Self-Immolation

John McCain goes on national TV this weekend and talks about his party's problems with Hispanic voters, how there's "much work to be done" and how Sonia Sotomayor is a great American success story. One day later, after claiming to be undecided, he comes out against Sotomayor, claiming that she's "an activist judge who legislates from the bench." Ian Milhiser does a great job showing how conservative activism on the Court is basically repealing the 20th Century.

Repealing the Twentieth Century: In three opinions that read like a tea-bagger’s wet dream, Justice Thomas would have restricted Congress’ power to enact economic regulation to a point unheard of since the Great Depression. A short list of laws that would simply cease to exist in Clarence Thomas’s America includes “the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the sick leave portions of the Family and Medical Leave, the Freedom of Access to Clinics Act, as well as minimum wage and maximum hour laws.”

Selling Justice To The Highest Bidder: Roberts, Thomas and Alito all joined dissents arguing that a West Virginia coal magnate could literally buy a judge for $3 million to overturn a verdict against his company.

Corporate Immunity From the Law: Joined by Roberts, Alito wrote a dissent arguing that drug companies have almost-total immunity from the law when one of their dangerous products caused a former professional musician to lose her arm and her ability to play music. Roberts, Thomas and Alito also joined a majority opinion giving sweeping immunity to the makers of dangerous medical devices.

Massive Resistance: All three justices joined a radical opinion which not only held that it is unconstitutional for school boards to desegregate public schools, but which audaciously cited Brown v. Board of Education for this proposition.

This Election Brought to You By Wal-Mart: Perhaps most ironic of all, all three of McCain’s justices are poised to declare McCain’s signature legislative accomplishment, campaign finance reform, unconstitutional.

McCain voted for all of the judges leading that charge. In fact, he's voted to confirm EVERY SINGLE JUDGE in his Senate career except for Sotomayor. And that's the larger point. Republicans are so in hock to their right-wing base that they must risk a generational divide with Hispanic voters by voting against a qualified Latina judge:

Most Senate Republicans say opposition to Sotomayor is a principled stand based on the belief that her public speeches reveal a personal bias in her judicial philosophy. Republicans have cited her views on Second Amendment cases, speeches she has given during her time as a federal judge and a key ruling on affirmative action -- all issues that are of sharp interest to conservative-base voters.

But some senators and Republican strategists worry that efforts to shore up support from conservative voters who dominate the GOP primaries could become a missed opportunity to extend an olive branch to Latino voters, who gave just 31 percent of their ballots to McCain last fall.

If you look at the demographic shifts of the country, both with age and ethnicity, you'll see that this is just suicide. But I'm not about to get in the way of it.

Through Judiciary

Sonia Sotomayor has been confirmed by the Senate Judiciary committee with a vote of 13-6. Only Lindsey Graham joined all the Democrats in supporting her confirmation. With four Republicans on the record as supporting her on the floor of the Senate, her confirmation is assured. She will become the first Latina on the Supreme Court.

The near-united front against a qualified Hispanic really isn't going to help the GOP in the years ahead.

The Bigot In The Room

I saw Pat Buchanan today refer to Frank Ricci as "an American hero" on Hardball. His opponent in the debate, an NAACP lawyer, was measured and calm. But he never brought up what Buchanan wrote just a couple days ago in talking about the GOP's strategy for victory in the future.

In 2008, Hispanics, according to the latest figures, were 7.4 percent of the total vote. White folks were 74 percent, 10 times as large. Adding just 1 percent to the white vote is thus the same as adding 10 percent to the candidate's Hispanic vote.

If John McCain, instead of getting 55 percent of the white vote, got the 58 percent George W. Bush got in 2004, that would have had the same impact as lifting his share of the Hispanic vote from 32 percent to 62 percent. [...]

Had McCain been willing to drape Jeremiah Wright around the neck of Barack Obama, as Lee Atwater draped Willie Horton around the neck of Michael Dukakis, the mainstream media might have howled. And McCain might be president.

If only John McCain race-baited more, if only Republicans, who have practically nobody but Southern white men left in their party, made MORE overt moves toward Southern white men, then they would receive electoral glory. As Ta-Nehisi Coates says:

There are a couple problems here, I'd submit. One is that Sotomayor isn't black (except in Baltimore.) She's a Latina. Amping up the race-baiting isn't just going to turn off black people (most of whom are already turned-off) it turns off Latinos also.

The second problem is that it likely turns a significant portion of white people also. The GOP's problem isn't that it needs to shore up Alabama--at least not yet. It's problem is, well, basically everywhere else that isn't Alabama. I don't know how bashing Sotomayor makes you more competitive in, say, Colorado or Oregon. I'd assume the opposite.

Altogether, I think this is awful political advice. But it's about what you'd expect from the guy who, as one of Matt's commenters note, told us that Sarah Palin would steal women from Obama. You don't have to be right to do Buchanan's job. Or even sincere. You just have to be very loud.

