All posts by David Dayen

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Calitics After-Action Report At CDP E-Board Meeting

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This is something I’m just whipping together on my own.  But based on the feedback on what I’ve been writing about the California Election Day campaign and some additional offline requests, there seems to be a desire to get together at this weekend’s CDP executive board meeting in Anaheim and go over what went right and what went wrong.  So, I’m taking ownership of this.

We can do it on Saturday, though I have no idea when or where.  The meeting is located at:

Sheraton Park Hotel at the Anaheim Resort

1855 S. Harbor Blvd.

Anaheim, CA 92802

I’m looking over the agenda, and the best time would probably be during the social from 5:30-8pm, but I wouldn’t be able to personally attend.  Otherwise, we’d have to do it during committee meetings, caucuses, or lunch.  Lunch might work best, actually, between 12:00-1:30.

I’m making this open-source, so I’ll cede to everyone’s best judgment.  Comment here on when you’d like to do this and if you can attend.  Also what you would like to see covered.  And of course, we’re going to have to find a place for this as well.  There is a coffee shop inside the Sheraton called Cappuccino Cafasia that might work, as well as Molly’s Kitchen, also at the Sheraton.  And there’s an IHOP across the street!

Please get this out to your lists so I can get some feedback.  Thanks.

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A Marriage Equality Movement In Search Of A Campaign

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The numerous issues inside the No on 8 campaign, and their disappointing mismanagement, has finally bubbled up into the traditional media (we were talking about it a week ago).  The SacBee writes about the trouble at the top:

Key staff members – including the campaign manager – were replaced in the final weeks as polls turned dramatically against the No side. Their replacements say they found an effort that was too timid, slow to react, without a radio campaign or a strategy to reach out to African Americans, a group that ultimately supported the measure by more than 2 to 1.

Gay marriage supporters are looking to the courts to overturn the decision. But if another political campaign is waged, said Dennis Mangers, co-chairman of the No on 8 Northern California Committee, “we’ll have to do better.”

No on 8 campaign manager Steve Smith was shoved aside three weeks before Election Day, after he was slow to counter TV ads in which the measure’s supporters claimed that same-sex marriage would be promoted in schools if the measure failed.

And Smith was replaced by a committee – half the consultant class in Sacramento went through the revolving door of that campaign.  And they set about to answer unchallenged ads from the Yes campaign and get on radio.  But the message remained somewhat timid, and the campaign didn’t put much effort into minority outreach or field operations.  Late volunteers were told to go out on a street corner and wave signs.

What’s remarkable is that the best activism and creativity I’ve seen from the LGBT community in years has come in the immediate AFTERMATH of this vote.  The talent was out there, but wasn’t channeled during the campaign.  Activists are using wiki-based technology to set up a national day of action on November 15 called The Impact.  A comedy troup in LA used the Yes campaign’s own words to “advocate” for prohibiting divorce.  And Utah lawmakers are turning the tables on the Mormon church by using their alleged tolerance to make major advances for gay rights in the Beehive State:

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have said they do not object to rights for same-sex couples, as long as those rights do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family.

Now, gay-rights activists and at least five Utah legislators are asking the Church to demonstrate its conviction.

The group Equality Utah says the Church made the invitation, and they’re accepting it. “The LDS Church says it does not oppose same-sex couples receiving such rights as hospitalization and medical care, fair housing rights or probate rights,” said Mike Thompson, executive director of Equality Utah.

These actions are useful to the future of marriage equality nationwide, and could be the backbone of a smarter, more grassroots movement.  Why were they not tapped at all for the No on 8 campaign?

Yesterday, Connecticut granted marriage equality to all its citizens, offering a glimmer of hope.  I am convinced that justice will eventually prevail.  But you have to treat the campaign like a campaign, and use the assets at your disposal.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Wednesday Open Thread

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It is Wednesday.  Here is a list of links.

• Arnold has hired his chiropractor, his dentist and now his nanny to various state boards.  Good thing this guy is nothing like George Bush or we would expect these people to be unqualified!

• The Supreme Court has now stepped into the battle between the Navy and environmentalists, ruling that the Navy can engage in sonar exercises off the California coast that may endanger dolphins, whales and sea lions.  Why courts are arbitrating this case instead of the science is one of the neat little quirks of our system.  But sure, why should the Navy be inconvenienced by moving a few miles off the coast?  Not in the public interest, you see.

• Mountain House, California, particularly Prosperity Street in Mountain House, offers a cautionary tale about how screwed the housing market is:

This town, 59 feet above sea level, is the most underwater community in America.

