By John Y. Brown IV, on Wed Nov 14, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
I was as disappointed as any other Republican with last Tuesday’s election results. President Obama defeated Governor Romney soundly in the Electoral College while also defeating him, albeit by a lesser margin, in the national popular vote. Republicans also lost seats in both chambers of Congress.
This was a pivotal election. On Tuesday, we learned that the large expansion of the federal government that took place in President Obama’s first term will likely continue without a Republican president or more conservative House or Senate to intervene. Whether Republicans like it or not, Obamacare is here to stay. The same is true of Dodd-Frank Act and many other expansions of federal power that took place under this President.
Likewise, whoever was elected president in 2012 was destined to play a major role in the budgetary reforms that are needed to bring our country to long term financial solvency and short term fiscal sanity. With President Obama, we can expect to see heavier tax hikes and military cuts and much smaller domestic spending cuts than we would have under a President Romney. Entitlement reform will be hard to achieve in any meaningful way with a President who is already on the record as opposing raising the retirement age, cutting benefits (even for the wealthy), or having any sort of market based changes within the various systems.
The point here is that with so much on the line, my party lost big last Tuesday in an election that had huge implications for the future of public policy.
The easy impulse is to find blame (the devastating storms, the power of incumbency, an Obama friendly media, etc.) that will relieve us from the harder (but also more rewarding) task of asking ourselves honestly where our party came up short.
What was it that made swing voters break towards President Obama instead of Governor Romney in the final days of the campaign?
Most commentators tell us that it was because Republicans came off as too extreme on social policy like immigration, abortion and other hot button social issues. These extreme positions, the argument goes, caused republicans to lose critical support from minorities, women and youth. I believe there is more than a grain of truth to what those commentators are telling us.
Most minorities don’t support Republicans because of issues like immigration but more because they are drawn to the populist economic message that Democratic Presidents typically promote. These segments of voters generally support higher taxes (on the “rich”) and more public services.
Read the rest of… John Y. Brown, IV: Why We Lost — Republicans Need to Connect to Middle America
The RP sent the following message to the 600,000 person army of Democrats, Republicans and Independents who comprise the No Labels movement. Please read, and if you agree, sign on to this important cause:
The election is over, and our leaders are talking about working across the aisle — but will they follow through?
The stakes have rarely been higher. Neither side has the numbers to push through an agenda without compromise, and the price of failure would be severe. Once again, they have no choice but to work together.
Speaker John Boehner said, “If there was one mandate that came out of the election, it was find a way to work together to address our problems.” President Barack Obama agreed, inviting congressional leaders tothe White House to work on a solution to the fiscal cliff.
More than a half-million Democrats, Republicans and independents have coalesced behind this cause. Washington can and will work, but only if the people demand it. That’s what we’re doing.
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Nov 13, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET
The aftermath of the Hurricane. The aftermath of the election.
What’s the spirit of New York right now? I went on a fact-finding mission in my Timberlands and my construction jumpsuit yesterday. I am an anthropologist of sorts. Anthropologist-matchmaker, if that makes any sense. (usually it doesn’t.) I was hopeful about the state of affairs on human connection. After all, I have gotten buckets of positive energy sent my way on the loss of our house, and meanwhile there are Hurricane victims who are much worse off. So I wake up at the crack of dawn and I’m thinking, like that old Dunkin’ Donuts commercial—“Time to make the dates happen.”
But out in the coffeehouses of the city, not so much. The isolation is deafening. We can’t even blame the Hurricane for the shell-shocked nature of New Yorkers these days. Prior to hurricane season this year I was with my 7-year old son in Starbucks, and we were searching for a seat. He said, “I want to sit over there in the Computer Lab.” He was referring to the communal table. Something has gone wrong with our ability to socialize.
There is so much opportunity for human connection this week. New Yorkers have been outpouring charitable donations, volunteer labor, blankets and peanut butter& banana sandwiches. There is a palpable energy of friendliness, community and good will. But my findings revealed that noble intentions haven’t translated into an easier time for singles to meet. They should, though.
