From Ashley Parker’s New York Times article, “Democrats Aim for a 2014 More Like 2012 and 2008“: “The Democrats’ plan to hold on to their narrow Senate majority goes by the name “Bannock Street project.” It runs through 10 states, includes a $60 million investment and requires more than 4,000 paid staff members. And the effort will need all of that — and perhaps more — to achieve its goal, which is nothing short of changing the character of the electorate in a midterm cycle…”The question is whether the party’s Obama-era volunteer base will replicate itself for a Mark Pryor or a Mary Landrieu or a Kay Hagan,” said Sasha Issenberg, author of “The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns,” referring to three vulnerable incumbent Democratic senators…Campaigns are realizing that the smartest way to win the next vote is by mobilizing a nonvoter than by trying to win over a voter.”
Here’s a very interesting stat from CNN Political Ticker: “According to the CNN/ORC International poll, which was released Friday, 55% of Americans surveyed say the GOP doesn’t understand women. That number rises to 59% among all women and 64% among women over 50.” It suggests that the Democrats’ best shot at getting a bigger bite of the high-turnout senior vote in non-presidential election years might be to focus on the concerns of senior women.
And here’s an encouraging report from Dan Roberts’ post at The Guardian “Senior Democrats set out strategy in preparation for tough Senate battle“: “Democrats face a common challenge of midterm election due to the propensity for low turnout and are spending millions on voter registration drives in cities such as Atlanta, where an estimated 400,000 African Americans are unregistered.”
What is it with the Republicans’ utterly shameless penchant for deceit as a political tactic? Apparently voter suppression is not enough. Now we have ‘decepticon’ political ads by the NRCC, as Dan Rothberg reports in his L.A. Times post “Republican Party wing creates 18 fake websites for Democrats.” Is it too much to ask that they be called to account for violating FEC rules and the spirit of honest discourse?
At the Plumline Greg Sargent addresses an important question: “Can Dems go on offense over Medicaid expansion in red states?” and notes “The politics of the Medicaid expansion have taken on a kind of life of their own, separate from Obamacare overall. It has allowed red state Dems to embrace parts of the law while implicitly hitting Republicans over their ideological fixation on full repeal, which would take health coverage away from millions. These Dems don’t talk about Obamacare, obviously. But they stand up for the core goal of expanding coverage to those who lack it (as Michelle Nunn has done by calling for the expansion in Georgia), and criticize Republicans for wanting to take it away from folks (as Alison Lundergan Grimes has done in Kentucky, where the expansion is in full force).”
Democrats who want to win statewide elections should be encouraged by the example of Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, who is riding a 54 percent approval rate, according to a new Bluegrass poll conducted by SurveyUSA for the Louisville Courier-Journal, WHAS11, the Lexington Herald-Leader and WKYT-TV in Lexington. According to Joseph Garth’s Courier-Journal report, “The poll also found that a small plurality of Kentucky voters said they will vote for Democrats in state House races this year” and a plurality of voters favor Beshear in all age groups.
At CBS News Anthony Salvanto probes “How presidential approval can make or break a midterm.”
For an assessment of Democratic prospects in other “red” states, read “How progressives can turn the deep South blue” by former NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. Among the insights provided by Jealous in his MSNBC post: “There are more than 600,000 unregistered black Americans in Georgia, plus thousands of unregistered Latinos, Asian-Americans, women and millennials. At an average cost of $12 per registration, it would cost less than $8 million to register virtually all of Georgia’s unregistered black voters. If even half of them had voted for President Obama in 2012, we would be having a very different conversation today.” Jealous quotes Stacy Abrams, Minority Leader in the GA state assembly: “2014 is a transformational year. Demography may be destiny, but voter registration is the pathway to the future in Georgia.”
Focusing on the defeat of unemployment benefits extension for the long-term jobless, at The Atlantic James Fallows shames his colleagues in the media for characterizing legislation defeated by filibusters as “failed” measures, and provides several examples in which they don’t even mention that the bill was filibustered. Fallows adds: “Fun fact for the day: By my ballpark count, the 59 senators who voted for the bill represented states with just less than 70 percent of the U.S. population. The 41 who voted no represented just more than 30 percent of the population. With only 70 percent support, no wonder the bill “failed.”

