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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: May 2014

Dems in Good Shape for Marquee Elections in November

The New York Times headline for Jonathan Martin’s article, “McConnell Win Leads Night of Victories for G.O.P. Establishment” pretty much reflects the simplistic MSM take on Tuesday’s primary elections. Martin deserved a better headline, since his wrap-up was a solid, fact-driven account of what happened. Such headlines overstate the differences between today’s “GOP establishment” and the tea party.
For a sharper analysis of what is really going on inside the GOP, check out Ben Jacobs’ Daily Beast post “Tea Party Loses Key Battles, But Is Winning The War.” The sub-head encapsulates the salient point that “Defeats handed to Tea Party candidates last night only tell half the story – the Tea Party’s real success has been to change the very DNA of the GOP.”
In his Times article Martin also offers this worthwhile insight from the Tuesday elections:

One of the main lessons emerging from the young primary season is that political fundamentals like candidate strength, fund-raising and incumbency remain paramount, even in an era of deep dissatisfaction with Washington. That Mr. McConnell, 72, so easily defeated Mr. Bevin in Kentucky underscored that point.

No matter how slick we Dems get about micro targeting and the like, winning elections still requires good candidates and excellent fund-raising, particularly when trying to defeat well-healed Republican incumbents. Alison Lundergan Grimes is nicely-positioned in the polls. But it is going to take dough — lots of it — to beat McConnell in November.
In Georgia, Dems have two good ‘legacy’ candidates, Jason Carter and Michelle Nunn running against old guard Republicans. Governor Nathan Deal made himself a lightning rod for criticism of Governors who refused to accept Medicaid expansion funds, denying more than 650,000 Georgians health care. His “guns everywhere” law has proven unpopular with a surprising 59 percent of Georgians in one poll. Unfortunately, Democrat Jason Carter also supported the “guns everywhere” bill, depriving his campaign of a good issue for energizing his base in opposition to Deal. The hope is that Carter’s campaign will soon show more fire than has been the case thus far.
Deal has a lot to answer for, however. As Dave Weigle notes in his Slate.com post “Can Georgia Democrats Make the State Turn Blue Ahead of Schedule?“:

Democrats are counting on a backlash to a gun bill that legalized firearms in bars and churches. They expect voters to blame the Republicans for larger class sizes and a spike in the cost of teachers’ health plans. And they’re shaming Republicans for turning down the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, which has spawned a steady run of stories about doomed or closing rural hospitals.
“Most people viewed Medicaid as sort of a poor people’s program,” Abrams says. “What they’re starting to realize is that it’s actually the funding for their hospitals. You lose one of those hospitals and you lose an economic center. A lot of the effect of that won’t be felt until July, when they start budgeting for next year.”

Michelle Nunn has played a very smooth hand in her Senate campaign, and a recent AJC poll shows her with a slight edge over Republican David Perdue and a 10-point lead over Rep. Jack Kingston. Kingston and Purdue will be battling it out in the run-off, and it should be brutal, which is exactly what Democrats want to see. Don’t bet against Nunn. She may even have some coattails to help Carter.
Most of the other primary elections went as expected, with no major downers for Democrats. Dems have a chance to avoid the usual midterm disaster, and if the GOTV effort delivers as hoped, the pundits just may be talking about the GOP’s ‘blown opportunity’ first Wednesday in November.


