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Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: October 2013

New AP-GFK Poll Shows Public Blaming GOP for Paralysis

by , October 9th, 2013 9:02 AM EST

After sorting through the responses to the new AP-GFK online poll, conducted Oct. 3-7, a couple of nuggets are worth highlighting. According to the AP report on the poll,

Overall, 62 percent mainly blamed Republicans for the shutdown. About half said Obama or the Democrats in Congress bear much responsibility.
…Fifty-two percent said Obama is not doing enough to cooperate with Republicans to end the shutdown; 63 percent say Republicans aren’t doing enough to cooperate with him.

Yet another indication that a healthy majority of Americans know who is responsible for paralysis in congress.

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Ed Kilgore’s Best: October 8, 2013

by , October 8th, 2013 9:26 PM EST

Note from TDS Managing Editor Ed Kilgore: This is the first installment of a regular feature in which I offer the best insights from my blogging at Washington Monthly’s Political Animal site, along with other reflections on the day in politics.
The big strategic issue today has been whether the President in his long press conference moved the debate over appropriations and the debt limit in his and the Democratic Party’s direction.
Here was my immediate reaction:

[T]he president did a good job of forcefully reiterating his position on the government shutdown and the debt limit and fighting the “false equivalence” meme in the media. These are both critical missions right now, since (a) Republican skepticism about his steadfastness is central to the GOP fiscal strategy, and (b) the combination of bad media habits, the complexity of fiscal issues, and public hostility to “Washington” make the “false equivalence” meme very powerful.
Having said all that, two aspects of Obama’s pitch worry me. One involves his answer–or really, non-answer–to a question about the potential incompatibility of a “no negotiations” stance with accepting a series of short-term CRs or debt limit increases and then engaging in budget negotiations. At some point, whether it’s acknowledged or not, indirect linkage between these two “tracks” of essential fiscal steps and “unconditional” negotiations will develop. Just saying they aren’t linked won’t necessarily change that basic fact unless both parties agree permanently to eschew using CRs and debt limit votes as leverage. I don’t think that’s quite on the table right now.

TNR’s Noam Scheiber lays out a more detailed–and alarmed–take on my concern about the inevitability of linkage between short-term “unconditional” measure on appropriations and the debt limit and ongoing budget negotiations.

My second concern may be more personal: I really think Obama is overdoing it in analogizing big fiscal decisions to household economics. In truth, sovereign nations are not just like families, and have resources at their disposal–and consequences for their actions–that are in no way comparable to those of individual households. The “kitchen table” analogies beloved of so many liberal pols over the years also cut both ways, as we’ve seen with the endless promotion of balanced budget amendments and arbitrary spending cuts by conservatives as analogous to an overextended family cutting up the credit cards or cutting out a few luxuries (indeed, that’s also the “conservative populist” argument for voting down debt limit increases).

In another post, I worried a bit about the perennial possibility that congressional Republicans are deliberately damaging the economy based on the calculation that bad economic news hurts the party controlling the White House regardless of actual responsibility:

It’s another reminder of the perils of our system of government at a time of asymmetric polarization: Republicans can act deliberately and unilaterally to screw up government in the reasonable belief a Democratic incumbent president and his party will ultimately lose support even if they do not objectively bear the blame.

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Have Pity, Your Honor, I’m an Orphan!

by , October 8th, 2013 5:53 PM EST

This item by James Vega was originally published on October 5, 2013.
There are some conservative commentators who can be extraordinarily amusing to read because they combine a massive sense of pompous self-righteousness with a willingness to offer without embarrassment arguments of absolutely flamboyant silliness.
A case in point is the Washington Post‘s official windbag-in-residence “Big Charlie the K” Krauthammer, Whenever Big Ole Charlie boy grabs himself a handful of some GOP talking points to recycle and sets his internal dudgeon on “high,” the results are often a kind of warped comic surrealism resembling a Cohen Brothers sequence in films like Raising Arizona or The Big Lebowski.
For example, here’s big Charlie hyperventilating loudly about the outrage of Obamacare:

From Social Security to civil rights to Medicaid to Medicare, never in the modern history of the country has major social legislation been enacted on a straight party-line vote. Never. In every case, there was significant reaching across the aisle, enhancing the law’s legitimacy and endurance. Yet Obama¬care — which revolutionizes one-sixth of the economy, regulates every aspect of medical practice and intimately affects just about every citizen — passed without a single GOP vote.

