America Ascendant

by Stanley B Greenberg

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid.; Governor Bobby Jindal, “How Republicans Can Win Future Elections,” CNN Opinion, November 15, 2012.

  17. Jindal, “GOP Needs Action, Not Navel-Gazing.”

  18. Luncheon keynote by Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.

  19. Dionne, Our Divided Political Heart, p. 124.

  20. Ibid., p. 105.

  21. Ibid., p. 5.

  22. Mann and Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, Kindle locations 119, 139; Jonathan Chait, “Anarchists of the House,” New York, July 21, 2013.

  23. Molly Hennessy-Fiske, “Rick Perry, Rand Paul Take Aim at Obama, Hillary Clinton at Koch Event,” The Los Angeles Times, August 29, 2014; Joe Scarborough, The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics—and Can Again (New York: Random House, 2013).

  24. Peggy Noonan, “Don’t Do It, Mr. Romney,” The Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2015.

  25. Dionne, Our Divided Political Heart, pp. 154, 244.

  26. Ronald Brownstein, “The State of Conflict,” National Journal, March 1, 2014.

  27. “Slide Show: The State Budget Crisis and the Economy,” Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, http://www.cbpp.org/slideshows/?fa=stateFiscalCrisis, December 19, 2011, slide 5; David Callahan, “89,000 Government Workers Have Been Laid Off Since September,” Demos, January 4, 2013; Heidi Shierholz, “Six Years from Its Beginning, the Great Recession’s Shadow Looms over the Labor Market,” Economic Policy Institute, January 9, 2014; Gordon Lafer, “The Legislative Attack on American Wages and Labor Standards, 2011–2012,” Economic Policy Institute, October 31, 2013.

  28. Carolyn Barta, “Eighty-second Legislature Cuts School Funds, State Jobs,” Texas Almanac, Texas State Historical Association; calculated based on data for 2008–2014 from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, accessed February 13, 2014, http://www.offthechartsblog.org/mapping-higher-ed-funding-cuts-and-tuition-hikes/.

  29. Lafer, “The Legislative Attack on American Wages and Labor Standards, 2011–2012.”

  30. Ibid.

  31. Charles M. Blow, “Poverty Is Not a State of Mind,” The New York Times, May 18, 2014.

  32. Nancy Folbre, “The Color of Affordable Care,” The New York Times, October 7, 2013; Robert Pear, “States’ Policies on Health Care Exclude Some of the Poorest,” The New York Times, May 24, 2013.

  33. Lafer, “The Legislative Attack on American Wages and Labor Standards, 2011–2012.”

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ibid.; Amanda Terkel, “Rep. Jack Kingston Proposes That Poor Students Sweep Floors in Exchange for Lunch,” The Huffington Post, December 18, 2013.

  36. Annual State of the State address by Governor Sam Brownback to a joint session of the Kansas State Legislature at the State House Chamber in Topeka, Kansas, January 15, 2014.

  37. John Gramlich, “In Kansas, Governor Sam Brownback Drives a Rightward Shift,” Stateline, Pew Charitable Trusts, January 25, 2012.

  38. Governor Sam Brownback, “Gov. Sam Brownback: Tax Cuts Needed to Grow Economy,” The Wichita Eagle, July 29, 2012.

  39. “Under Gov. Sam Brownback, Kansas Lags Neighboring States and the Nation in Job Growth,” The Kansas City Star, May 16, 2014; Alan Pyke, “Kansas Anti-poverty Task Force Recommends Stronger Families, Weaker Safety Net,” Think Progress, September 9, 2013.

  40. Survey of 693 Kansas voters, including 375 Republican primary voters, by Public Policy Polling, February 18–20, 2014.

  41. Adam Nagourney and Shaila Dewan, “Republican Governors Buck Party Line on Raising Taxes,” The New York Times, January 24, 2015; Max Ehrenfreund, “Kansas Lawmakers Want the Poor to Pay for Tax Cuts for the Rich,” The Washington Post, April 21, 2015.