Lux: Midwest Populist Uprising Threatens GOP

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:
Few people in this era, even the political junkies who pore over the red and blue political maps and know all the swing states, are aware that at one time in American history the rural Midwest was the center of progressive economic revolt. States like Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas in the late 1800s and early 1900s were dominated by firebrand populists who created state banks like the one that still serves North Dakota well; fought for nationalizing the railroads and phone companies; and demanded a shorter workday and a progressive income tax. William Jennings Bryan, who was outspent by McKinley by probably 10-1 and yet only lost the 1896 presidential race by a margin of 51 percent to 47 percent, used rhetoric like this in his classic Cross of Gold speech at the 1896 Democratic convention:
“When you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your action. We say to you that you have made too limited in its application the definition of a businessman. The man who is employed for wages is as much a businessman as his employer. The attorney in a country town is as much a businessman as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The merchant at the crossroads store is as much a businessman as the merchant of New York. The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, begins in the spring and toils all summer, and by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of this country creates wealth, is as much a businessman as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain. The miners who go 1,000 feet into the earth or climb 2,000 feet upon the cliffs and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured in the channels of trade are as much businessmen as the few financial magnates who in a backroom corner the money of the world.
“We come to speak for this broader class of businessmen. Ah. my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic Coast; but those hardy pioneers who braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose–those pioneers away out there, rearing their children near to nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds–out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their children and churches where they praise their Creator, and the cemeteries where sleep the ashes of their dead–are as deserving of the consideration of this party as any people in this country.
“It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came…
“There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.”


ACA Survives 880,000 ($418 million) Attack Ads

At the MaddowBlog Steve Benen’s “ACA withstands attack-ad onslaught” does a fine job of putting the GOP’s all-out assault against Obamacare in perspective. Benen quotes from a new study by Campaign Media Analysis Group at Kantar Media, which reveals that “Spending on negative ads outpaced positive ones by more than 15 to 1.” Benen adds

…According to the report, ACA opponents have spent $418 million on 880,000 commercials, as compared to $27 million on 58,000 positive ads from the law’s proponents. This includes advertising on all local television markets, national broadcast networks, and cable.

Benen notes in an update that the government and insurance companies have spent $249 million for ads urging people to get enrolled. But that’s not the same thing as directly responding to the attack ads. He continues,

Assuming the research is accurate, it would help explain a few things. For years, there’s been a lingering question underscoring public attitudes on “Obamacare”: if the polls showed public demand for health care reform going into the reform fight; Democrats approved a moderate law built on bipartisan ideas; and polls show broad support for the law’s provisions, why does the public still disapprove of the Affordable Care Act?
Perhaps because they’ve seen some of the 880,000 attack ads.
In fact, maybe I’m the oddball on this, but given the one-sided advertising, shouldn’t the ACA be a lot less popular?

Benen concedes that “the Affordable Care Act isn’t winning any popularity contests,” but adds, “I hate to break this to the right, which has literally and figuratively invested so much in this fight, but after outspending proponents 15 to 1, the ACA is holding up pretty well when it comes to public attitudes.” Further,

Look, there’s no mystery as to why these ads aired in the first place: in general, television advertising is a very effective medium. When the right spends hundreds of millions of dollars to air misleading attack ads, desperately trying to convince Americans to hate health care reform, it’s going to have an effect. Indeed, most of the public won’t know better – they don’t follow politics closely; they’re not policy wonks; and they’ve been inundated with “You should hate Obamacare” messaging for more than four years. Clearly, this will turn a whole lot of folks against the law, even if these same people love the provisions of the law they claim to dislike.
But as a long-term proposition, conservatives must realize at a certain level that time is no longer on their side. They threw everything they had at “Obamacare,” up to and including outspending their opponents 15 to 1, and the law is still in the low- to mid-40s and is still growing more popular.

As Benen concludes, “That’s hardly a victory $418 million and 880,000 commercials later.”


