Republicans hate to hear it. But it must be said, now more than ever. Some stuff should not be privatized, outsourced or sub-contracted out.
There is ample evidence, for example, that the private sector is less than efficient in delivering affordable, quality health care to most Americans, as is the conclusion most non-ideologues would likely to draw from reading this article comparing health care in the U.S. and Sweden.
For an even more newsy take on the inefficiencies of government outsourcing to the private sector, however, read Tim Shorrock’s “Put the Spies Back Under One Roof” in the New York Times. As Shorrock observes:

The revelation that Edward J. Snowden, a contractor at Booz Allen Hamilton, was responsible for the biggest leak in the history of the National Security Agency has sparked a furious response in Congress.
“I’m very concerned that we have government contractors doing what are essentially governmental jobs,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last week. “Maybe we should bring some of that more in-house,” the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, mused.
It’s a little late for that. Seventy percent of America’s intelligence budget now flows to private contractors. Going by this year’s estimated budget of about $80 billion, that makes private intelligence a $56 billion-a-year industry.

Seventy percent? That’s an awful lot of faith in the integrity and capabilities of businesses that measure success in terms of their economic profit.
You will not be too surprised to learn that the push toward subcontracting our intelligence gathering and analysis to private, profiteering enterprises began around the year 2000. It wasn’t long before “The N.S.A.’s headquarters began filling with contractors working for Booz Allen and hundreds of other companies,” reports Shorrock, who adds:

And if the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs are unlawful or unconstitutional, as many Americans (including myself) believe, does it make any difference whether the work is done by a government analyst or a private contractor?
It does. Here’s why. First, it is dangerous to have half a million people — the number of private contractors holding top-secret security clearances — peering into the lives of their fellow citizens. Contractors aren’t part of the chain of command at the N.S.A. or other agencies and aren’t subject to Congressional oversight. Officially, their only loyalty is to their company and its shareholders.
Second, with billions of dollars of government money sloshing around, and with contractors providing advice on how to spend it, conflicts of interest and corruption are inevitable. Contractors simply shouldn’t be in the business of managing large projects and providing procurement advice to intelligence agencies…
Third, we’ve allowed contractors to conduct our most secret and sensitive operations with virtually no oversight. This is true not only at the N.S.A. Contractors now work alongside the C.I.A. in covert operations (two of the Americans killed in Benghazi were C.I.A. contractors; we still don’t know who their employer was).

Shorrock also writes about the incentives for corruption in the ‘revolving door’ and adds “After Blackwater’s sordid history in Iraq, we don’t need more unaccountable actors fighting terrorism for profit.” As for solutions to the problem:

Congress must act now to re-establish a government-run intelligence service operating with proper oversight. The first step is to appoint an independent review board — with no contractors on it — to decide where the line for government work should be drawn. The best response to the Snowden affair is to reduce the size of our private intelligence army and make contract spying a thing of the past. Our democracy depends on it.

There is way too much at stake in our national security to allow profit-driven concerns to spend 70 percent of our intelligence budget. Democrats should lead the call to restore public interest in our intel operations.

