"Turning the Tide in Ohio" a Campaigns & Elections post by by Dennis Willard & Melissa Fazekas about the successful campaign to defeat Governor Kasich's assault on collective bargaining for public workers features an in-depth discussion of "how social media helped amplify our message, boost earned media efforts, and overturn an Ohio law."

According to Gabriella Schwarz CNN.com post "Poll: Obama leads GOP candidates in Virginia," in the latest Quinnipiac Poll of registered voters, "President Barack Obama edged out Mitt Romney in a hypothetical general election match-up in Virginia, according to a new poll. ...Obama captured 47% to Romney's 43%, a wider margin than the two percentage point difference in the December results. But Romney fared better than his GOP rivals in the likely swing state....Obama led Newt Gingrich 51% to 37%, Rick Santorum 49% to 41% and Ron Paul 47% to 40%."

The same poll has former DNC Chairman Tim Kaine in a statistical tie with George Allen in the U.S. Senate race. "Kaine's standing in the Senate race will almost certainly be tied to Virginia's view of the president," according to Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. This is a high priority race for the GOP, and Dems can help Kaine at his Act Blue page.

When the best Romney can do with a Pawlenty endorsement in MN (his home state), is a humiliating defeat, as Ben Jacobs notes at the Daily Beast, it's probably a safe bet that TimPaw is not going to be seen as much of a veep asset on the GOP ticket.

As the 10th most populous state (close to tied with NC and NJ), Georgia is the biggest prize on Super Tuesday (March 6), and it's a must-win for Newt, who never won a state-wide race in his former home state. (Gingrich now lives in VA, where he failed to qualify for the primary ballot). In 2008, 60 percent of GA GOP voters were white evangelicals. Romney and Santorum are reportedly planning join the fray in GA.

Sara Kiff of Ezra Klein's Wonkblog explains why the white house is prepared to hang tough on supporting health care coverage of contraceptives. "A poll out Tuesday from the Public Religion Research Institute finds 52 percent of Catholic voters agreed with the statement, "employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost." That's pretty much in line with overall support for the provision, which hovers at 55 percent - likely because Catholics use contraceptives at rates similar to the rest of Americans." Kiff reports that 60 percent of young voters and women support the measure.

E.J. Dionne's WaPo op-ed, "Clint, Rick and the limits of pessimism" spotlights Rove's blunder in criticizing Clint Eastwood for making a highly popular ad celebrating America's moxie, as symptomatic of the GOP's rut -- "a constant doubling-down on glumness."

Harold Meyerson has some fun with his WaPo op-ed "The GOP scrambles for a bogeyman," holding the Republicans to account for their Europe-bashing as a way to trash President Obama. Meyerson asks Republicans, "If Europe is not a "free land," why are we still in NATO? If Europe is home to the pernicious bureaucratic authoritarianism that Romney and Gingrich claim, why haven't Republicans called for breaking our alliances with it? Why do we have close ties to Germany, where workers have considerable input into corporate decisions? Or to Britain, the home of national health? Is Europe friend or foe?"

TV still rules as the primary source for political news, according to TPM's Kyle Leighton, who explains of a new survey: "The Pew study also shows that there is certainly overlap between those who watch newscasts and seek information online. Two thirds of Americans get their news either "regularly" or "sometimes" from cable, nearly the same as those who go to local television news, and 61 percent that look to the national nightly broadcasts for the same. About 52 percent say the regularly or sometimes go to the internet, and with 32 percent saying they never do.."

Another week, another set of primaries--and soon enough, undoubtedly, another cascade of speculations about the prospect of a brokered convention. Predictions of an unpredictable fight-to-the-finish have become an unfortunate refrain--not to say, cliché--of our presidential election campaigns.

Enough! I hate to be the one to have to break it to my fellow political junkies, but the truth must be told: Not only isn't there going to be no brokered convention this year--there probably isn't going to be a brokered convention ever again.

For starters, there's a reason it hasn't happened in either party since the advent of the modern nomination system in 1972. With virtually all delegates being selected in scheduled primaries and caucuses, there are no longer any blocs of uncommitted or "favorite-son," or machine-controlled delegates who can prevent a front-runner from accumulating a majority well before the convention. All the great "smoke-filled room" conventions--including the classic 1920 GOP session in Chicago which gave America a Harding administration, and the 1924 Democratic convention that required 103 ballots--occurred when primaries were marginal events that mainly consisted in influencing the party bosses who controlled a sizable majority of delegates.

The only way to produce a "deliberative" convention now--barring some cataclysmic event like the death, disability, or disqualification of the putative nominee--is via an extended primary season in which multiple candidates remain viable to the bitter end. Sure, it could happen, but only theoretically. Candidates on the edge of elimination often say they will stay in the contest until the bitter end (as noted in my last column on Gingrich's actual odds of victory), but they typically don't, because they quickly realize they've lost the media attention and the financial donors that they need to win primaries and delegates in significant numbers.

One element of confusion that has entered the conversation this year is the supposed adoption of "proportionality" in Republican delegate allocation rules, which, it is argued, will make it harder for front-runners to lock down a majority of delegates. As Davidson College's Josh Putnam has explained repeatedly, while the first-ever intervention in state delegate selection systems by the RNC this cycle is a big deal, the actual changes in these systems required in 2012 are actually pretty small: states holding binding primaries and caucuses prior to April 1 cannot award delegates according to statewide winner-take-all procedures. But they can award (and one state, South Carolina, has already awarded) delegates by congressional district winner-take-all rules, which are a long way from "proportional" representation at the convention. Moreover, after April 1, the rules are exactly the same as before. In short, there hasn't been any procedural revolution that has made a "brokered convention" more likely.