Pat Buchanan is a bigot. He provides a bigoted viewpoint for hours per day on a supposedly liberal network called MSNBC. Why is that tolerated, like ol' Pat is just a crazy uncle?

...Rachel Maddow is laying into Buchanan right now, it's pretty lively.

Shoehorning In Immigration Reform?

Unlike health care and climate change, there have always been a handful of Republicans willing to deal on immigration reform. One of them was George W. Bush, although his sympathies arguably lied with the corporations who wanted that steady stream of cheap labor to keep flowing. And much of the work has already been done to lay the groundwork for a deal. So while many are skeptical, I wouldn't be surprised to see an immigration bill come together late in the session this year. The President met with Congressional leaders on the issue this week, and delivered remarks expressing the difficulties but also the opportunities in immigration reform. It won't be long in the health care debate before we start hearing about giving "free health care to illegal immigrants." Same with education. The same with practically every issue on Congress' plate, meaning that striking a deal on immigration would short-circuit the hijacking of other debates by xenophobes.

I agree with Markos, this can get done this session. The Senate wants to do it, the President wants to do it, and Republicans are completely forked by their need to bolster their credibility among the fast-growing Hispanic voter population.

Among Republicans, that level of support is larger than the overall -- 89-11. It seems they realize that these undocumented immigrants aren't going anywhere, so they like the idea of giving them legal status as long as they're punished for breaking the law and required to make restitution. Seems fair enough.

Republicans, playing to that 11 percent, will fight reform. Not only do they have the Pat Buchanans in their camp suffering from unbridled bigotry, but they have to consider the political ramifications of legalizing 10-15 million undocumented immigrants on their electoral prospects. The GOP's rabid anti-Latino sentiment (now being seen in their handling of the Sotomayor nomination) has been noted by Latinos, and their support for the Republican Party is hemorrhaging as a result. Republicans, already at a deep electoral deficit, can ill afford to dig themselves an even deeper hole in states like Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina, Colorado, and Nevada.

Yet they're stuck in a no-win situation. Oppose comprehensive immigration reform, and lose even more of the meager support they have left among Latinos. Support it, piss off their nativist base, watch Obama get all the credit, and add net millions of new Democratic voters to the rolls.

The GOP's saving grace would be getting a guest worker program to the legislation, allowing for several hundred thousand indentured servants to be imported into the country on an annual basis. That would still anger their nativist base, but it would greatly please their big-business patrons. Yet the guest worker program angers organized labor for obvious (and justified) reasons. When hearing talk of "unresolved issues", tops among them is this guest worker program. And the big question is whether Reid has the votes without the guest worker program, or whether passage would require that compromise.

That will be the giant bone of contention, but other than that, I don't see much of an argument. The nativist base doesn't have a filibuster-worthy minority in the Senate. The sloth of Congress and the other high-profile issues on the docket could slow this down, but it could just as easily come together very quickly and pass without much delay.

Rosen's Redemption

Remember that lady nominated to join the Supreme Court? Sonia something-or-other? Funny, it doesn't seem like the GOP wants to talk about her much anymore. They're on to Democracy, Whisky, Sexy in Iran, and even the wingnut welfare machine of groups making money off of the Sotomayor nomination have started to lay low.

I would guess that somebody read a poll, particularly one including Hispanic voters. And they recognized that going to the mats against her would be completely counter-productive. And now everyone's zipped their lips. Hell, Kenneth Starr endorsed her yesterday.

That doesn't let off the hook those who charged her as a racist and tried to leverage the "white man's burden" theory of politics to make her toxic. It doesn't let off the hook people like Jeffrey Rosen, who lent credence to a bunch of anonymous smears designed to damage her reputation. Rosen is trying to rehabilitate himself with a more measured piece, explaining that you can find bold language and hints to her style in her dissents, not the technical decisions where she upholds settled law. He tries to roll back this charge that she isn't a big thinker by pointing out certain flourishes.

One would hope that everyone has a long memory about Rosen.

...I'm not at all sanguine about whether Sotomayor's presence on the Court can change this dynamic at all, but the current Court really sucks rocks.

Here’s a beaut of a decision from the increasingly brutal and inhumane conservative-dominated Supreme Court. Not content with gutting anti-discrimination legislation, a 5-4 majority has decided that if people are wrongfully convicted they should be punished anyway because, hey, tough on crime!

Ugh.

Immigration Reform This Year?

Not that Senate and House schedules aren't made to be broken, but that's certainly interesting.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Thursday that he would like the Senate to pass comprehensive immigration reform this year, adding another huge project to Democrats' already packed schedule for 2009.

“As far as I’m concerned, we have three major issues we have to do this year, if at all possible: No. 1 is healthcare; No 2 is energy, global warming; No. 3 is immigration reform,” Reid said.

“It’s going to happen this session, but I want it this year, if at all possible.”