This week, a real estate office in Tracy, Calif., near Mountain House, was advertising foreclosure sales.

Because of plunging home values, almost 90 percent of homeowners here owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth, according to figures released Monday. That is the highest percentage in the country. The average homeowner in Mountain House is “underwater,” as it is known, by $122,000.

That is really worse than anyone’s projections.  This is going to be a brutal downturn, and the recently upgraded homeowner relief looks to be insufficient.

• DiFi, who may be made chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is striking hard at the most important, festering problem at the soul of our society today – scalped tickets for the inauguration.  But I’m sure that if we were committing torture or illegally wiretapping on Americans or indefinitely detaining prisoners without charges, she’d be all over that, too.

• Gary Miller has been caught with some pretty shady campaign practices again. Well, I take that back, this goes beyond shady:

apparently Congressman Miller paid his “bigger development construction company” a series of 5 payments which equaled $47,360. All this came from his re-election campaign, and when this is taken into perspective, it  amounts to his largest campaign expenditure, 22% of the $218,368 that he raised.(LiberalOC)

• Dan Weintraub, hero of High Broderism.  I love this line: “Will (redistricting) change the world? No.”  The better question is “Will it change anything?”  I love how these guys never look at the actual registration statistics, with all these seats that have changed between 6-8% in party affiliation, when they intone that legislators pick their voters.  Do they pick who changes their registration, who dies and who moves, too?

• Finally, CREDO Mobile is trying to whip legislators to remove John Dingell from the chair of the House Energy Committee and replace him with Henry Waxman.  Which is great, and they personalize the message so that each person receiving their email gets the name of their Congressman on it.  Only, my Congressman is Henry Waxman.  And so my message said “Will you tell Henry Waxman to vote for Henry Waxman for Energy Committee chair?”

I think he can be trusted to do the right thing.

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Echoes Of Failure: Feedback

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I received a lot of feedback on my piece about the disappointing California election results and I want to thank everyone who participated.  A few points:

• The CDP has a version of Neighbor-to-Neighbor called Neighborhood Leader.  The program asks for a commitment from the activist to talk with 25 friends on multiple occasions throughout the year.  I don’t have metrics on it, which would be nice to know, but my suspicion is it needs to be expanded.

• There is a lot of back and forth about the extent of the ground game here in California.  Many have written in to talk about the field operation in key districts and field offices throughout the state.  Some have said that I overlooked this element, including all the doorhangers and phone calls made inside the state.  Others have told me that the calls tried to shoehorn too many messages into one (I did have experiences calling for multiple propositions and a candidate at the same time, which ends up shortchanging all of them) and that the results on the ground in general were unfocused.  And the insistence from some to talk about field elides the point.  Even if I grant that every targeted legislative campaign had the most aggressive and far-reaching field program in American history, the facts are that most of these campaigns lost, and so it’s time to come to terms with the fact that the type of organizing done in the state isn’t working.

• Some have suggested that Democrats, in fact, did not underperform the Presidential ticket in House races, but I think a lot of this is fun with statistics.  Yes, House Democrats in California may have done better than Barack Obama, but that would be because a substantial number of them had token or no competition.  Like 30 out of 53.  While on the chart at the link, it appears that California exceeded the Presidential numbers, the proof is in the lack of pickups despite a 24-point blowout at the top of the ticket.

• Other local organizers have the right idea.  I’m going to reprint this comment in full:

We ran a very intensive and very grassroots effort in Monterey County with more than 1000 volunteers (5 fold increase over 2004) that was by and large successful, got some newcomers into office and saved some progressive incumbents from conservative challengers.

We did all of this without CDP help.

We were offered use of the CDP voter database which in many ways was quite inadequate when it came to mapping and would have costed us money.  We were also offered 1000 doorhangers on Thursday before the election (we have 80,000 Democrats in Monterey County).

Instead we commissioned our own slate mailers and door hangers and mailed and hung 80,0000 and 30,000 respectively in conjunction with the local unions.  We used the VAN through CAVoterConnect for free with great results for us. We were able to manage our volunteers with it and we used it for all of our phone banking and Neighbor-to-Neighbor activities.

Here is what the CDP could have done – and can still do for future campaigns:

Support the VAN and help all local parties get access.  Help integrate State VAN with Obama VAN.

Conduct more capacity building, especially in how to run county-based campaigns, along the lines of Camp Obama but applied to state and local races.

Provide a template for door hangers that local parties can buy into instead of having to go out and design their own.

Work toward a more modular – bottom-up campaign.

