34 posts tagged Bill Schneider
In this month’s newsletter, Bill looks at the libertarian streak among Republicans and the sudden celebrity of Sen. Rand Paul. Sen. John McCain called Paul and his allies “wacko birds.” Bill calls them hedgehogs.
Watch Third Way’s Bill Schneider discuss the changing face of the GOP with MSNBC’s Craig Melvin.
Be sure submit your questions on the sequester to Bill during his live chat going on right now.
“Given all that leverage, Republicans should win this political battle. But they may not. In fact, the White House is confident that it will win.”
Third Way’s Bill Schneider on the sequestration fight.
Read why in Bill’s latest op-ed: “Leveraging Likability: Why Obama Will Win the Sequester”
“Best Performance by an Actor: Karl Rove’s meltdown on Fox News election night, trying to argue that Ohio went for Romney. A bravura performance.”
Government a Threat?
A majority of Americans believe the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms. That’s something we’ve never seen before. Polling by the Pew Research Center and other organizations show the number of Americans who feel threatened by the federal government climbing steadily since 9/11. In January 2013, nearly a third of Americans called the federal government “a major threat.”
What rights and freedoms do people believe are threatened? The polls do not say. But there appear to be a variety of perceived threats, judging from the groups that feel most threatened.
At the top of the list: conservative Republicans, more than three quarters of whom see the federal government as a threat. President Obama represents their worst nightmare of big government: huge deficits, government bailouts, government control of health care. After health care reform was signed into law in 2010, a Tea Party activist told a rally in Iowa, “Every single person’s body in this whole country belongs to the government now.”
Also near the top of the list: gun owners, 62% of whom see the federal government as a threat. That’s one of the reasons they buy guns.
Increased government surveillance after 9/11 appears to have played a role. The biggest jump occurred between 2002 and 2003 when many security measures like those at airports went into effect. You even find heightened concern among self-described liberal Democrats. More than a third see the federal government as a threat to their personal rights and freedoms. Liberals may have different complaints—more about the Patriot Act and civil liberties than gun rights and health care—but they, too, share the concern about big government.
Read more in this month’s Inside Politics Newsletter.
WATCH: Third Way’s Bill Schneider discusses the State of the Union and the GOP and Tea Party responses with MSNBC’s Craig Melvin.
By Bill Schneider
Democrats don’t talk about it, but they have become the party of the unchurched in America. It’s right there in the 2012 exit poll. Asked, “Are you Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, other or none?” 12% of the voters last year called themselves “None.” They voted 70% for Barack Obama.
The unchurched were about equal in number to African-American voters (13%), larger than Latinos (10%) and much larger than either Mormons or Jews (each 2%).
The reason why Democrats don’t talk about the unchurched is obvious. They don’t want to advertise themselves as “the godless party.” The United States is still a country where religion is a major force in both public and private life. That makes the U.S. unique among advanced industrial countries.
In October, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported that 58% of Americans claim that religion is very important in their lives—far higher than in Britain (17%), France (13%), Germany (21%) or even Spain, once the land of the Holy Inquisition (22%). More Americans believe in God, heaven, hell, angels, Satan and the inerrant authority of the Bible than citizens of any other modern country.
By Bill Schneider
Two tough issues — immigration reform and gun control. “It won’t be easy,” President Barack Obama said about gun control in December, “but that’s no excuse not to try.” Tuesday, he said about immigration reform: “The closer we get, the more emotional this debate is going to become.”
Which does he stand a better chance of winning? Answer: immigration. On immigration, Obama has Democrats strongly behind him. Republicans are divided — and freaked out by the issue. On guns, he’s got Republicans strongly against him. Democrats are divided — and freaked out by the issue.
On both issues, the president has the public solidly behind him. That’s his biggest asset. “There’s already a growing consensus for us to build from,” he said on Dec. 19, five days after the Newtown, Connecticut, massacre. “A majority of Americans support banning the sale of military-style assault weapons.’’ On Jan. 29, when he went to Las Vegas to speak about immigration reform, he said, “A broad consensus is emerging and … a call for action can be heard coming from all across America.”
Even more important, the president’s popularity is soaring. He has a 60 percent favorable rating in the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, the highest since his first year in office.
The president intends to use the bully pulpit to rally public opinion behind both causes. He also intends to use his 2012 campaign organization, which has morphed from Obama for America to Organizing for Action, to browbeat Congress into action. Welcome to real the permanent campaign.
Is the “era of liberalism” back?
Watch Bill Schneider, resident fellow at Third Way, and Tara McGuinness, senior vice president of communications at the Center for American Progress, join MSNBC’s Craig Melvin to talk about President Obama’s progressive agenda for his second term.
By Bill Schneider
There’s a reason why President Barack Obama has chosen to put gun control at the top of his second-term agenda. No issue draws as bright a line between the Old America and the New America as the gun issue. It will keep his coalition mobilized – the New America coalition that delivered for him in the election: working women, single mothers, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Jewish and Muslim voters, young people, gays and educated professionals.
Obama paid tribute to the New America in his second Inaugural Address on Monday. “We possess all the qualities,” Obama declared, “that this world without boundaries demands, youth and drive, diversity and openness, of endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention.”
Obama insisted “our journey is not complete” until the country finds a “better way to welcome striving hopeful immigrants,” until “our wives, mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts,” until “our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law” and until all our children – including those on “the quiet lanes of Newtown” – know that they are “always safe from harm.”
Virginia and New Jersey are the only two states that elect governors in the year following a presidential election. That means both will hold elections for governor in 2013.
Here’s how the two states have voted for governor going back to 1977. There’s a pattern.
Both states have a tradition of electing governors from the party that just lost the White House. In New Jersey, the tradition goes back to 1989. In Virginia, it goes back to 1977.
That’s because the electorate shrinks radically in the off year election. In New Jersey, 3.9 million people voted for President in 2008. In 2009, only 2.4 million voted for governor. In Virginia, the electorate shrank from 3.7 million in 2008 to 2.0 million in 2009. The winning presidential party loses its bonus voters—people who vote once every four years, mostly for the winner.
Will the tradition continue in 2013? Right now, Republican Chris Christie looks like a good bet for re-election in New Jersey. His approval ratings since Hurricane Sandy have been soaring. Virginia will be a tougher test. The Republican candidate is likely to be Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.
Cuccinelli has taken intensely controversial positions on abortion, gun control, climate change, health care reform, immigration and gay rights. If “Cooch” is nominated and loses, it would provide yet more evidence that Republicans are throwing away elections by going too far to the right.
Read more in the December 2012 Inside Politics Newsletter.