Reid met Thursday with leaders of Hispanic groups including the National Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He and those leaders promoted the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court at a press conference.

Reid stressed that he does not want to pass immigration “piecemeal” but, instead, as a comprehensive package.

We haven't heard a lot about this since the recession hit, but perhaps this recent poll has led Democrats to be bolder on the issue. It shows overwhelming support for immigration reform legislation, 64-21. And after comprehensive immigration reform is explained, it goes up to 86-14.

There are also political considerations. The Sotomayor nomination has turned off conservatives even more to the Republican Party. Getting immigration reform done under a Democratic Administration would put another nail in that coffin. Not to mention adding millions of new potential voters down the road. Plus, there's Harry Reid' re-election chances. Nevada Hispanics are 23% of the population. Perversely, that data point may move Reid toward the more progressive solution, so prove to the folks back home his sensitivity to the issue.

But aside from this, comprehensive immigration reform is the right thing to do. We should bring millions of residents out of the shadows and into the greater economy, where they can help produce and pay US taxes. Morally speaking, we should not keep people hidden in the underground economy. Practically, this is the only way to deal with the problem. We're not deporting 11 million people any time soon, and given how vital they are to the smooth functioning of the US economy, we would be cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Obviously this will be a long slog - conservatives would love to rile up their anti-immigrant base. But as we've seen with Sotomayor, they commit electoral suicide with every utterance. Let's get this done.

"I am not a racialist, but, und this is a big but..."

(Title from an obscure Monty Python sketch)

The Sotomayor debate continues to reveal the absolute worst of human nature, driven by conservative white men with serious issues over race. Tom Tancredo and Pat Buchanan, two of the biggest loudmouths in this debate, share an aide who plead guilty to karate chopping a pedestrian and calling her the N word. For his part, Buchanan called the Supreme Court nominee a quota queen who practices "race-based justice," basing this on a quote and none of the facts of her record (in Ricci she was bound by the law and precedent, and quotas had nothing to do with it, as Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out to him today). Does everyone remember when Pat Buchanan was radioactive to the party and brought down George W. Bush's hopes in 1992? Now he's on the "liberal" MSNBC more than the peacock.

And now there's a new player in this debate, Manuel Miranda, who you may remember from stealing Democratic files when he was working for Bill Frist. Within the space of a few hours today, he basically called Mitch McConnell gay for resisting a filibuster for Sotomayor, and then he slandered all African-Americans.

Today, Miranda did a conference call with conservative bloggers organized by the Heritage foundation, where he discussed Sotomayor. Asked how Republicans could oppose her while avoiding charges of racism, Miranda said they had to wage substantive attacks. Then he segued into a discussion of the views of Hispanics on issues, saying:

“By the way, Hispanic polls, Hispanic surveys, indicate that Hispanics think just like everyone else. We’re not like African Americans. We think just like everybody else.”

The audio is here; the key bit starts at around the 42 minute mark.

To be clear, Miranda didn’t appear to be saying that African Americans are unlike everyone else in that they don’t think. He seemed to be saying that everyone, including Hispanics, thinks one way on issues, and African Americans think another way. Perhaps Miranda meant otherwise, but this seems clumsy or wacky at best and seems to crudely isolate African Americans as a political group.

Not like those dirty African-Americans, you see.

This is just a disaster for the GOP, and it gets worse and worse.

White Man's Burden

The old crazy uncles that the GOP would rather keep in the basement have all burst to the surface, and the craziest of the crazy if Tom Tancredo. His assertion that the National Council of La Raza is "the Latino KKK" not only offends that organization and all Hispanics, but members of the GOP who have appeared at NCLR events and accepted their awards. We truly are seeing the crackup of the white male conservatives.

African-American and Hispanic conservatives who have questioned her judicial philosophy also note the historic nature of the appointment and praise her triumph over economic hardship. White conservatives, on the other hand, have been far more personal and aggressive in their attacks on Sotomayor's record, repeatedly accusing her of "reverse racism" and questioning her intelligence.

White male conservatives, despite polling showing both the public and GOP insiders disagree, are maintaining that Sotomayor is an unqualified bigot.

Pat Buchanan described Sotomayor in a column Friday as an "anti-white liberal judicial activist" as well as a "lightweight" who "covers up her intellectual inadequacy by bullying from the bench."

John Derbyshire, at National Review Online, took admiration for Sotomayor's life story as an intentional insult to him and all other white people:

I get mighty annoyed by the unspoken implication in a lot of commentary that anyone not a member of a Protected Minority must have grown up in a twelve-bedroom lakeside mansion and been chauffered off to prep school with a silver spoon in his mouth. Judge Sotomayor was raised in public housing? So was I. Her mother was a nurse working late shifts? So was mine. When did white working poor people disappear off the face of the earth? Where are the eager listeners to their "compelling stories"?