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to announce its decision on section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, Ari Berman has a poignant post up at The Nation , “John Lewis’s Long Fight for Voting Rights.” Says Berman: “… It’s shocking that the Supreme Court appears to be leaning toward overturning the centerpiece of the country’s most important civil rights law… If the Court upholds Section 5, as it has in four prior opinions, Lewis’s legacy will be cemented. And if the Court eviscerates it, Lewis’s voice will be needed as never before.”
In other voter suppression news, Josh Israel reports at Think progress that “Colorado’s state ethics panel has ruled that Secretary of State Scott Gessler (R) violated state ethics laws and breached public trust for his own personal gain. Gessler, best known for his failed voter purge and his crusade against largely nonresistant voter fraud, received a fine for the violations.”
At least same-day voter registration is moving forward at the state level, explains Steven Carbo at Demos. Yet here too there is resistence: “Sadly, voting rights opponents are also seeing Same Day Registration’s potential, and are moving to end the reform in several SDR states. Last month, Montana lawmakers voted to put an SDR repeal question before the voters on the November 2014 ballot. In North Carolina, the conservative majority is championing a string of voter suppression measures that would eliminate Same Day Registration, impose a strict voter ID requirement, and shorten the state’s early voting periods.”
Here we have an interesting meditation on “What are ‘Liberals,’ What are ‘Progressives,’ and Why the Difference Matters.”
Mark Caputo reports at The Miami Herald why “Fla. Democrats see Gov. Rick Scott as easy target in 2014.” Caputo explains: “The most recent public polls, released in March, indicate Crist would soundly beat him and that Scott is viewed far less favorably than favorably. One survey, from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling showed that Scott would lose to Crist by 12 percentage points and to Sink by 6 points, but that he’d beat Rich by 6 percentage points.
At The Fix, Chris Cillizza reports on the intensification of the GOP’s internecine battles.
Alex Roarty’s “Will North Carolina Shape the Future of the Senate?” at The National Journal limns the challenge Dems face in holding Kay Hagan’s Senate seat — and the Senate majority: “The Republican Party’s hopes for a Senate majority will rise and fall on 2014 elections in seven red states where Democratic senators are running for reelection or retiring…Within this group (Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia), one state stands apart. North Carolina is represented by freshman Kay Hagan, seeking reelection for the first time since her 2008 victory.”
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham certainly has a way with words, as Phillip Ellito reports in his Talking Points Memo post: “Graham: GOP Is ‘In A Demographic Death Spiral.”
Georgetown poly sci proffesor Dan Hopkins addresses the question “Is it really the GOP’s anti-immigration stances that turn off Latinos?” at Wonkblog.
At The Atlantic Norm Ornstein explores “Why Can’t House GOP Leaders Stand Up to Radical Members of Their Party?” Ornstein observes: “Why have we privatized and subcontracted the lions’ share of our national security intelligence apparatus? Because mindless budget cuts, a long-standing zeal to privatize reflexively, along with multiyear pay freezes for all civilian government employees and other efforts to undercut and demoralize those who work for government, have made it nearly impossible for government security agencies to compete with the private sector for top-flight electrical engineers and computer scientists. So we have turned to the back door, relying more and more on less-secure private contractors. This is the consequence of moving from a commendable focus on lean, efficient, and functional government in areas where we need it to an unthinking hatred of all government that is transcendent in the new GOP, and unchallenged by those who know better.”

The following article by TDS founding editor Ruy Teixeira, is cross-posted from Think Progress:
In terms of red states going blue, Texas gets most of the ink (I myself wrote a recent piece on possibilities for a blue Texas). That’s understandable. Moving Texas and its 38 votes out of the red column would sunder Republicans’ already tenuous path to an Electoral College majority.
But Georgia’s 16 electoral votes are not trivial and would, if lost, also do grievous damage to Republican prospects. Yet we hear relatively little about possibilities for a blue Georgia, despite the fact that Georgia is, in many respects, a more plausible candidate than Texas for changing colors. Zac McCrary and Bryan Stryker’s strong argument, as well as some of my own research, suggests that we might see Georgia’s votes go to the Democratic candidate as soon as the 2020 Presidential election.
Start with the basic facts on electoral performance as rehearsed by McCrary and Stryker:

In 2012, Georgia was the second most competitive state carried by Mitt Romney (+7.8 percent Romney) — behind only North Carolina (+2.0 percent Romney). Romney’s margin in Georgia was narrower than his winning margins in 2008-cycle swing states Missouri (+9.4 percent Romney) and Indiana (+10.2 percent Romney) as well as in forward-looking Democratic target states Arizona (+9.1 percent Romney) and Texas (+15.8 percent Romney). And in 2008, Georgia was the third most competitive state won by McCain, behind only Missouri and Montana.

