Dear Readers:
The 2014 elections are now just 14 months away.
If the results go the wrong way, these elections can have profoundly negative consequences — a GOP senate could even ramp up impeachment hearings as just one more concession to the right-wing activist base.
Democrats have been slow to face up to the challenge. There have been disturbingly few articles that seriously evaluate strategies and propose initiatives to motivate and mobilize the voters who will make the critical difference on election day.
The Democratic Strategist is therefore pleased to present the first of a series of Strategy Memos on voter mobilization for 2014.
Democrats: it’s time to start thinking seriously about voter mobilization for 2014 — and particularly about the youth vote that will be critical to the outcome. But let’s start by avoiding one basic mistake.
You can read the memo HERE.
We believe you will find the memo both useful and important.
Sincerely Yours,
Ed Kilgore

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Senator Claire McCaskill shows why she may be the very last U.S. Senator Republicans ought to mess with. In this clip, she demolishes the GOP’s phony meme that members of congress are exempt from Obamacare requirements. She points out also that Republican members of congress can opt out from taking an employer contribution any time they want — but of course they won’t.
McCaskill adds, “There was an election in November and there were two candidates for president. One said repeal Obamacare; the other one didn’t. the one that said it’s not going to be repealed won. And by the way, every Democratic senator who voted for Obamacare — red state, blue state, purple state — were re-elected, many by double digits. And we added two senators…”
This is how a well-prepared, media-savvy elected official shreds her adversaries’ bogus arguments.

At the Washington Post Zachary A. Goldfarb reports on the memes and messages Dems are enjoying as a result of the latest round of GOP budget brinksmanship.’ Goldfarb shares a few choice examples:

“We’re going to make the case that 2014 is going to be a referendum between extremist Republicans and crisis and leaders with reasonable solutions,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “It does create a narrow path for us.”
…”It didn’t go well for Republicans then, and there’s reason to believe that public opinion is more likely to be against them now,” said Jennifer Palmieri, White House communications director and a veteran of the Clinton White House.
…In Illinois’ 13th District, for instance, Democratic candidate Ann Callis, a former judge, has attacked Rep. Rodney Davis (R) and other Republicans for putting “the livelihood of millions of Americans in doubt to prove a political point.”
In Minnesota’s 1st District, retired Gen. Jerry Cannon warned after Republicans voted to strip funding for Obama’s health-care law that “the paychecks of troops and other military workers would be delayed indefinitely” if the government shut down.

The usual caveats apply. For one thing, notes Goldfarb,

But despite Democrats’ convictions that they will come out ahead, there’s evidence that both sides may get blamed in a shutdown. One Pew Research Center poll this week reported that 39 percent of respondents would blame Republicans if the government shut down, compared with 36 percent who would blame Obama.

Goldfarb also quotes Democratic strategist Paul Begala, “”I’m not going to say the Democrats are going to pick up 20 seats because the 2010 redistricting redrew the districts in such a remarkable way,”
Still, the Cruz-Boehner show feeds the Dems’ GOP=Gridlock, Obstruction and Paralysis meme, and Dems are just beginning to work it. Indeed there is some evidence that the high-turnout seniors, who are often the key demographic in non-presidential year elections, are getting disgusted with Republican extremism and divisive tactics. Goldfarb also points out that polls indicate that most voters don’t support the Republican call for repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
It’s hard to see how the GOP gets positive traction with voters as a result of Cruz’s fake filibuster and Boehner’s groveling at the behest of the tea party — provided Dems do a decent job of making them own it.