Political Strategy Notes

Start your day with Corey Robin’s “The Republican War on Workers’ Rights” at the New York Time Opinionator, which offers this measure of the importance of midterm elections: “Over the last four decades, for example, low-wage workers have been hit hard by the declining value of the federal minimum wage. In the absence of federal action, states, cities and counties have increased the minimum wage or indexed it to inflation (or both) to ensure that it keep pace with rising costs…Republican politicians in state capitals have tried to check them at every point. Florida, Indiana and Mississippi have banned local governments from increasing the minimum wage. In Nevada, Missouri and Arizona, state legislators tried to overturn constitutional amendments and ballot initiatives. In 2011, New Hampshire’s Republican legislature simply abolished the state’s minimum wage.” Robin’s op-ed has much more on the GOP rip-off of workers’ rights.
At Sabato’s Crystal Ball Sean Trende probes “Are Republicans Really Doomed Demographically?” and comes to a lightly skeptical conclusion.
From Thom Hartmann’s “Republicans’ deadly political strategy: Ruining our country hurts the Democratic Party” at Salon.com: “For six years now, Republicans have been hard at work damaging America and the American people. When the Democrats briefly controlled Congress, Nancy Pelosi got passed legislation that removed tax incentives for big companies to move jobs overseas and reversed those incentives to encourage companies to move factories back to the United States…The Republican Chaos Strategy dictates that you cannot allow these things to happen when there is a Democrat in the White House. Under their theory, if anything positive is done for the American people by Congress, the American people – who don’t know which party controls Congress – will assume that the president and his Democrats must’ve had something to do with it. And therefore, the Democrats will get the credit…if Republican House Speaker John Boehner simply allowed a vote in the House of Representatives to extend the unemployment benefits they cut off last Christmas it would instantly pass. Probably over 80 percent of Americans do not realize that this one single Republican, playing out the Republican Chaos Strategy, has screwed millions of Americans…The only way to stop the Republican Chaos Strategy is to educate the American people as to how the Republicans, for the majority of the Obama presidency, have been able to systematically and intentionally damage our economy and our nation for purely political purposes…This should be the single-minded focus of the Democratic Party between now and November.”
At CNN Politics Leigh Ann Caldwell’s “Meet the woman who could turn Texas purple” discusses the possibility that a popular Latino woman candidate for Lieutenant Governor, State sen. Letitia Van de Putte, may have some coattails in getting Hispanic and women voters to the polls in Texas.
More on the Democrats Texas campaign from NYT’s Amy Chozick: “…After Mr. Obama’s re-election, Jeremy Bird, the campaign’s national field director, started Battleground Texas, a grass-roots political organization whose goal was to make Texas competitive, a long-term effort intended to take root perhaps by the 2020 presidential election…The work Battleground Texas is doing in 2014 is helping in “building an infrastructure that will exist in 2016, 2018, 2020,” said Jenn Brown, the group’s executive director. “You’re not going to win every election”…Central to that goal will be persuading the more than two million Hispanics who are eligible to vote but did not in 2012. In 2010, about one million voting-age Hispanics cast ballots for a turnout rate of about 23 percent, compared with about 44 percent among white voters.”
So WWLBJD?

From E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s column, “No more liberal apologies as Elizabeth Warren takes the offensive“: “But doesn’t being pro-government mean you’re anti-business? Well, no, Warren says, quite the opposite. “There’s nothing pro-business about crumbling roads and bridges or a power grid that can’t keep up,” she writes. “There’s nothing pro-business about cutting back on scientific research at a time when our businesses need innovation more than ever. There’s nothing pro-business about chopping education opportunities when workers need better training.”
The American Prospect’s executive editor Bob Moser has an update on rising Democratic hopes in the south, which notes “Pass the smelling salts to your fellow liberal Dixiephobes…The Southern Democrats aren’t all winning just because they’re mimicking the old Republican Lite schtick. Some of them are winning because they’re acting kind of like actual Democrats.”
Ouch.


May 16: Seniors May Soon Be Moving Left

Anyone interested in political demographics should remember two things about age cohorts: (1) they age, and (2) they change. At Washington Monthly yesterday, I wrote about a particular important discernable trend involving seniors–currently the bedrock of the Republican coalition–and how they may age and change in the near future:

[Y]ou definitely need to take a look at David Frum’s interpretation of new research on how the changing composition of the senior population is likely to affect voting patterns over time.
Frum begins by noting the central importance of the pro-Republican swing among seniors in the very recent past:

The emergence of the older voters as a massively solid Republican bloc is a post-Obama phenomenon.
The Pew survey explained the trend in a 2011 report. The Silent Generation that voted for Bush in 1988 had retained its conservatism into its retirement years. No news there. The news was among the next cohort, the Baby Boomers: After the year 2000, the Woodstock generation veered abruptly to the right.
In their youth, the Boomers had expressed strongly liberal views about the role of government. In 1989, asked to choose between a bigger government that did more for people versus a smaller government that did less, they opted for bigger government by a margin of 52-40. By 2007, that preference had reversed itself, 52-35, and it has remained reversed through the Obama years. Even more striking was the collapse in trust in government among the Boomers: In 1997, 38 percent of them trusted the government to do the right thing most of the time; by 2009, only 16 percent did so, the same suspicious percentage as their formerly more conservative “silent” elders….

This changing attitude towards government was most intense among (white) men, notes Frum, who were close to parity with women among the Baby Boomers now just reaching retirement age. These men drove the Republican senior wave, but their relative power is due to drop:

In 2010, the old as a group voted Republican because the lopsided hostility toward Obama among older men could overwhelm the mild preference for the president among older women. As the population ages, however, the ratio of men to women within the over-65 population should drop. The share of over-80s in the population is rising faster than men’s likelihood of surviving to 80. The changing sex ratio will sway the political outlook of the whole group.

Aside from gender ratios, there’s a considerable change in perspectives as seniors move from their late 60s to their 80s:

Old age comes later now. But when it comes, it changes people in the same way it always did. Women begin radically to outnumber men. (In 2010, the older-than-80 population included 4 million males and 7.2 million females). Personal savings are exhausted. (Average net worth drops by 25 percent between age 65 and age 75.) Dependency rises. Attitudes to government change.
The older you get, the more you appreciate Social Security and Medicare…and the more you mistrust proposals for reform that might affect current recipients. In 2009, 43 percent of people in their twenties were open to reforms in entitlements that might touch those now receiving Social Security and Medicare; only 27 percent of people in the strongly conservative groups older than 65 would consider it.
As yet, few published surveys break out the differences between people in their sixties and eighties. Working politicians notice it, though. As one very successful political operative told me, “The No. 1 concern of every voter over 80 is, ‘Will my check arrive on time?'”
There will soon be a lot more people digging in against benefits changes. The elderly population is poised to grow hugely quickly; the oldest of the old to grow faster still. Between 2000 and 2010, the total population grew 9.7 percent; the population older than 65, by 15.1 percent; the population older than 80, by 23 percent. That last group now numbers more than 11.2 million–and demographers expect it to grow even faster over the decades ahead.

All in all, Frum believes that as the Baby Boom generation ages, its Republican voting tendencies will abate and likely be reversed.

A vote’s a vote, of course, and it’s a huge mistake to think that pro-Republican groups will change while pro-Democratic groups will stay where they are. But particularly for those Democrats who are frustrated by the senior-driven Republican advantage in midterm elections, which makes multi-cycle Democratic progress so difficult, a more balanced senior demographic will be a most welcome development.


Seniors May Soon Be Moving Left

Anyone interested in political demographics should remember two things about age cohorts: (1) they age, and (2) they change. At Washington Monthly yesterday, I wrote about a particular important discernable trend involving seniors–currently the bedrock of the Republican coalition–and how they may age and change in the near future:

[Y]ou definitely need to take a look at David Frum’s interpretation of new research on how the changing composition of the senior population is likely to affect voting patterns over time.
Frum begins by noting the central importance of the pro-Republican swing among seniors in the very recent past:

The emergence of the older voters as a massively solid Republican bloc is a post-Obama phenomenon.
The Pew survey explained the trend in a 2011 report. The Silent Generation that voted for Bush in 1988 had retained its conservatism into its retirement years. No news there. The news was among the next cohort, the Baby Boomers: After the year 2000, the Woodstock generation veered abruptly to the right.
In their youth, the Boomers had expressed strongly liberal views about the role of government. In 1989, asked to choose between a bigger government that did more for people versus a smaller government that did less, they opted for bigger government by a margin of 52-40. By 2007, that preference had reversed itself, 52-35, and it has remained reversed through the Obama years. Even more striking was the collapse in trust in government among the Boomers: In 1997, 38 percent of them trusted the government to do the right thing most of the time; by 2009, only 16 percent did so, the same suspicious percentage as their formerly more conservative “silent” elders….