The 2012 numbers aren’t accidents. A slate of underlying demographic trends are pushing Georgia in a bluer direction.
In the last decade, Georgia had a rapid rate of increase in its minority population, going from 37 to 44 percent minority over the time period. The increase in the minority population accounted for 81 percent of Georgia’s growth over the decade. Unusually, the biggest contributor to minority growth came from blacks, who alone accounted for 39 percent of Georgia’s growth. The next largest contributor was Hispanics, whose numbers increased at a scorching 96 percent pace and accounted for 26 percent of the state’s growth.
By 2020, along with Nevada and Maryland, Georgia is almost certain to join the ranks of majority-minority states. These ongoing shifts should continue to move Georgia in a more competitive direction.
The geographical locus of that change will likely be in the burgeoning Atlanta metropolitan area, whose share of the statewide vote continues to grow (up to 54 percent in the 2012 election). It is here that the new Georgia is taking shape most clearly. As summarized by McCrary and Stryker:

Of metro Atlanta’s roughly one million new residents over the past decade, 90 percent are non-white (54 percent African American / 31 percent Hispanic). This growth reduced the metro area’s white percentage from 60 percent in 2000 to 51 percent in 2010. Conversely, African Americans (from 29 percent to 32 percent of the area’s population) and Hispanics (from 6 percent to 10 percent) have undergone a population boom.

Reflecting these changes, Obama carried the Atlanta metro in both 2008 and 2012, by 4 points and 1 point, respectively. That’s a 21 point Democratic swing from the 1988 Presidential election. The changes–and the improvements for Democrats-are generally even gaudier in the metro area’s (and the state’s) most populous counties: Cobb (138 percent of growth from minorities, 34 point margin shift toward Democrats since 1988); DeKalb (143 percent of growth from minorities, 55 point shift toward Democrats); Fulton (94 percent of growth from minorities, 16 point shift toward Democrats) and Gwinnett (118 percent of growth from minorities, 42 point shift toward Democrats).
With figures like this, it’s not hard to see a blue Georgia taking shape in the near future — probably nearer than Texas, despite its slightly higher Democratic support among whites and slightly higher minority share of voters. The secret ingredient: Georgia’s minority voters are dominated by extremely pro-Democratic African-Americans. That pushes overall Democratic support among minorities in Georgia about 20 points higher than in Texas. That makes a huge difference and explains why Georgia has been so much closer in the last two elections than Texas.
But how near is this near future we’re talking about? Could be pretty near. Projections we have done at CAP suggest the minority percentage of eligible voters in Georgia should rise by about 3.5 percentage points between 2012 and 2016. All else equal, that could cut the Democratic deficit by as much as 5 points (that is, reducing Obama’s 8 point deficit in 2012 to a mere 3 points). And by 2020, if trends continue, a blue Georgia seems eminently possible.
But, of course, all else might not be equal. That’s why the quest for a blue Georgia, just as the quest for a blue Texas, is going to have to be built on a three-legged stool, only one leg of which is ongoing demographic change. The other two are matching minority, particularly Hispanic, turnout to white turnout and elevating white support for Democrats. In the former area, the Democrats have an advantage relative to Texas because such a higher proportion of the minority vote is black and blacks have been turning out a high rate. But that has to continue post-Obama. Moreover, a greater proportion of the Georgia minority vote in the future will be Latino and these voters, according to recent data, turn out at a rate 17 points lower than blacks. Closing that gap will be an important part of any blue Georgia strategy.
In the latter area, if the Democrats can simply get their support among whites into the 25-30 percent range (support was probably around 20 percent in 2012) — in other words, make the typical GOP landslide among Georgia whites just a little bit less of a landslide — they will be in a good position to stand firmly on the three legged stool and take blue Georgia from aspiration to reality.

