In the debates over this week’s off-year elections, one of the major Democratic and MSM memes is that the Tea Party movement has lost major ground. Some say the Cuccenelli campaign defeat says so, or the Alabama Republican congressional primary says so. There are good reasons for this interpretation, but I’ve argued against it at the Washington Monthly:\\

My old buddy Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute offers his plenary take on what happened yesterday: he thinks it was pretty much a rout of the Tea Folk.

I don’t agree.

In considering Will Marshall’s argument that Tuesday’s primaries show that Tea Party influence on the GOP is on the wane, I countered with the suggestion that intimidation of Republicans by the Tea Folk is a more important part of its strategy than replacing “RINOs” in primaries.
A case in point is the ongoing pander-fest being conducted by Sen. Lindsey Graham, who faces divided and underfunded Tea Party primary opposition next year, and is trying to overcome conservative anger at his role in supporting immigration reform legislation and then ending the government shutdown.
First you had him risking the Mother of All Filibuster Wars with a threat to hold up all presidential nominations unless he’s given fodder for more Benghazi! investigations. Now we have this, via National Review’s Robert Costa (burnishing his credentials as the go-to conservative reporter of his era):
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is ramping up his pro-life efforts, and today unveiled the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

“These babies who have been taken out of the womb at 20 weeks can feel pain, and some have survived,” Graham says, in an interview with National Review Online. “We need to get the courts to establish this as a legitimate state interest to protect unborn children….”

The planted-axiom rhetoric about “babies” is as much the point as the legislation, which has no chance of passage (to the chagrin of “pro-life lawmakers” cited by Costa who clearly think Graham is grandstanding).

Graham, who is up for reelection next year, says it’s important to bring social issues back into the fold as the midterms approach. “The goal is to have a vote in 2014, to make sure we vote on it,” he says. “It’s worth having this debate. The more people understand what we’re trying to do, the more public support will grow over time.

More to the point, it will be harder to purge Graham as a traitor to The Cause if he’s out there fighting for the victims of the American Holocaust.
Another validator of the Tea Folk’s power to intimidate is its onetime hero Marco Rubio. Is there any right-wing meme, position, or opinion the man hasn’t embraced since his movement-conservative stock fell over the immigration bill? If so, I must have missed it. Just yesterday Rubio offered post-election analysis closely toeing the Movement line that Cuccinelli lost because the party didn’t give him sufficient resources, while Christie’s win had zero implications for the national party.
These are just data points, of course. But I’d argue that Graham’s and Rubio’s frantic efforts to propitiate radical conservative opinion are better measurements of the Tea Party’s influence on the GOP than a very narrow loss to a rigorously conservative and massively-financed candidate in Alabama.

Win or lose, the Tea Folk are doing well.

McAuliffe’s victory is all the more impressive in light of the repressive electoral system detailed in Qasim Rashid’s PolicyMic post, “Virginia’s Racist Voter ID Law is a Chilling Step Towards Jim Crow America.”
Politico’s Alexander Burns explains “How Terry McAuliffe mapped his Virginia win” According to Burns, “In February, McAuliffe took a large-sample poll of 10,000 Virginia voters. That huge tranche of data allowed the campaign to create a detailed model of the off-year electorate. While media attention has largely focused on whether McAuliffe would be able to turn out apathetic Democrats who participated in the 2012 presidential race, his campaign also had another objective in mind: identifying all the occasional voters who participated in the 2009 Virginia elections and ensuring that they showed up at the polls in a second off-cycle year.”
Not surprisingly, the Crystal Ball’s Larry J. Sabato Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley have a superb wrap-up about what happened in Virginia in their article “The Surprisingly Dramatic Terry & Ken Show.”
At USA Today Cara Richardson has an update on current Senate races.
Time Swampland’s Maya Rhodan takes an interesting angle in her post-mortem “Election 2013’s Biggest Winner? Labor Unions.” Rhodan explains, “Working America was one of the many unions and super PACs on the ground in Boston canvassing for mayor-elect Walsh, and the group worked in states across the country to push prolabor candidates and ballot measures. Nine of the eleven candidates they were pushing for are heading into office, and their positions on minimum wage prevailed…”We have a major challenge coming in 2014, and we have important battles to fight at the state and national levels,” says Mike Podhorzer, the political director of the AFL-CIO. “We are hoping this is a harbinger of how the electorate is feeling and gives us momentum.”
More good news for unions — and Dems — at NPR Jay Hancock’s “Administration Looks To Give Labor Unions Health Tax Relief”
Lewis Krauskopf reports at Reuters that “Interest in Obamacare rises despite website problems: Reuters/Ipsos poll.” Krauskopf reports “The uninsured view the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, more favorably since online marketplaces opened – 44 percent compared with 37 percent in September, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll…A higher proportion of the uninsured also said they are interested in buying insurance on the exchanges, with 42 percent in October, saying they were likely to enroll compared with 37 percent in September. The results have a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.”
Late-breaking — Great news for Georgia Democrats: “Democratic state Sen. Jason Carter will challenge Gov. Nathan Deal next year in a move that catapults the gubernatorial contest into the national spotlight and tests whether Georgia’s changing demographics can loosen the Republican Party’s 12-year grip on the state’s highest office,” reports Greg Bluestein at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The entry of President Carter’s well-liked grandson gives Georgia two exciting young Democrats running statewide in 2014 — and the likely involvement of two of Georgia’s most popular leaders, Sam Nunn and Jimmy Carter.
Talk about a mismatch. Try to imagine a duel of wits between Rachel Maddow and Sen. Rand Paul. Maddow could be arrested for child abuse.

