A Bad Day for POTUS

At The Washington Post, Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake write:

A majority of House members are now on the record as either against or leaning against authorizing President Obama to use military force against Syria, according to the latest whip count from the Washington Post.

As of Friday afternoon, there were 223 members in the “no” or “leaning no” category, more than the 217 that would be needed to sink the resolution. (The threshold for passage in the House is 217 votes, rather than the usual 218, since there are currently two vacancies.)

US News reports:

Support for U.S. military strikes in Syria is lower than any other intervention in the last 20 years, according to a new poll.

Just 36 percent of Americans support President Barack Obama's call for air strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad, who the U.S. claims used chemical weapons to kill about 1,400 Syrians, including more than 400 children, according to a Gallup survey released Friday. Obama said he would seek congressional approval before moving ahead with the intervention, but faces stiff opposition from members, the public and the international community. 

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In 1999 during the Clinton administration, 43 percent of people said they supported the mission in Kosovo and the Balkans. But all three wars started under Bush administrations earned well over 50 percent support: George H.W. Bush's Persian Gulf War had 62 percent support in 1991; George W. Bush's war in Afghanistan, launched in the wake of 9/11, earned 82 percent support; and his Iraq War received 59 percent support.

The New York Times reports on the G-20 summit:

After two days of tense discussions, including a dinner debate that went into the morning hours, Mr. Obama left without forging an international consensus behind military action as other leaders urged him not to attack without United Nations permission. But he won agreement from some allies on blaming Syria’s government for a chemical weapons attack and on endorsing an unspecified response.

The deep divisions on display here at the Group of 20 summit meeting raised the stakes even further for Mr. Obama as he seeks authorization from Congress for a “limited, proportional” attack. While aides said he never expected or sought a more explicit endorsement of military action during the meeting, the president hoped to use the statement from allies condemning Syria to leverage more domestic support, but he acknowledged that he had a “hard sell” and might fail to win over an American public that polls show still opposes a strike.

And the economy is not so great, either. CNN reports:

The official U.S. unemployment rate is falling, but that's not necessarily a good thing.

That's because the slice of Americans involved in the labor force has shrunk to a level not seen in 35 years.

The labor force participation rate -- the percentage of people over 16 who either have a job or are actively searching for one -- fell to 63.2% in August. The last time it was that low was in August of 1978.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the rate rose steadily for decades as more women were entering the workforce, eventually peaking at 67.3% in 2000. But the number has been on the decline ever since -- a trend that was accelerated by the Great Recession.

Advisers Who Will Alienate the GOP

The Washington Post reports that the White House is turning to outside advisers for counsel on how to sell Syria policy:

The group included men and women steeped in politics as well as communications and national security: former senior advisers David Axelrod and David Plouffe; Robert Gibbs, who served as White House press secretary; former White House communications director Anita Dunn; Stephanie Cutter , who served as deputy campaign manager for Obama’s 2012 campaign; Tommy Vietor, former National Security Council spokesman; and Jon Favreau, who was the president’s speechwriter. Vietor and Favreau now have a joint communications firm.

A White House official who asked not to be identified, because the meeting was private, wrote in an e-mail that the session was not unusual. “We hold regular sessions with folks like this all the time,” the official wrote.

This report will fuel Republican suspicions about the president's motives.  Says Rush Limbaugh:

The Washington Post has an article this morning about how Obama has turned to his "brain trust" for selling his attack on Syria, and the brain trust includes David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Robert Gibbs, Anita Dunn, Stephanie Cutter, Tommy Vietor and some former speechwriter -- and these people are nothing but cutthroat campaign people.  So the way that we're going to sell military intervention in Syria is to beat up the Republicans and force them to vote "yes" with Obama on this. 

Demographics, Social Issues, and the Vote

At The New York Times, Thomas Edsall writes:

As traditional economic divisions in politics have weakened, other factors are helping to determine partisan affiliation.

Lesthaeghe and Neidert have found, for example, that the higher the non-Hispanic white birthrate of a state, the stronger its vote in 2004 for Bush. Figure 5 shows the striking correlation:

Neidert and Lesthaeghe are looking at voting behavior both as a driver of the contemporary demographic transition and as stemming from it — from the differences, that is, between states and other localities in the embrace of new behavioral norms. Factors shaping political choices are less tied to classic class distinctions and increasingly related to values conflicts regarding family formation.

Writing with Johan Surkyn, Neidert and Lesthaeghe consider the impact on voters of same-sex households, cohabiting households, births to teenagers, births to unmarried women, divorce and separation, the percentage of two-parent households, fertility postponement, fertility decline brought on by contraception and abortion, the percentage of women without children in the household, rates of early or late marriage, the disconnection between marriage and procreation, and so forth.

These topics both feed and reflect what social scientists call “ideational” transformation, which is emerging from trends toward “secularization and the subsequent accentuation of individualistic expressive values,” as well as from the backlash against such trends.

Democratic strength is now concentrated in fewer but more heavily populated areas. Polarization has intensified as voters in over half the nation’s counties cast landslide margins for one presidential candidate or the other. These tendencies are intensifying and have spilled over to Congressional elections, leading to legislative paralysis. Self-perpetuating clusters of the like-minded lead voters and their representatives away from the center.

GOP Local Strength in ... California

Mark Z. Barabak reports at The Los Angeles Times:

Over the last two decades, California has become a Democratic fortress, beyond the GOP's reach in presidential campaigns and all but hopeless in statewide contests. Republicans are largely irrelevant in Sacramento, where the most important fights are between liberal and more moderate Democrats.