Now as everyone who actually follows events in Washington knows, it was decided by the top Republican leadership in a meeting in March of 2009 that the GOP would resolutely refuse to participate in any negotiations with the Democrats about the shape of the proposed law and to instead instruct all Republican representatives to totally oppose it. In Charlie’s hands, this carefully and deliberately calculated GOP strategy and decision to refuse bipartisan cooperation then becomes the basis for an argument that the law is unacceptably “partisan” because the Dems could not get any Republicans to support it.
Now many conservatives, lacking as they do a sense of absurdist humor and therefore any broad familiarity with the history of American comedy, will actually take this argument quite seriously. But connoisseurs of comedy will immediately recognize that it is actually a tongue-in-cheek update of a classic old vaudeville routine:

Judge: You have killed your mother and father. This is a vile and heinous crime that deserves the maximum penalty.
Defendant: Have pity, your honor, I’m an orphan.

The logical structure of the argument offered by Charlie the K and the homicidal defendant in the vaudeville routine is, of course, precisely the same.
But you really have to give Big Charlie an awful lot of credit as a stand-up comedian here. He manages to tell this old classic joke with a completely straight face and without even once beginning to giggle.

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Watch out, Dems. There’s a general view right now that if there is a government shutdown, the GOP will get the blame. But things may not work out that way. The GOP has a secret weapon in this fight – the appalling dishonestly of the mainstream media

by , October 8th, 2013 4:45 PM EST

This item by James Vega was originally published on September 21, 2013.
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.”

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Demystifying the High-Turnout Senior Vote

by , October 8th, 2013 3:22 PM EST

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on September 19, 2013.
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).

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Kilgore: ‘Disarray in Both Parties’ Meme a Stretch

by , October 8th, 2013 12:10 PM EST

The following article by TDS Managing Editor Ed Kilgore is cross-posted from the Washington Monthly:
Today’s big MSM meme could well be “disarray in both parties” over fiscal issues. But let’s take a look at where they actually are on the biggest challenge, the impending debt limit breach.
Politico’s Raju and Bresnahan have a prominently placed item this morning entitled “Democratic cracks open in debt-limit fight.” There’s actually just one “crack” the article discusses, involving the president’s signal that he’s “open” to a short-term debt limit increase so long as it comes with no conditions, even as the Senate prepares to debate a trillion-dollar increase designed to get the federal government through the 2014 election year.

Democrats began to raise concerns privately that the White House appeared to be softening its iron-clad position.
“This is very disconcerting to us,” a senior Senate Democratic leadership aide said on condition of anonymity, referring to comments by the president’s top economic adviser, Gene Sperling, at POLITICO’S Playbook Breakfast on Monday. “All along, the president and White House have been firm on what they want, both in a [government funding bill] and debt ceiling. So we’re concerned about this….”
The Democratic discord started Monday morning when Sperling said the White House would be open to a two- to three-week increase to avert the Oct. 17 deadline when the U.S. government may begin to default on its $16.7 trillion debt. The comments were a shift from the position the White House took in the 2011 debt fight, when it demanded that Congress extend the debt ceiling through the 2012 elections.

OMG! Obama’s caving again!
Not really. The “no short term debt limit increase” position of 2011 was in the context of a deal where Obama was making major substantive concessions to the GOP. The White House didn’t want Republicans to come back a few weeks or months later and ask for more. This time around, Obama’s ruled out concessions in connection with the debt limit. So it really doesn’t matter how often the GOP asks for debt-limit related concessions so long as the answer remains “no.”
Here’s what may be the real Senate Democratic objection to the idea of a short-term debt limit increase:

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said, “What does short-term buy us? That buys us Thanksgiving in Washington.”

Well, no offense to Durbin and to shutdown-ravaged staffs who aren’t jazzed about the idea, but it’s often rather pleasant in the Washington area in late November, and avoiding a debt default is a reasonably big deal. If the White House starts getting happy feet on its “no substantive concessions for a debt limit increase” stance, then that is a problem.
Meanwhile, the Senate itself is going to take up its own “clean” debt limit measure today, and the big question is whether Harry Reid can shake loose six GOP senators to kill a filibuster. Ezra Klein counts Mark Kirk and Lisa Murkowski as certain votes for cloture, and figures John McCain will go along, which usually means amigos Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte are in tow. So it could be close, which means the yelling and screaming among conservatives about RINOs and squishes and stabs in the back could be intense.
But more fundamentally, Republicans appear to be in genuine disarray over the relationship of the CR to the debt limit, and whether screwing up Obamacare or the rest of the conservative agenda is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Today Erick Erickson is still calling for a quick debt limit increase so that the GOP can refocus on “defunding Obamacare” through the appropriations deadlock. And National Review’s Robert Costa reports House conservatives aren’t giving John Boehner much leeway to cut a debt limit deal:
Speaker John Boehner may be trying to finalize a plan to raise the debt limit, but House conservatives are already skeptical of his efforts. In interviews, several of them tell me they’re unlikely to support any deal that may emerge.