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
As the Republicans in Congress furiously accelerate the train going down the tracks to a government shutdown, apparently hoping to do maximum damage both to the country and their party’s own political standing, some very interesting things are happening inside the Democratic party as well — the Larry Summers nomination going down, the surprise Bill de Blasio victory in the NYC mayoral race, the stunning Bill Daley decision to drop out of the IL governor’s race. These developments have more to do with each other than you would think, but not in ways the establishment conventional wisdom would be the least bit comfortable with. The difference between what is happening within the two parties is incredibly instructive as this fascinating moment in American politics.
Republicans have just lost it. Their epic leaderless meltdown with a government shutdown and an economy-derailing default on government debt looming and no endgame solution in sight is stunning and frightening. This will eventually get resolved because it has to, but who knows the amount of damage to the nation’s economy and moral standing in the world in the meantime. For the dominant wing of the Republican party, none of the damage matters. They hate government so much that any amount of pain they cause is worth it — not only worth it, in fact, but part of the plan. If our government can’t function, it is actually a good thing for these anti-government radicals, because they don’t want it to function. If the economy crashes, that’s good too, they think, because people might blame Obama for a bad economy. If chaos ensues and people don’t get their Social Security checks or food stamps or Medicare or disability support, all the better for these Republicans: the lazy leeches should fend for themselves.
This moment is the logical conclusion of decades of steadily higher levels of anti-government hysteria. The dominant wing of the Republican party is closer in viewpoint to the right-wing armed militia movement than it is to the old Bob Dole Republicanism of the last century. And as the country changes demographically and culturally, these extremist conservatives get more and more angry, bitter, and desperate. They want to wreak havoc, and because the so-called leaders of the party won’t stand up to the extremists, it looks like they will get to.

Read more…

From Paul Krugman’s “Attack of the Killer Hipsters” at his Conscience of a Liberal NYT blog:

Never mind the polls showing approval of Obamacare moving one way or the other; they are all being taken in an environment where people are amazingly ignorant about the law, with a large minority believing that it has been repealed. What matters is how the thing works — and that, in turn, depends crucially on sufficient numbers of young, currently uninsured people signing up for the exchanges. Advocates will try to get those people signed up; Republicans will try to convince them not to. So how are the two sides’ chances.

A good point. Polls and how they are spun matter less for the implementation of Obamacare than how the universe of potential participants responds to the requirements and opportunities presented by the act. Krugman correctly identifies some key demographic groups that must step up for Obamacare to succeed — the young, non-affluent and largely non-white uninsured. He quotes Jonathan Chait on the challenge:

Fortunately for Obama, this field of battle favors his side. To pass the law, he needed to win over skeptical senators. To defend it in court, he needed conservative jurists. But identifying and persuading young people is a battle Obama does not expect to lose to Republicans, and in place of the federal outreach funds, the administration is deploying a campaignlike array of weapons: microtargeting, including door-to-door outreach, and all forms of media. (A few weeks ago, Katy Perry tweeted out a link informing her 42 million followers that health care was available beginning October 1.)

No doubt the Obamacare mobilization is also tapping African American and Latino icons to reach youth of color (we hope). In any case, it’s an option that the right doesn’t have. Hard to imagine the wingnuts having the Nuge or Kid Rock doing ads saying “Hey don’t sign up for Obamacare. It sucks” persuading many youth to disobey the mandate, compared to Perry’s positive pitch.
Dems have other unique advantages, as Krugman explains:

But that’s not all: there are also channels of influence the party of Fox News simply cannot reach: Spanish-language radio and TV, black churches (which played a big role in 2012), and more.
I don’t know whether anyone thought this out in advance, but the battle of the exchanges is indeed being fought on remarkably favorable ground for the reformers. And I, for one, find the thought of conservatives humiliated by an army of tweeting hipsters remarkably cheering.

Implementing the Affordable Care Act is not going to be an easy struggle going forward. But Krugman’s and Chait’s insight that supporters of the legislation have some significant advantages makes sense — and look a lot more promising at this political moment than Sen. Cruz’s ready-for-his-close-up drama queen antics do for the right.