Another largely false issue is the scenario whereby a "late entry" candidate jumps into the primaries and hoovers up delegates in sufficient numbers to deny Romney a majority. Primary filing deadlines have now passed for nearly all the primaries before mid-April, with new deadlines popping up every week. As the failure of Newt Gingrich to get on the ballot in Virginia has shown, even well-established candidates often struggle to meet complex filing conditions. There is nobody out there who is going to jump in late and have enough general support to leap the barriers to entry; all the "white knights" usually mentioned--Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, etc.--didn't run for very good reasons (Bush's surname; Daniels' "truce" insult to social conservatives; Christie's various ideological heresies, from abortion to gun rights).

Finally, it's worth examining the actual resistance to Mitt Romney's nomination that is the essential premise for most of the "brokered convention" scenarios. Certainly he is not the ideal candidate for most conservative activists. But it is remarkable how few of them have failed to pledge allegiance to him if he does win the nomination. And he remains relatively popular among GOP voters: a NBC-Wall Street Journal survey of Republican voters taken well before the Florida primary, showing Gingrich leading Romney nationally, also showed Mitt with a better favorable/unfavorable ratio than Newt.

And even if you buy my learned TNR colleague Walter Shapiro's idea that Gingrich could yet make a comeback and smite Romney in later primaries, that's not the same as suggesting a "brokered convention" is likely. Should Newt somehow romp in February, March and April, then he might well romp all the way to the nomination, leaving Romney in the dust.

As still another TNR regular, Jonathan Bernstein, has noted, a "brokered convention" depends on "brokers." Party leaders have a lot of ways to influence the selection of delegates in the primaries, but beyond that, their powers are limited. In the extremely unlikely event no winner heads to Tampa with a majority of delegates, we are looking not at a "brokered" convention, but a "deadlock" where the actual delegates, once their legal and moral commitments are discharged, can do what they want. "Brokering" is much too tame a metaphor for what would take place in that scenario. It would be a lot more like herding feral cats. Fortunately, it probably won't--no, it definitely won't--come to that.

The votes in MN, CO and MO were two caucuses and a beauty contest, respectively, and the turnout was low in all three. It is tempting to dismiss their results entirely, except that these are swing states and Santorum did win them all. They may signal some movement in his direction. It's nothing for Dems to lose sleep over yet, since Santorum's views are pretty extreme across the spectrum of major issues.

Santorum does defend conservative economic policies more artfully than do his competitors for the GOP nod, which is why he has done better with blue collar voters in his congressional and senatorial elections than have most Republicans. He has on occasion supported causes championed by labor, such as a minimum wage hike and steel tariffs, and he has been the GOP field's most vocal advocate of re-invigorating U.S. manufacturing.

But his smokescreen defenses of more tax breaks for the rich, de-regulation, partial privatization of social security and draconian cuts in social programs are not likely to hold up well under the light of increasingly intense national scrutiny. It is even harder to see how his extremist views on social issues, which include criticism of contraception, won't alienate millions of swing voters, particularly Republicans of a libertarian bent. And he is not exactly 'Mr. Clean' when it comes to coddling with lobbyists.

Still, Santorum's three wins make a case that he can generate some excitement with the conservative base, which is a good quality in a veep candidate. He just might be able to help Romney in PA, as well as with Catholic blue collar voters in general. He has earned a spot on the veep short list.

Newt wasn't on the ballot in MO Tuesday. And his weak showings in CO (3rd) and MN (4th) suggest that his widely-ridiculed Occupy the Moon proposal may have damaged his chances. (Memo to Newt: Not every brain fart should be loudly trumpeted).

Santorum's Fat Tuesday does nothing to dismiss the mounting evidence that the GOP field -- each candidate included -- is so flawed that their nominee will likely need a sudden economic downturn or some other disaster to get traction against the incumbent. At the very least, Santorum has increased the odds that the GOP field of presidential candidates is in for a long, grueling slog, while President Obama uses the opportunity raise money and shore up his coalition.

So, one more time. There is no Santa Clause, no Easter Bunny, no tooth-fairy and there are no 'independent voters.' There are swing voters. There are political moderates. There are Reagan Democrats and other voters who sometimes vote for different parties. But over 90 percent of self-identified 'independents' lean Democratic or Republican, according to Alan I. Abramowitz, author of "The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy." The term has little useful meaning, other than serving as a feel-good, catch-all category for Democratic and Republican voters who can't bear to identify themselves as such.

Jamelle Bouie sheds light on the phenomenon in his American Prospect post, "New Name, Same Old Thing.":

Among political scientists, it's well known that the "independent voter" is a myth. When pressed, the large majority of voters lean Democratic or Republican and tend to vote like partisans, consistently supporting their party of choice. The only difference between a strong partisan and a "weak partisan leaner" is that the latter are reluctant--for whatever reason--to place themselves in one camp or the other...Over the last few years, this myth of the independent voter has taken hold among political journalists and others outside of academia.

Bouie provides a painful example of the delusion, which you can read if you want to at his link above, then has this to say about the so-called "Obama independents":

"Obama Independents" fit the profile of a Democratic-leaning voter, who might defect from the party in GOP wave years, but for the most part chooses the name with "D" next to it when in the voting booth...There's no need to hype Obama Independents as some new segment of the electorate, and indeed, the entire exercise is a little banal. Of course the Democratic presidential candidate needs to win a large majority of Democratic voters to win the presidency. That's just how it goes.