“They may try to throw the kitchen sink at the debt limit, but I don’t think our conference will be amenable for settling for a collection of things after we’ve fought so hard,” says Representative Scott Garrett (R., N.J.). “If it doesn’t have a full delay or defund of Obamacare, I know I and many others will not be able to support whatever the leadership proposes. If it’s just a repeal of the medical-device tax, or chained CPI, that won’t be enough.”

As always, Paul Broun is good for a psychotic quote:

Representative Paul Broun (R., Ga.) agrees, and says Boehner risks an internal rebellion if he decides to broker a compromise. “America is going to be destroyed by Obamacare, so whatever deal is put together must at least reschedule the implementation of Obamacare,” he says. “This law is going to destroy America and everything in America, and we need to stop it.”

But here’s the bottom line:

“I think you’d see at least 50 to 60 Republicans break with Boehner if he went for something small,” predicts a House GOP aide who works closely with conservative members. “They’re also reluctant to even give Boehner a short-term debt-limit extension unless he gets something big in return. But that’s the one area where Boehner may have room to maneuver. He could tell them, ‘I’m with you fighting, but let’s just extend the fight a few weeks.'”

It’s interesting to watch conservatives debate exactly how many concessions from Obama they’ll consider sufficient when the White House has very consistently argued the number will be zero. It’s all the more reason Obama can’t even hint at changing that position, but may indeed want to be open to an unconditional short-term debt limit increase that enables Republicans to work out their many disagreements and delusions.
All in all, Democratic “disarray” looks a lot more manageable by contrast.

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Just So You Know: The 19 Times Senate Democrats Tried to Negotiate With The GOP Since Last Spring

by , October 8th, 2013 12:06 PM EST

Writing in the National Journal Alex Seitz-Wald lays out the facts:

To hear almost any Republican lawmaker speak in post-shutdown Washington is to hear that Democrats are refusing to negotiate to reopen the government and avert a debt default. It’s a talking point that may be selling well, but it’s only true if you ignore anything that happened before last Monday at about 11 p.m.
….here are all the times since this spring Senate Democrats tried to negotiate with Republicans by sending their budget to a bicameral [House-Senate] conference committee. Every time, Republicans blocked the move:
1. 4/23 Senator Reid requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Toomey blocked.
2. 5/6 Senator Reid requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Cruz blocked.
3. 5/7 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator McConnell blocked.
4. 5/8 Senator Warner asked unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator McConnell blocked.
5. 5/9 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator McConnell blocked.
6. 5/14 Senator Warner asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator McConnell blocked.
7. 5/15 Senator Wyden asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator McConnell blocked.
8. 5/16 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Lee blocked.
9. 5/21 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Paul blocked.
10. 5/22 Senator Kaine asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Rubio blocked.
11. 5/23 Senator McCaskill asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Lee blocked.
12. 6/4 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Rubio blocked.
13. 6/12 Senator Kaine asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Lee blocked.
14. 6/19 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Toomey blocked.
15. 6/26 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Cruz blocked.
16. 7/11 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Marco Rubio blocked.
17. 7/17 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Mike Lee blocked.
18. 8/1 Senator Durbin requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Marco Rubio blocked.
19. 10/2 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Toomey blocked.

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Digby Launches Petition Campaign Urging TV Networks to Report Accurately on Shutdown

by , October 8th, 2013 10:28 AM EST

From Digby’s e-blast announcing a petition campaign urging major television networks to stop blaming both political parties for the government shutdown:
This week, the White House started pushing back on the media’s coverage of the government shutdown, with White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer calling an ABC reporter’s comments about the shutdown “some of the worst false equivalence I have seen in a long time.”
The major television networks have largely ignored the Republicans’ own words and tried to imply that both sides are equally to blame for the shutdown. That’s why I started my own campaign on CREDOMobilize.com, which allows activists to start their own petitions. My petition, which is to ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN, says the following:

The government shutdown is not the result of a legislative breakdown or both parties refusing to compromise. It is a direct result of the right-wing House Republicans’ legislative strategy of taking hostages and making extremist demands that are out of touch with the American people. Report the truth: House Republicans are solely responsible for the government shutdown.