In the blackout of 1965 in NYC, my parents lived at 4thAvenue and 10th Street. My Dad was at NYU Law School and was walking home with a fellow student when the lights went out. He invited the guy over, knowing that my Mom would be there with dinner, and it would be wrong for his friend to have to be alone in the dark. My Mom had been at the gynecologist’s office in the neighborhood and had befriended a random woman in the waiting room who lived uptown and was stuck without safe passage. Needless to say, my Mom (not yet a Jewish mother but obviously in-training) invited the woman over for dinner as well. The two guests met that night and the rest was history. They fell in love and got married.
I’ve always loved that story. I was barely a gleam in the doctor’s speculum but that night must have been the start of my matchmaking proclivities. The most pertinent part of the story is that my Mom (Jewish mom in-training or otherwise) would not have invited a random stranger to dinner under normal circumstances. Don’t get me wrong, she is extremely hospitable. But she follows social norms, and it is just not a very socially acceptable thing to do.
I believe when you breach social norms and make yourself vulnerable, great things can happen. You can effect change. This is the time. That Billy Joel song is playing in my head. He says,“We lived through a lifetime and the aftermath.” What is the aftermath of a lifetime? I certainly don’t know, but one thing is for sure—the aftermath of a lifetime is even further beyond our control than the aftermath of a hurricane or an election. “This is the time, but time is gonna change.” You can bet that Obama knows this. You can know it too.
Imagine you only have 4 years- to accomplish your next goal. Whether that is finding the One, having a baby, starting a business, how might you get started?
“Is that a weathervane in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” Okay, maybe that’s not the best pick-up line in the world. But any pick-up line is better than no pick-up line. And judging from my anthropological findings around NYC this week, a cheesy pick-up line might be just the ice-breaker we need. Or should I say glacier-breaker? “How’d you do in Sandy” or “How’d you weather the storm?” might be a little more socially acceptable. There may be something to be said for some social norms.
Trying times can go either way, when it comes to human connection. We feel vulnerable, so we want to go back into the safe shell of workaholism and isolation. Or alternatively, we feel vulnerable so we reach out for the hope that love and connection can provide comfort. Two roads diverged in a taxi line. “Are you going to the Upper West Side too? I hear they have power and Internet there.” It’s so easy to reach out, yet so hard.
So when you’re out and about this week, think about the next 4 years, and stretch outside of your comfort zone to talk to a stranger. Get yourself one step closer to your goals. This is the time. Take New York City by storm. 😉
We are proud to introduce our latest “reinvention” expert: Saul Kaplan. Saul is a nationally-recognized recognized expert on entrepreneurship and is the author of The Business Model Innovation Factory and founder and Chief Catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory. Saul’s column will be dedicated to advising members of the RP Nation who are in the midst of, or are considering, a second (or third, or fourth) act as an entrepreneur. Enjoy and learn:
Learn by doing. Constantly test new ideas. Learn, share and repeat. The world is ever changing — stay ahead of the curve. Embrace the art of discovery.
We need to try more stuff. Innovation is never about silver bullets. It’s about experimentation and doing whatever it takes, even if it means trying 1,000 things, to deliver value. Business model innovation requires a lot more experimentation than we are comfortable with today. Tweaking existing business models won’t work. Technology as a sustaining innovation may improve the efficiency of current business models but will not result in the transformation that we all want and need. We need to learn how to leverage technology for disruptive innovation and to experiment with new business models.
Geoffrey Canada, the inspiring founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone in NYC, reminds us of the importance of constant experimentation. Everyone wants to know the one thing that makes a program like Harlem Children’s Zone successful. What is the silver bullet that will allow the program to be replicated with ease across the country? We are always looking for an easy answer. There is no silver bullet and it is not easy to transform any business model or social system. According to Canada, at Harlem Children’s Zone it is doing 1,000 things with passion to help those children succeed. It is about focusing on the customer, in this case, the children within 100 city blocks in Harlem and doing what ever it takes to help them secure a bright future. There is no one thing.