There's lots more at the link, including Billo chiming in with how "the left sees the white man as a problem." As a white man, I can say pretty directly that I don't. No, but what does seem to be the case is that the right, in particular the white male conservative right, can't stand that their coded attacks aren't working anymore. They have used this playbook for decades, mostly with success, and now the country has changed, gotten more diverse, more interconnected, more tolerant, and they don't know what the hell to do.

Some people, mainly the ones in charge of electing Republicans, have recognized this. But the loudest members of the party, the media hounds, haven't, and they still think they can call Sotomayor a "reverse racist" or a "twofer" and reap the rewards. And when it falls flat, now that the worm has turned, they figure, this all must be because everyone hates whitey.

Funny, several years ago the Democrats rejecting Miguel Estrada as a circuit court judge was supposed to ruin their relationship with Hispanic voters. But there's a difference between rejecting a conservative judge who happens to be Hispanic and rejecting a Hispanic woman who happens to be a judge. They've foregrounded the race and gender attacks, and this side of the GOP is simply ugly to watch.

Rudderless Ship

I don't know why I'm surprised by this freak-out on the right over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, but I am. The right wing had to have a fight to feed their starving base, and they oppose Democrats for the same reason George Leigh Mallory wanted to climb Mount Everest: "Because it's there." They don't believe that a Democratic President could possibly be legitimate, and therefore he doesn't have the legitimate right to nominate judges for the nation's highest court. QED.

But despite having advance knowledge of Sotomayor's potential nomination for a month, they have not been able to suffuse their objections to Sotomayor with anything but racial and identity politics. Michael Goldfarb says Obama has the "views of a 21 year-old Hispanic girl. Mark Krikorian simmers over the pronunciation of Sotomayor's NAME. Sen. Inhofe worries about "undue influence from her race and gender." The leader of the Republican Party called her a "reverse racist".

Look, I'm not going to tell Republicans they need to watch their opposition to a Latina woman solely because of her race and gender. They haven't asked for my help. I'd rather simply say that, when a party has no leadership, this kind of insanity can reign. The contradictions at work - conservatives touting Clarence Thomas' "empathy", the identity politics conservatives praised with the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor, the obvious disparity of conservatives demonizing empathy in the law while damning the "unfairness" of the Ricci decision to white firefighters - are just too obvious to count, as are the political sensitivities. But nobody has the controls of the Party, and nobody can douse these flames.

There's another theory on this, however. Conservatives have used racial coding for decades, and it's a well to which they have often gone over the years. But you know, we're in something of a new era when it comes to that. After all, take a look at the President.

Meanwhile, inside the Senate, there's no appetite for a filibuster, and Jeff Sessions even screwed up the only talking point that fell outside of the race/gender lines by saying that courts, in fact, do make laws. I plan to bring that little nugget out every time I hear about those "activist judges."

Dave Weigel: "Sotomayor's nomination will come crashing down when Larry Johnson releases the tape of her railing against whitey."

...and now Newt Gingrich calls her a racist. They really can't help themselves.

CA-31: Becerra To Join Cabinet After All?

I'm not really much for forcible identity politics, but some Latino leaders are making noises that a Hispanic ought to replace Bill Richardson (who withdrew his nomination) as the Secretary of Commerce, making the argument that the Latino population must maintain its representation in the Administration. I'd prefer the best man or woman for the job, but this is a case where there already is a Hispanic who Obama considered for a separate cabinet appointment who may be able to be persuaded into accepting this one. That would be Xavier Becerra.

An Obama transition team source said a veteran California congressman, Xavier Becerra, has emerged as the leading congressional candidate to replace Richardson, the Hispanic governor of New Mexico, as President-elect Barack Obama's choice for a job that will include overseeing the 2010 U.S. Census.

“Even though he turned down the trade representative slot, Becerra is not only Hispanic, but he has the skill, talent and experience to do the Commerce job,” said the source, who was not authorized to speak for the president-elect.

“Xavier's name has gone to the top of the list of potential replacements in part because he is a member of the House leadership, he is well liked, he has very good credentials, and, of course, he was an early Obama backer,” the source said.

It's all speculative at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if this happened. Becerra wanted a bigger role in the Administration than trade representative, and certainly the Commerce Department would give him a better opportunity to shape White House policy.

Obviously this would create another special election in an adjoining district to incoming Labor Secretary Hilda Solis' CA-32. Los Angeles County from Hollywood to points east would be ground zero for political wrangling this spring.

UPDATE: Becerra's spokeswoman says he's not interested.

Xavier Becerra is not considering an appointment to become Secretary of Commerce and will remain in the House, his spokeswoman told Politico.

"The Congressman has already expressed that he is staying in Congress and looks forward to working with the Obama Administration from his position as House Democratic Vice Chair," said Fabiola Rodriguez.

Couldn't Happen To A Nicer Vote Suppressor

Remember good ol' Tan Nguyen? He was the candidate running against Loretta Sanchez in 2006 who sent out that mailer to the Hispanic community in the district claiming they would be deported if they tried to vote. So, OK, he was indicted yesterday.