Manu Raju and Byron Tau report at Politico that Democrats are exploring ways to leverage Super PACs “to dedicate huge resources to usually low-key state races to help their respective parties change the partisan makeup of legislatures across the country.
Tell it straight, rag of record. It’s Kamikaze Republicans, not “Kamikaze Congress.”
This will probably shock his tea party base. It’s not quite as assertive as McCain’s “In the United States Senate, we will not repeal or defund Obamacare. We will not. And to think we can is not rational,” but it does appear that some Republicans are making a break to join the reality-based community as regards the Affordable Care Act.
E. J. Dionne, Jr. reports on why two more Republican governors have seen the light on Obamacare.
At Op-Ed News, James Thindwa notes in his post against felon-disenfranchisement, “A study by sociologists Chris Uggen and Jeff Manza found that former felons could have changed the outcomes of seven U.S Senate elections between 1978 and 2000.” Thindwa adds “Progressives could tip the scales in this internecine struggle and cause a tectonic shift in the incarceration debate. An important source of energy and inspiration is the army of grassroots and legal organizations that blocked, diluted, repealed or postponed anti-voter laws in 14 states over the last two years. Another key model is creative action such as North Carolina’s “Moral Mondays.” The weekly rallies and civil disobedience right at the seat of state power brought national focus to the state’s nefarious voter suppression laws and lowered Gov Pat McCrory’s approval ratings from 48 percent to 39 percent. This organizing model could be especially effective if it incorporated real institution building and expansive voter registration.”
Rand Paul is clearly hoping that his libertarian philosophy will resonate with young people, many of whom like libertarian views on social issues, like same-sex marriage, pot and isolationism. But the ‘Achilles heel’ of libertarian philosophy with respect to young people is opposition to environmental protection, and that’s exactly where Paul should be challenged. On his website, Paul, who tried to gut the Cross State Air Pollution Rule in 2011, also writes on his website: “By subsidizing certain new energies like solar and wind we distort the marketplace and make it impossible for companies to know what is really the most efficient solution.”
At Media Matters for America Meagan Hatcher-Mays skewers the Wall St. Journal for for shameless distortion in explaining the decline of labor, while ignoring the role of anti-labor court decisions and state legislation. Her article also explains some key reasons behind the erosion of the middle class in the U.S.
Vague poll questions are generally useless from a policy-making point of view, none more so than “Do you think gun control laws should be made more or less strict than they are now?” Down in the fifth graph of this post, however, we get “A HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted in August found that 79 percent of Americans support universal background checks, including for gun shows and private sales.”
Good forum here. The Catholic right is going to have a cow.

The general assumption behind most progressive discussion lately has been that the GOP will shoulder most of the blame if there is a government shutdown. The two main arguments for this view are that opinion polls currently show voters will blame GOP more and that the Republicans were generally blamed for the previous shutdown in 1994.
But neither of these arguments are fully convincing. For one thing the opinion poll results are deeply dependent on question wordings which tend to suggest the shutdown is being promoted by the GOP. Equally, there is a major, indeed fundamental difference between the 1994 shutdown and one today. In 1994 GOP proudly took credit and ownership of the shutdown. Today, they are already trying to avoid responsibility by promoting the notion that it is Obama and the Democrats who are refusing to “compromise.” “After all”, they say innocently, they are just asking for a tiny little “delay.”
Now it is true that if the Republicans are forced into taking a clear “make or break” vote on shutting down the government in order to defund Obamacare – and the media presents it that framework – the GOP will probably shoulder most of the blame.
But if the final legislative maneuvers involve a series of votes on different aspects of the budget (the sequester, funding levels etc.) as well as defunding Obamacare, confusion is extremely likely to occur. As Mike Tomasky notes:

Without a vote defunding Obamacare, only a relatively small percentage of the population can probably keep track of what’s going on. It’s an argument about the sequester and funding levels. That’s an argument that any reasonably skilled pol can fudge and turn into a situation that leaves most observers walking away thinking well, they’re both probably lying, and the truth is somewhere in the middle, and they’re both to blame.

An honest media that properly focused on the fact that a political party that lost the last election is using the threat of economic blackmail to overturn a law duly passed by congress might limit this problem. But the simple reality is that today’s media has been completely intimidated by conservatives to the point where they will wiggle and twist to avoid saying this clearly and directly. Instead, they will “split the difference,” suggesting that Obama really ought to consider “compromising.” They will admit that the GOP’s actions are unprecedented and extreme, but they will unctuously mutter that Obama’s compromising would be “for the good of the country” and that “someone has to be the adult in the room” and so on and so on with groveling commentary.
This nonsense will further muddy the waters and produce even more ambivalence on opinion surveys. A vicious cycle will develop in which the more fanatical and extreme the GOP resistance becomes, the more the mainstream media will turn its criticism on Obama for failing to “solve the problem” i.e. capitulate.
To repeat, much will depend on the exact way the last minute voting on the budget proceeds. But Democrats should be prepared for a scenario in which the mainstream media once again becomes the GOP’s secret weapon and political “fifth column.”