Saul’s new book. Click on image to review and/or purchase
Business model innovation is all about experimentation. It is about combining and recombining capabilities from across silos until something clicks and value is delivered in a new way. It is never just one thing. It starts with a big idea that gets the juices flowing and attracts others with similar passion to the new approach. The big idea has to be translated from the white board on to a real world test bed to demonstrate that the idea is feasible. Starting small and demonstrating progress is key to building credibility and expanding a network of interested stakeholders. An ongoing portfolio of small-scale experiments to fail fast on those without merit and to prioritize those with the potential to scale is critical.
We also must get far more comfortable with hacking capabilities. Capabilities are the amino acids of innovation. They are the building blocks that enable value delivery. Innovation is a better way to deliver value and is often the result of repurposing existing capabilities. Locking capabilities into rigid organization structures and proprietary closed systems gets in the way of unleashing new sources of value and solving many of the important challenges of our time. Innovation is about hacking capabilities. Business model innovation happens when we enable random capability collisions resulting in new and unexpected ways to deliver value.
A good example of the power and potential of hacking capabilities is Microsoft’s (MSFT) Kinect. Microsoft introduced Kinect in November 2010 as a product extension to its Xbox franchise. Kinect adds a very cool capability for Xbox game players by getting rid of the hand held game controller and turning players into their own controllers. Microsoft and cool haven’t been used in the same sentence for a long time. Kinect is cool.
Microsoft predictably launched Kinect with it’s deeply ingrained proprietary product mind set. You could buy Kinect as a bundle with an Xbox or as a separate component to attach to an existing Xbox for $150. While Microsoft views Kinect as a product the global geek community views it as a capability. To geeks, Kinect is a powerful capability screaming to be hacked and repurposed for exciting new uses beyond its use as an Xbox extension. What a bargain for only $150. It’s a hackers dream.
And hack they will. A crowd of makers, programmers, roboticists, and other assorted and sundry geeks are having at it to explore what Kinect can enable beyond Microsoft’s initial intention. It’s only a matter of time before we see new gesture based applications and platforms. How about gesture based health care and education applications to start?
Read the rest of… Saul Kaplan: Experiment All the Time
By Michael Steele, on Mon Nov 12, 2012 at 8:20 AM ET
I am certain at some point during the past 18 months you found yourself feeling like that kid riding in the backseat of the family car on what is supposed to be the “great adventure” to “someplace special.” But the only thing you can muster after about 15 minutes is, “Are we there yet?” Well, kiddies, Tuesday night we arrived, and the trip that was Election 2012 was finally over.
When this journey started many of us had high hopes for an engaging battle of ideas, but what we got instead was more a battle of super PACs and their negative campaign ads. By the time of the first debate in early October, many voters were fed up and tuned out.
But a funny thing happened that night: President Obama finally got to meet Mitt Romney — not the caricature of the “rich white guy” or the plutocrat from, well, Pluto, but the husband and father, and the former governor of Massachusetts. It was this night, on the biggest stage of his political career, that Romney found his voice. He didn’t talk process or sound indifferent to the concerns of 47 percent of Americans, nor did he concern himself with the misdirection and bright shiny objects offered up by Democrats (e.g. campaign ads) but instead, looked every voter in the eye and talked to us with specifics and reminded us that we are not better off just because “it could be worse.”
Read the rest of… Michael Steele: Are We There Yet, GOP?
We welcome our newest contributing recovering politician to the RP: Steve Levy, who served as a Suffolk County Executive from 2004-2011, a New York State Assemblyman and was a Republican candidate for Governor of New York in 2010. Steve currently is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political, governmental and business consulting firm.
1. Occupy Wall Street
This movement, which started as a grassroots, diverse consortium of the disaffected and ultimately morphed into a cabal of old time anarchists and communists, is what gave Obama his sense of direction. Obama handlers knew there were few accomplishments to harp on, given the stagnant economy, but by focusing public anger on the 1%, they could help galvanize their base while also pointing the finger at the greedy rich folks they could claim were the cause of the mess they inherited.