The following article is by Erica Seifert of DCorps:
In today’s Wonkblog, Ezra Klein writes that despite Terry McAuliffe’s victory in yesterday’s Virginia gubernatorial election, the exit polls point to a “demographic drift that could help Republicans next year.”
“A Republican looking at these numbers should feel disappointed by last night’s election but hopeful about next year’s,” Klein writes.
Central to his argument is the fact that seniors represented 18 percent of Virginia’s 2013 electorate — up 4 percent from 2012 — and can therefore be expected to make up a larger share of next year’s midterm electorate. While we accept that demographic trends in odd-year elections point to potential shifts in the off-year body of voters, we take issue with the idea — taken as fact by most pundits — that a high vote share among seniors is necessarily bad news for Democrats.
More important than the vote share among seniors was the vote choice among seniors last night. At Democracy Corps, we have been closely examining voting trends among seniors in our polls and noting that they are increasingly supporting Democrats. But this is not a poll. This is an actual election that confirms what we have been seeing in our data: Something is, in fact, happening among seniors.
In 2009, seniors voted for Republican Bob McDonnell by a 20-point margin, 40 percent to 60 percent. Four years later, Democrat Terry McAuliffe cut that margin by three quarters (down to just +6 for Ken Cuccinelli).

So, while we accept Ezra Klein’s analysis that we should pay attention to the demographic trends apparent in last night’s election, we reject that these trends point to potentially bad things for Democrats in 2014. A strong turnout among seniors may, in fact, be a good thing for Democrats next year.

Republicans are spinning Terry McAuliffe’s margin of victory in the Virginia gubernatorial election as smaller than expected (2.4 percent) and a result of the Democrat’s heavy campaign spending. Fair enough. But Dems can point out that McAuliffe is not exactly Mr. Charisma, as he would admit, and he won, as did the Dems’ candidate for Lt. Gov, while the Dem. candidate for A.G. is behind a few hundred votes out of more than 2 million cast. Some other observations:

As Chris Cilliza and Aaron Blake point out at WaPo’s The Fix, “The Republicans’ un-married people problem: Cuccinelli carried married men and married women by single digits. But, he lost among unmarried people by massive margins. Unmarried men favored McAuliffe over Cuccinelli by almost two dozen points and unmarried women by more than forty.”
McAuliffe won women voters by a margin of 51-42 percent (but lost men by 3 percent). He got 67 percent – two out of three — unmarried women.
In terms of age, McAuliffe’s strongest cohort was those 30-44, who gave him 56 percent of their votes. But he also got 45 percent of the 65 and older voters, which is impressive for Dems in a southern state.
Also, note Blake and Cillizza, “In 2009, 78 percent of the Virginia electorate was white — and Republican Bob McDonnell rolled up a 35 point win over Democrat Creigh Deeds among white voters. Four years later, the electorate was only 72 percent white and Cuccinelli led McAuliffe by 20 points within that demographic group, according to exit poll results. That trend of white voter erosion is nothing new. In the 2012 election, it was on stark display.”
Alec McGilllis points out at The New Republic, “…very few pundits have been framing the race as having anything to say about the state of the gun control cause, despite McAuliffe’s remarkably forthright support for tighter gun restrictions, which included proudly touting his F rating in a debate with Republican Ken Cuccinelli.”