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Last week JPMorgan Chase’s Board approved a 74 percent pay raise for its CEO, Jamie Dimon, for 2013, a year when JPMorgan barely escaped a criminal penalty and paid $20 billion in fines and penalties for wrongdoing — much of it on his watch.
Sometimes we get numb to numbers like $20 million. To put it in perspective, in 2013, Dimon made $9,615 per hour. In other words, he made more in the first two hours of the first workday of the year than a minimum-wage worker made all year long.
There has been much debate about whether Dimon deserved his big increase in a year that the bank paid so much in fines, and narrowly avoided criminal prosecution.
Still others are outraged that Wall Street bankers whose reckless speculation lead to the collapse of the world economy — and cost 8 million Americans their jobs — should continue to be rewarded with lavish economic benefits.
But the real scandal is the fact that for more than 30 years, a tiny slice of Americans have rigged the rules of the economic game so they could siphon off all of the more than 80 percent increase in our per capita gross domestic product.
Last week the New York Times reported that even though Dimon’s massive pay package was inconceivable to most ordinary Americans: “… in the world of executive compensation, especially when viewed from the rarefied perspective of other chief executives, and more broadly on Wall Street, Mr. Dimon’s pay — and how it is determined — is not only defensible, but laudable.”
Yep. To other CEOs his $20 million salary seems quite reasonable. After all, the chairman of the JPMorgan Compensation Committee was Lee R. Raymond, former chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil. When he left Exxon he got a $400 million retirement package — no kidding.
The Compensation Committee apparently reasoned that “in context,” Mr. Dimon’s compensation package was quite reasonable. Mr. Raymond’s successor at Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson, was paid $40.3 million in 2012. Leslie Moonves, CEO of CBS, was paid $62.2 million. Larry Ellison of Oracle brought home $96.12 million.
And these salaries are nothing compared with the incomes of some of Wall Street’s greatest speculators — people like John Paulsen, who several years ago made a whopping $5 billion.
What do the very rich do with all of this money?
Of course most of it is used to invest in making more money. It isn’t hard to make lots of money if you have some to start with. If you have $50,000 of savings in the stock market, just let it sit and stock prices go up 40 percent over a couple of years, you make $20,000 — not bad. But if you have a million dollars in the same stock market and expend the same effort you make $400,000.
And they spend it. According to a study by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, in 2012, 38 percent of all personal consumption expenditures were made by the top 5 percent of earners. That’s up from 27 percent in 1992. In response, the New York Times reports that “the customer base for businesses that appeal to the middle class is shrinking as the top tier pulls ever further away.” As it result the Times reports firms like Olive Garden, Red Lobster, J.C. Penney and Sears that cater to the middle class are struggling and fine-dining restaurants and retailers are thriving.
And the very rich also use their extraordinary wealth on other “critical necessities”:

• How about a Seamagine Aurora personal submarine — great for ice-diving or spotting tropical fish. It’s safe down to 3,300 feet, comes in three, four or five person designs and sells for a mere $3 million.
• Or you might want to buy a Vacheron Constantin Patrimony Traditionnelle Chronograph (watch). The advertisement for this piece says that “this Patrimony Traditionelle carries over the aesthetic cues from those dress chronographs into a modern 42 mm case size.” Sells for only $55,900. Keeps time about as well as a $22.95 Timex — and for all but the most sophisticated looks pretty much like a $250 Bulova — and certainly no better than a $8,000 Rolex. But I’m sure to someone for whom money is no object it’s worth it.
• Or perhaps you might want to stroll down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and drop in on a little boutique where you could pick up a $4,000 blouse. That’s right, some people actually pay four grand for a blouse that looks for all the world like one you could get for $100 — and probably not much better than a knock off you could pick up for $50. Must be that designer name in the label.