2. The Greatest Convention Ever?
History will show the 2012 Democratic Convention as being the best of this century and possibly any convention over the last fifty years. It played to every constituency in the base, motivating them in difficult times and used President Clinton to lay the blame for today’s woes on the Bush administration. Romney could easily have accentuate the hypocrisy of Democrats blaming the current problems on the Bush administration. Economists agree that Bush policies had little to do with the crash of 2008. The culprit was the deregulation of Wall Street by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, ironically signed by Democratic President Clinton. The Romney campaign allowed the Democrats to establish traction on the term “Don’t Go Back.”
3. Define Your Opponent Early
Politics 101 is to seek to define your opponent in a negative way as early as possible. Politics 101A is for the affected candidate to respond quickly and forcefully. The Democrats wisely adhered to the former strategy, while the Republicans ignored the latter to their detriment. In the lull after the Republican primary, the Democrats spent a good share of their money pummeling Romney, defining him through his association with Bain Capital. He became the out-sourcing, job cutting, detached Daddy Warbucks who could not identify with the average worker, It took away Romney’s narrative that he was the sharp businessman who knew how to fix the economy. Romney could easily have defended himself as being the saver of jobs. Staples, Sports Authority and other companies survived because of his intervention. The initial jobs that were lost after Bain’s acquisitions would have been lost anyway. By the time Romney finally sought to aggressively erase this caricature at the debate, it was too late.
Read the rest of… Steve Levy: Top Ten Game Changes of the 2012 Election
Well before Bill Clinton mastered the skill of political survival, and became the most consequential ex-president since Theodore Roosevelt, he pulled off a more pivotal achievement. Clinton essentially restored the Democratic Party as an electoral force by shoring up its credibility on fiscal policy, social policy, and race, and in so doing, he drew two crucial blocs firmly back into his party: blue collar whites and suburban professionals. The modern electoral map, which allots most of the industrial north and Midwest to Democrats and in which suburb-heavy states like California and New Jersey have not been contested in a generation, is the legacy of Clinton’s restoration project.
Republicans face a comparable predicament to the one pre-Clinton Democrats faced in the late eighties, and to compound the analogy, it is a challenge along roughly the same fronts with a very similar alignment of voter blocs. If Walter Mondale’s Democrats seemed wedded at the hip to their union benefactors, today’s Republicans seem just as tied to corporate lobbies or billionaires. If the party that nominated George McGovern seemed mired in the grip of left-leaning activists bent on a radical redesign of social policy, Republicans appear to be under the sway of one network and a bevy of factions who are just as bent on a counter-cultural revolution from the right. The combination of money and noise exerted veto power on late eighties Democrats, much as contemporary Republicans are constrained by their own base.
And the blue collars and suburbanites whom Clinton strategized over are the very same slices of the electorate that allowed Barack Obama to run the battleground table with the exception of North Carolina (whose unpopular Democratic governor and nine percent plus unemployment should have made a 2.5 point margin much more comfortable).
The particulars of the Clinton project are worth recalling. The adoption of welfare reform served as an antidote to voters who associated Democrats with the transfer of tax dollars to the irresponsible. The denunciation of a rapper for loose lyrics about police violence seemed to erase the pandering, excuse making side of the party’s DNA. The now forgotten middle class tax cut proposal may not have survived Clinton’s first budget cycle, but it did its job by linking his party to the economic fortunes of a group that hadn’t seemed needy enough to be a liberal priority.
My strong hope is that Republicans, my new party, are about to discover their Clinton instincts. Had those sensibilities surfaced in the last ninety days, Mitt Romney would likely be planning a transition now. It is not hard to imagine the impact of a well-timed denunciation of the Todd Akin/Richard Murdock mythologies on rape not as gaffes, but as wrong-headed efforts to have government substitute for the conscience and moral judgment of a victimized woman. A fleshed out plan to rescue homeowners underwater on ill-conceived mortgages would have reflected some of the smarter instincts in the conservative intelligentsia in the last several years, while paying dividends with voters who associated the GOP with the blocking of initiatives and little else. Grabbing and running with Senator Marco Rubio’s version of the Dream Act before Obama absconded with it would have made a difference in Florida and Colorado.