Vinz Koller/ Chair/ Monterey County Democratic Party

I particularly want to emphasize the VAN, the California VAN is for some reason not integrated with the DNC’s Votebuilder program, which doesn’t make much sense to me.  There ought to be an effort to clean up all that idea in the off-year to get it ready for 2010.  Votebuilder is simply easier to work with and can be managed by volunteers.  And since there will be off-year elections this year, it can be test run.

• I don’t think I ever blamed the Obama campaign for draining the state of resources, but let me say again that I don’t.  In addition to many of the best volunteers leaving the state, many of the top organizers, including most of labor, left as well.  And Obama’s election was crucially important for a variety of reasons so you can’t blame them.

• Therefore, the biggest thing California Democrats can do to reverse this disturbing trend of the “political trade deficit,” sending money and organization elsewhere and never importing anything, is to argue for and pass the National Popular Vote plan, which would force locals to organize their own communities in a Presidential election.  If the Electoral College were offered as a system today, it would be found to be an unconstitutional violation of the principle of “one person, one vote” as determined by the 14th Amendment.  It shrinks the pool of competitive states down to a geographically significant battleground, and has made California irrelevant – again – as it has been for Presidential races for a generation.  A disruptive change like the National Popular Vote would go a long way to changing how campaigns are conducted in Presidential years in California.

Election 2010

CA-Sen: Houston, We Have A Wingnut

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Despite the expected post-election lull, there is actually a lot of intrigue over various open seats and 2010 prospects happening right now.  Mark Ridley-Thomas’ vacant State Senate seat will draw an election, likely in March, and potential gubernatorial candidates are jockeying for position (much more on that in the weeks to come).  But there’s also the matter of the 2010 Senate race against Barbara Boxer.  The ongoing rumor was that Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is termed out in 2010, might go after this seat.  However, being a complete failure as Governor has dampened that speculation somewhat.  So into the breach has stepped… Chuck DeVore?

Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore will announce Wednesday that he will run for U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat in 2010.

DeVore, R-Irvine, is declaring his candidacy just one week after winning his third and final term in the 70th Assembly District, representing Laguna Beach, Irvine, Newport Beach, Tustin and other portions of Orange County.

DeVore has scheduled an Internet news conference at 1 p.m. Wednesday to make the announcement. He confirmed his intention Tuesday in a phone conversation with Capitol Alert.

Now, Chuck DeVore is, frankly, crazy, and there’s blogospheric evidence to back up that opinion.  I don’t think I have to cite much more than his opposition to marriage equality because it would embolden NAMBLA.

DeVore, well-liked by hard-right conservatives, is a down-the-line Yacht Party regular, in a state where the last statewide election favored the Democrat by 24 points.  The lesson learned by Republicans, I guess, is to “go boldly in the direction of the insane.”  I’ll say this – it will be an entertaining race.

UPDATE: Chris Prevatt at The Liberal OC has Chuck’s letter of intent.  

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Budget

LAO Report: Arnold, Time To Fix The VLF

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As the special session gets underway, the new “Budget Nun” Mac Taylor, and since it’s a he this time I think we’ll go with “Budget Priest”, has released an overview of the Governor’s proposals.  The first thing that pops out is we now have a new shortfall number: $28 billion for the next 20 months, and an unsustainable long-term deficit thereafter.

State Faces $27.8 Billion Shortfall. We concur with the administration’s assessment that the state’s struggling economy signals a major reduction in expected revenues. Combined with rising state expenses, we project that the state will need $27.8 billion in budget solutions over the next 20 months.

Long-Term Outlook Similarly Bleak. The state’s revenue collapse is so dramatic and the underlying economic factors are so weak that we forecast huge budget shortfalls through 2013?14 absent corrective action. From 2010?11 through 2013?14, we project annual shortfalls that are consistently in the range of $22 billion, as shown below.

Overall, Taylor is generally supportive of the Administration’s proposals for closing the gap, but I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the Governor is finally using realistic numbers and not employing any borrowing gimmicks.  Compared to the 2008-09 budget, this is extremely welcome.  However, Taylor makes the point that a short-term increase in the sales tax cannot possibly be the backbone of a long-term solution, and three years out we’d still see deficits in the range of $9-11 billion.  Instead, he offers a couple points.  First is one that I’ve been making a lot, that California needs to lobby hard for state and local government relief in the second stimulus package:

In the coming months, there is a good chance that Congress will pass economic stimulus measures in an effort to boost the national economy. In the past, some components of such measures have directly provided state fiscal relief. To date, the administration has not built any estimates of such relief into its budget numbers.  For the time being, this is appropriately cautious to avoid counting on relief that may never come.  The state, however, should continue to press the federal government for economic stimulus measures that will provide California with flexible fiscal relief. While such relief would not solve the state’s budget problem, it could provide several billions of dollars in budgetary solutions.