  42. Trip Gabriel, “Pennsylvania Governor Faces an Uphill Battle for a Second Term,” The New York Times, May 10, 2014; “Under Gov. Tom Corbett, ‘Pennsylvania Ranks 49th in Job Creation,’” PolitiFact.com, July 15, 2014.

  43. Laura Bassett, “Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania Governor, on Ultrasound Mandate: Just ‘Close Your Eyes,’” The Huffington Post, March 15, 2012.

  44. Survey of 1,308 registered Pennsylvania voters by Quinnipiac, May 29–June 2, 2014.

  45. Steve Singiser, “In an Election Year, North Carolina Republicans Flog a Phony ‘Teachers Raise,’” Daily Kos, May 30, 2014.

  46. Annie Lowrey, “States Cutting Weeks of Aid to the Jobless,” The New York Times, January 21, 2014; Jeanne Sahadi, “North Carolina’s Republican Tax Experiment,” CNN Money, August 8, 2013; Lee Weisbecker, “McCrory Signs Bill Eliminating Tax Credit,” Triangle Business Journal, March 13, 2013; “A Look at Unemployment Benefits by State,” Associated Press, January 7, 2014; Evan Soltas, “North Carolina Shows How to Crush the Unemployed,” Bloomberg View, December 17, 2013.

  47. Survey of 672 registered North Carolina voters by Elon University, April 25–28, 2014; survey of 1,076 registered North Carolina voters by Public Policy Polling, June 12–15, 2014; North Carolina State Board of Elections 2014 statewide official general election results, accessed February 11, 2015, http://enr.ncsbe.gov/ElectionResults/?election_dt=11/04/2014.

  48. Survey of 600 Louisiana voters by Southern Media & Opinion Research, September 11–20, 2012. Fifty-four percent of the respondents disapproved of the voucher.

  49. Rachel Weiner, “What Happened to Bobby Jindal?,” The Washington Post, April 9, 2013.

  50. Survey of 664 Louisiana voters by Public Policy Polling, June 26–29, 2014; survey of 750 2014 likely Louisiana voters by Rasmussen, July 8–9, 2014.

  51. Campbell Robinson, “As Jindal’s G.O.P. Profile Grows, So Do Louisiana’s Budget Woes,” The New York Times, February 6, 2015; The Editorial, “Governors Can Run, but They Can’t Hide,” The New York Times, February 28, 2015.

  52. David Leonhardt, “Is College Worth It? Clearly, New Data Say,” The New York Times, May 27, 2014.

  53. Matt O’Brien, “The Good News: We’re Back to 2008 Job Levels. That’s Also the Bad News,” The Washington Post, June 6, 2014.

  54. Andrew P. Kelly, “Does College Really Improve Social Mobility?,” The Brookings Institution, February 11, 2014.

  55. Neil Irwin, Claire Cain Miller, and Margot Sanger-Katz, “America’s Racial Divide, Charted,” The New York Times, August 19, 2014.

  56. Next America survey of 1,272 adults by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for National Journal and College Board, October 14–24, 2013.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Michael Leachman and Chris Mai, “Most States Funding Schools Less Than Before the Recession,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, May 20, 2014; Editorial Board, “Governors Can Run, but They Can’t Hide,” The New York Times, February 28, 2015; Julie Bosman, “2016 Ambitions Seen in Walker’s Push for University Cuts in Wisconsin,” The New York Times, February 16, 2015; Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015).

  59. Sarah Ayres and Adam Hersh, “New Ryan Budget Cuts Investments in America’s Future,” Center for American Progress, March 13, 2013; “Fact Sheet: GOP Budget Cuts to Non-defense Discretionary Programs,” House Budget Committee Democrats, April 8, 2014.

  60. Jerry M. Melillo, Terese Richmond, and Gary W. Yohe, “Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third Climate Assessment,” U.S. Global Change Research Program, 841, pp. 7–8.

