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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Political Strategy Notes

Dem campaign workers and candidates, don’t miss Nathan L. Gonzales’s “6 Things Losing Candidates Say” at Roll Call’s ‘Rothenblog’
From Stephanie Condon’s CBS News post, “Majority oppose GOP plan to defund Obamacare, poll finds“: “A clear majority of Americans are opposed to the Republican-led effort to defund Obamacare, a new poll shows….Fifty-seven percent of Americans say they disapprove of the proposal to cut off funding as a way to stop the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, according to a new survey from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.” More disturbing, “As many as 51 percent say they don’t have enough information about it to understand how it will impact them and their family, while as many as 44 percent either think the law has been repealed (8 percent), overturned by the Supreme Court (5 percent) or are unsure whether it remains the law (31 percent).”
Peter Mackin’s PBS News Hour report, “The Alternative American Dream: Inclusive Capitalism” provides an interesting update on worker ownership’s promise and pitfalls.
In a rare display of humility, Bill O’Reilly admitted that he was, gasp, wrong. According to Jack Mirkinson’s report at HuffPo: O’Reilly had complained that no Republicans had been invited to the event. In fact, many, including both living Republican presidents, John McCain, Jeb Bush and John Boehner had been asked to attend. All declined for various reasons….O’Reilly admitted that he had been wrong….”The mistake? Entirely on me,” he said. “I simply assumed … Republicans were excluded.”
Elsewhere in Republican punditland, “Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham chose to follow up a recording of Lewis’ call to Congress to both fix the Voting Rights Act and pass immigration reform with a gunshot sound effect. As Joan Walsh of Salon observed, even “[a]fter the assassinations of Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King, after the gunning down of so many civil rights workers over the years, Ingraham thought it was funny, or clever, or provocative, to ‘symbolically’ cut off Lewis’ speech with the sound of a gun,” reports Sergio Munoz at Media Matters.
At Scholars Strategy Network, Theda Skocpol’s “Why Now is the Time to Build a Broad Citizen Movement for Green Energy Dividends” explores an interesting alternative to cap and trade.
Timothy Noah’s MSNBC post “Why business needs a stronger labor movement” ought to be of interest to thoughtful business leaders. As Noah notes, “The trouble with a capital-focused economy isn’t only that it’s bad for workers. It’s also, more broadly, bad for the economy. Capital’s current hogging of corporate income is doing very little to create actual prosperity, except for stockholders–and eventually it won’t create prosperity even for them…U.S. corporations are currently recording, on average, a profit margin of about 9%, which-except for the fourth quarter of 2011, when it reached 10% percent–is the highest that corporate profits have been in six decades…You would think the surge in profits would mean that Gross Domestic Product–the standard measure of prosperity-was expanding like gangbusters. But it isn’t. Second-quarter GDP growth is estimated at a paltry 1.7%–an improvement over the first quarter’s 1.1% but about half what it would be in a healthy economy.”
In “LGBT Advocates Move Immigration Reform Forward During August Recess” at Center for American Progress, Sharita Gruberg reports on an interesting example of different progressive movements agreeing “to work together to build support for two separate ballot questions last November–one allowing same-sex marriage in Maryland and the other allowing undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition at colleges and universities under certain circumstances.”
Re Tim Alberta’s National Journal post “Republican Lawmakers Retaliate Against Heritage Foundation,” keep up the great work guys.

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