A federal grand jury indicted a former Republican Congressional candidate on an obstruction-of-justice charge on Wednesday after an investigation into a letter his campaign sent to Hispanic voters. The man, Tan Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant who unsuccessfully ran in the 47th Congressional District in Orange County in 2006 against Representative Loretta Sanchez, is accused of misleading state investigators looking into the mailer.

Oddly, he wasn't indicted on the content of the mailer itself, which could be considered wire fraud, but maybe there will be time for that later.

This continues to be an issue across the country this year.

The Philadelphia Daily News reported today that flyers have been making the rounds in some of the city's African-American neighborhoods, falsely claiming that voters who face outstanding arrest warrants and even unpaid parking tickets may be arrested at the polls.

The flyers could prove particularly effective at scaring people away from voting, because they attribute the falsehood to "an Obama supporter."

At this point, all the Republicans have is voter suppression. If they can make the lines longer on Election Day, if they can turn people away from the polls, they will have accomplished their goal. It's their version of the ground game; they mean to disenfranchise a many Democrats as possible (the McCain campaign co-chair in Wisconsin, also the Attorney General, is leading that effort). And their noise machine is falling right in line.

On his radio show, Chris Baker said, "I don't think homeless people should vote. Frankly. In fact, I have to be very honest. I'm not that excited about women voting, to be honest." Baker later said: "But that's just me. I'm a pig, and that's fine. All right? And we'll see that, I'm sure, on a lame-ass website very soon. But I don't think hobos ought to vote at all. They're nuts. And I think that there needs to be a little more care in who votes."

"A little more care" as in "only Republicans".

Obama Is Spanish For "McCain's In Trouble"

Here's yet another poll out showing that Barack Obama is doing extremely well with Hispanic voters, leading John McCain by 66-23. At one level this proves the utter fallacy of trying to conflate primary results with general election projections; as Scott Lemieux says, Hillary Clinton would have done better than 10% of the black vote in the G.E., too. But on a more substantive level, it's devastating for McCain to have this much of a deficit against the fastest-growing voting bloc in the United States. In some states Obama probably only needs 35-40% of the white vote to win, if these numbers hold. And it puts him in great shape in the Southwest and even North Carolina, which has a growing Latino population.

Of course, wait until the Hispanics figure out that Obama can't make full-court basketball shots and that the veracity of his birth certificate has been challenged by random crazy people! Those numbers will dip overnight.

Numbers Don't Add, Statements Don't Match, Nobody's Making Sense

Welcome to the McCain campaign.

After delivering an economic policy document with no numbers attached to it, the WaPo editorial board, in an unexpected burst of journalism, asked for some corroborating information, and found it wanting.

SEN. JOHN McCain says that President McCain would balance the federal budget by 2013. The plan is not credible.

The Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of $443 billion in 2013 if President Bush's tax cuts are extended, as Mr. McCain wants, and the alternative minimum tax is merely patched to make certain it does not hit growing numbers of taxpayers. But Mr. McCain is proposing far more tax cuts.

The McCain campaign says it will fill the hole with spending cuts. It would "reclaim billions" by rooting out existing earmarks and prohibiting new ones; impose a one-year freeze on discretionary spending other than for defense and veterans; and "reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations" to use toward deficit reduction. These claimed savings are illusory. The campaign assumes $150 billion in savings by cutting in half deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Congressional Budget Office says that even reducing troops to 30,000, far beyond Mr. McCain's estimate, would save just $55 billion in 2013 beyond the costs that the CBO projects as part of its deficit calculation. The campaign assumes an additional $160 billion in cuts to the Pentagon procurement budget and other discretionary spending. But eliminating every procurement program that the CBO has identified as a potential budget target would save perhaps $30 billion in 2013.

Republican primary voters don't ask for numbers to add up, they ask for all the tax cuts they want and a balanced budget and a pony. And McCain is their white knight on this front. He just makes up numbers and provides everything conservatives hope and dream for.

Speaking of dreams, McCain faced a far different audience yesterday than he previously faced in the primary, at the National Council of La Raza conference, and he up and lied about his support for the DREAM Act.

In the Q&A session following his prepared remarks, a young woman from the group One Dream 2009, asked John McCain, if he were president, to support the DREAM Act next year. McCain answered he would.

But that is not what John McCain told right-wing bloggers on an October 25, 2007 conference call. McCain emphasized that he has "said it a thousand times" that he "got the message" on immigration. However, don't take my word for it, ask conservative blogger Paul Mirengoff:

As for the Dream Act, McCain told us that he would have voted against cloture (i.e., in favor of preventing a vote) because he "got the message" this summer that Americans want the border secured before we "go on to the rest." McCain would deem parts of the border secure when the governor of the relevant state so certifies.

Since McCain is clearly on record as to how he would have voted on the Dream Act cloutre motion, and since his vote was not needed to prevent cloture, there seems to be no basis for criticizing his departure for Iowa prior to the vote.