  61. “Red News/Blue News: Climate Change,” CNN, Reliable Sources, May 11, 2014.

  62. National survey of 1,200 adults by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps’ Republican Party Project, July 10–15, 2013.

  63. David Gutman, “McKinley Amendment Bars Defense Fund for Climate Change,” WV Gazette, May 25, 2014; Ryan Koronowski, “House Votes to Deny Climate Science and Ties Pentagon’s Hands on Climate Change,” Think Progress, May 22, 2014.

  64. Jamie Fuller, “Environmental Policy Is Partisan. It Wasn’t Always,” The Washington Post, June 2, 2014.

  65. Rebecca Leber, “What Happens If Congress Doesn’t Deliver o
n Obama’s Climate Promises?,” The New Republic, February 4, 2015.

  66. Benjamin Bell, “Sen. Marco Rubio: Yes, I’m Ready to Be President,” ABC News, May 11, 2014.

  67. Paul Waldman, “Where the 2016 GOP Contenders Stand on Climate Change,” The Washington Post, May 12, 2014.

  68. Philip Bump, “Why Don’t GOP Presidential Candidates Address Climate Change? Because They Want to Win,” The Washington Post, April 22, 2015. Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter of the Holy Father Francis on Care of Our Common Home (Rome: Vatican Press, English ed., 2015); Max Ehrenfreund, “Pope Francis’s Views on Climate Change Put Catholic GOP Candidates in a Bind,” The Washington Post, June 18, 2015; Jessica Mendoza, “Why Rick Santorum Doesn’t Want Pope Francis Talking About Climate Change,” The Christian Science Monitor, June 3, 2015.

  69. Motoko Rich, “Science Standards Divide a State Built on Coal and Oil,” The New York Times, May 18, 2014.

  70. Ibid.; Ashton Edwards and Dallas Franklin, “UPDATE: Oklahoma Governor Announces Decision on Common Core Measure,” KFOR.com, May 23, 2014.

  71. Remarks by President Barack Obama on the economy in Osawatomie, Kansas, December 6, 2011.

  72. Scott Winship, “Stop Feeling Sorry for the Middle Class! They’re Doing Just Fine,” The New Republic, February 7, 2012; Reihan Salam, “Guest Post: Scott Winship on the Obama Administration’s Questionable Mobility Claims,” National Review, January 17, 2012.

  73. Richard V. Burkhauser, Jeff Larrimore, and Kosali I. Simon, “A ‘Second Opinion’ on the Economic Health of the American Middle Class,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 17164, June 2011; Ron Haskins, “The Myth of the Disappearing Middle Class,” The Washington Post, March 29, 2012; Winship, “Stop Feeling Sorry for the Middle Class!”; Bruce D. Meyer and James X. Sullivan, “Sorry, Mr. Biden, Most Middle Class Americans Are Better Off Now Than They Were Thirty Years Ago,” Fox News, October 24, 2011.

  74. Burkhauser, Larrimore, and Simon, “A ‘Second Opinion,’” p. 4; Meyer and Sullivan, Fox News; remarks by President Barack Obama on the economy in Osawatomie, Kansas; remarks by Alan Krueger in “The Rise and Consequences of Inequality in the United States,” Center for American Progress, Washington, D.C., January 12, 2012.

  75. Burkhauser, Larrimore, and Simon, “A ‘Second Opinion,’” pp. 33–34.

  76. Ibid.

  77. Haskins, “The Myth of the Disappearing Middle Class.”

  78. Sabrina Tavernise, “Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say,” The New York Times, February 9, 2012.

  79. Haskins, “The Myth of the Disappearing Middle Class”; Burkhauser, Larrimore, and Simon, “A ‘Second Opinion,’” pp. 31–34.

