 after Kerry had locked up the nomination.

In his e-mail, Messina sought donations of $3 or more to "close the gap" against Romney in fundraising.

"More people giving a little bit is the only way to compete with a few people giving a lot,'' he said. So, let's fight like hell and win this thing."

Obama has been an active fundraiser and lately has stepped up the number of events he holds with donors. As of Thursday, the president has done 153 fundraisers since filing as a candidate for re-election on April 4, 2011, according to statistics kept by CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller. During same period in the 2004 election cycle, Bush had participated in 79 fundraisers.

In all, Obama and the Democratic National Committee and other state-focused funds have hauled in more than $500 million during the 2012 election campaign, compared with more than $480 million for Romney and the Republican Party.

The Romney campaign reported that the party and the campaign had $107 million cash on hand at the end of May. Obama's campaign did not list its comparable figure on Thursday, but last month, it reported $115 million in the bank through the end of April, with the DNC listing $24 million in hand.

Obama's new ad does not mention congressional Republicans, but its target is clear. Republicans have proposed their own measures aimed at creating jobs and have blocked several Obama proposals to promote hiring of teachers and police officers and to increase infrastructure projects. Obama has proposed paying for those measures with tax increases on wealthier taxpayers, an idea Republicans reject.

The ad is airing in the key presidential-election states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The campaign declined to reveal how much it was spending on the ads, saying only that it was a "significant" purchase of air time.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

Posted

View the original article here

Wisconsin recall vote is telling, but of what?

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's decisive victory in Tuesday's recall election is a blow to the state's Democratic Party and its union allies and a spur to officials in other states who want to challenge the pension benefits of public-employee workers.

By Morry Gash, AP

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks to supporters at his victory party on Tuesday in Waukesha, Wis.

By Morry Gash, AP

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks to supporters at his victory party on Tuesday in Waukesha, Wis.

However, even top officials of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign caution against over-reading its meaning for November's presidential elections, saying it demonstrates that the Badger State is competitive but not that Republicans can count on it.

On the other hand, neither can Democrats — though President Obama now leads in polling there.

There is "no doubt" that Romney is the underdog but the state is "very competitive," Walker said on ABC Wednesday, fresh from his victory over Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. He said the country is "hungry for leaders who are willing to stand up and say it like it is and tell people what they are going to do and then mean it."

White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed November implications from Tuesday's vote. "I certainly wouldn't read much into yesterday's result beyond its effect on who's occupying the governor's seat today in Wisconsin," he told reporters aboard Air Force One Obama headed for San Francisco.

Surveys of voters as they left polling places show a tighter race in Wisconsin for Obama this year than his easy 56%-42% win over Republican John McCain in 2008, but he still leads Romney by 51%-44% and is preferred over him on handling the economy.

Still, Wisconsin is one of several once-solidly Democratic states — Pennsylvania and Michigan are others — that are viewed as battlegrounds this time. All three voted Democratic in the last five presidential elections.

"I do think it's in play, and that's telling," Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to the Romney campaign, said today at a breakfast with reporters hosted by Bloomberg News. But he said the outcome reflected state issues and candidates and wasn't "a proxy fight" for Obama and Romney.

"It would be foolish for any Democrat to take these states for granted," says Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. (He was a strategist for a state Senate candidate in Wisconsin whose victory Tuesday tips control of the state Senate to the Democrats.) "But there's not a lot of vulnerability here for President Obama. The same exit polls that had Barrett losing by six points show Obama ahead of Romney by similar margins."

Beyond the presidential race, the results show a willingness by voters even in Wisconsin, the first state to provide collective bargaining rights to public employees, to curb the cost of their benefits. Voters by 52%-47% approved of recent changes in state law that limited the ability of public workers to collectively bargain over pay and benefits.

And in California on Tuesday, voters in San Diego and San Jose overwhelmingly approved initiatives that would cut pension benefits for municipal employees as part of an effort to balance city budgets that are in the red.