This changing attitude towards government was most intense among (white) men, notes Frum, who were close to parity with women among the Baby Boomers now just reaching retirement age. These men drove the Republican senior wave, but their relative power is due to drop:

In 2010, the old as a group voted Republican because the lopsided hostility toward Obama among older men could overwhelm the mild preference for the president among older women. As the population ages, however, the ratio of men to women within the over-65 population should drop. The share of over-80s in the population is rising faster than men’s likelihood of surviving to 80. The changing sex ratio will sway the political outlook of the whole group.

Aside from gender ratios, there’s a considerable change in perspectives as seniors move from their late 60s to their 80s:

Old age comes later now. But when it comes, it changes people in the same way it always did. Women begin radically to outnumber men. (In 2010, the older-than-80 population included 4 million males and 7.2 million females). Personal savings are exhausted. (Average net worth drops by 25 percent between age 65 and age 75.) Dependency rises. Attitudes to government change.
The older you get, the more you appreciate Social Security and Medicare…and the more you mistrust proposals for reform that might affect current recipients. In 2009, 43 percent of people in their twenties were open to reforms in entitlements that might touch those now receiving Social Security and Medicare; only 27 percent of people in the strongly conservative groups older than 65 would consider it.
As yet, few published surveys break out the differences between people in their sixties and eighties. Working politicians notice it, though. As one very successful political operative told me, “The No. 1 concern of every voter over 80 is, ‘Will my check arrive on time?'”
There will soon be a lot more people digging in against benefits changes. The elderly population is poised to grow hugely quickly; the oldest of the old to grow faster still. Between 2000 and 2010, the total population grew 9.7 percent; the population older than 65, by 15.1 percent; the population older than 80, by 23 percent. That last group now numbers more than 11.2 million–and demographers expect it to grow even faster over the decades ahead.

All in all, Frum believes that as the Baby Boom generation ages, its Republican voting tendencies will abate and likely be reversed.

A vote’s a vote, of course, and it’s a huge mistake to think that pro-Republican groups will change while pro-Democratic groups will stay where they are. But particularly for those Democrats who are frustrated by the senior-driven Republican advantage in midterm elections, which makes multi-cycle Democratic progress so difficult, a more balanced senior demographic will be a most welcome development.


Needed: Creative Ideas for Turning Out Millenials in Midterms

Stephanie Czekalinski’s National Journal post (via NJ Daily) “Democrats Have a Millennials Problem” distills one of the more frustrating challenges facing Democrats in the 2014 elections — how to get what may be the most liberal generation of young voters ever to the polls in November. Czekalinski explains:

As the midterms approach, Democrats are underperforming among a voting bloc that supported Barack Obama over Mitt Romney almost 2-to-1 in 2012…That’s the takeaway from a new online poll of millennial adults conducted by Harstad Strategic Research. The survey found that although more than seven in 10 millennials lean progressive on a host of topics and policies and support a more involved government, only 28 percent said they will “definitely vote” in the 2014 midterm elections.

You can almost hear the “past is prologue” pundits writing off the millennials as a lost cause for Dems in the 2014 midterms. That would be the safe bet. There is as yet no reason to think they are going to break the historical pattern. Of course the Republicans have done all they can to keep the pattern in place by making it harder for college students to vote in some states.
Yet, the progressive tilt of the millennials is so strong that it’s hard to justify not investing some resources into breaking the pattern at least a small amount, if only in states where there are key races. In Georgia, for example, a better than average turnout could help elect both a Democratic U.S. Senator and Governor, a rare double pick-up for the party holding the White House in the 2nd midterm election. Here’s what the millennials are thinking about the proper role of government:

A majority of millennials were also likely to say they favor a more involved government. Nearly 60 percent said they preferred the government be “on their side” rather than “off their back,” although political ideology influenced respondents’ views. More than 70 percent of millennials who identified as Democrats said they preferred government on their side, compared with only 50 percent of Republicans. Independents fell in between. Race and gender played a role, too, with nonwhites (66 percent) and women (65 percent) more likely than whites (54 percent) and men (54 percent) to say they preferred a more involved government.