One of the most oft-cited observations about Virginia is that it is unique with the large numbers of federal workers voting in the state, and so the strong shutdown backlash is not likely to be replicated elsewhere. In reality, however, the research triangle of North Carolina is roughly analogous to the northern VA ‘burbs with its liberal bent. Dems face more of an uphill battle in NC. But it is the state where Obama lost by the closest margin, and discontent with Republican voter suppression is energizing key pro-Democratic constituencies. Virginia is trending blue today and N.C. is on deck.

TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore has a post up at the Washington Monthly on “Counter-Polarizing the Social Security Debate,” which explores the ramifications of Dems taking a more assertive position in favor of increasing, not cutting SS benefits. Kilgore explains:

The idea has been kicking around think tanks (notably the Economic Policy Institute) and the blogosphere (particularly Atrios, who’s made this a personal crusade) for a while, but now is getting some serious buzz in the Senate: it’s time not to trim but to expand Social Security benefits.
Unions and progressive activists are uniting around Tom Harkin’s bill to boost benefits by $70 a month for all Social Security recipients (and more for those heavily dependent on benefits for retirement security), increase (rather than decrease, as the “chained CPI” tentatively accepted by the White House as part of a not-going-to-happen “grand bargain” would do) the cost-of-living adjustment formula, and pay for it all by eliminating the regressive payroll tax cap for the program.

Kilgore quotes Sen. Sherrod Brown, via Greg Sragent, on the need for Dems to quit dithering about what to do regarding Republican efforts to cut Social Security, and get out front in a big way: “Why would we play on their playing field? Democrats need to play offense here. Force Republicans to say what it is they really want to do. Republicans just don’t like social insurance.” Kilgore adds that “Brown is talking about counter-polarizing the “entitlement” debate instead of taking a “responsible but flexible” posture to be contrasted with GOP “extremism.” Kilgore concludes,

The actual ace-in-the-hole for the “expand Social Security” message may be less about shifting the frame or changing the playing field than the simple fact that voters, and particularly the older voters on which the Republican Party so heavily relies, are likely to support higher benefits however they feel about “entitlements” as an abstraction, and whether or not they are vulnerable to GOP efforts to wedge them away from younger Americans with some sort of grandfathering provision for current retirees. And as noted earlier, the broader subject of rapidly eroding retirement security is long-overdue for serious public debate.

It makes a lot of sense, especially now, that recent opinion poll data indicates that senior voters are tilting more towards Democrats. Dems calling for better Social Security benefits just might provide the edge needed to secure a healthy majority of this high turnout constituency in 2014.

