High among the reasons why Republicans don’t get votes from African Americans and others who have a distaste for bigotry is the disturbingly high tolerance too many Republican leaders have for the ugliest forms of racism. The latest example from a Political Bulletin e-blast:

Tuesday saw a substantial increase in the coverage of the controversy surrounding House Majority Whip Steve Scalise – following Monday’s revelation that in 2002 he spoke to an avowedly racist and anti-Semitic group founded by the Ku Klux Klan’s David Duke. All three network newscasts had reports on the developing story, and the controversy is front-page news in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Most of Tuesday’s coverage portrayed Republicans, and especially the rest of the House Republican leadership, as steadfastly in support of Scalise continuing on in his position – despite the likelihood that the GOP’s efforts to appeal to minority voters will be undermined. Under the headline, “Boehner Stands By GOP Leader Who Spoke To Hate Group,” for example, USA Today reports that Speaker John Boehner characterized Scalise’s decision to speak at the 2002 event featuring conspiracies claiming that the government of Israel was responsible for 9/11 as an “error in judgment.” USA Today also reports that Scalise claims that he “does not recall the event.”
…Many reports indicate that Scalise’s claims that he did not know what group he was addressing, and that he now has no memory of speaking to the group, have been met with widespread skepticism. On Fox News’ Special Report, Rick Leventhal reported that “critics say it doesn’t pass the smell test,” and McClatchy reports that critics, including “influential conservative blogger” Erick Erickson of RedState, said Scalise’s “explanation that he was unaware…that he was speaking to a white supremacist group was a weak one.” Erickson wrote, “How the hell does somebody show up at a David Duke organized event in 2002 and claim ignorance?”
Indeed, according to Roll Call , “A 1999 Roll Call story revealed that Scalise was well-aware of David Duke’s politics, and he seemed to be courting Duke voters.” The Huffington Post added that in a “Monday night interview,” Duke himself “said it seemed a bit strange that Scalise – who had a friendly relationship with Duke’s campaign manager Kenny Knight, the EURO event’s organizer – claims he didn’t know what the group’s message was about.” Duke is quoted as saying, “It would seem to me, it would be likely that he would know.”
Notably, prominent conservatives are among the most vociferous critics of Scalise and Boehner’s defense of the GOP Whip. For instance, Matthew Boyle of Breitbart notes that conservative radio host Mark Levin and Fox News’ Sean Hannity both “are demanding a clean sweep of House GOP leadership, pushing for Boehner, [House Majority Leader Kevin] McCarthy, and Scalise to be removed.” Boyle also reports that Scalise’s “relationship with Duke’s top political hand, Kenneth Knight…last[ed] several years, and involved the top aide to the former KKK head actually campaigning for Scalise.” According to Boyle, “A top GOP aide with longtime ties to the Louisiana GOP delegation” says “rumors about Scalise’s close relationship with Duke’s top aide have been circling…at high levels in Louisiana for years.”

Not the first time a prominent Republican has been outed for flirting with overt racism. See Pauls, Ron and Rand, or even Reagan, Ron. Back then Republicans thought they could play footsie with racists and anti-semites under the radar. Those days are over and Scalise should have had the smarts to get a clue by 2002.

Politico’s Alex Isenstadt reports on Democratic strategy to energize Latino turnout in 2016. California Rep. Tony Cárdenas, the incoming chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s political action committee, plans to double their spending on Hispanic turnout and “elect two or three additional Hispanic Democrats to the House in 2016, and over the next decade to double their number to 50.”
At the Washington Times, no less, Robert W. Merry, political editor of The National Interest, presents an argument that “if Mr. Schumer and Mrs. Warren have their way, their party will begin taking steps to…bring those working-class Americans back into the fold. If Republicans are flat-footed, the new Democratic populists could create a major fault line between themselves and Republicans on the issue of the big Wall Street banks. That represents the biggest threat to Republicans going into the 2016 elections.”
A political geography feast awaits you at this link.
Interesting nuggets from a Monkey Cage report a new study of political activism by Jenny Oser, Jan E. Leighley and Ken Winnegon: “Our study identifies four types of voters…(1)”All-around activists” (5 percent of voters), who are highly active in all participatory opportunities…(2)”Traditional campaigners” (8 percent of voters), who are particularly active in traditional offline campaign activity…(3)”Persuaders” (12 percent of voters), who are highly engaged in online means to communicate directly to representatives…(4)”Low engaged” (76 percent of voters), who are unlikely to be politically active beyond voting.”
Although it is understandable why so many Dems blame the south for the party’s troubles, the political situation in Michigan highlights the painful reality that Democratic state parties need better strategy in all regions.
Lest we forget, there are elections in the U.S. in 2015, as well as 2016. At stake are three governorships (KY, LA MS), legislative elections in four states (LA, MS, NJ and VA), along with numerous citizen initiatives and mayoral races in 20 major cities. Some particulars here.
Also for 2015, John Perr’s Kos post, “Three ways the GOP will sabotage the government and the economy in 2015” and Sam Baker’s “Why Liberals Should Fear the Supreme Court in 2015” at The National Journal should help get you politically-prepped for the new year.
The midterm drubbing notwithstanding, it looks like President Obama is now doing a good job of positioning his party for 2016. Steve Benen has an interesting take along these lines at Maddowblog.
It’s only Monday, but here’s a good candidate for the ‘No shite, Sherlock’ headline of the week.