In his Wall St. Journal column for this week, Republican strategist Karl Rove has a warning for the wingnuts in his own party:

Today, independents look more like Republicans than Democrats, especially when it comes to health care. In a new Crossroads GPS health-care policy survey conducted in 10 states likely to have competitive Senate races and in House districts that lean Republican or are swing seats, 60% of independents oppose President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. If this holds through 2014, then Republicans should receive another big boost in the midterms.
There is, however, one issue on which independents disagree with Republicans: using the threat of a government shutdown to defund ObamaCare. By 58% to 30% in the GPS poll, they oppose defunding ObamaCare if that risks even a temporary shutdown.

Evidently it hasn’t dawned on Rove that a lot of self-identified independents are really just Republicans who are too embarrassed to admit it. But it’s interesting nonetheless that so many think defunding the Affordable Care Act is a bad idea if it risks a government shutdown.
Rove has made a lot of strategic mistakes himself over the years, as amply demonstrated by the 2012 elections. But he can still count:

After all, avoiding a shutdown would require, first, at least five Senate Democrats voting to defund ObamaCare. But not a single Senate Democrat says he’ll do that, and there is no prospect of winning one over.
Second, assuming enough Senate Democrats materialize to defund ObamaCare, the measure faces a presidential veto. Republicans would need 54 House Democrats and 21 Senate Democrats to vote to override the president’s veto. No sentient being believes that will happen.

Apart from the head counting, a shutdown would create an awful mess the Republicans would have difficulty explaining:

A shutdown now would have much worse fallout than the one in 1995. Back then, seven of the government’s 13 appropriations bills had been signed into law, including the two that funded the military. So most of the government was untouched by the shutdown. Many of the unfunded agencies kept operating at a reduced level for the shutdown’s three weeks by using funds from past fiscal years.
But this time, no appropriations bills have been signed into law, so no discretionary spending is in place for any part of the federal government. Washington won’t be able to pay military families or any other federal employee. While conscientious FBI and Border Patrol agents, prison guards, air-traffic controllers and other federal employees may keep showing up for work, they won’t get paychecks, just IOUs.

No doubt the GOP’s Kamikaze wingnuts will respond to Rove’s warning with snarkage about his disastrous outing in the 2012 elections. Unlikely as it is, if they pull off the shutdown, Rove may once again end up atop the rubble of his party. The interesting question is, has just the threat of a shutdown already done damage to the GOP’s 2014 prospects?