Those race and gender caveats are useful for targeting specific millennial sub-groups. And on some key issues favoring Democrats:

Millennials are most persuaded by policies that promote economic opportunity, according to the survey. Nearly 60 percent of millennials said they found messaging regarding making college and student loans more affordable persuasive; 57 percent said that investing in good jobs and improving K-12 education was a persuasive position; 56 percent said that investing more in community colleges was. Background checks for gun sales and gun shows also had the support of 56 percent of respondents.

These are good numbers, and it would be a shame if Dems just shrug them off. And let’s not overlook the huge cuts in higher education in states controlled by Republicans. Dems should do some thinking about the possibility of securing a better than expected turnout of millennials in key states — even a little bit could help in close races.
One friend suggests a voter registration information bank alerting youth via apps that registration deadlines are approaching in particular states (registration status is still the most accurate predictor of who actually votes). Not a bad idea since all millennials seem to live on their cell phones. Another acquaintance half-jokingly suggested a “million robe march” in the Fall — nightime bonfire rallies on college campuses across the nation attended by students and rock bands in their bathrobes etc. focused on registering voters where possible. How about a series of viral YouTube skits challenging young people not to sit out midterms?
No doubt many better ideas could come from the millennials themselves. As the summer vacation begins, now seems like a good time for young activists to organize some creative GOTV projects — and have them up and running when Fall begins.


Political Strategy Notes

The Massachusetts House of Reps has passed what looks like a model early voting bill, and the state senate and Governor are expected to approve it. OK, it’s Massachusetts, but could it be that early voting is one of those issues that could sway some fed-up seniors to vote Democratic? There must be a lot of seniors out there who are disgusted by Republican attempts to crush early voting because it is such a blatant attempt to thwart democracy and because early voting is a valued convenience, especially for seniors. Dems should test a few ads exploring this angle on senior focus groups.
Zach Carter’s HuffPo article “Austerity Fetishists Are Finally Giving Up” reports that “American deficit hawks gathered in the nation’s capital on Wednesday to commiserate over the collapse of the U.S. austerity movement, solemnly hobnobbing with political royalty to reminisce about the days when slashing Social Security seemed all but inevitable” and cites “a growing recognition that, just as in Mellon’s day, out-of-control finance may actually be a greater threat to America’s bottom line than greedy geezers.”
Illinois Rep Jan Schakowsky notes an encouraging development: “The NAACP and the Leadership Council on Civil Rights are going to be conducting a ‘Freedom Summer and Fall’ and start doing recruiting and training and dispatching and organizing and publicity around this idea of getting people out to vote,” Schakowsky said. “Anywhere there are these barriers to voting, to physically help people get over them.”
Leave it to the Big Dog to nail Rove with a well-crafted zinger in response to the GOP strategist’s sleazy pitch to raise questions about Hillary Clinton’s health: “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds . . . First they say she faked her concussion; now they say she’s auditioning for a part on ‘The Walking Dead’!”
And at The Daily Beast Michael Tomasky weighs in with his post, “Karl Rove May Be Evil, but He’s No Genius,” noting the “mind-boggling overestimation of Karl Rove’s brilliance,” and adding that “…In 2000…I mean, his candidate didn’t even really win. Then came 2004….all he did then was (barely) reelect an incumbent. Just two incumbents going back to FDR lost their reelection bids while eight won them, so that’s a pretty low bar for genius…Then came the truly dark period, the one that should have pulverized his reputation forever, when Rove told his president to go out and promote Social Security privatization, which sank like a stone. This while Rove was talking up a “permanent conservative majority” and world-historic realignment, even though all he and his president’s failures managed to do was turn the Senate and the House Democratic in 2006 and then pave the way for the country’s rejection of John McCain and embrace of Barack Obama. Rove is a so-so political strategist, a corrupt trickster going back to college, and a venal and wholly unprincipled man who once orchestrated a whisper campaign that an Alabama judge who did admirable work with youngsters was a pedophile. And on top of all that, he’s just not that smart, as proved on Election Night 2012, when he made a world-class asshole out of himself over Ohio.”
In her NYT Upshot post “Democrats Are Unified; G.O.P. Is Unified Only in Opposing Obama,” Allison Kopicki marshals a credible argument and makes her case with revealing examples. She may be overstating GOP divisions a bit, however, because many of the so-called ‘establishment’ Republicans have simply absorbed and now parrot tea party values.
Democratic candidates and campaign workers should mine Nicholas Kristoff’s NYT op-ed “It’s Now the Canadian Dream” for nuggets such as: “A Danish child is twice as likely to rise as an American child…The top 1 percent in America now own assets worth more than those held by the entire bottom 90 percent… The six Walmart heirs are worth as much as the bottom 41 percent of American households put together…the American worker toils, on average, 4.6 percent more hours than a Canadian worker, 21 percent more hours than a French worker and an astonishing 28 percent more hours than a German worker, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.”
Good to see that the British Labour party is now tapping into the strategic insights of David Axelrod and Stan Greenberg.
John Oliver’s not-for-the-squeamish, side-splitting goof on Kentucky political ads in the Grimes-McConnell U.S. Senate race is at the moment only available to HBO subscribers at this link. (The whole show was a gem, but the political hilarity kicks in big time about 20 minutes into the link.) Will some ingenious teenager please figure out to get the segment on Youtube, so all can enjoy it for free?