These are just total panders. He wants to be all things to all people, and he keeps tripping himself up on the details.

And that's also true on Social Security, where McCain doesn't know the details of the program and is throwing around words like "privatization" to pacify the economic royalists in his party. Here, he is in for the fight of his life.

It was a spectacular flop: a president making dozens of fruitless trips around the country to build support for a plan his own party's leadership refused to accept.

But President Bush's failed push to privatize Social Security has not deterred John McCain from putting forward the same idea - and from risking a similar political disaster [...]

Democrats are gearing up to turn McCain's stand on Social Security, and his willingness to consider a privatization plan, into a key campaign issue. They say changing the program in that way would undermine retirees' benefits, and they hope to use the issue to harm the Arizona senator's support among a set of voters who tilt toward him -- seniors.

On Tuesday, a coalition of Democratic strategists, labor unions and liberal activist groups that helped defeat Bush's efforts in 2005 plans to launch a similar campaign. They intend to target McCain and dozens of GOP congressional candidates who have supported proposals to allow workers to divert some of their payroll taxes out of the Social Security system and into private investment accounts.

This feels like we're putting the band back together. There is no chance for McCain to survive if he is defined on Social Security - that's why I picked up on his remarks immediately. If Obama can cut into his numbers among seniors just a little bit on this issue, there's no credible path to victory. The signs that Obama is increasing his leads in Midwestern and Great Plains states, which are traditionally a little older, suggests that McCain is already meeting resistance among his core group. Time to wonk out on Social Security and pummel this guy.

McCain's Policies Being Brought Out Of The Shadows

John McCain was perfectly content for this election to be about Sen. Obama's readiness and to remain invisible as the alternative in the corner. Unfortunately for him, it's not shaping out that way.

He was hammered by a veteran yesterday, forced to explain his rejection of the new GI Bill and his continued opposition to improving veteran's health care.



McCain tried to backpedal and obfuscate and claim that he has "received the highest award from literally every veterans organization in America". The problem is that's not true.

The recognition McCain has received from veterans groups is not "high awards" but failing grades:

• Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave McCain a grade of D for his record of voting against veterans. (By contrast, Obama got a B+.)

• Disabled Veterans of America noted McCain’s dismal 20 percent voting record on veterans’ issues. (Obama had an 80 percent.)

• In a list of "Key Votes," Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) notes McCain "Voted Against Us" 15 times and "Voted For Us" only 8. (Obama voted for VVA 12 times, and against only once.)

Today, McCain showed up at a meeting of the League of United Latin American Citizens, got a polite response, and then watched as Barack Obama lit into him for failing immigrants with his duplicitous votes:

Now, I know Senator McCain used to buck his party on immigration by fighting for comprehensive reform, and I admired him for it. But when he was running for his party's nomination, he abandoned his courageous stance, and said that he wouldn't even support his own legislation if it came up for a vote. Well, for eight long years, we've had a President who made all kinds of promises to Latinos on the campaign trail, but failed to live up to them in the White House, and we can't afford that anymore. We need a President who isn't going to walk away from something as important as comprehensive reform when it becomes politically unpopular.

He also made a detailed economic argument that struck at the heart of the matter - that McCain is offering the same failed policies that have brought us to the brink of recession and created massive income inequality, and that we need a leader who will remember the common man and give them a fair chance to realize their goals. And the crowd loved him for it.

Obama also put together an ad fighting back on McCain and the RNC's dishonest claims about energy policy.

"McCain and Bush support a drilling plan that won't produce a drop of oil for seven years," the announcer says. "McCain will give more tax breaks to big oil. He's voted with Bush 95% of the time."

McCain is whining today about this being a "negative ad" because anything that actually addresses his record ought to be out of bounds.

(It's a small point, but I wish the ad said "reduce the drip of OIL" and not foreign oil. Drilling it ourselves won't solve the problem, as he says in the ad.)

This is not the calculating Obama we have seen in recent weeks, but a strong one working to draw major contrast and shine the spotlight on the terrible record of failed conservatism being put forth by this year's standard bearer.

It's The Economy, Estupido

This week we got further proof that the myth of Barack Obama doing poorly among Latinos was completely unfounded, as he's outpacing John Kerry's 2004 effort significantly. When seeking an explanation for why a culturally conservative bloc supports the culturally liberal candidate, Matt Yglesias stumbles upon an answer. Latinos with ties to Mexico, Central and South America, who have acutely felt the effects of authoritarian governments and their policies towards the poor, actually vote their pocketbooks:

If you look at it in detail, though, the Hispanic electorate mostly seems to vote the way Thomas Frank suggests everyone should in What's the Matter With Kansas -- poorer Hispanics vote Democratic, richer ones vote Republican, and social and cultural issues just don't seem to play very much. Because Hispanics are poorer-than-average this leads to a big pro-Democratic tilt. I think it's clear that Republicans can hurt themselves with the immigration issue by acting like racist demagogues but the GOP's primary problem with this voting group really is things like S-CHIP rather than a lack of sufficient immigration-related pandering.