The overwhelming majority of 'independents' are Republican and Democratic "leaners," while swing voters and moderates will remain the more relevant categories for political analysis.

Some time ago, I suggested that the 2012 election would hinge on three variables: the identity of the Republican nominee, the thrust of the Obama campaign's reelection strategy, and the progress of the economy. While the first two have come into focus, the third presents a puzzle, because recent economic reports are not consistent with the forecasts for 2012. This is an analytical distinction that makes a political difference: If the forecasts are right, history suggests that the president's reelection prospects are dicey at best. But if recent economic progress is sustained through the remainder of 2012, he's an odds-on favorite to win a second term.

The January 2012 employment report highlighted this contradiction. Just last week, the Federal Reserve Board lowered its estimate of real GDP growth for 2012 to a range of 2.2 to 2.7 percent, and it raised its estimate of unemployment to a range of 8.2 to 8.5 percent. But according to the January BLS report, the economy generated 243,000 jobs last month alone, lowering the official unemployment rate to 8.3 percent.

A single month can be an aberration, of course. But the pace of job generation over the past few months is not consistent with the tepid growth the Fed is predicting. If the Fed turns out to be right, monthly job growth should fall below 150,000 and stay there, and unemployment will be no lower at the end of the year than it is today.

From one perspective, it's not hard to understand the trend. As often happens, productivity rose sharply as soon as the Great Recession bottomed out--from 0.6 percent in 2008 to 2.3 percent in 2009 and 4.1 percent in 2010. But in the year just ended, productivity fell sharply, to only 0.7 percent. At that pace, even modest growth will generate substantial increases in total hours worked and net job creation. Still, productivity would have to fall even farther for the recent pace of employment growth to be sustained--that it, unless the Fed, the IMF, and the OECD are all too pessimistic about the next twelve months.

There's something else going on: The labor force participation rate, which stood at 66.2 percent as the recession began four years ago, has declined by two and one half percentage points, to only 63.7 percent in the most recent report. If Americans were still working or looking for work at the rate of four years ago, 6 million more would be in the labor force, and unemployment would be much higher. Even a year ago, the rate was a point higher, suggesting that today's labor force is about 750 thousand persons smaller than it would be if last year's modest participation rate had remained unchanged.

Politically, though, these analytical details probably don't make much difference. If the labor market continues to move forward at anything close to last month's pace, the fourth quarter of 2011 may go down as the key inflection point of Obama's presidency. If the Fed is right--if headwinds from housing, high debt, a weakened Europe, and slowdowns in the developing world restrain U.S. growth--it will turn out to be yet another false dawn. Either way, if the time you can devote to political news between now and November is limited, focus more on economic reports than on public opinion surveys.

In 2008, Obama carried a combined 80 percent of minority voters; the ABC/Washington Post survey shows him drawing 81 percent of non-white voters against Romney (who attracts just 14 percent).

In 2008, Obama carried 43 percent of whites, while McCain won 55 percent of them. The new survey shows Romney leading Obama among whites 53 percent to 42 percent. The ABC/Post poll shows Obama holding his ground both among whites with and without a college education. In 2008, Obama won 40 percent of non-college whites, while 58 percent of them voted for McCain. In the new survey, those working-class whites-the toughest audience for Obama throughout his national career-break in virtually identical proportions: 56 percent for Romney, 39 percent for the president."

Brownstein describes it as "a modest, but important, rebound for Obama's job approval rating among those non-college whites," and he quotes Greg Sargent: "Obama's approval rating among these [blue-collar] voters is 43-54. While those numbers don't appear too good at first glance...This is his best level among non-college whites since early last year (excluding the post-Bin Laden bump), and they are far better than they were at their lowest point in 2010, when Democrats suffered massive desertions among this constituency." Obama also matches and slightly improves on his '08 percentage of college-educated whites. Further, adds Brownstein:

Viewed through a partisan lens, the ABC/Post survey shows Obama winning 85 percent of Democrats (compared to 89 percent in 2008), 8 percent of Republicans (compared to 9 percent) and 48 percent of independents (up from 44 percent). One other convergence is worth noting. In the ABC/Post poll, Obama has essentially restored the advantage among moderates that he enjoyed against McCain. In 2008, Obama carried 60 percent of moderates; the new survey puts him at 59 percent against Romney. (In the new poll, Obama runs slightly ahead of his 2008 number among conservatives and slightly behind it among liberals, two trends that might not last in the heat of an ideologically-polarized campaign.)

Brownstein concedes that "The gains might be temporary, driven by the confluence of good economic news and a highly bruising period in the Republican presidential primary that has sent Romney's unfavorable ratings soaring in recent weeks." Yet Brownstein also argues that Obama "could win a national majority with as little as 40 percent of the white vote...he can give back some of the terrain he's recaptured in this latest survey - and still hold the high ground in November."

Ronald Brownstein has a sobering analysis for those who think President Obama will have a cakewalk election in November: "Political strategists used to believe that incumbents were unlikely to win elections (or carry states) where their approval rating lagged below 50 percent; but given the widespread cynicism about politicians many strategists on both sides believe the tipping point is now around 47 percent. Below that number, incumbents are a distinct underdog; above it, they are favored, with the ground tilting much more toward them once they cross 50 percent...the number of states Obama can plausibly contest to reach 270 Electoral College votes is narrowing." On the upside, Brownstein notes that Obama is "generally polling above his approval ratings in head-to-head match-ups against the leading Republican contenders-who have seen their favorability ratings decline amid their fierce primary struggle."