  80. Winship, “Stop Feeling Sorry for the Middle Class!”

  81. Charles M. Blow, “Paul Ryan and His Poverty Prophet,” The New York Times, July 23, 2014.

  82. Nicholas Eberstadt, “American Exceptionalism and the Entitlement State,” National Affairs, Issue Number 2, Winter 2015.

  83. Philip Bump, “Why Hillary Clinton Should (And Will) Embrace Obamacare,” The Washington Post, April 13, 2015.

  84. House Budget Committee, “The War on Poverty: 50 Years Later,” March 3, 2014, p. 4; Glenn Kessler, “A Story Too Good to Check: Paul Ryan and the Tale of the Brown Paper Bag,” The Washington Post, March 6, 2014.

  85. The Editors, “Paul Ryan Is Right,” National Review, March 17, 2014.

  86. Andrew J. Cherlin, Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America (New York: Russell Sage, 2014), p. 196.

  87. Ibid., p. 178; Rob Stein, “Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds,” The Washington Post, December 29, 2008.

  88. National survey of 950 2012 voters (840 likely 2014 voters) by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund, March 19–23, 2014.

  89. Ibid.; this will be discussed at length in chapter 10.

  90. Abby M. McCloskey, “Clearing the Way for Working Women,” National Affairs, Issue Number 22, Winter 2015.

  91. Steven Swinford, “David Cameron Pledges 600,000 Childcare to ‘Make Work Pay,’” The Telegraph, April 22, 2015.

  92. K. J. Dell’Antonia, “For Younger Mothers, Out-of-Wedlock Births Are the New Normal,” The New York Times, February 19, 2012; George A. Akerlof, “Men Without Children,” The Economic Journal, 108, Royal Economic Society, 1998.

  93. Ross Douthat, “Is Marriage Promotion Possible?,” The New York Times, January 14, 2014.

  94. Ross Douthat, “For Poorer and Richer,” The New York Times, March 14, 2015. David Brooks, “The Next Culture War,” The New York Times, July 1, 2015.

  95. Scott Winship, “Whither the Bottom 90 Percent, Thomas Piketty?,” Forbes, April 17, 2014; Avik Roy, “Thomas Piketty’s Impoverished Debate About Inequality—and Ours,” Forbes, May 26, 2014.

  96. Rush Limbaugh, “The Left Is Giddy over New Marxist Book,” The Rush Limbaugh Show, April 24, 2014.

  97. Danny Vinik, “Meet the Man Who Wants to Help Paul Ryan Solve Poverty,” Business Insider, November 26, 2013.

  98. Jared Bernstein, “Piketty’s Arguments Still Hold Up, After Taxes,” The New York Times, May 9, 2014.

  99. Alan Reynolds, “The Truth About the 1 Percent,” National Review, November 11, 2013.

  100. Chris Giles, “Piketty Findings Undercut by Errors,” The Financial Times, May 23, 2014; “Picking Holes in Piketty,” The Economist, May 31, 2014.

  101. Roy, “Thomas Piketty’s Impoverished Debate.”

  102. David Brooks, “The Piketty Phenomenon,” The New York Times, April 24, 2014; David Brooks, “The Inequality Problem,” The New York Times, January 16, 2014.

  103. James Pethokoukis, “The New Marxism,” National Review, March 24, 2014.

  104. Ross Douthat, “Piketty, Doom Loops, and Haymarket,” The New York Times, April 22, 2014.

  10 FROM REAGAN DEMOCRATS TO THE NEW AMERICA

  1. National survey of 950 likely 2016 voters for Democracy Corps, Women’s Voice Women Vote Action Fund, and the Voter Participation Center, January 7–11, 2015; national election survey of 1,001 likely 2012 voters by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and the Voter Participation Center, November 5–7, 2012. Survey results were weighted to reflect the national exit survey.

  2. National survey of 950 2012 voters (827 likely 2014 voters) by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voice Women Vote Action Function, June 10–15, 2014.