Read more…

This item by Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research is a follow-up rejoinder to the essays previously published as part of the joint American Prospect/TDS roundtable, Progressive Perspectives on the Future of the New Deal/Great Society Entitlement Programs. It is cross-posted from the Prospect.
My co-authors made many useful points in their pieces. They also made some claims with which I disagree. Rather than address their comments individually, I will make three general points in response to issues that came up in several of the pieces.
First, generational equity has almost nothing to do with tax and transfer policy; we give our children a whole economy and society. If we hand our kids a government with no debt burden and no taxes to pay for their parents’ Social Security, but a wrecked infrastructure, a devastated environment, and an antiquated capital stock we’ve have not done well on the generational equity scorecard.
We pointlessly hand the right an enormous political advantage when we imply that the share of tax revenue going to programs for the young versus programs for the old has anything to do with generational equity. We’ve already lost almost $8 trillion in output from the Great Recession (more than $25,000 per person). This lost output, coupled with the destruction to families’ lives resulting from long-term unemployment and underemployment will do hugely more to hurt the life prospects of our children and grandchildren than Social Security and Medicare taxes ever could. If we want to point fingers at generational villains we should be looking at Greenspan, Rubin, and the Wall Street gang.
If we sustain decent economic growth there is no plausible story in which workers twenty or thirty years from now won’t be far wealthier on average than they are today. Assuming normal economic growth, real wages will be on average more than 40 percent higher in 2040 than they are today. If workers in 2040 have to pay another 2-3 percentage points of their income in taxes, that doesn’t amount to generational inequality in any meaningful sense of the term. If large numbers of workers actually are not living as well as their parents or grandparents it will be due to intra-generational inequality, not inter-generational inequality.
As a sidebar, the debt is mostly passed on as assets to our children. We’ll be dead, so they will hold the bonds. There is an issue of debt held by foreigners, but people troubled by that one are looking at the wrong deficit. The problem with foreign debt is the trade deficit, re-read an intro economics textbook if this is not clear.
The second point is that the U.S. health care system is broken. We pay more than twice as much per person as people in other countries without anything to show for it in terms of outcomes. Yes, it is hard politically to attack insurers, doctors, drug companies and other health care providers, but it is also hard politically to cut Social Security and Medicare. It is bizarre that anyone who considers themselves progressive would be anxious to take on the politically difficult task of cutting Social Security and Medicare, but back away from going after the people responsible for outrageous health care costs.
I have repeatedly advocated trying to push for more open trade in health care as an end-run around the powerful interests that keep up costs. This is a way of focusing on the fact that the debate has nothing to do with free market ideology, it is a debate over protecting the high incomes of health care providers pure and simple. While I find allies on this one on the more conservative side of the political spectrum, progressives seem to find the concept confusing. I know it’s hard for intellectuals to think about new ideas, but sometimes it is necessary to try. The effort to contain health care costs is one such case. (It should be noted that costs have grown much more slowly over the last six years.)
Third, Keynesian economics is true regardless of its popularity, just like gravity and global warming. If people do not accept Keynesian economics as it has been presented, then we have to find other ways to present it. (It doesn’t help that our “progressive” Democratic president is on the other side on this one.) The reality is that we will not have full employment without large budget deficits or bubbles unless we get the trade deficit down. There is no way around this fact.
As I explained in my original piece, any serious effort to get the trade deficit down means lowering the value of the dollar. We could probably reduce the value of the dollar against other currencies if it were a political priority of the Obama administration. Unfortunately that does not appear to be the case. This leaves us budget deficits or bubbles. Better framing or good rhetoric won’t get around this logic.
The one other option is re-dividing the work. Work sharing and more leisure have much to recommend them. If we can’t get around the stalemate blocking the expansion of the pie, a fairer division among the pie-eaters seems the best alternative. After all, it is not their fault they are unemployed. It is the fault of the policymakers in Washington.