Punditty at Allvoices.com has a somewhat sunnier take on Obama's prospects: "According to poll figures available Feb. 3, 2012, at Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, President Obama leads in 20 states when the three most recent polls for that state are averaged, giving him 259 electoral votes of the 270 needed to win re-election. The unnamed GOP opponent is ahead in 15 states for 106 electoral votes, with 136 electoral votes rated as tossups and 37 electoral votes lack enough data to reach a conclusion."

AP's Ken Thomas assesses prospects for a long GOP campaign, and also sees a tough struggle for Dems: "A Gallup survey showed Obama's approval ratings dropping in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, all critical to his re-election. In New Hampshire, which Obama carried in 2008, he had an approval rating of about 38 percent...Adding to the concerns, the Congressional Budget Office estimated this week that the economy would grow only 2 percent this year. It also predicted an unemployment rate of 8.9 percent on Election Day."

In his post on "The 50 Percent Problem" at The Hill, Democratic consultant Mark Mellman takes an instructive look at the relationship between presidential approval ratings and reelection prospects, and notes "Professor Alan Abramowitz's statistical model suggests that a 1-point increase in the president's net approval rating leads to a 0.1 percent increase in vote -- meaningful, but hardly the perfect correlation implied by the 50 percent rule...So based on all the data, what can we say about approval ratings and presidential votes? In short, presidents with approval ratings below 43 percent are quite likely to lose, while those over 55 percent are very likely to win. In between, where President Obama now stands, is the zone of uncertainty...

Charlie Cook sees a significant uptick in President Obama's prospects: "My feeling for much of the past year was that Obama's reelection chances were distinctly uphill. Today, I am not so sure. I see it as more of an evenly matched fight, something borne out by a USA Today/Gallup survey of the key battleground states showing essentially a tie."

As if the GOP doesn't have enough internecine conflict, Karl Rove picks a fight with Clint Eastwood for doing a patriotic "Yea America" ad cheering on Big Auto's comeback -- just because it indirectly calls attention to the fact that President Obama's initiative -- which Romney opposed -- saved America's most pivotal industry. Hard to see any political upside for Rove's whine, which has undoubtedly increased the ad's hittage, now at over 2.7 million and counting.

Republicans shot themselves in the other foot with a different Super Bowl ad deploying a demeaning racial stereotype to defeat Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow (MI). The denunciations are rolling in. As Republican consultant Mike Murphy swiftly tweeted his verdict Sunday night: "Pete Hoekstra Superbowl TV ad in MI Senate race really, really dumb. I mean really." Hoekstra still supports the ad, which was produced by the same wizard who did the 'Demon Sheep' ad for Carly Fiorina in her losing Senate campaign in CA. and Christine O'Donnell's "I'm You" spot in her losing U.S. senate campaign in DE.

The buzz is increasing, even in conservative circles, that Dems may indeed retake the House, mostly because of the growing perception that Republicans are responsible for Washington gridlock, reports WaPo's Aaron Blake.

Big shift in Obama campaign fund-raising strategy, as Michael O'Brien reports at MSNBC First Read: "Obama campaign manager Jim Messina emailed supporters to formally endorse contributions to Priorities USA, the Democratic super PAC founded by Bill Burton, a former White House deputy press secretary. "With so much at stake, we can't allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm," Messina wrote on the campaign's blog. "Therefore, the campaign has decided to do what we can, consistent with the law, to support Priorities USA in its effort to counter the weight of the GOP Super PAC."

Lest you thought that the GOP voter suppression campaign was finally flagging, the Virginia News Leader reports that "there are at least 17 bills flowing through the Virginia General Assembly that make voting more difficult...Those "Voter Integrity" bills are generally the work of Republicans."

George Wagner's op-ed in the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel, "Today's GOP Vacates the Center," presents some interesting data about the primary source of current political polarization and paralysis: "...Over the last generation, the Republican Party has drifted much farther to the right than Democrats have moved to the left. Political scientists Howard Rosenthal and Keith T. Poole cite legislative voting records over the past 35 years. By creating a widely used measurement that reveals the ideology of congressional members, U.S. Senate Republicans moved twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left; and House Republicans moved six times farther to the right than their Democratic colleagues move to the left...It's really been a one-sided shift. The polarization that the electorate decries has been caused mostly by the GOP.

...The redistricting process has changed the political complexion of North Carolina, as Republicans attempt to turn this racially integrated swing state into a GOP bastion, with white Republicans in the majority and black Democrats in the minority for the next decade...Before this year, for example, there were no Senate districts with a BVAP [black voting age population] of 50 percent or higher. Now there are nine. A lawsuit filed by the NAACP and other advocacy groups calls the redistricting maps "an intentional and cynical use of race that exceeds what is required to ensure fairness to previously disenfranchised racial minority voters."

...The consequences of redistricting in North Carolina--one of the most important swing states in the country--could determine who controls Congress and the presidency in 2012. Democrats hold seven of the state's thirteen Congressional seats, but after redistricting they could control only three--the largest shift for Republicans at the Congressional level in any state this year..."GOP candidates could win just over half of the statewide vote for Congress and end up with 62 percent to 77 percent of the seats," found John Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation.

...And it's not just happening in North Carolina. In virtually every state in the South, at the Congressional and state level, Republicans--to protect and expand their gains in 2010--have increased the number of minority voters in majority-minority districts represented overwhelmingly by black Democrats while diluting the minority vote in swing or crossover districts held by white Democrats. "What's uniform across the South is that Republicans are using race as a central basis in drawing districts for partisan advantage," says Anita Earls, a prominent civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice.... Four years after the election of Barack Obama, which offered the promise of a new day of postracial politics in states like North Carolina, Republicans are once again employing a Southern Strategy that would make Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater proud.