But the tactical missed chances by Romney’s operation are history. The current challenge is finding a GOP pathway to do on the right what Clinton did in the salvation of the left 20 years ago: first, restoring the party’s bona fides as an institution capable of thinking and governing and not just pawing under the commands of its base. Second, overcoming a resistance to smart, fiscally disciplined innovation and reform.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: The New Republicans
By Nick Paleologos, on Fri Nov 9, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
In their quest for the presidency, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each spent a billion dollars. They debated each other three times in front of an average audience of 60 million Americans. In the process, they aired sharp differences on several major issues facing the country.
The people listened carefully.
On Tuesday November 6, 2012, Americans delivered their verdict.
They gave President Obama three million more popular votes–and 126 more electoral votes–than Governor Romney. By their votes, the American people settled the following questions:
1) National health care? YES. (Obamacare is here to stay.) 2) Tax cuts for the rich? NO. (Ryan Budget rejected.) 3) Roe v. Wade? YES. (Rape is never “legitimate.”) 4) Citizens United? NO. (Most expensive election ever.) 5)Balanced approach to deficit reduction? YES. (Grover Norquist sent packing.) 6) Privatize social security & medicare? NO. (Fix, don’t nix.) 7) More women in US Senate? YES. (Number climbs to 20–the highest ever.) 8) More Republicans in congress? NO. (GOP loses 2 seats in Senate, 5 in House.) 9) Bi-partisanship? YES.(Voters applaud Obama-Christie cooperation.) 10) Deregulation? NO. (Voters to top 1%: Greed is NOT good.) 11) Equal pay for equal work? YES. (Voters punish GOP for “war on women.”) 12) Self-deportation? NO. (Voters support sensible immigration reform instead.) Significantly, the proportion of young people voting in 2012 was up from 2008—as was the proportion of African-Americans and Latinos.
President Barack Obama–by virtue of 2 consecutive majority victories in the popular vote–is now the most successful Democratic presidential candidate since Franklin Roosevelt.
For a rare look into the man’s soul, I offer you this:
When all was said and done, this election did turn out to be 2004 again. A polarizing president with tepid approval ratings fended off a Massachusetts based challenger who proved surprisingly resilient, but whose tactical errors and vulnerabilities put an unbreakable ceiling on his appeal. The victory itself was a weirdly shaped bubble made partly of scaring up a base vote with ad hominem attacks on the persona and character of the opponent, and partly of one time, single issue alliances that lifted the beleaguered incumbent without gaining much for his ballot mates in his own party: In George W. Bush’s case, a same sex marriage ban that doubled the normal black Republican vote in Ohio, in Barack Obama’s, an adept use of Mitt Romney’s opposition to the automobile industry bailout to bolster Democratic white working class support in Ohio.
But winning in uninspiring form counts just as much as the grand sweeps like 1980 and 2008. The Republican Party’s defeat unmasks deep liabilities beyond the expected demographic shortcomings with Latinos and voters under 29 (who against all expectations, maintained their slice of the electorate at 2008 levels in the midst of an appalling job market for new college graduates). The electorate rejected Romney even in the face of exit polls showing that voters trusted Romney to handle the economy better than Obama; that they overwhelmingly viewed the economy as poor or mediocre; that they favored repeal of Obama’s signature healthcare initiative; and that they rejected Obama’s strategy of deficit reduction through tax increases.
The conservative base is smaller than it has been in three decades, with its share falling to 35% while liberals edged up to 24%, a narrowing advantage further diminished by the fact that about a fifth of that conservative base consists of blacks and Latinos who still overwhelmingly voted for Obama. The Republican conservative base seems perilously close to shrinking to white southern evangelicals, senior white males, and upper income Protestants.