A Daily Kos Jed Lewison comments on Gov. Christie’s latest shift to the “incompetent buffoon defense,” which Lewison describes as: “Christie is basically saying that people shouldn’t hold it against him that he’s got a bunch of staffers who did something bad because he’s such an out-of-touch boss that he didn’t know what they were up to.” Or how about, “Don’t blame me just because my judgement in selecting people for major staff posts and appointments sucks bad.”
NYT’s Michael Barbaro, Nicholas Confessore and Jonathan Martin explain how “Democrats Aim to Capitalize on Christie Problems,” basically by making him poster-boy for GOP Governors: “…Democrats are determined to transform him into a toxic figure, whose name is synonymous with the ugliest elements of politics: partisan bullying and backslapping cronyism…”If Republican governors want to keep embracing him as their chair, as their model for the future, we’re happy to help them out,” said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.”
Olivia Nuzzi has a Politico profile, “The man Who Keeps Christie Up at Night,” of the most likely beneficiary of the Christie mess, Assemblyman John Wisniewski, whose impressive commentary on the Christie debacle has put him on the short list for Democratic nominations for Gov. in New Jersey.
Can the Koch Brothers buy the 2014 elections? WaPo’s Matea Gold has a scary update on record-level early spending to attack Democratic candidates by the Koch Brother’s Americans for Prosperity.
Greg Sargent elaborates at The Plum Line: “Meanwhile, in North Carolina, the source says, AFP as of today has spent a staggering $7.2 million against Senator Kay Hagan, versus only $1.4 million by the SMP…Those are lopsided imbalances. And it’s going to get a lot worse. Dems expect the Koch network to spend as much as $200 million this cycle. Meanwhile, the money from the left just isn’t there yet, Dems say privately. If it were, you’d see groups like the Senate Majority PAC, Emily’s List, and the League of Conservation Voters (which is up with an ad hitting Scott Brown in New Hampshire) spending much more in these races, to match AFP’s spending.”
Good news for Marianne Williamson: Sandra Fluke has decided to run for CA state senate instead of Waxman’s House seat. But Williamson will likely face formidable opposition anyway.
David Callahan has an interesting post at Demos Policy Shop discussing the political ramifications of the terms “middle class” and “working class.” He crunches some self-i.d. data and observes “The term “working class” isn’t uttered so often by politicians in a stand alone way..The term almost seems dated, as if whoever uses it is stuck in a Laverne and Shirley re-run. Sure, we hear a lot about low-wage workers and “working families,” but the clear class component here has drifted quietly out of political and media discourse — even though tens of millions of Americans still think of themselves as working class…You’d think that progressives, at least, would talk often about the working class, but that’s not really the case. Instead, we prefer “working families,” which is bad choice for a few reasons — starting with the fact that many affluent professionals actually work longer hours than low-wage workers, who are more likely to be underemployed or unemployed. But the big problem is that when we drop the word “class,” we lose that all-important reminder that there is a rigid economic hierarchy in America, more rigid than in many European countries, according to mobility research.”
At ProPublica Charles Ornstein addresses “As the Media Gets Bored With Obamacare, Is the Public Starting to Get on Board?” Lots of interesting detail here, including: “…we are close to being able to say that the March 31 open enrollment period is already a success. And let me break it down for you. We have 2.2 million people who’ve already selected plans through the exchanges [as of the end of December], which is about 30 percent of what CBO [the Congressional Budget Office] predicted. We have about 6 million people who have been found eligible to enroll in Medicaid, and we have 3 million young adults who weren’t previously insured who are now insured under their parents’ policies. …You’ve got about 11 million people who’ve been touched by the law, maybe as many as 15 million. That’s really quite an astonishing number for the first six months.”
Here’s why Georgia Democrats are hoping that Rep. Paul Broun will get the keys to the GOP clown car.

From a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research e-blast:
Voters overwhelmingly want to see the country move away from coal and toward renewable energy, and they believe the government should be taking more action to combat climate disruption, according to a new national survey for the Sierra Club conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. As a result, voters show very strong support for new EPA limits on carbon pollution from power plants, support which holds up after voters hear pros and cons about the proposal, including strong arguments from opponents of the plan on its potential impact on jobs and energy prices.
Other key findings include:

• The EPA gets very solid favorability ratings. Forty-four percent of voters give the EPA a warm, favorable rating compared to only 27 percent who give the agency a cool, unfavorable rating. By comparison, the ratings for the U.S. Congress are severely underwater (13 percent favorable, 64 percent unfavorable).
• By more than a 2-to-1 margin, voters believe that climate disruption is a serious problem and they believe that the federal government should be doing more, not less, to address it. Two-thirds say climate disruption is a serious problem, and by a 50 to 19 percent margin, voters think the federal government should be doing more to address the problem.
• Voters believe, incorrectly, that the federal government already regulates carbon pollution. A majority of voters incorrectly believe that the government currently regulates carbon pollution, while just 28 percent correctly understand that there are currently no regulations on the amount of carbon pollution power plants can release.
• Seventy percent of voters support the President’s proposal to have the EPA set new limits on carbon pollution. Key demographic groups, including millennials, African Americans, Hispanics, moderates, and Midwestern voters, strongly support the plan.
• Support holds after pros and cons about the debate. Support for EPA carbon limits holds steady at 70 percent after voters hear pros and cons about the proposal, including strong arguments against the plan centered on its potential impact on energy prices.
• Voters overwhelmingly believe that the proposal will make a positive impact on public health and climate disruption. Nearly 7 in 10 voters (69 percent) think the plan will help public health, and 57 percent think it will help reduce climate disruption. Meanwhile, 58 percent of voters reject the notion that the plan would harm the economy.