...Though public dissatisfaction with GOP members of Congress is at an all-time high, Republican dominance of the redistricting process could prove an insurmountable impediment to Democratic hopes of retaking the House, where the GOP now has a fifty-one-seat edge. Speaker of the House John Boehner predicts that the GOP's redistricting advantage will allow the party to retain control of the House, perhaps for the next decade.

Last Friday the GOP had a really bad day. It didn't come in the form of new polling results -- or some new political scandal. It was delivered to them by the economic statistics:

Private sector jobs up 243,000 -- almost 100,000 more than expected.

Unemployment rate down to 8.3 percent.

Twenty-three straight months of private sector jobs growth.

But you say, this is not bad news -- this is good news. Not for the GOP and its chances of ousting President Obama, seizing control of the Senate or maintaining its majority in the House.

As Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell made ever so clear early last year, the Republican Leadership -- and their backers on Wall Street -- have one and only one goal: to defeat President Obama next fall. To do that, the GOP is betting against the American economy.

For the last two years they have done everything in their power to slow America's recovery from the greatest economic meltdown since the Great Depression.

They have opposed virtually every element of the president's American Jobs Act.

They brought the economy to the brink by threatening that they wouldn't allow America to pay its bills during the debt ceiling standoff last year.

They tried their best to prevent extension of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits that are so critical to maintaining buying power momentum as the economy begins to pick up speed.

And, of course, they advocate returning to the regulatory and fiscal policies that caused the Great Recession in the first place.

But the most significant thing they have done to stall the economic recovery has been their refusal to continue federal aid to state and local government.

In the last 23 months, the economy has created 3.7 million new private sector jobs. But during the same period, it has created only 3.165 net total jobs. That is because government -- mainly state and local government -- laid off a net of about 535,000 people.

If the Republicans in Congress had not refused to continue providing aid to state and local governments, it is likely that unemployment would be in the mid 7 percent range and the economy as a whole would have at least another half million jobs.

Beneath the turbulent political spectacle that has captured so much of the nation's attention lies a more important question than who will get the Republican nomination, or even who will win in November: Will we have a democratic election this year? Will the presidential election reflect the will of the people? Will it be seen as doing so--and if not, what happens?...

Drew goes on with a disturbing account of the ramifications of the Citizens United decision, noting that,

The 2012 election has been virtually taken over by Super PACs; the amounts they are spending are far outstripping expenditures by the candidates' campaigns....Though unions will play a part in campaign financing, they simply don't have the resources that thousands of corporations have. A billionaire with a strong affection for a specific candidate no longer has to go through a party organization or a group organized around an issue to offer financial support--the women's advocacy group Emily's List, for instance, or the pro-business Club for Growth. The candidates and the Super PACs formed for the purpose of supporting them are ostensibly barred from collaboration; the candidates must not "request, suggest, or assent" to an ad taken by a Super PAC on his behalf, which leaves a lot of possibilities for means of communication between them, and this year's Super PACs are noteworthy for the extent of the interlocking relationships between the candidates and those who run the Super PACs on their behalf. The election of 2012 has introduced a new kind of politics into American life.

...Numerous people and organizations have tried to figure out how to get rid of them, and though there is no ready solution, there are numerous efforts to find ways to overcome the inestimable damage done by Citizens United. Responsible and irresponsible solutions have been proposed.

...Citizens are now faced with evidence of the growing power of organized moneyed interests in the electoral system at the same time that the nation is more aware than ever that the inequality among income groups has grown dramatically and economic difficulties are persistent. This is a dangerous brew. Political power is shifting to the very moneyed interests that four decades of reform effort have tried to contain. The election system is being reshaped by the Super PACs and the greatly increased power of those who contribute to them to choose the candidates who best suit their purposes. But little attention is being paid to the fact that our system of electing a president is under siege. While the political press is excitedly telling us how the polls on Friday compare with the ones on Tuesday, little notice is taken of the danger to the democratic system itself.

Drew's article includes a capsule history of soft money and campaign finance regulation, and the lack of it. She is rightly skeptical about proposals to tweak the first amendment to the Constitution to correct the harm done by Citizens United and acknowledges that "It's too late to rescue this election from the appalling imposition of Super PACs."

In addition to the Super PAC's, Drew pinpoints the GOP's voter suppression campaign as a parallel threat to the integrity of elections in the U.S.:

Ever since the controversial recount in Florida in 2000, through their political control of numerous states, Republicans have mounted a nationwide and organized effort to rig state election laws in order to tip the outcome in November. (This is not to say that Democrats are innocents, but there is scant evidence of a parallel effort.) The goal of this pernicious effort is to deny the right to vote to minorities, the poor, the elderly, and students--all groups inclined to vote Democratic.

"Can an election that's being subjected to such seriously self-interested contortions be accepted by the public as having been arrived at in a fair manner?," asks Drew." And what will happen if it can't?"

"Many tea party folks are going to find me, I believe, to be the ideal candidate," the Republican presidential contender said in a news conference in December. "I sure hope so."

These words were uttered not by Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul or Rick Perry -- but by Mitt Romney. Yes, the same Romney who has been pegged as too moderate to attract tea party voters and hard-core conservatives.