For those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, talk of lowering corporate tax rates falls as flat as tsk-tsking about cultural outrages. Hispanics are far more in tune with the real-world impacts of their vote.

McCain Not In A Sunshine State

The key insight to this slate of good polls in the battleground states is that McCain cannot win without Florida in his column. It's pretty much impossible. And if he's behind right now and has to spend so much time and energy to defend it, Obama can put asymmetric resources into Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina (and he'll have the money to do so).

I wonder if this has anything to do with Obama's early strength among Latino voters, which the conventional wisdom has finally come around to acknowledging.

There was a growing consensus during the Democratic primary season that Obama was going to struggle with Latino voters -- due to the exit polls, his race, and McCain’s immigration stance. In fact, in that now-famous conference call in which Hillary Clinton indicated that she would be open to serving as Obama’s running mate, that response was spurred by concern by New York Rep. Nydia Velasquez (D) that Obama was going to have trouble with Latinos. But it looks like that CW -- at least right now -- was wrong. In addition to our recent NBC/WSJ poll, which showed Hispanics breaking for Obama 62%-28%, a new survey of 800 Latino voters from 21 states finds that 60% of them plan to vote for Obama versus 23% for McCain. That is down considerably from the 40%-plus Bush received in 2004. It’s no longer fair to say that Obama has a problem with Latino voters; McCain does. This was a case of conventional wisdom that was never based on fact, just semi-informed speculation based on primary exit polling and bad stereotypes of Latinos.

Why break such a consistent streak? Media horse race narratives are ALWAYS based on semi-informed speculation and bad stereotypes.

If McCain's tanking in Florida now, then it's only going to get worse after the implications of his call (backed by the entire Republican establishment) for offshore drilling is fully felt. MUCH more on that later.

Nevada's Electoral Jackpot?

Todd Beeton looks at Barack Obama's Western state appeal, and while he agrees that Colorado and New Mexico look pretty good, Nevada may be out of reach.

Polling says otherwise. Rasmussen Reports found Barack Obama trailing John McCain by 6 points last month. Bush won Nevada in 2004 by just 3%. The poll represents a 1 point uptick for McCain in Nevada since April and is a full 11 points worse than Hillary Clinton polled against McCain in the state. Obama is performing this badly at a time when, thanks to the hotly contested caucuses in January, Democratic registration and involvement is up.

Of course, since that Rasmussen poll was there's also been an additional facet to the race: the all-important "the governor's a scumbag adulterer who won't be able to show his face in public and campaign for the ticket" effect.

Gibbons filed for divorce last month, saying he and Dawn were incompatible. Since then, the first couple has brawled over custody of the 23-room governor's mansion. (Dawn finally agreed to sleep in the guesthouse.) She has accused him of cheating. He says "absolutely not."

Gibbons, 63, lacks the looks and charm of a Gavin Newsom or Antonio Villaraigosa -- yet the governor is now trailed like a club-hopping starlet.

The Republican governor has been spotted with his alleged paramour, according to published reports, at a sushi bar and at her daughter's high school play. He escorted another woman to the movie "Sex and the City." A Las Vegas paper posted video of him chatting with a dark-haired woman whose face is mostly obscured. The headline: "Video of governor with 'other woman' surfaces." [...]

Conservative activist Chuck Muth says the governor needs to clean up the mess. "If they get divorced -- this is Nevada, for crying out loud -- it's not a big deal. But a messy divorce, that's trouble for everyone."

The governor won't face voters until 2010 -- a political eternity -- but GOP activists fret that his purported philandering could hurt the party in November. What if fed-up Republicans pare back campaign contributions -- or stay home on election day? That could flip control of the state Senate, where Republicans cling to a slender majority -- or even hand Nevada, which twice voted for President Bush, to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

"You're going to have candidates begging the governor not to come into their district because he'll make things worse," Muth says.

This is alternatively known as the Robert Taft (Ohio Gov. caught up in Coingate) effect. Ohio went completely blue in 2006 because the Governor's troubles impacted every Republican. So too in Nevada, perhaps. Especially since John McCain loves him some nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, which I'm sure Obama will spell out in ads.

Libertarian Nevada doesn't care about a high-profile politician getting divorced and fooling around on the side, but enough people might - social conservatives and Latinos in particular - to flip a very close state. And if Gibbons can't help the state GOP, they're robbed of a valuable asset.

UPDATE: Ooh, text messages.

You know that unidentified estranged wife of a Reno doctor that the governor of Nevada is not having an affair with?

Well, during one month last year he exchanged 850 text messages with her phone from his official state phone, at 15 cents per.

This is going to get worse and really damage the Nevada GOP.

Latinos: Viva Obama!