(While we’re at it, we could also recoup the $2 billion giveaway to Wells Fargo precipitated by the Treasury Department illegally changing the tax code to allow banks to avoid corporate taxes.  Any California Congresscritters want to hop right on that?)

He also rightly notes that the Governor’s tax proposals are regressive in nature, and offers one final solution – fix the VLF that you broke as your first act in Sacramento.

Alternative Program Realignment. As noted above, raising the VLF tax rate to 1 percent has merit from a tax policy perspective. If the Legislature made it the foundation of a program realignment with local governments, programmatic outcomes could be improved as well. Under this approach, $1.6 billion of state criminal justice and mental health programs could be realigned to counties and supported by (1) the revenues raised by the increase in the VLF rate and (2) most of the VLF fee revenues currently retained for administrative purposes by the DMV. By consolidating these program responsibilities at the county level, and giving counties significant program control and an ongoing revenue stream, we think California could achieve greater program outcomes and significant budgetary savings.

You can see the total savings chart at the end of this PDF, but clearly the VLF raise is the big story here.  The LA Times picked it up as a news story and also on their op-ed page today.  For those who counter that the VLF is just as regressive as the sales tax, it doesn’t have to be.

Right now the VLF is a flat rate on the assessed value of a vehicle, which is based on its purchase price and a fixed schedule of depreciation (basically 10% per year). It’s true that if all you did was raise the VLF to its old rate of 2% it would remain about as regressive as a sales tax (see Table 5 here), but that’s not the only way you can do it. Unlike a sales tax, which needs to be a flat rate for administrative reasons, the VLF could easily vary by assessed value. It could stay at its current rate of 0.65% up to, say, $10,000 in assessed value, increase to 2% for more expensive cars, and increase still further to 4% for top end cars. The average rate would still be about 2%, but the incidence of the tax would be more progressive.

You can also build progressivity into the VLF by having it function as a carbon tax, essentially. You could set the VLF at a higher rate for cars that produce greater emissions, and at a lower rate for cars that are cleaner. As California is about to get a waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions under the Clean Air Act in a new Obama Administration, they would certainly be empowered to do so.

This is a repudiation of the very issue Schwarzenegger ran on in 2003.  We’ll see if he’s inclined to own up to his mistake.

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The Future of the Marriage Equality Movement

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The mass of outrage and activism that has welled up in the wake of California’s passage of Prop. 8 will I think eventually be healthy.  It’s a testament to the failure of the No on 8 campaign that they were unable to channel this energy before the vote, but often it takes a disruptive outcome like this to make it happen.  And I think people are finally starting to ask the right questions and move from lashing out in anger to a more mature response befitting the message of equality.  The scattered instances of racial intolerance were harmful and unnecessary, especially given that, based on the exit poll data, there was no one ethnic group that deserved to be targeted (Republicans who crossed over to vote for Obama made up a far larger portion of the Prop. 8 coalition than African-Americans).  The various proposed boycotts (how could the owner of LA’s El Coyote donate to Yes on 8?  Given their clientele that’s unthinkable) and individual actions are natural outgrowths of a movement like this and they have their place, but at least someone is making sure that the actual culprits get mentioned in all of this.

What is odd about the loss of family rights for California’s gay and lesbians is that the losing old school campaign was built while the rules of campaigning where being demonstrably rewritten by the Obama campaign.

The Obama campaign’s success was built upon not ceding territory to old myths on Latinos, African Americans, and young voters. The myth that Latinos would never vote for an African American was debunked by the Obama campaign, the idea of low voter turnout among African Americans and young people was also debunked. But in addition to ignoring basic myths on minority voting behavior, the Obama campaign knew that it had to still work hard to get the electoral results they wanted. They waged a campaign to win the votes and turnout model they needed.

At the end of the day, Prop. 8 was still a campaign and it needed to maximize its potential, which it clearly did not do.  Many on this site have asked the right questions and will continue to do so.

As for the next steps, this is not, in my view, about patiently waiting back and hoping that the younger generation will reverse the decision at some unspecified point in the future.  It’s about sustained effort on a variety of fronts.  It is quite heartening to see 44 members of the California Legislature offer an amicus brief to the State Supreme Court on behalf of marriage equality in the ongoing lawsuit to invalidate the constitutional amendment.  There are a lot of politicians on our side.  