Brad Plumer’s Wonkblog post, “Do private-sector unions still have a future in the U.S.?” addresses a question of enormous importance, not only for the union movement and the nation, but also for the Democratic Party. Plumer riffs on Rich Yeselson’s even wonkier essay, “Fortress Unionism” in the journal Democracy, and distills a few key points.
Regarding the Taft-Hartley Act’s effect on union power, Plumer notes: “Yeselson offers a slightly recast argument here, suggesting that the blizzard of new legal restrictions “bureaucratized labor unions,” by forcing them to lawyer up and “drain[ing] the energy and creativity out of the members and their rank-and-file leadership.”
Plumer notes Yeselson’s critique of Labor’s “creative campaigns to organize workers in fresh territory,” and explains:

Some of these campaigns were quite successful on a small scale — like SEIU’s “Justice for Janitors” push. But Yeselson, who worked on many of these efforts, argues that they simply haven’t been enough to stop labor’s overall decline. One reason, he notes, is that it’s simply much harder to organize on a large scale today. When the UAW organized its famous sit-down strike in GM’s Flint plant in 1937, there were 47,000 workers at stake. A single Wal-Mart store today might yield about 300 workers.

Plumer takes a look at labor organizing history in the U.S. and other developed nations and comes to a disturbing conclusion:

Organized labor tends to expand only at rare points in history, so unions should hunker down and wait for that moment to come along. Labor economist Richard Freeman has argued that labor unions in advanced nations tend to follow a similar pattern. They’ve only grown during a few rare “spurts” of social upheaval — World War I, the Depression, World War II. But the rest of the time, they usually wilt….
As such, Yeselson argues, it’s unlikely that incremental organizing pushes can break this long-standing pattern. Instead, he argues, unions should work to shore up their existing strengths: Bolster their locals; organize only where they’re already strong; invest in “alt-labor” campaigns for non-union workers. And then… they should wait for another one of these “spurts” to come along.
“Wait for the workers to say they’ve had enough,” Yeselson advises. “When they demand in vast numbers collective solutions to their problems, seize upon that energy and institutionalize it.” The big question, of course, is what that moment of social upheaval might look like — or whether anything like the worker unrest in the 1930s is even possible today.

Plumer adds that “certain changes to labor law could at least slow that inexorable erosion of union density — even if they can’t stop it entirely.” However, he adds that “Favorable labor law only passes when unions are already strong — and rarely happens otherwise. He cites Dems’ failure to pass card check in 2009 when they had big majorities, intimidated as they were by the filibuster. He concludes, “if the goal is to hope that big changes to labor law will save unions, that could be a very long wait.”
The future of the labor movement and the Democratic party are inextricably intertwined. When one is sick, the other suffers and neither will prosper unless both are in good health. That’s why unions must stay deeply involved in politics and the Democrats must push harder for labor reforms that can strengthen the ability of workers to organize their power into trade unions. The bleak, unacceptable alternative is continued gridlock.
I appreciate the data mining done by Yeselson, Plumer and all political and social science writers. There are important lessons we must learn in historical patterns. At the same time, however, let’s not allow history to make a hostage of hope. Sometimes a creative tweak can make a failed strategy viable.
Perhaps it’s premature to judge recent experimental labor organizing techniques a failure. If the ones that have been fully tried have failed thus far, then lesson learned. To the extent that they haven’t been fully explored, there may be some room for future successes. Surely there is always room for innovative organizing ideas and more creative forms of membership.
As for waiting for the most opportune moment to organize, certainly unions will be alert and move decisively when such a time ripens. But, like the savvy civil rights leader Dorothy Height once said, “When the times aren’t ripe, you have to ripen the times” — which is damn good advice for any progressive movement.

This article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:

Here is the bottom line: if the minimum wage in 1968 had been adjusted for inflation, right now instead of $7.25 per hour, it would be $10.55 per hour — 45 percent higher. Instead of making $15,080 per year for 52 weeks of full-time work, a minimum wage worker would make almost $22,000.
The federal minimum wage has been increased 22 times since it was passed in 1938, but it has never been indexed to inflation. As a result, the incomes of a larger and larger number of working Americans have eroded over the last three decades to the point where many Americans work hard, for 40 hours a week, and still live in poverty.
To put it another way, the growing profits of some of the nation’s largest corporations and wealthiest people in America result from the labor of people whose work is rewarded with poverty level wages.
That makes no economic sense. And it’s just plan wrong.
Senator Tom Harkin and Congressman George Miller have introduced legislation in Congress to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour and index it to inflation. The passage of these measures would be a major step in stopping the continued growth of the widening chasm between the incomes of ordinary Americans and the top 2% of the population.
And the President, Democrats in Congress and major progressive organizations — like the National Employment Law Project and the nation’s labor movement — are preparing a major national campaign to pass minimum wage legislation.
There are six reasons why the coming battle to increase the minimum wage is very high political ground for Democrats:
1). The polling is clear. Overwhelming majorities of Americans believe that it is simply wrong for people to work 40 hours a week and earn poverty level wages. And there is not much anyone can say to persuade them otherwise.
For years, many Republicans, corporate lobbyists and — especially — advocates for the restaurant industry, which is the worst offender when it comes to exploiting low wage workers – have promoted the conventional wisdom that raising the minimum wage somehow has political costs.
They try to make it appear that raising the “minimum wage” is a “low income” issue — that is unpopular with the middle class.
But the fact is that increasing the minimum wage can’t be exploited politically the way the right wing exploits increases in so-called “entitlements” of “takers” that are paid out of taxpayer dollars.
First, the minimum wage, by definition, is paid to people who work for a living. And, when you think about it, it is often paid to people who work harder than anyone else in America – doing some of the dirtiest jobs in America.
The guys who are chauffeured to work in black SUV’s aren’t the ones on the road at 4:30 a.m. It’s the maids and janitors and cooks and dishwashers who do hard, repetitive physical work — maybe at two or three jobs, and still barely make ends meet — that make the minimum wage.
Politically, it’s hard for a CEO who makes $10 million a year to argue that wages should not be increased for one of their workers when he makes as much before lunch on the first day of the work year as his minimum wage worker makes all year long.
Right now a CEO who makes $10 million a year makes $4,807 an hour. That’s 633 times the rate of a minimum wage worker.
2). Increasing the minimum wage — and tying it to inflation — helps stimulate the economy without relying on more public sector spending.
Most economists agree that the federal government should be spending more money on public sector activities like building infrastructure, investing in education and providing economic support to those who have been devastated by the economic crisis that began at the end of the Bush Administration. They believe more spending is necessary to get the slowly recovering economy to really take off.
Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress continue to do everything in their power to obstruct economic policies that most economists agree would turbocharge growth. Instead, Republicans insist on the kinds of cuts that serve as a massive albatross around the neck of the economic recovery.
Increasing the minimum wage would put more money in consumers’ pockets without tapping the federal treasury. And it would put that money into the pockets of people who will actually go out and spend it, rather than sinking it into yet another vacation home or a Cayman Islands account.