Click here to read the results and full analysis from the survey conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.

When the only two Democratic Presidents to get re-elected since FDR huddle with fellow Democrats on 2014 campaign strategy, it’s a good idea for those who would rather not see a Republican takeover of congress to start paying attention. Begin with Marshall Cohen’s CBS News post “Obama, Bill Clinton huddle with Democrats to plot 2014 strategy,” which sets the stage for the meeting, which begins today at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.
Cohen touches on some key concerns about the current political moment, including:

Democrats are in a precarious position right now: Mr. Obama’s approval ratings are sagging, and Democrats are fighting to hold onto the Senate. Some insiders have already given up on winning back the House.
Senate Democrats currently have a 55-45 majority, but they could lose that edge in November.
Top Republican targets include Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mark Begich of Alaska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina. Democratic retirements in West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana and Iowa haven’t made the map any friendlier for the party as it tries to cling on to control.
“Republicans have no equivalently vulnerable incumbents up in blue states,” CBS News elections director Anthony Salvanto recently wrote. “In fact, none of the Republican seats (up for re-election), except Maine, are in states carried by President Obama.”

Holding the Senate, let alone cutting into the Republicans’ House majority, is a daunting challenge. Cohen’s emphasis on the negative political fallout of the Affordable Care Act seems a little overstated, since there are some very encouraging trends which could offset GOP messaging on the issue (see here, here and here, for example). On the other hand, he doesn’t discuss what may be the GOP’s biggest asset, the Koch brothers early money-bombing, which is well underway and has been cited in turning polls against Dem incumbents like Sen. Kay Hagan.
But Cohen does note what will likely be the Democrats’ strongest messaging point: “Meanwhile, top Democrats hope their new message of income inequality will strike a chord with voters this election cycle.” But Jackie Calmes has noted in the New York Times:

To Republicans, talk of income inequality smacks of class warfare and redistribution of wealth, of taxing the rich to give to the poor. They prefer to emphasize opportunity and upward mobility, and Democrats, too, have come to see that frame as more appealing to middle-class voters in this midterm election year.

Opportunity and upward mobility for the middle class is a solid aspirational theme for Democrats. But it shouldn’t distract Dems from the compelling need to call out the Republicans, loud and clear, for their all-out assault on the economic well-being of the middle class. Indeed, runaway economic inequality has become so grotesque that Democrats must make it a central theme of campaign 2014 until a critical mass of swing voters get it that today’s Republicans are united around one key goal — screwing working people to enrich the wealthy even more.

This post is by TDS Contributor and Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, Alan Abramowitz. Alan can be followed on Twitter: @AlanIAbramowitz.
Class warfare! That’s what Republicans call it when Democrats talk about the need to address the problem of growing economic inequality in the United States. They claim that it’s wrong to focus attention on the growing concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority of corporate executives and captains of finance. And some centrist Democrats, like those associated with the organization Third Way, seem to feel the same way. They’ve been warning that advocating policies aimed at reducing disparities in wealth and income could backfire and cost Democrats support among moderate, swing voters in November.
Notwithstanding such claims, an examination of recent polling data indicates that advocating policies to reduce economic inequality is a winning issue for Democrats in 2014. Americans overwhelmingly believe that wealth and income are too heavily concentrated at the top and that this situation has gotten worse in recent years. Moreover, a majority of Americans want to see the government take steps to reduce the gap in wealth and income such as increasing the minimum wage and raising taxes on upper income households. Finally, and most importantly, this is an issue on which Democrats are more united than Republicans and independent voters tend to side with Democrats. As a result, economic inequality could provide Democratic candidates with a powerful wedge issue in the 2014 midterm election–one that they can use to energize the Democratic base and appeal to swing voters.
Despite attempts by some conservative pundits to minimize its importance, ordinary Americans clearly see growing economic inequality as a major problem. For example, a Gallup Poll conducted in early January of this year found that 67% of Americans were dissatisfied with the way income and wealth are distributed in the U.S. including 39% who were very dissatisfied. Fully 75% of Democrats were dissatisfied but so were 70% of independents and 54% of Republicans.
Americans are not only dissatisfied with the way wealth and income and distributed; they want the government to do something about the situation. Thus, in an April, 2013 Gallup Poll, 59% of respondents indicated that they considered the current distribution of wealth to be unfair and wanted money and wealth to be more evenly distributed in the U. S. A whopping 83% of Democrats along with 60% of independents favored a more even distribution of wealth. Even among Republicans, 28% supported a more even distribution of wealth. Moreover, in the same survey, 52% of Americans favored redistributing wealth by “heavy taxes on the rich.” This was the largest percentage of respondents endorsing redistribution through heavy taxes on the wealthy since Gallup began asking this question in 1998. Fully 75% of Democrats, 50% of independents and 26% of Republicans favored such a policy. There is little doubt that those percentages would have been considerably greater if the question used less loaded language and asked about “higher taxes” on the rich.
Recent polls have shown that Americans overwhelmingly favor policies designed to help those at the bottom of the income ladder such as raising the minimum wage and extending long-term unemployment insurance. Large majorities of Democrats and independents support these policies along with a substantial share of Republicans. Congressional Republicans are clearly on the wrong side of these issues and Democratic candidates, even in red states, have little to lose and much to gain by endorsing such policies. Moreover, the evidence presented here indicates that Democrats would also benefit from directly linking these policies to the broader goal of reducing economic inequality. And if Republicans respond with accusations of class warfare, Democrats should take it as an opportunity to reinforce the public’s perception of the GOP as the party of wealth and privilege. In 2014, a little bit of class warfare may be just what Democrats need.