The spontaneous protests and marches can actually be a way to harness the energy if they are handled properly.  I think The Impact, a series of protests organized on a distributed model in California and in every state in America, is exactly what is needed.  This is actually quite promising and would move this seamlessly into an issue of civil rights.  Ultimately, there is a future for equality.  There always is.

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Quick Update On Close Races

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Unfortunately the news is not good.  In CA-04, Charlie Brown has fallen behind of Tom McClintock by 1,092 votes, with still over 52,000 left to count.  In CA-44, the number is now 5,896 votes separating Ken Calvert and Bill Hedrick.  Both are trending away.  In AD-10, Jack Sieglock now has a 614-vote lead on Alyson Huber.  Only in SD-19 are we still on top, with Hannah-Beth Jackson leading Tony Strickland by 1,203 votes, which is exactly where the race was over the weekend.

A roundup of the close races at a glance is here.  And you can help defray the costs of the lawyers to watch the counts and the staffs to support them at the Calitics ActBlue page.

UPDATE by Brian: Strickland has now taken a small lead over Hannah-Beth (178920 to 178380) after a bunch of votes came in from Ventura County. Frank Russo has the story. There are still a bunch of votes to count though.

Environment

Obama Adminstration Prepares To Hand California A Gamechanger On Climate Change

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Among the many executive orders that Barack Obama will seek to overturn to rack up some quick victories at the beginning of his term, none may have a more lasting impact than granting the waiver to California to regulate their tailpipe emissions.

The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration’s decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. “Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer,” Obama said in January.

California had sought permission from the Environmental Protection Agency to require that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles be cut by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, effectively mandating that cars achieve a fuel economy standard of at least 36 miles per gallon within eight years. Seventeen other states had promised to adopt California’s rules, representing in total 45 percent of the nation’s automobile market. Environmentalists cheered the California initiative because it would stoke innovation that would potentially benefit the entire country.

“An early move by the Obama administration to sign the California waiver would signal the seriousness of intent to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and build a future for the domestic auto market,” said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

There are two reasons this is a major change.  One, by granting that carbon dioxide emissions threaten human welfare, you open up a whole toolkit of innovative policy choices to follow to restrict them.  Cap and trade or a carbon tax becomes not just a policy option but a madate under the EPA.  The second, as noted in the article, is that dozens of states will seek to follow the California ruling on tailpipe emissions over the federal government.  And once you have 45% of the market mandating a higher fuel efficiency standard, it is unlikely that automakers will create a secondary market at the lower standard.  You will have raised the CAFE number by default.

All of this is a recognition that the dangers of global warming is real, and that an Obama Administration will not stand in the way of sound science that declares the danger and seeks to mitigate it.  For all of the effort by polluters to save John Dingell’s chairmanship from the clutches of Henry Waxman (and they’re enlisting all the legislators they’ve bought off to that end), this executive order would have lots of reach regardless who controls global warming legislation in the Congress.  It would mean that California can control its own destiny and regulate its own air.  It will force innovation and create economic opportunity and improve public health and possibly save lives.

And it’s all a stroke of the pen away.

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CA-03: I Know, Let’s Put A Threatened Incumbent In Charge

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This is hilarious:

California Rep. Dan Lungren is considering a challenge to House Minority Leader John Boehner for his leadership position.

Several House conservatives have courted Lungren in the past two days, seeking change in leadership after demoralizing losses in Tuesday’s election and two years of tussling with Boehner over earmarks, spending and most recently the $700 billion financial rescue package.

I know that Republicans are deeply in denial and all, but Dan Lungren?  He didn’t break 50% in his Congressional election on Tuesday, winning by only 13,700 votes, and if anything, the district is trending away from him.  The registration advantage is a thin 2.2%, and after two years of more organizing that’s likely to be even.  And Bill Durston is going to run for a third time in 2010.

Republicans in Democratic-trending districts often win by making few waves in Washington and running away from party ID.  There is absolutely no chance that a House Minority Leader could do that.  He’d be well-known to the district and the nation.  Whether successful or not, every Democrat and Democratic-leaning independent would know where Dan Lungren stands on the issues.  There wouldn’t be any low-information voters left.  And national groups would be encouraged to knock off the Republican leader in the House.  Remember that Durston got pretty much no meaningful help from any progressive organization in 2008 and still managed a close 5-point loss, improving his position by 13 points from one election to the next.

Please, oh please, Republican caucus, do this.  Let’s see Dan Lungren have two years in the spotlight before we knock him out.