Read more…

It’s good to see an effort to better coordinate strategy with respect to climate change among Democratic leaders, as reported by Zack Coleman at The Hill’s ‘E2 Wire’ Energy and Environment Blog. White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, Sen Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Henry Waxman have begun meeting to explore ways to initiate executive action for needed climate change reform. “The liberal lawmakers have pressed President Obama to take more aggressive action on climate, noting partisan gridlock will likely close off the legislative route…They want Obama to forge ahead with emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants, expand energy efficiency efforts and sign more international climate accords, among other items.” Such executive action and the ensuing GOP outcry would also highlight Republican obstructionism.
With less than two weeks to go before the special election, Rep. Edward J. Markey is up 7 points (12 points in internal Democratic polling) in his bid to hold John Kerry’s U.S. Senate seat for Dems, report Katharine Q. Seelye and Jess Bidgood at the NYT. Still, his campaign needs money to help reduce the Republican edge in turnout in non-presidential election years. Donations accepted right here.
Politico’s Alexander Burns explains why immigration reform should be a done deal: “Immigration reform continues to attract broad public support as the Gang of Eight compromise legislation moves through the Senate, according to a huge raft of polling conducted for three pro-reform groups: the Partnership for a New American Economy, the Alliance for Citizenship and Republicans for Immigration Reform…In a polling memo set for release Tuesday – and shared early with POLITICO – Democratic pollster Tom Jensen and Republican pollster Brock McCleary reveal that their surveys found “overwhelming, bipartisan support for the bill” across 29 states.” In each of the states, “The average support for the “Gang of Eight” legislation was just under 68 percent, according to the pollsters.”
Media Matters nails Sean Hannity for his shameless two-faced position on NSA surveillance. “Like most ‘wingers, Sean writes history in pencil,” adds one commenter. “Hmm, I thought it was crayon,” says another.
At Wonkblog Timothy B. Lee comments on the findings of a new Gallup poll regarding NSA’s compiling telephone logs and Internet communications: “Interestingly, the most intense opposition to the programs comes from the political right. Republicans disapprove of the program by almost a 2 to 1 margin. Independents disapprove, 56 to 34 percent. But 49 percent of Democrats approve of the program, compared with 40 percent who disapprove.”
Michael P. McDonald reports “A Modest Early Voting Rise in 2012 ” at HuffPo: “The increase of 1.9 percentage points in early voting rates in the past two presidential elections is in stark contrast to the sharp rise of 9.7 percentage points from 2004 to 2008, from 20.0% to 29.7%…The rate of increase in early voting over the past two presidential elections may have slowed since some states have nearly maxed out the pool of people who may wish to vote early. Also, fewer new states came online to offer an early voting option to their voters, beyond the traditional excuse-required absentee ballot.”
Ari Berman’s “North Carolina is the New Wisconsin” provides an excellent update on the ‘Moral Monday’ uprising in the tarheel state, a possible template for progressives struggling with gerrymandered wingnut power-grabs in other states.
Joan Walsh’s Salon post “Hillary must own 2014” spells it out quite clearly: “…She needs to be part of a Democratic team making the 2014 midterms a referendum on the uncompleted business of the Obama presidency – and on the GOP’s outrageous abuse of its minority status to block everything from popular legislation to agency nominations…Clinton has enormous political capital with the Democratic base, and beyond it. She needs to spend some of it turning out voters in 2014, or the presidency might not be a prize worth winning, except as another title in your Twitter bio.”
At The National Journal Josh Krushaar’s “Three Signs Republicans Haven’t Learned Any Lessons From 2012” notes a growing disconnect between the hopes of GOP leaders and the teaps: “The composite is a party stuck in the status quo despite its leaders’ public hand-wringing. Much of the desire for change is coming from the top, while the more-populist conservative grassroots–skeptical of wide-ranging legislation and disdainful of pragmatic problem-solvers–are pulling in another direction.”
Tim Murphy is on to something with his MoJo post “The Private Intelligence Boom, By the Numbers.” The privatization of U.S. intelligence and our national security should be more of a media concern regarding the Snowden case than has been the case thus far.

in their post, “Why Democrats should listen to Joe Biden,” at The Fix, Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake share a quote from a recent speech by Vice President Biden, which they believe could serve as a boilerplate spiel for Democratic Senate candidates in particular:

“This is not your father’s Republican Party. It really is a fundamentally different party. There’s never been as much distance — at least since I’ve been alive — distance between where the mainstream of the Republican congressional party is and the Democratic Party is. It’s a chasm. It’s a gigantic chasm. … But the last thing in the world we need now is someone who will go down to the United States Senate and support Ted Cruz, support the new senator from Kentucky (Rand Paul) — or the old senator from Kentucky (Mitch McConnell). … Think about this: Have you ever seen a time when two freshman senators are able to cower the bulk of the Republican Party in the Senate? That is not hyperbole.”

As Blake and Cillizza intepret it,

The picture Biden is trying to paint is this: The Republican party is beholden to absolutists like Cruz and Paul who view any compromise as a concession, that a vote for any Republican for Senate — even one like Gabriel Gomez who has worked hard to avoid any connections to the national GOP during his campaign against Markey — is a vote for that sort of my-way-or-the-highway approach that subjugates getting things done to philosophical principles. (Tougher gun background checks, which national polling suggested had widespread support among the American public, is Exhibit A for Biden in making that argument.)
And poll after poll has shown the GOP remains in poorer stead with the American people than the Democratic Party. A recent Post-ABC News poll showed Americans thought Republicans in Congress were more focused on issues that aren’t pertinent to them than those that are by a 60-33 margin. For Democrats, the split was 50 percent non-pertinent and 43 percent pertinent.
…The potency of the “just too extreme” message among independents is demonstrated by the success of Democratic Senate candidates in conservative-leaning states like Indiana and Missouri in 2012. There’s no way that Claire McCaskill wins re-election or Joe Donnelly gets elected without winning a large majority of those voters who identify themselves as independents.