That Obama more or less maintained the 2008 foundation of his victory, with the exception of North Carolina and Indiana, is especially striking given the weak-kneed nature of the Obama recovery and the fact that close to half the country now views the president, a figure once ascribed near mythical powers, in an unfavorable vein. One unavoidable conclusion is that the country’s skepticism toward the last four years was outweighed by a marginally wider distrust of what Republican rule would look like. Another is that the electorate’s affinity for individual elements of the Republican agenda never coalesced into their approval of a broader GOP governing vision.
Hence the seemingly conflicted choice to pair Obama with a Republican House that surrendered few members of its majority beyond districts with a history of Democratic strength. Keeping the House red preserves the check on the unpopular aspects of Obama’s rule, while electing Romney would have meant sanctioning a policy course that remained nebulous or disconcerting to many swing voters and moderates.
To be sure, a better crafted campaign would have filled in Romney’s policy goals more convincingly than the ritualistic invocation of five point plans and generic references to cutting regulation and producing more domestic energy. But that failure is not just a marketing flaw on the part of Romney’s ad men: it is a symptom of a modern conservatism that seems spent and resistant to innovation on some days, purely oppositional and reactive on other days. And the weightiest part of the recent conservative agenda, Paul Ryan’s budget plan, was barely mentioned and its details only intermittently defended. (The details of Ryan’s budget had their share of political pitfalls, but the scant attention to it by the Romney campaign surely contributed to the impression that the Republican wish list was being kept deliberately shadowy.)
The other risk for Republicans, as Fox News’ Britt Hume noted last night, is that the axis of gravity is shifting leftward, and that a center right electorate is more predisposed than ever to a view that equates conventional conservatism with a middle aged backwardness. The hardening of the Democratic edge in affluent Northern Virginia, the white professional female gender gap, and the historically poor Republican showing with Hispanics can all be linked to a value judgment about the insularity of the Republican coalition. It is not hard to imagine that Democrats will exploit their growing cultural edge by pushing harder on issues that seemed marginal a cycle ago, like a fifty state right of same sex marriage, or more aggressive regulation of faith based institutions.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: The Republican Dilemma
The Jewish vote for Romney was 32% – up 10% from 2008..but clearly the Obama coalition doesn’t depend on it like the Democrat Party of old. It’s the new youth-single women-black-latino votes that lost this thing. I think I was somewhat prophetic in what I said to you in my email before the election.
What this means is we need to clean house and start to put other faces in charge; the future coalition of the GOP will be a synergy between social Libertarians, Jack Kemp (supply side) Republicans, and something I call Republican NeoRealists (“Neo Realism”).
This will include people like Condoleeza Rice, Allen West, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Alberto Gonzalez, and Log Cabin (gay) Republicans.
NeoRealists will work for, push, support, and make law state-based solutions for replacing the social compact of the New Deal and War on Poverty, while being inclusive of the reality of our population – it is openly accepting of gay issues, and I think the Republican Party should just accept it, support it, and make it known that we’re not going to fight that issue since gays, too, are concerned about economic freedom and prosperity. I think we should just say we support gay marriage as a general rule as a state-by-state decision, and that any marriage recognized in one state will be automatically recognized in another.
To bring forward the understand of the grievances of the black population, we can there tap into the connection of the religious aspect – as churches are a core element in many around the country.
I think we’re hanging onto some ideals that are a little rediculous and there is nothing wrong with waking up to this fact.
The focus of the moral majority of the 1980s is over and we need to accept it and make appropriate changes. The Reagan coalition came together because one person had the vision to realize what unites people.
The youth today are clearly – clearly – unimpressed with the GOP. The only way to capture them is to tap into their desires. They just don’t care about anything, frankly. Look at all the smut on the internet. We can support their smut and just tax it – tax it overwhelmingly.
I was as disappointed as any other Republican with last Tuesday’s election results. President Obama defeated Governor Romney soundly in the Electoral College while also defeating him, albeit by a lesser margin, in the national popular vote. Republicans also lost seats in both chambers of Congress.
The point here is that with so much on the line, my party lost big last Tuesday in an election that had huge implications for the future of public policy.