Skocpol predicts that Romney's nomination will be followed by numerous "media obituaries for the tea party explaining how the movement that won so much in 2010 fell short in 2012 and is left saddled with an elite, middle-of-the-road candidate it doesn't want." In reality, however, Skocpol explains:

...Romney -- Swiss bank accounts, establishment support and all -- has maneuvered with ruthless precision and impeccable timing to position himself as a champion of the tea party agenda. During the primary campaign, he's repeatedly pledged fealty to key tea party priorities: cracking down on illegal immigration, repealing "ObamaCare," slashing taxes and drastically scaling back government spending. It's working: Half of the primary voters in Florida who say they support the tea party went for Romney.

Romney has become the stealth tea party candidate, endorsing the essence of the movement while remaining unburdened by its public label. This makes him the ideal tea party candidate for the general-election battle against President Obama.

Noting that illegal immigrants are a top source of anger for the tea party, Scokpol explains that Romney has declared "himself unalterably opposed to the Dream Act and any other benefits "rewarding" illegal immigrants," including the big fence and draconian crack-downs on hiring and government benefits, with no amnesty for illegal immigrants, who should all "self-deport.". As for health care reform:

...Romney has constantly declared his determination to get rid of ObamaCare the minute he moves into the White House. Of course, Romney's health-care overhaul in Massachusetts, which he continues to defend, is essentially the same thing as Obama's Affordable Care Act does: Both feature rules to curb private insurance abuses, state "exchanges" for people to buy private health plans and subsidiesfor Americans who cannot afford insurance. No matter; Romney just loudly promises to get rid of ObamaCare and assumes, probably correctly, that many in the tea party accept his pledge.

Romney has also hitched his star to the most draconian right-wing economic "reforms" that have been proposed, including:

When Gingrich surged in GOP primary polls, Romney endorsed Ryan's budget plan, which promises to continue the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy, add new tax breaks for corporations and wealthy estate owners, and slash public spending on Medicaid, Medicare, welfare and college tuition assistance. In fact, Romney has gone well beyond Ryan's proposals, issuing campaign documents that promise to slash non-defense spending to 20 percent of gross domestic product, or even as low as 16 percent. This would pull the federal government out of much of what it does to promote education and health, and to care for an aging population. No wonder the Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity and other ultra-right elite groups are falling in line behind Romney.

Romney will make centrist noises once he is nominated, warns Skocpol, but there are no reasons for believing he would govern with moderation:

...If he ends up in the general-election race, Romney's campaign will rarely mention the tea party. While throwing occasional red meat to the conservative faithful, he will generally repackage himself as a centrist who knows how to grow the economy and create jobs. Some voters and commentators may even conclude that the "true Romney," the moderate Romney, is reemerging and that he simply pandered to the right during the primaries.

Don't count on it. Research shows that presidents strive to carry out the promises they make during campaigns. If Romney defeats Obama, he could take office backed by a Republican-led House and Senate, which would quickly send radical-right bills to his desk. A President Romney would sign them all -- the Ryan budget eviscerating Medicare and Medicaid, a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts, harsh immigration crackdowns, the gutting of ObamaCare. Whatever his deep-down beliefs, he would be determined to overcome any lingering conservative skepticism.

"In Romney," concludes Skocpol, "the tea party has found the ultimate prize: a candidate loyal to the movement's agenda, but able to fool enough pundits and moderate voters to win the White House at a time when the tea party has lost broad appeal. Pushing the Republican Party to the hard right and denying Obama a second term have always been top tea party goals. In Romney, the movement has just the man it needs."

Florida Representative Rachel Burgin recently filed a pretty typical bill for a conservative Republican, asking the federal government to lower corporate taxes. But there was one thing that made Burgin's measure a little unusual: It began by stating the mission of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). That's likely because Burgin's bill had its origins with the corporate-funded nonprofit.

...The next day, Rep. Burgin quickly withdrew the bill hoping that no one had noticed and then re-introduced it 24-hours later, with a new bill number (HM 717), but now without the problematic paragraph. Nobody seems to have noticed until now.

The incident is instructive about ALEC's ability to turn Republican elected officials into corporate puppets. For a more in-depth expose of ALEC's adverse impact on state legislatures, check out The Nation's excellent series, beginning with John Nichols' "ALEC Exposed."

For those who want a more nuanced understanding of what the latest employment numbers may mean for the 2012 elections, however, Nate Silver's "Obama's Magic Number? 150,000 Jobs Per Month" at his FiveThirtyEight NYT blog may be the most incisive data-driven analysis yet published on the relationship of employment to presidential politics. Silver takes a sobering look at the connection, and explains:

No economic indicator is the holy grail...And there are a number of non-economic variables pertinent to predicting presidential elections -- wars, candidate quality and ideology, turnout, scandals and so forth...But if you want to focus a single economic indicator, job growth during the presidential election year -- especially as measured by the series called nonfarm payrolls -- has a lot going for it.

...Data related to the change in the level of employment have had among the highest correlations with electoral performance in the past. The correlations aren't perfect by any means. But if you perform a true apples-to-apples comparison (that is, looking at the economic indicators alone rather than muddying them with other sorts of extraneous variables), they do at least as well as anything else in predicting elections, and slightly better than some other commonly used metrics.

Just as important, there are a lot of qualitative reasons to focus on the jobs numbers. They measure something tangible and important. They receive much attention from economists, investors, political campaigns and the news media, and therefore inform the public discussion. They are released every month after only a minimal lag. They are subject to revision, and the revisions can be significant, but they aren't quite as bad as those for other economic series like G.D.P. or personal income growth. The jobs numbers are calculated in a comparatively straightforward way, and are usually in pretty good alignment with other economic measures. They don't need to be adjusted for inflation.