I think I've said before that if Barack Obama can maintain a big lead among Latino voters, and more importantly, get them out to vote, he can nail down this election. It could give him Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina. Well, he's started nailing it down.

Some Democrats have worried that Latinos view Obama warily and will be drawn to Republican nominee John McCain, who has been popular in that community and has campaigned in it aggressively -- already airing Spanish-language radio ads in the heavily Latino battlegrounds of New Mexico and Nevada.

But there are signs that Obama begins the general election battle for Latinos with significant advantages.

A new Gallup Poll summary of surveys taken in May shows Obama winning 62% of Latino registered voters nationwide, compared with just 29% for McCain. Others have found a wide gap as well. The pro-Democratic group Democracy Corps compiled surveys from March through May that showed Obama with a 19-point lead among Latinos. And a Times poll published last month showed Obama leading McCain among California Latinos by 14 points.

George Bush did quite a bit better than 29% of the Latino vote, and he still barely won. Latinos are now a bigger portion of the electorate, and we already know that African-American turnout is going to peak, with maybe a 96-3 split for Obama on Election Day (and that's a conservative estimate). In an increasingly multicultural America, you can't pull those kind of numbers in those communities and win.

Expect McCain to respond to this by picking some unknown middle-aged white guy as his running mate...

AD-80: Manuel Perez' Statement of Victory

Your next Assemblyman from the 80th District:

Coachella, CA – Early this morning Manuel Perez declared victory in the Democratic primary in the 80th Assembly District. Perez won an overwhelming victory by building a strong multi-ethnic and diverse coalition in Riverside County and Imperial County.

“People power made the difference in this election,” declared Democratic nominee Manuel Perez. “My message of hope and values resonated across both counties as voters yearned for new leadership, new energy and common values.”

Progressives around the state could really learn from this guy. I met Manuel Perez almost a year ago and was really thrilled by the transformative nature of his candidacy, someone who understands the issues facing California but can also put together the progressive argument in a broad and powerful way. Plus he can reach out and help build a new generation of Hispanic leadership in the desert area that will leave its mark long after he's out of the picture. Mark my words, there's a leadership position in this guy's future, sooner rather than later.

The great thing is that the best chance we have for a pickup in November is not a Lou Correa-type Democrat but a real fighter for progressive values. You don't have to be afraid of your beliefs, you can speak to them and win. That's what Perez' victory signifies.

(and a little labor money didn't hurt either)

A Killer Data Point For Obama In The Latest PPIC Poll

(also at Calitics)

The latest PPIC poll, a pretty decent one in California, has Barack Obama leading John McCain by 17 points, 54-37. It's a large sample size including 2003 Californians and 1086 likely voters, so it's a fairly robust poll amongst age groups and ethnicities. And if this data point is correct, Barack Obama looks VERY strong for November.

According to the poll, Obama leads McCain among Hispanics 69-20.

That's a "game over" type of number if it holds.

Cast your memory back to the February primaries, and you may remember that Obama's problem area was not white working-class voters, as they have been so eloquently called, but Hispanics. Much ink was spilled over how Obama couldn't connect with them, how there was all this antipathy between the black and brown communities, and it did manifest itself in the voting, at least in California. Hillary Clinton cleaned up in the heavily Hispanic areas in Southern California. In fact, it made up very nearly all of her delegate and popular vote win in the state. She had the backing of the Latino establishment and worked them extremely hard to get out the vote, which they did in big numbers.

I don't think anybody expected Obama to rebound among these voters this strongly, this soon. But his favorables among Hispanics are right in line with his share of the vote over McCain, at 69%.

It's one poll and it's one data point. But extrapolate it out. The legendary figure is that Hispanics voted 44% for Bush in 2004. That's probably not true - it was probably around 39%. However, that's substantially larger than 20% - and remember that Bush only won by 3 points, and Hispanic voters may be a slightly higher share of the electorate this year.

Again, it's one point in one poll, but if California's Hispanics voted at similar rates to the rest of the country's, then Colorado would be done, New Mexico would be done, Nevada would be close to done, Arizona would be in play, Texas would be in play, North Carolina and Georgia (with growing Hispanic regions) would be in play... you get the picture. Rove's "permanent Republican majority" relied on chipping away at a chunk of Hispanic voters while maintaining the white vote and building the coalition. The fearmongering and demagoguery over immigration reform, even though McCain nominally supported it (until the primary), has tarnished the Republican brand significantly among this subgroup. There's no other explanation for these numbers.

If John McCain gets 20-25% of the Hispanic vote he can't win the election. The highest that Kerry ever polled among Hispanics was 59-31. This is ten points below what Obama's polling in California. This is a bigger lead than Democrats had in 2006 among Hispanics.

I think it's kind of a big deal.

This also calls into question the handwringing about other groups supporting Obama, much of it based on faulty data. If Hispanics came over this quickly, I don't think Obama will have problems with other communities, either.