Chris Cillizza’s “2014 Senate races may be a referendum on Obama; if so, Democrats should worry” at The Fix doesn’t entertain the possibility that an economic uptick, divisions within the GOP and an improved profile of Obamacare could help the Dems in this year’s elections. But he does acknowledge that “even a slight comeback for the president would probably do a world of good for someone like Hagan. It’s also possible — per the Heitkamp example cited above — that people like Begich and Pryor can effectively turn the focus of their races from national concerns to state ones.”
Meanwhile Karen Tumulty and Robert Costa explain, also at the Washington Post, why “Republicans face 2016 turmoil” at The Washington Post: “The party is divided and in turmoil, with a civil war raging between its establishment and insurgent factions. For the first time in memory, there is no obvious early favorite — no candidate with wide appeal who has run before, no incumbent president or vice president, no clear establishment pick…An enormous number of potential contenders are looking at the race, including, perhaps, a return of virtually everyone who ran in 2012. Come this time next year, 15 or more of them could be traveling the early primary states, jockeying for attention and money.
Evan McMorris-Santoro takes a peak “Inside The Plan To Get More Young Americans To Enroll In Obamacare” at Buzzfeed Politics. Hint: it’s about targeting young women.
At the Tucson Weekly David Safier explains what you get when you vote for a Republican state legislature in AZ: “Last year, Republicans passed a voter suppression bill in the AZ Lege. People who objected to it managed to gather 146,000 signatures to put an referendum on the ballot that would let Arizona voters decide if they wanted to keep the new law or repeal it. In a “To hell with the voters” move, Republicans wrote another bill to repeal their own bill. If the new bill passes, they plan to vote the suppression measures back in piece my piece, making them referendum-proof.” Yet another indication that Dems should make Republican voter suppression a messaging issue everywhere in November.
The Washington Post editorial board explains why “Government has to make voting easier” — and how to do it.
Sean Trende’s “The 2020 Reapportionment and the Voting Rights Act” at the Crystal Ball touched on a delicate problem for Dems, among other redistricting issues: “…Many Democrats would prefer to weaken majority-minority districts. Part of the Democrats’ challenge in winning the House is that the VRA forces them to place their most loyal supporters into districts with one another. If Democrats could weaken these districts, they could dilute Republican strength in the suburbs and create more Democratic districts. We see this with the ongoing Florida litigation, where Democrats are urging the dismantling of two African-American plurality districts in the hopes of weakening neighboring districts currently held by Republicans.”
It looks like Sandra Fluke may be running against Marianne Williamson for the congressional seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Henry Waxman.
At The New Yorker Steve Coll writes about Colorado’s political transformation as a possible preview of the future of the Democratic Party.
At L.A. Times Politics Now Maeve Reston explains why Democratic women were the key to getting President Obama to hike the minimum wage.