The Republican anti-Obamacare message du jour seems to be that the President “lied” when he said everyone can keep their current insurance policy under the ACA, when it now appears that as many as fiver percent may not. Senator Mary Landrieu is introducing legislation to allow “anyone who is satisfied with their current insurance to retain it,” according to Richard Cowan’s Reuters report. Dems should freely admit that tweaks to the ACA will be needed, introduce corrective measures and force Republicans to address them. Some potential fixes, like Sen Manchin’s proposed one-year delay of the individual mandate are more problematic, but some kind of extension should be workable. In any case, the Republicans will oppose all reasonable compromises, and that could work in favor of Democratic candidates next year.
There are also incidents of excessive premium hikes under the ACA, as Ariana Eunjung Cha and Lena H. Sun report at the Washington Post. “There are definitely winners and losers,” explains Sabrina Corlette of Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms in the Post article. “The problem is that even if the majority are winners… they’re not the ones writing to their congressmen.” Many of the hikes will disappear once the on-line exchanges are functioning smoothly. But Dems will also have to formulate some adjustments to reduce unfair premium hikes experienced by middle-class consumers, while always underscoring the far-reaching benefits of the legislation. ‘Mend it, don’t end it’ remains a credible message point for Dems.
Robert Reich points out that health insurance companies are still bullish and “jubiliant” about the ACA, which after all, was the GOP alternative to single-payer. Reich notes a “deep irony to all this. Had Democrats stuck to the original Democratic vision and built comprehensive health insurance on Social Security and Medicare, it would have been cheaper, simpler and more widely accepted by the public. And Republicans would be hollering anyway.” A strategic consideration to think about for future battles.
NYT’s Nicholas Kristoff has a good post putting all of the Obamacare nitpicking in perspective, noting “…far more serious is the kind of catastrophe facing people like Richard Streeter, 47, a truck driver and recreational vehicle repairman in Eugene, Ore. His problem isn’t Obamacare, but a tumor in his colon that may kill him because Obamacare didn’t come quite soon enough.” Says Streeter’s doctor, quoted in Kristoff’s article: “I am tired of being the messenger of death,” said Dr. Gibson. “Sometimes it’s unavoidable. But when people come in who might have been saved if they could have afforded care early on, then to have to tell them that they have a potentially fatal illness — I’m very tired of that.” The salient message here is that, despite all of the start-up glitches, Obamacare will prevent many such tragedies in the future.
At Sabato’s Crystal Ball, managing editor Kyle Kondik explores “The Cost of Ted Cruz’s Rebellion.”
Sure, it’s a plus when your candidate is physically attractive. But people who vote for candidates because of their “healthy” looks, instead of their policies are probably not an easily-targeted demographic. Lots of members of congress don’t look all that healthy, and surely many of them beat healthier-looking candidates. And voters who chose candidates because of their looks likely divide their support more or less evenly between Dems and the GOP over time. It’s a nebulous, ‘washout’ demographic not worth worrying about.
Mayha Rhodan has an interesting Time Swampland post on the complications caused by Virginia’s restrictive early voting law. As Rhodan explains, “In Virginia, if you don’t have one of 15 possible excuses, you are not eligible for absentee voting. Excuses range from being in college to having a long commute or a religious obligation. Though the state has taken steps to make in-person absentee more accessible by extending absentee voting until Nov. 2, proponents of wide spread early voting say the fact that an excuse is needed is still too limiting. “Getting an absentee ballot isn’t that difficult for some segments of the population,” said Hope Amezquita, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. “It’s just there are 15 excuses that will allow a voter to be eligible to apply, but there are a lot of people whose excuses aren’t included.” While about 30% of voters voted early nationwide in 2008, for example, just 14% voted early in Virginia… In 32 states, voters can cast a ballot early by going to a designated early polling location (or mailing their ballot-in) between 45 days and a week before Election Day. In 27 states, any registered voter can cast an absentee ballot without an excuse, either in person or via the mail.”
AP’s Matt Sedensky reports that a new AP/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll “finds passionate opposition to any change in the way Social Security benefits are calculated that could result in smaller annual raises…The poll found that 62 percent of respondents expressed opposition to such a proposal, compared with 21 percent who supported it.” But the poll also “finds support among those 50 and older for raising the cap on earnings that are taxed to fund the Social Security program so higher-income workers pay more…Currently, the cap is $113,700, meaning those earning more do not pay Social Security taxes on wages above that threshold…The poll found that 61 percent of people favored raising the cap, compared with 25 percent opposing it.” Dems own all the high ground on this one.
…As if this could be otherwise, given the GOP’s extremist candidates in VA.

At Politico you will find a surprisingly excellent update on “The Obamacare Sabotage Campaign” by Todd S. Purdum. It’s surprising, not because of Purdum’s fine reporting, but because Politico has been a little soft on the Obamacare-bashers. Purdum, however, is not giving any free rides:

To the undisputed reasons for Obamacare’s rocky rollout — a balky website, muddied White House messaging and sudden sticker shock for individuals forced to buy more expensive health insurance — add a less acknowledged cause: calculated sabotage by Republicans at every step.
…From the moment the bill was introduced, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress announced their intention to kill it. Republican troops pressed this cause all the way to the Supreme Court — which upheld the law, but weakened a key part of it by giving states the option to reject an expansion of Medicaid. The GOP faithful then kept up their crusade past the president’s reelection, in a pattern of “massive resistance” not seen since the Southern states’ defiance of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
The opposition was strategic from the start: Derail President Barack Obama’s biggest ambition, and derail Obama himself. Party leaders enforced discipline, withholding any support for the new law — which passed with only Democratic votes, thus undermining its acceptance…
…But the bitter fight over passage was only the beginning of the war to stop Obamacare. Most Republican governors declined to create their own state insurance exchanges — an option inserted in the bill in the Senate to appeal to the classic conservative preference for local control — forcing the federal government to take at least partial responsibility for creating marketplaces serving 36 states — far more than ever intended…Then congressional Republicans refused repeatedly to appropriate dedicated funds to do all that extra work, leaving the Health and Human Services Department and other agencies to cobble together HealthCare.gov by redirecting funds from existing programs.