Tell major television networks to report the truth: Republicans are solely to blame for the government shutdown.
The Republican leadership in Congress has said as clearly as possible that it does not want people to have access to healthcare and will try to do everything it can to prevent it, including shutting down the government and possibly letting the government default on its debt.
The major television networks seem determined to make the story of the shutdown one of a partisan standoff where both sides are equally to blame. This is dishonest.
The facts are as clear as day. The Republicans have opted to use a shutdown as a way of pressuring President Obama to give up or delay the Affordable Care Act. Media coverage of the government shutdown and who is to blame should reflect these facts and inform the American people, but so far it has largely failed to do so.
The false equivalence and “he-said, she-said” coverage from major television networks and the dysfunctional DC press corps has dangerous implications for the proper functioning of our democracy. If Americans who watch television news don’t understand the fact that Republicans intentionally created the government shutdown and debt ceiling crises in an unprecedented attempt to extract extreme legislative concessions from Democrats, they won’t be able to hold those responsible accountable at the ballot box.
It is not the media’s job to cover for the Republicans. It’s time for the media to come clean on this and report the truth: Republicans are solely responsible for shutting down the government.
Will you join me and add your name to my petition to the major television networks to demand that they tell the American people the truth about the shutdown of the federal government?
Thank you for your support.
Digby

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Political Strategy Notes

by , October 8th, 2013 7:49 AM EST

NBC News political reporter Michael O’Brien reports, “Thirty-eight percent of Americans said Republicans were to blame for the shutdown, versus 30 percent who blame the Obama administration and 19 percent who blame both, according to the Pew poll, which was conducted in the days since the shutdown came to pass. (For context, a Pew poll before the shutdown found that 39 percent would blame the GOP, 36 percent would blame Obama and 17 percent would blame both if the shutdown were to occur.)…The ABC News/Washington Post poll, meanwhile, found that 70 percent of Americans disapprove of the way congressional Republicans are handling negotiations over the federal budget, while just 24 percent approve. (Last week, 26 percent approved of the GOP’s handling, and 63 percent disapproved.)
Don’t feel bad if you didn’t notice that the Obama administration captured another al Qaeda bigwig The story has been all but smothered by shutdown coverage.
In his National Journal post, “19 Times Democrats Tried to Negotiate With Republicans: The GOP’s biggest talking point of the shutdown is only true if you ignore everything that happened before last week,” Alex Seitz-Wald makes an important point that apparently confounds the rest of the print and broadcast media.
At the Nieman Journalism Lab, Mark Coddington reports on “False Equivalence in Shutdown Reporting,” and flags several articles on the topic, including a post by Jay Rosen, who notes that “with the critique of ‘false equivalence’ now a part of the journalist’s daily life and the rise of point-of-view reporting to normal status online, the artifice is shakier than ever.” We hope.
For one of the better recent discussions of the problem, read Time Magazine’s “Not “Both Sides,” Now: Why False Equivalence Matters in the Shutdown Showdown” by James Poniewozik. “Both sides are to blame; the truth is somewhere in between”-that has always been the political media’s happy, safe place…Seeming fair becomes more important than being fair…At worst, a legitimate impulse (“Let’s make sure we’ve checked out the other side”) becomes skewing reality for the sake of appearances (“We have to put in an example of the other side doing this”).”
CBS News says there are 215 House votes ready for a clean CR to end the shutdown, 2 votes short of a majority. Many believe the spotlight would flush out a healthier majority.
At Wonkblog, Neil Irwin’s “Can business take the Republican Party back from the Tea Party?” notes “…So far the business-oriented, pragmatic wing of the Republican coalition has done more private grumbling about their Tea Party brethren than outright intra-party warfare. The question for 2014 is whether the current shutdown and debt ceiling crisis pushes them to actually recruit and fund candidates — and whether Republican primary voters in at least a few districts buy the pitch those candidates are selling.”
Beth Reinhard’s National Journal post, “Democrats Read Virginia As A War-on-Women Winner: Success with the strategy in 2013’s marquee race has Democrats hoping it will be equally effective in big 2014 contests” offers some promising observstions for Dems, including: “What we’re seeing in Virginia is incredibly validating,” said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, which is airing a $1 million television and radio campaign against Cuccinelli. “I believe this race has set the table for these issues and for women to be determinative in 2014.”…Closing the gender gap was one of the major goals identified by the Republican National Committee in a sweeping review of the 2012 election, but a new United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll suggests the GOP is still struggling to connect with women. Only 14 percent of women said the Republican Party better represented their views. More than twice as many women, 33 percent, said the party had drifted further away, while 46 percent saw no change.”
Gallup oozes out yet another ‘congress job approval’ poll that somehow avoids the “which party is to blame” question.

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