At the local level, however, the picture is quite different. Despite the Democrats' sizable statewide registration advantage, Republicans hold close to half the 2,500 mayoral and city council seats in California, according to figures compiled by GrassrootsLab, a Sacramento research and political data firm.

In the last two statewide election cycles, when Californians voted true to partisan form — bucking the national GOP wave in 2010, siding strongly with Obama in 2012 — Republicans won more local contests than did Democrats, and not just in rural or such traditionally conservative-leaning areas as the Central Valley. More than 75 cities in California have a majority of Democratic voters but Republican-run city councils; the GOP has toeholds in such otherwise blue bastions as Alameda, Los Angeles and Santa Cruz counties.

For a party desperate to rebuild, that's the good news. "It's important because most members of the Legislature come out of local government," said state Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte. "Most members of Congress come out of the Legislature."

 Still, most municipal elections in California are nonpartisan affairs and there is good reason to question whether Republicans successful locally can advance once party label becomes more important and issues such as municipal finances and public safety, which typically help Republicans, recede.

Running on a nonpartisan basis, Steve Cooley won three terms as district attorney of Los Angeles County. But when he was the Republican nominee for attorney general in 2010, he lost the county to Democrat Kamala Harris, 53-39% 

Airstrikes and Politics

Speaker Boehner has announced support for a military strike on Syria.  He is not pandering to public opinion or the GOP base.

The Pew Research Center reports:

President Obama faces an uphill battle in making the case for U.S. military action in Syria. By a 48% to 29% margin, more Americans oppose than support conducting military airstrikes against Syria in response to reports that the Syrian government used chemical weapons.

The new national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Aug. 29-Sept. 1 among 1,000 adults, finds that Obama has significant ground to make up in his own party. Just 29% of Democrats favor conducting airstrikes against Syria while 48% are opposed. Opinion among independents is similar (29% favor, 50% oppose). Republicans are more divided, with 35% favoring airstrikes and 40% opposed.

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 Overall, just 32% of Americans say Obama has explained clearly why the U.S. should launch military airstrikes against Syria while 48% say he has not explained the reasons clearly enough.

The Washington Post reports:

Americans widely oppose launching missile strikes against the Syrian government for its alleged use of chemical weapons, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News pollthat finds little appetite for military action across the country despite a growing drumbeat in Washington.

Broad opposition in the new poll contrasts with a December Post-ABC poll that found most Americans saying they would be supportive of U.S. action if Syria used chemical weapons. At that time, 63 percent supported U.S. military involvement when it was a hypothetical situation, while 30 percent were opposed.

Politico reports:

“Rarely have I ever witnessed such consensus from my audience that we should stay the heck out of Syria,” nationally-syndicated conservative talker Mike Gallagher told POLITICO. “Even liberal callers who usually challenge and criticize me say we should not intervene. I am delighted that the president has done this about-face and will now turn to congress for approval. Now it’s up to the Congress to do the right thing and deliver a big, fat ‘no.’”
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Rush Limbaugh, meanwhile, told his listeners Tuesday that Obama’s decision was part of the president’s plan to “announce that he’s going to go to Congress to get a use of force authorization and then when the Republicans don’t give it to him, blame them for dead Syrians.” And the Syria question, he said, just comes down to politics for Obama.

“I get into arguments with people about this who still do not understand that no matter what the issue, no matter what day of the week, the either No. 1 or No. 2 objective in the world of Barack Obama is the elimination of any opposition,” Limbaugh said. “You cannot take the 2014 midterm elections out of this equation. You cannot remove from this equation just how desperate the Democrats are to win the House in 2014, anything that can be done to blame the Republicans.”

Ceaser on Syria

At First Things, James Ceaser writes:

Republicans should support some version of the authorization of force resolution. They should do so even if they think that the President’s policy will prove ineffective, do no good, waste money, or entail unforeseen risks; they should do so even if they think he has gotten the nation into this situation by blunders, fecklessness, arrogance, or naiveté; and they should so even if, and especially, if they have no confidence in his judgment. The simple fact is that the nation and our allies will be at further risk if the world sees a presidency that is weakened and that has no credibility to act. Partisans may be tempted to see such a result as condign punishment for the President’s misjudgments; they may feel that he deserves to pay the price for his hypocrisy and cheap and demagogic attacks on his predecessor. But at the end of the day, Republicans need to rise above such temptations; the stakes are too high.. The weaker the president’s credibility on the world scene, the more the need to swallow and do what will not weaken it further. President Obama is the only president we have. That remains the overriding fact.

Why Democrats Are Focusing on the Georgia Senate Race

In the Georgia Senate race, the GOP may nominate a weak candidate.  Democrats are running Michelle Nunn. The New York Times explains:

The numbers tell why Democrats are preparing to essentially put all of their Georgia hopes in a soft-spoken, bespectacled candidate who has never held elective office — and how much will have to break their way to win. Assuming a special Senate election in New Jersey this fall goes Democratic, Republicans will have to win six seats in 2014 to take the Senate.

Democrats start in deep trouble in three Republican states with retiring Democratic veterans — West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana. Two incumbent Democrats, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska, face tough re-election fights against credible opponents in Republican states. If all five flip, Republicans would need one more in a tough-but-broad playing field that includes North Carolina, Louisiana, Michigan and Colorado.

If Democrats could take a Republican seat, it would provide much-needed insurance. But only two seem remotely possible. One, in Kentucky, is occupied by the wily, well-financed Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell. The other is in Georgia, a state where a growing urban, minority and immigrant population has been coveted by Democrats, but where Mitt Romney beat Mr. Obama comfortably, 53 percent to 46 percent, in a high-turnout election.