Silver then taps some creative methodology to correlate the nonfarm payroll growth rate with the popular vote margin of defeat or victory for the incumbent party in 16 post WWII presidential elections, and he comes to some interesting conclusions, including:

Overall, the relationship between job growth and electoral performance is good but not great...Roughly speaking, there were 10 election years in which you could make a pretty good prediction about the election outcome from knowing the jobs numbers alone: 1948, 1960, and then the eight elections from 1980 onward...In six other elections, you would have needed to look beyond the jobs numbers to come to a good prediction about the outcome.

Citing some of the complicating factors that can cloud his data-driven analysis, such as Eisenhower's charisma, the Watergate scandal and foreign policy debacles. Regarding a possible Obama-Romney race, Silver argues,

...If we knew nothing else about the election but how many jobs were created between January and October 2012, we would deem Mr. Obama to be a favorite if the economy created more than 107,000 jobs per month and an underdog otherwise. Basically, this would represent job creation at about the rate of population growth.

That's good news for Obama. The "what have you done for me lately?" factor may signal even better news:

...The public has tended to give greater weight to recent job growth, discounting earlier performance when the trajectory seems positive...If you break it down in more detail, you'll find that job growth during the third year of a president's term has a positive effect on his re-election odds, while the coefficients attached to the first two years are negative.

But none of these results are statistically significant or particularly close to it; only job growth during the fourth year of a president's term has a clear effect.

Silver then factors in presidential approval ratings into his calculations, which indicate:

Mr. Obama's approval rating is now 46.5 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics average...That isn't terrible -- it's in the range where Mr. Obama might be able to eke out a victory in the Electoral College -- but it's somewhat below average. From 1948 through 2008, the average president had an approval rating of 52 percent as of Feb. 1 of the election year, according to the Roper Center archives.

If Mr. Obama has an approval rating of 52 percent by November, he will almost certainly win re-election. He'd also be a favorite if he's at 50 percent. And 48 percent or 49 percent might also do the trick, since at that point Mr. Obama's approval rating would likely exceed his disapproval rating.

But Mr. Obama is not quite there yet. The surest way for him to improve his approval rating will be to create jobs at a rate that exceeds the rate of population growth.

We can come up with an estimate of just how many jobs this might be if we put a president's approval rating as of Feb. 1 and the payrolls numbers into a regression equation...I'll spare you the math (although it is straightforward), but this works out to a break-even number of 166,000 jobs per month -- not a huge number, but more than the 107,000 that we had estimated before accounting for Mr. Obama's middling approval rating.

...If you run another version of the analysis that considers a president's net approval rating, along with the rate of payroll growth net of population growth, you come up with a break-even number of 151,000 jobs per month.

The Wall St. Journal is predicting an average of 155K jobs being added per month in 2012, notes Silver. But he adds that forecasting track records are "frankly pretty mediocre." Taking all of the factors into consideration, Silver ventures, " If payrolls growth averages 175,000 per month, Mr. Obama will probably be a favorite, but not a prohibitive one. If it averages 125,000 per month, he will be a modest underdog."

Silver's numbers appear to be sound enough, and 150K jobs per month seems like a good guidepost. Rachel Weiner cautions at WaPo's The Fix, however, that "No president in recent history has been reelected with unemployment above 8 percent, and analysts suggest it would take growth of between 167,000 and 260,000 jobs a month to get there by November."

It would be interesting to see what Silver's analysis could do scaled down to the state level, taking into consideration Geoffrey Skelley's point at Sabato's Crystal Ball that "after all, presidents are elected in 51 individual battles (50 states plus Washington, D.C.)." It might be worthwhile to look at needed job growth and margins of victory in the half-dozen most volatile swing states. That could be helpful to Dems in terms of laser-targeting resources.

As the 2012 election gets underway, President Obama is still waiting to see who his opponent will be. Candidates and campaigns matter hugely, of course, but we should also pay attention to the field on which the match will be played--and at first glance, the lay of the political land doesn't look so favorable to Obama and his party.

The lingering economic slump has demoralized voters and tilted the electorate rightward. With idle workers, underwater homeowners, exploding deficits and debts, growing inequality, and a bitter, broken political system, objective reality isn't exactly working in incumbents' favor. Upon closer inspection, however, the electoral landscape may not be as forbidding for progressives as it first appears.

For one thing, the recovery finally seems to be gaining momentum, complicating Republican attempts to cast Obama as a "failed president" who doesn't have a clue about how the economy works. For another, Republicans are incumbents too, and their intransigence and obstructionism throughout 2011 will make many swing voters reluctant to entrust them with undivided control of the federal government. Finally, the fractious battle for the GOP nomination reveals a party at war with itself, while conservatives' venomous attacks on Obama push Democrats toward unity.

But no matter whom the Republicans pick as their standard bearer, the tricky political terrain confronts Obama with three strategic imperatives: 1) roll up a big majority of moderate voters; 2) win back a good chunk of the independents who deserted his party in 2010; and 3) fashion a stronger economic message that combines jobs and fiscal responsibility.

Moderates Matter More Than Ever

Obama today faces an electorate that's more conservative than the one that elected him in 2008. According to new polls by Gallup, 40 percent of the public identifies as conservative, while just 21 percent fess up to being liberals.

That's up three points from 2008, and up significantly from the one-third share of the electorate that conservatives have averaged in polls going back three decades.

The recent uptick is most likely a reaction to an unusually severe economic downturn. The fact remains, however, that whereas there used to be 1.5 conservatives for every liberal in America, in 2012 the ratio is nearly 2-1. The new arithmetic doesn't mean Democrats are doomed; it does mean they have to do exceptionally well among moderates to win.