The Republicans have been no less obstructionist in sabotaging the ACA in the states. As Purdum notes, “On top of that, nearly half of the states declined to expand their Medicaid programs using federal funds, as the law envisioned…Then, in the months leading up to the program’s debut, some states refused to do anything at all to educate the public about the law. And congressional Republicans sent so many burdensome queries to local hospitals and nonprofits gearing up to help consumers navigate the new system face-to-face that at least two such groups returned their federal grants and gave up the effort.”
Purdum goes on to document the Republican sabotage, not just in congress and the states, but also the Republican-dominated courts and the media. “When the White House let it be known last summer that it was in talks with the National Football League to enlist star athletes to help promote the law, the Senate’s top two Republicans sent the league an ominous letter wondering why it would “risk damaging its inclusive and apolitical brand.” The NFL backed off.
it’s a shameful litany for the GOP. Sure, they have used lax enforcement of progressive legislation before, most notably with respect to the Motor Voter act in the states they control –they are also huge on obstructing citizens right to vote. But now they are all about full-frontal sabotage of the law of the land on a scale that calls into question their commitment to democracy itself.

As discussed here back in 2008, a big part of Barack Obama’s approach to politics has involved efforts to force Republicans either to compromise or to split. As we all know now, the GOP has been extraordinarily resistant to pressure to compromise. And while Obama did succeed in peeling off a small but significant portion of prior Republican voters in 2008 and 2012, the long-awaited GOP split between old-school Republicans and the ascendant and increasingly radical movement conservatives hasn’t transpired, either.
In the wake of the government shutdown/debt default mess, there’s now fresh hope, and some fresh evidence, that things could be shaking loose within the GOP. I addressed this possibility rather skeptically at Washington Monthly today.

Today’s new revelations from the latest NBC/WSJ survey on favorable/unfavorable ratings for the GOP among its rank-and-file will doubtless fan speculation about a potential split. They show GOP favorability among self-identified Republicans dropping to 49/26 (as compared to 73/7 among Democrats). Moreover, non-Tea Party Republicans are exhibiting significantly more disgruntlement (41/32) than Tea Party Republicans (56/21). On top of that, in a hypothetical three-way generic congressional contest involving a Democrat, and Republican, and a third party/independent candidate, non-Tea GOPer are more likely to go indie (32% as opposed to 25% for Tea Folk). Chuck Todd and his colleagues at NBC’s First Read place a lot of stock in these latter numbers indicating that threats of defection from the GOP are now graver from “the center” than “the right.”

Maybe, but maybe not. When you stare at all these numbers, some problems emerge.

For one thing, while Republicans are broken down into Tea and Non-Tea factions, independents are not. Given the past tendency of Tea Folk to disproportionately identify as indies even though they almost all vote overwhelmingly Republican, Republican identifiers within the Tea Nation are obviously going to be relatively quite loyal.
More importantly, happiness and unhappiness with the current condition of the GOP is likely to have different meanings for different Republicans. If one stipulates that the GOP is dangerously right-wing these days, the numbers look a little different: add together the 56% of Tea Folk who feel good about it with the 21% who likely think the party should be more conservative, plus the 41% of non-Tea GOPers who are happy with the party’s direction, and you don’t exactly have a mandate for moderation, do you? (And this is totally aside from the reality that Tea Folk are significantly more likely to participate in Republican primaries).
As for the third-party support findings, they are indeed interesting, but in the absence of any identification of what kind of ideology an indie/third-party would stand for, it’s really just an indication of party loyalty, which brings us full circle. Fully 61% of self-identified indies in the survey say they’d support an indie/third-party candidate, but it’s hard to know what if anything that means if you don’t know whether we’re talking about a hard-core Tea Party candidate or some sort of Michael Bloomberg “centrist.”
So while pursuing a split in the GOP is obviously an important Grand Strategy goal for Democrats–it’s been a big part of Obama’s Grand Strategy from the get-go–and while Democrats are much happier with their party than Republicans, it’s a bit early for the Donkey Party to declare any kind of victory or even a major advance. If you add in the fact that elected officials are massively less likely to defy party discipline than the rank-and-file, perhaps the most we can say is that the preconditions for a GOP split are coming into view, but still at a great distance until such time as we see more evidence.

Democrats are just going to have to be patient, and work harder, if they want to see the GOP rupture or lose many millions of previous voters.