Tonight’s State of the Union address was President Obama’s first speech of the 2012 campaign. As such, I was very interested in what sort of tone he would strike. Would he be closer to the post-partisan uniter of 2008, a tone he clung to even in the face of unprecedented GOP obstruction, or the anti-inequality populist he needs to be to win in 2012?

Overall, I think Obama is making progress in the right direction. When dealing with the topics of inequality and fair taxation, I think he makes a strong, clear case for why reducing inequality is all about American values:

We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. [From prepared remarks, via the LA Times]

Here’s another one:

We don’t begrudge financial success in this country.  We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich.  It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference – like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That’s not right.  Americans know it’s not right.

The problem I had, though, was with Obama’s continuing effort to prove he’s the grownup in the room, and the way he takes pains to validate certain Republican ideas. Some say he was “co-opting their language” for the 2012 campaign. I think he was ceding intellectual ground to them.

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In response to my post yesterday urging the DFL to start pushing its narrative while the GOP can’t easily respond, commenter Amuseinc says there’s no such thing:

Not to rain on your parade but what exactly is this “DFL narrative” you speak of? I have not heard a coherent platform message from the DFL since Humphrey was in charge.

Ouch.

Long-time readers of the blog will know that I have my own complaints about the DFL’s messaging abilities.However, I do think the party is getting much better, and a few conversations with party insiders have convinced me that they understand that they need a clear, simple message in 2012.

What exactly should that message be? If you ask me, it should be making Minnesota work for everyone, not just the rich. We should be clear that the GOP is the party of millionaires, and the DFL is the party of Minnesotans. Here are just a few talking points I’d like to see from the DFL over the next 11 months:

• The way to fix our economy is to help the poor and middle class. They are the real job creators.
• The richest Minnesotans pay lower taxes than the rest of us. They must pay their fair share before we ask the poor and middle class to make sacrifices.
• The Republican majority in the legislature forced us into a shutdown to protect special privileges for the very-rich.
• The GOP agreed with Governor Dayton on spending, but refused to pay for it honestly. They rejected a tax on millionaires who don’t pay their fair share, but were perfectly happy borrowing the money from our schools.

Mark Dayton has already proven that this sort of message works. It will work all the better in the wake of the Occupy movement and the MNGOP’s atrocious shilling for the richest during the most recent legislative session. Now is the time to start getting that message out.

It would be an understatement to say that the MNGOP is in disarray right now. The party is an utter mess, and rumors are that it may get even worse. For the DFL, this is an enormous opportunity.

I know many of us are currently having a grand old time surveying the wreckage, and possibly poking it now and then to see what else we can stir up. That’s all well and good, but now is the perfect opportunity to lay the groundwork for the 2012 campaign.

Yes, it’s a bit early. It would have been nice if the GOP meltdown had come a few months from now. But still, we can and should use the GOP trainwreck to our advantage. Let’s make January 2012 all about defining the terms of the 2012 election, at a time when it will be much more difficult than normal for the GOP to respond.

But Jeff, who’s paying attention 10 months before election day? Admittedly, very few people — mainly political junkies and the media. But that’s okay. Let’s get the conversation rolling. Let’s define the debate in our own terms. Let’s choose our turf and dig in. It doesn’t matter if it takes the voters another six months to tune in; once they do, they should join a debate already proceeding according to the DFL narrative.

Today’s Senate vote on the American Jobs Act will be another indication of which Democrats are too conservative and too politically inept to deserve the party’s support. It’s widely expected that some conservative Democrats will vote against the jobs bill, to the detriment of their own re-election chances.

Democrats do this all the time. Here’s an example of how it works:

1. Republicans claim the jobs bill is socialism.
2. Democrats accept that framing without putting up a fight.
3. “Moderate” Democrats try to prove they’re not socialists by voting against the bill.
4. Democrats try to blame Republicans for the lack of jobs.
5. Republicans point out that Democrats helped to defeat the jobs bill.
6. Furious voters punish all incumbents for the failing economy.

Democrats could easily rewrite the script if they wanted to. Here’s how it should play out:

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It’s no secret that unionization correlates strongly with middle-class income. New research from the Center for American Progress shows, unsurprisingly, that the trend we’ve been seeing for over 40 years continued in 2010:

…over time the strength of the middle class and the strength of the union movement have tracked closely together. In 1968, the share of income going to the nation’s middle class was 53.2 percent, when 28 percent of all workers were members of unions. Since then, union membership steadily declined alongside the share of income going to the middle class. By 2010, the middle class only received 46.5 percent of income as union membership dropped to less than 12 percent of workers.