That in fact is what Obama did in 2008, when he carried 60 percent of the moderate vote. But he'll probably have to do even better this time to compensate both for the rise in self-identified conservatives and a likely falloff in support among his core 2008 constituencies: minorities, young voters, single women and highly educated professionals. Liberals consider themselves the Democratic "base," but there just aren't enough of them to deliver victory. In 2008, half of Obama's vote came from moderates, while liberals accounted for 37 percent. Conversely, Republicans will need fewer moderates to build majorities because more voters now describe themselves as conservatives.

Of course, voters don't define themselves exclusively by their political outlook, and things get more complicated for Republicans when we look at trends in partisan affiliation. Last year, according to Gallup, a record-high 40 percent of Americans described themselves as independents. In addition, more identified as Democrats (31 percent) than as Republicans (27 percent).

Does the much ballyhooed fact that independents are now the biggest "party" in America bode well for third-party challengers? Not necessarily. There may be more of them, but most independents continue to lean to one party or the other. As a group, they've grown more conservative in the last several years, and Gallup says more leaners incline today toward the Republicans than Democrats, resulting in an even, 45-45 partisan split. Genuinely unaffiliated voters make only about 10-15 percent of the electorate.

Gov. Mitch Daniels, Indiana's shameless corporate toady, signs the 'right-to-work' bill into law -- the first rust belt state to do so. The great Hoosier, Eugene V. Debs, turns in his grave as workers begin protests.

But it looks like a 'Stop the Insanity' movement may be afoot among some other GOP governors, according to Michael Cooper's New York Times article "Second Year In, Republican Governors Moderate Tone." Well, maybe just a 'Reduce the Cluelessness' trend.

Jamie Stiehm's "What's a Republican Feminist To Do?" at the NYT 'Campaign Stops' blog explains the dilemma facing Republican women who don't think women who have abortions should be criminalized. Stiehm doesn't directly address whether some pro-choice Republican women will vote Democratic, but it's clearly a possibility for those who strongly believe that women ought to have dominion over their own bodies. Her post also illuminates Romney's flip-flops on the issue, in stark contrast to both of his parents. Stiehm's best quote comes from Ted Kennedy in his victory over Romney in the '94 Senate race: "I am pro-choice. My opponent is multiple choice."

Richard Cohen's WaPo column "Republicans Have Only Themselves to Blame" provides a condensed catalog of GOP folly from the primary trail, along with some sharp zingers, among them "Yahoos stride the stage" and "The GOP is brain-dead." As for the cause, Cohen explains: "The Republican establishment acts as if this season's goon squad of presidential candidates has come out of nowhere, an act of God -- a tsunami that hit the party and receded, leaving nothing but nitwits standing...For too long it has been mute in the face of a belligerent anti-intellectualism, pretending that knowledge and experience do not matter and that Washington is a condition and not a mere city."

This should be Thursdays' most unappealing event.

TDS's James Vega did a worthy takedown of the recent WaPo article in the Fix, "Obama: The most polarizing president. Ever." Now Jim Manley, a longtime aide to Democratic Sens. Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid has a rebuttal, also in the Fix, featuring quotes placing the blame for polarization where it more plausibly belongs, including this gem by Thomas Mann, of the Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute: "One of our two major parties, the Republicans, has become an insurgent outlier--ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

Josh Dzieza has a rogues' gallery, "Who Gave $1 Million or More to Super PACs? A Daily Beast Roundup".

Mindful that "after all, presidents are elected in 51 individual battles," Geoffrey Skelley reviews the latest unemployment rates of the 50 states at Sabato's Crystal Ball, and discusses the possible implications. For example, "Nevada is a toss up state that...However, the terrible state of the Silver State's economy -- it has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 12.6% -- might be a drag on Obama...Then there are toss ups such as Virginia (6.2%) and Iowa (5.6%), which have jobless rates considerably lower than the national average. That could make these states more likely to support the status quo and vote for the incumbent. For the same reason, recent good news regarding the economies of many Rust Belt states could improve Obama's reelection chances...Obama barely won North Carolina in 2008, and the state's 9.9% unemployment rate helps explain why we believe, at the moment, the Republicans are slightly favored to take back the Tar Heel State in November. Conversely, New Mexico, a state with a large Hispanic population that has been trending more Democratic, has a fairly low unemployment rate, making it more likely to remain in the president's column."

At FiveThirtyEight.com John Sides sorts out the available data to address the question, "Did Romney's Ad Advantage Help in Florida?" Lots of significant caveats here, but Sides concludes that "I would say there is suggestive evidence that Mr. Romney's advantages in advertising helped him win in Florida - but it qualifies as circumstantial."

Nate Berg reports at the Atlantic that "Increasing Density and Diversity Likely to Make Western States More Blue." Berg notes that "much of this shift to the blue side of the spectrum is due to the heavy concentration of new growth in the urban areas of these six states and, not unrelated, their increasing minority populations...The Las Vegas metro area, for example, is now home to three out of four Nevadans. The state's minority population also increased by about 11 percent between censuses, bringing the non-white population to nearly 45 percent. Two-thirds of Arizonans live in the Phoenix metro area. Arizona's minority population also increased from 36.2 percent in 2000 to 42.2 percent in 2010. The Albuquerque metro area now houses about 44 percent of New Mexicans. Nearly 40 percent of all Idahoans live in the Boise metro area."

Don't miss this moving photo tribute to Obama's leadership