Seniors over age 65 were 23 percent of the turnout in 2010, up from 19 percent in 2006. In 2006, they evenly split their votes between Democratic and Republican House candidates. In 2010, they favored Republican House candidates 59 percent to 38 percent. According to Administration on Aging, three in five people over age 65 are women. African American persons made up 8.3 percent of the older population. By 2050, the percentage of the older population that is African American is projected to account for 11 percent of the older population. In 2008, Latinos were 6.8 percent of the older population.. Minority populations are projected to be 23.6% of the elderly by 2020.
For an interesting history of senior voter turnout from 1952-2000, read Andrea Louise Campbell’s “How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Political Activism and the American Welfare State.”
Emily Brandon’s “States with the Best Older Voter Turnout” at U.S. News notes the following: “Senior citizens are much more likely than younger people to show up on election day to cast ballots. Nationwide, 61 percent of people age 65 and older voted in the 2010 election, compared to 46 percent of all citizens. Here are the states where retirees were the most likely to vote in the November 2010 election.” According to Brandon, Washington state lead in 2010 with 77 percent of over-65 voters turning out, followed by: ME (76%); MT (74%); ND (75%); CO (74%); WI (72%); SD (70%); MN (70%); OR (71% of over 75); AK (69%).
In another article Brandon notes, “But even in the states with the lowest older voter turnout–Georgia, Virginia, and Indiana–more than half of citizens age 65 and older voted” in 2010. Perhaps Georgia and Virginia are trending purple as a partial result of lower than average senior turnout.
Hard to say how much of the following is lip-service and how much is straight talk. In 2004, Tucker Sutherland, editor of seniorjournal.com reported, “Counter to the political stereotype of seniors as single-issue, self-interested voters, a strong majority of American grandparents say they will be casting their vote this election day with the interests of their grandchildren in mind,” according to the new Ipsos-Public Affairs poll released today by the non-partisan group, GrannyVoter.org… Only 26 percent said they make up their mind on Social Security and Medicare mostly on the basis of how it will affect them in the short-term.
“As of April 2012, 53% of American adults age 65 and older use the internet or email” and “as of February 2012, one third (34%) of internet users age 65 and older use social networking sites such as Facebook, and 18% do so on a typical day,” according to a Pew Internet and American Life post, “Older adults and internet use” by Kathryn Zickuhr and Mary Madden. The figures represent a significant uptick in facebook and internet use by seniors. This could be a significant trend because “a single get-out-the-vote message sent to 61 million Facebook users on Election Day 2010 influenced 340,000 people to cast ballots when they otherwise would not have, according to the findings of a massive social experiment,” reports LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas in her post, “Facebook Friends Carry Huge Influence on Voter Turnout.”
With senior voters, it’s apparently not all about bread and butter issues. As Robert H Binstock notes at Medscape.com, “During President Reagan’s first term in office, 1981-1984, he presided over a freeze in Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment and proposed additional direct cuts in benefits (Light, 1985). When Reagan ran for reelection in 1984, the Democratic campaign against him highlighted these actions to portray the President as an enemy of Social Security. Yet…older voters substantially increased their support for Reagan from 54% in 1980 to 60% in 1984, paralleling the large increase provided by the electorate as a whole.” Of course the difference could also be attributed to incumbency.
Here’s how photo i.d. laws reduce senior voter turnout. An estimated 18% of seniors don’t have identification, according to Jodeen Olguín-Tayler of Caring Across Generations.
Among seniors who intend to vote, the tide appears to be turning blue. In “Why Seniors Are Turning Against The GOP” DCorps’s Erica Seifert reports, “There’s something going on with seniors: It is now strikingly clear that they have turned sharply against the GOP…In 2010, seniors voted for Republicans by a 21 point margin (38 percent to 59 percent). Among seniors likely to vote in 2014, the Republican candidate leads by just 5 points (41 percent to 46 percent.)…Seniors are now much less likely to identify with the Republican Party. On Election Day in 2010, the Republican Party enjoyed a net 10 point party identification advantage among seniors (29 percent identified as Democrats, 39 percent as Republicans). As of last month, Democrats now had a net 6 point advantage in party identification among seniors (39 percent to 33 percent)…–More than half (55 percent) of seniors say the Republican Party is too extreme, half (52 percent) say it is out of touch, and half (52 percent) say the GOP is dividing the country.”
Brent Roderick’s “Identify and Reach Senior Citizen Voters” at the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) ArcWatch focuses on a “geospatial” approach to segmenting America’s nearly 40 million eligible voters over 65. Rooted in “the theory that people seek and live near others with the same tastes, lifestyles, and behaviors,” ESRI helps clients target such senior segments as “Prosperous Empty Nesters,” “Rust Belt Retirees,” “Senior Sun Seekers” and the “Social Security Set.” Hey, it might be fun to look at “Aquarian Elders” (older hippies).

1. Is Obama losing it?
2. The presidents Syria plan is already a mess
3. Voters reject white house spin
4. [Obama’s] Pacts with the devil
5. Summers latest indication Obama out of steam
6. President Obama plays the victim instead of leading the country
7. Rare policy agreement between left and right: Obama foreign policy is a disaster
8. {Obama] can fool some of the people some of the time
9. Obama panned by key constituency: the media
10. Obama’s Syria speech: an illogical speech from a paralyzed president
11. Obama’s foreign policy hits rock bottom
12. If no on Syria, Obama’s to blame
13. An untrustworthy commander in chief
14. Obama’s politicizing national security
15. Obama adrift, America isolated
16. Obama no longer commands respect
17. Critics of half-measures in Syria: Obama’s pathetic
18. Obama dwarfed by MLK