May 14: Another Bad Week for the Republican Establishment

As a month full of Republican primaries continues, the Year of the Republican Establishment narrative beloved of both GOP “insiders” and major precincts of the MSM (some eager to bury the Tea Party, others determined to show the GOP is “moving to the center”) continues to struggle. Here’s an excerpt from my take on the Nebraska and West Virginia primaries at TPMCafe.

The dominant primary narrative for 2014, that the sensible, pragmatic Republican establishment was putting the “constitutional conservative”/Tea Party extremists back in their place, has somehow survived less than impressive establishment wins in Texas and North Carolina. At some point, the narrative may need to change, beginning with Tuesday’s results from West Virginia and Nebraska, where the establishment is again struggling.
In the one major contested primary in West Virginia, for the House seat currently held by Senate candidate Shelley Moore Capito, a carpetbagger from Maryland (he was once state GOP chairman in Maryland, but says he needed to move from that sinful secular socialist Blue State to secure “freedom”), Alex Mooney, won a comfortable victory over a field of six other GOP candidates. He was endorsed by the Senate Conservatives Fund, the Tea Party Express, the Madison Project, and Citizens United — all the ideological heavies. He’ll face Democrat Don Casey — another state party chair, but from West Virginia — in November.
Across the country in Nebraska, the marquee Senate race featured Republican establishment candidate and former state Treasurer Shane Osborn against college president Ben Sasse, with self-funding banker (and alleged “moderate,” as the other candidates hastened to accuse him of being) Sid Dinsdale. Sasse was endorsed by nearly every Tea Party and ideologically right-wing group in sight, including the Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks, and the Tea Party Express, plus Sarah Palin and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT). Osborn was backed avidly by Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Sasse romped past Osborn by better than a two-to-one margin, as the establishment candidate finished third, narrowly behind Dinsdale. Sasse will face Democrat Dave Domina in November.
As Osborn’s sinking fortunes became obvious in the run-up to the primary, some elements of the Republican establishment tried to disclaim him or dismiss the contest as no big deal (just yesterday, Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin noted the two main candidates had similar positions — which you could have also said about the North Carolina Senate contenders a week ago, in a primary trumpeted across the land as a huge establishment victory — and dismissed the race as “irrelevant”). But it’s hard to avoid the impression that the spin would have been very different if Mitch’s boy had, as was originally expected in this race, beaten the Tea Party insurgents…
All in all, last night definitely represented a hiccup for the “Year of the Republican Establishment” narrative. I’m guessing the Powers That Be in the GOP and the mainstream media will emulate Rubin by dismissing the results and focusing their attention on next week’s primaries, when the establishment is expected to do better in Idaho (Rep. Mike Simpson appears likely to hold off a right-wing challenger), Kentucky (Mitch McConnell has bludgeoned Matt Bevin into submission), and perhaps Georgia (“outsider” businessman David Perdue and career appropriator Rep. Jack Kingston are leading most polls and could be headed to a runoff).