  3. National survey of 950 likely 2016 voters by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voice Women Vote Action Fund and the Voter Participation Center, January 7–11, 2015. This is the average of the top six policies.

  4. Ibid.; “The Moment of Truth,” Report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, December 1, 2010.

  5. Statewide survey of 456 white persuadable likely voters in Louisiana by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps.

  6. National survey of 950 likely 2016 voters by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voice Women Vote Action Fund and the Voter Participation Center.

  7. House battleground survey of 1,105 likely 2014 voters in the 66 most competitive House districts (280 interviews in the 17 most competitive Republican districts and 200 interviews in the next 16 most competitive Republican districts and 625 interviews in the 33 most competitive Democratic-held districts) by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps, October 4–9, 2014.

  8. Survey of 1,000 likely voters in the 12 most competitive Senate races across the country by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voice Women Vote Action Function, September 20–24, 2014, including an oversample of 1,200 voters across Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, and Colorado conducted September 12–October 1, 2014.

  9. North Carolina State Board of Elections 2014 statewide official general election results, accessed February 11, 2015, http://enr.ncsbe.gov/ElectionResults/?election_dt=11/04/2014.


  10. State of the Union research was conducted on January 20, 2015, by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund. Participants were 61 white swing voters nationwide who split their votes fairly evenly between Democratic and Republican candidates over the past several presidential and congressional elections, though there were slightly more Obama voters than Romney voters. The group’s self-identified partisanship was 33 percent Democratic, 34 percent independent, and 33 percent Republican. The group included 27 women and 34 men, including 13 unmarried women.

  11. Focus groups by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voice Women Vote Action Fund in Virginia Beach, January 8, 2015, among white non-college-educated men and women from Virginia Beach. These men and women have household incomes under $50,000 a year, were roughly half Obama voters, and weak partisans or independents.

  12. Greenberg Quinlan Rosner conducted 31 double-blind qualitative interviews, 30–45 minutes long, with thought leaders in the infrastructure field spanning functions, asset class, and geography for McKinsey in the fall of 2012. All participants were in infrastructure-focused roles within organizations with revenues or budgets in excess of $2 billion; 9 have truly global roles, 9 focus on EMEA, 7 on the United States, 3 LATAM, and 3 APAC; across the value chain from government and developers, through finance and construction to operations; across sectors, but with a focus on transport and energy.

  13. Focus groups by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voice Women Vote Action Fund in Virginia Beach, January 8, 2015.

  14. James Carville and Stanley B. Greenberg, It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! (New York: Blue Rider Press, Penguin Group, 2012), pp. 108–25; national survey of 1,000 2008 voters (866 likely 2010 voters) by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Campaign for America’s Future, July 26–29, 2010; survey of 1,000 likely 2012 voters by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Center for American Progress, October 15–18, 2011.

  15. Web survey of 1,500 2010 voters by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps’ Economic Media Project, March 1–7, 2013; 52 percent favored an infrastructure investment plan and 48 percent favored an austerity/spending cut plan for growth: “Given where our economy is, we should invest now in infrastructure, education, and technology, and rehiring teachers and firefighters to get people back to work to make our country stronger in the long-term”; survey of 1,012 British adults and 1,025 German adults by Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, March 4–27, 2013. When asked if the best way to solve the country’s economic problems is to reduce government spending to reduce public debt or spend more to stimulate the economy, 67 percent of Germans said cuts while 26 percent said stimulus, and 52 percent of Britons said cuts while 37 percent said stimulus. Survey of 1,710 adults. Conducted by YouGov for The Sun, July 21–22, 2013. Asked about the way the government is cutting spending to reduce the deficit, 39 percent said it is good for the economy, 44 percent said it was bad for the economy, and 17 percent said they don’t know; 57 percent said the cuts are necessary, 29 percent said unnecessary, and 14 percent said they don’t know. http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/vu1qujpx35/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-220713.pdf.