As unions weakened, the lion’s share of the economy’s gains have gone to the wealthy. The share of pretax income earned by the richest 1 percent of Americans more than doubled between 1974 and 2007, climbing to 23 percent from 9 percent.

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The viral video of Elizabeth Warren taking on the “class warfare” talking point seems to be already permeating into Democrats’ language. She reminded Democrats that taxes are really just a social contract:

You built a factory and it turned into something terrific, God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay it forward for the next kid that comes along

For that, we owe Warren enormous gratitude. She has done what it seems no Democratic candidate has been able to do for years: make a strong defense of taxation and investment that resonates with voters. And as Greg Sargent notes, Democrats are listening — even Barack Obama. Here’s an excerpt from Obama’s town hall yesterday: 

We benefited from somebody making an investment in us. And I don’t care who you are — that’s true….  We’re in this thing together, we’re not on our own, and those of us that have been successful, we’ve gotta remember that.

Let’s hope we keep hearing more of this, from Obama and other Democrats, throughout the next 14 months.

Michele Bachmann, and most other Republicans, have been using the same tired rhetoric against liberals for decades now. They believe — and their belief is based on long experience — that we’ll back down in the face of these attacks. But it’s time to start standing up for ourselves when they say things like this:

Bachmann said unions that are using terms like “anti-worker” are engaging in “class warfare.”

Are unions engaging in class warfare? You’re damn right they are. That’s the whole point of unions — to fight the class war on behalf of the little guys. If more of us would wake up and realize that a class war has been waged against us for the last 30 years, maybe we would finally join the unions in fighting back.

Good on our unions for calling big corporations “anti-worker” when they behave in ways that hurt workers. It’s the workers and the consumers who drive our economy, not CEOs and wealthy investors. Thank you, unions, for fighting the class war on our behalf.

This is the sort of thing I wish we saw more from Democrats. Rodney Ellis, a Democratic State Senator from Houston, received an “F” from a right-wing advocacy group and sent them a letter letting them know he was proud of the grade:

…I am proud to have earned an “F” from Empower Texans for my work in the 82nd legislature.  I know I am doing things right in Austin, and would seriously question both my judgment and values were I to receive any higher grade.

I am proud to have opposed Voter ID, which does nothing to protect the sanctity of the ballot and is designed only to limit the participation of the disenfranchised; I am proud to have fought against those who held the Rainy Day Fund hostage and to use an additional $3 billion to alleviate devastating cuts to vital programs… I will wear my “F” grade from Empower Texans as a badge of honor and look forward to further disappointing you in the future.

To paraphrase the greatest President of the 20th Century, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: I welcome your hatred.  After all, I’d much rather be a champion of the powerless than a lickspittle of the powerful. [Daily Kos, via Eric Pusey]

Ellis’s letter should serve as a model for Democrats everywhere. Never be ashamed of your principles. Don’t shrink from conflict and try to hide from your record; explain your votes and your principles clearly and confidently. Excellent work, Senator.

I’ve been arguing for some time that Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to stand up for their ideals. In particular, I’ve written that taxes can be a political winner that Democrats shouldn’t shy away from. A recent Washington Post article indicates that Democrats may finally be embracing the issue:

For years, it has been Republicans who have wanted to talk about [taxes], winning elections promising not to let government take more from voters.

But since the showdown over raising the debt ceiling, Democrats have been unusually eager to embrace tax increases, gambling that voters will see the Republican refusal to consider higher taxes for the wealthy as recalcitrant and out-of-touch.

“Silence has been Democrats’ main political strategy since the mid-’90s on this issue,” said Michael J. Graetz, a professor at Columbia Law School who has studied the tax issue. “What’s happened is people’s consciousness has been raised that cutting spending may mean serious cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And that has had at least the potential to change the politics of the tax issue.”

I’m sure it helps to be able to tie taxes into the debate over the Republicans’ efforts to end Medicare. Whatever the reason, I’m glad to see glimmers of Democrats possibly growing spines.

We are Wisconsin launched two ads yesterday with the sort of messaging I’d like to see more liberals using. It’s time for more of this sort of bare-knuckled populism — or, if you prefer, class warfare.

We didn’t start the class war — it’s been waged on us for decades now. But it looks like liberals and progressives are finally ready to stop being cowed and fight back. This ad gets it exactly right. While 98 percent of us are sacrificing, the rich are taking more and more. It’s high time they got called out for having their hand in the cookie jar.