Yeah, Big Media Narratives die slowly, living on until they find the data to support them.


Another Bad Week for the Republican Establishment

As a month full of Republican primaries continues, the Year of the Republican Establishment narrative beloved of both GOP “insiders” and major precincts of the MSM (some eager to bury the Tea Party, others determined to show the GOP is “moving to the center”) continues to struggle. Here’s an excerpt from my take on the Nebraska and West Virginia primaries at TPMCafe.

The dominant primary narrative for 2014, that the sensible, pragmatic Republican establishment was putting the “constitutional conservative”/Tea Party extremists back in their place, has somehow survived less than impressive establishment wins in Texas and North Carolina. At some point, the narrative may need to change, beginning with Tuesday’s results from West Virginia and Nebraska, where the establishment is again struggling.
In the one major contested primary in West Virginia, for the House seat currently held by Senate candidate Shelley Moore Capito, a carpetbagger from Maryland (he was once state GOP chairman in Maryland, but says he needed to move from that sinful secular socialist Blue State to secure “freedom”), Alex Mooney, won a comfortable victory over a field of six other GOP candidates. He was endorsed by the Senate Conservatives Fund, the Tea Party Express, the Madison Project, and Citizens United — all the ideological heavies. He’ll face Democrat Don Casey — another state party chair, but from West Virginia — in November.
Across the country in Nebraska, the marquee Senate race featured Republican establishment candidate and former state Treasurer Shane Osborn against college president Ben Sasse, with self-funding banker (and alleged “moderate,” as the other candidates hastened to accuse him of being) Sid Dinsdale. Sasse was endorsed by nearly every Tea Party and ideologically right-wing group in sight, including the Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks, and the Tea Party Express, plus Sarah Palin and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT). Osborn was backed avidly by Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Sasse romped past Osborn by better than a two-to-one margin, as the establishment candidate finished third, narrowly behind Dinsdale. Sasse will face Democrat Dave Domina in November.
As Osborn’s sinking fortunes became obvious in the run-up to the primary, some elements of the Republican establishment tried to disclaim him or dismiss the contest as no big deal (just yesterday, Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin noted the two main candidates had similar positions — which you could have also said about the North Carolina Senate contenders a week ago, in a primary trumpeted across the land as a huge establishment victory — and dismissed the race as “irrelevant”). But it’s hard to avoid the impression that the spin would have been very different if Mitch’s boy had, as was originally expected in this race, beaten the Tea Party insurgents…
All in all, last night definitely represented a hiccup for the “Year of the Republican Establishment” narrative. I’m guessing the Powers That Be in the GOP and the mainstream media will emulate Rubin by dismissing the results and focusing their attention on next week’s primaries, when the establishment is expected to do better in Idaho (Rep. Mike Simpson appears likely to hold off a right-wing challenger), Kentucky (Mitch McConnell has bludgeoned Matt Bevin into submission), and perhaps Georgia (“outsider” businessman David Perdue and career appropriator Rep. Jack Kingston are leading most polls and could be headed to a runoff).

Yeah, Big Media Narratives die slowly, living on until they find the data to support them.