Walker's victory "will have a huge impact on how a lot of states deal with their looming insolvency," predicts Republican strategist Steve Schmidt. If the governor had lost, it would have had "a huge freezing effect" on efforts to curb public employee benefits.

Veteran Democratic strategist Robert Shrum agrees that there is "obviously a real sentiment" to curb retirement benefits for public workers. "People have a sense the pension benefits are very generous and need to be scaled back or public employees need to contribute more," he says.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, sought to put the best spin possible on the outcome.

"Last night's results were not what we had hoped for, but this was not the end of the story but rather the beginning," he told reporters Wednesday. "We knew a recall election would be tough, and we knew that we would be outspent. In the end, though, the best funded politician in state history spent more than $50 million to hold onto his office, but he could not hold onto a majority in the state senate."

One more lesson from Tuesday: Voters are leery of replaying elections. Six in 10 Wisconsin voters said recalls were appropriate only in cases of official misconduct. Those voters supported Walker by more than 2-1.

Only three governors have faced recalls in U.S. history. Walker was the first to survive.

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

View the original article here

Free-market Dems push back

(PNI) Could it be that the free market and the Democratic Party are not parting company after all?

Over the last several weeks, President Barack Obama's re-election campaign aggressively has skewered Republican candidate Mitt Romney for his work at the private-equity firm Bain Capital. The attack includes ads in which Bain and Romney are vilified as "vampires" preying on American workers in their pursuit of personal profit.

The Obama ad campaign builds on an ardently held liberal view that the fault for the current economic malaise should be laid entirely at the feet of people like Mitt Romney. Which is to say capitalism. Which is to say, the free market.

In a nutshell, that is the raison d'etre of Occupy Wall Street. It is the motivation behind the national debate over tax "fairness" as it applies to that notorious subset of Americana, "the 1 percent."

And, as noted, it is a major theme of President Obama's re-election campaign. Whether he intentionally wishes it or not, the president is stigmatizing the free market in his critique of Romney and Bain Capital.

There are people who have a problem with that. And they are not all Republicans.

While delicately acknowledging that Romney's private-sector experience is "fair game" for criticism, a surprising number of influential Democrats have effectively said "enough" to the constant beat-down of the private-equity business, an important subset of the free market.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a key member of the Obama re-election team, has called the attacks "nauseating to the American public." In the same breath that he called on Republicans to stop resurrecting the specter of Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, he demanded that his own side "stop attacking private equity."

Booker has been underscored by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who called Bain "a perfectly fine company." Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell also has said he is displeased with the tone of attacks against an important tool of the free market.

Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee criticized Booker … for later walking back his criticisms of the Obama ad campaign. Ford observed that private equity is "a good thing in many, many instances." Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., made a point of noting that Bain had "done a good job for their investors," a group that included many retirees and union pension funds.

Then on Thursday, former President Bill Clinton stepped voluntarily into the off-campaign-message fray, offering abundant praise for Romney and Bain.

Clinton called Romney's work at Bain "sterling" and added that it constituted "a good business career."

The impetus behind all the Democratic push-back against the "vampire" imagery is not hostility to Obama's re-election. Every one of the campaign critics bracketed his comments with support for the president.

More accurately, their comments represent the return of an aggregation of Democrats who do not reflexively view business or free enterprise as a bad thing. That was a perspective promoted by the Democratic Leadership Council, a pro-business wing of the Democratic Party that enjoyed much popularity during the Clinton years, including from Clinton himself.

Led by famous "third-way" advocate Al From, the DLC backed the 1996 welfare reforms and some school-choice plans, and opposed a government-directed single-payer health-care plan. It was viewed as enthusiastically pro-business.

It nearly dissolved in 2011 as the Democratic Party became increasingly infused with a view of business and free markets as malevolent and undertaxed.

The reaction of these important Democrats to the anti-market sentiments of the "vampire" ads is refreshing. If it leads to a resurrection of a more business-friendly party, all the better.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

Posted

View the original article here