It seems like a sound strategy, if a little overstated in places. As Cillizza and Blake conclude, “…Biden is counseling his party to make 2014 a referendum on Republicans, not Democrats. It’s not an easy sell, but it may well be Democrats’ best bet in what, on paper, should be a very difficult election.”
But CNN.com’s Julian Zelizer brings the Republicans’ 2014 campaign problems into sharper focus:

The rebellion taking place within the GOP has been growing more intense. Many senior leaders are warning that their party is on a destructive path that will only lead to more rounds of defeat. Many Republicans privately agreed when former Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole said the GOP ought to be “closed for repairs” until next year, and in the meantime, “spend that time going over ideas and positive agenda.”
Since 2010, Republicans invested almost everything in the issue of deficit reduction and saying no to everything that came out of the White House. The bet hasn’t been paying off. At a certain point, voters seem to have lost interest in the message and, now that the long-term budget picture is doing much better while the economics of austerity has come under fire, the issue is gaining even less voter traction.

However, Zelizer sees a more positive message strategy for Democrats going forward:

Voters want to hear what Democrats have to say about federal investments in the nation’s economic future, about how to handle climate change and how to build on Obama’s promise to restore the balance between law and civil liberties and homeland security. If Democrats can start developing ideas for the next candidate to run on, they could not only bolster their numbers on the Hill but strengthen the platform for the next crop of candidates to win over voters.

Democrats should deploy a combination attack for 2014, tapping into Biden’s critique of the GOP, while offering a positive path forward to draw a stark contrast with the GOP’s obstructionist fixation. No matter how effective the Democrats’ GOTV effort or how impressive our candidates will be, a strong, clear messaging strategy will be essential to bust historical precedent and make election day 2014 the beginning of a new era of hope for progressives.

At The Washington Monthly Ed Kilgore explores the political fallout from the Edward Snowden leaks./whistle blowing story and shares some nuanced observations:

…Virtually all of the talk about extraditing and prosecuting Snowden, so far, is coming from Republicans. Obama’s National Intelligence Director James Clapper has referred Snowden’s case to the Justice Department for possible prosecutorial action, but that’s it. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who has been outspoken in defending aggressive surveillance activities and investigations of leaks, has so far been quiet about Snowden’s potential criminal liability. And the White House hasn’t been heard from either.
It’s much clearer that Snowden is presenting a major problem (as well as am Obama-bashing opportunity) for the GOP and the conservative movement. Peter King is calling for extradition of the leaker, and Eric Cantor is promising a House investigation. And for every Glenn Beck joining Ellsberg and Michael Moore in calling Snowden a hero, there’s a Max Boot calling him a “misguided and malevolent individual.”
Most of all, this is a tricky situation for Rand Paul, who has threatened to sue the federal government over the NSA’s sweep of phone numbers from telecom companies, but hasn’t linked arms with Snowden just yet (the unsurprising revelation that Snowden was a supporter of his father’s 2012 campaign may make this silence quickly impossible).

While the Obama Administration will continue to catch heat from the left until it all blows over, the fissures in the GOP may deepen considerably as a consequence. As Kilgore concludes,

…The set of issues raised by this case are harder to finesse than more conventional national security issues where Paul and the neocons can agree on unilateralism even as they mute differences over interventionist and non-interventionist postures. Most importantly, however, this is a rapidly developing story that tends to produce highly emotional reactions. So I’m not sure conservatives will be able to keep their rickety coalition together, particularly if Obama and Democrats find some way to avoid a rupture in their own.

In addition, the controversy once again raises questions about the wisdom of subcontracting important work bearing on our national security to the private sector — another thing they don’t do very well. That would be more of a problem for conservative ideologues than for Democrats.