AP’s Bill Barrow reports on how Republicans hope to buck “the demographics is destiny” edge Democrats are anticipating in 2016 — and why many astute observers believe Dems remain in good shape. Here’s the Republican strategy in short:

“The notion of demographics as destiny is overblown,” said Republican pollster and media strategist Wes Anderson. “Just like (Bush aide Karl) Rove was wrong with that ‘permanent majority’ talk, Democrats have to remember that the pendulum is always swinging.”
…A GOP nominee such as the Spanish-speaking Jeb Bush, a proponent of comprehensive immigration reform, has the potential to capture significantly more than the 27 percent of the Latino vote that fellow Republican Mitt Romney claimed in 2012. Meanwhile, Republicans hope African-Americans make up a smaller share of the electorate with Obama no longer atop the ballot.
“We’re not talking about winning those groups, but these elections are fought on the margins, so improvements here and there can make a difference,” Anderson said.

However, notes Barrow:

…Despite Democrats’ midterm shellacking and talk of a “depressed” liberal base, many in the party still like their starting position for 2016. Ruy Teixiera, a Democratic demographer, points to a group of states worth 242 electoral votes that the Democratic presidential nominee has won in every election since 1992. Hold them all, and the party is just 28 votes shy of the majority needed to win the White House next time.
Obama twice compiled at least 332 electoral votes by adding wins in most every competitive state. He posted double-digit wins among women, huge margins among voters younger than 30 and historically high marks among blacks and Latinos.
As non-white voters continue to grow as a share of the electorate, a Democratic nominee that roughly holds Obama’s 2012 level of support across all demographic groups would win the national popular vote by about 6 percentage points and coast in the Electoral College, Teixeira estimates.
“Could a Republican win? Sure,” Teixeira said. “But they have to have a lot of different things happen.”

Yet demographics, however powerful are not the only factor that can turn an election. As Barrow cautions, “…further analysis of the raw numbers alone ignores the potential of the candidates themselves to shape the election — not to mention dramatic changes in the economy, national security events or other developments that fall outside the control of any candidate.”
Barrow notes, however, that white voters cast 87 percent of presidential ballots in 1992 , but only 72 percent in 2012 — and few believe that percentage is going anywhere but south in 2016.

One of the things both progressives and MSM types consistently get wrong is the tendency to dismiss, ignore, or underestimate the Christian Right as a factor in Republican politics. We can expect this bad habit to reemerge in connection with the 2016 presidential contest, which is already being billed as an Establishment Versus Tea Party battle where “social issues” won’t be prominent. But you can make the argument, as I did at TPMCafe this week, that the emerging GOP presidential field has more systemic links to the Christian Right than we’ve ever seen:

At least four frequently-mentioned GOP presidential proto-candidates have deep and intimate Christian Right ties. There’s former Gov. Mike Huckabee, of course, a Southern Baptist minister whose 2008 campaign almost entirely relied on conservative evangelical voters. His successor as the winner of the Iowa Caucuses, Rick Santorum, is a Catholic traditionalist who also appealed on moral and grounds to conservative evangelicals, and on occasion hinted that mainline Protestantism had been captured by Satan. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has long enjoyed close relationships with crypto-dominionists and radical self-styled Christian Zionists. And fellow Texan Sen. Ted Cruz frequently deploys as his warm-up act his father Rafael Cruz, a fiery conservative evangelical minister who believes Christians must “take back society” from “the progressives” who are responsible for “the blood of 57 million babies…crying out to God, just like the blood of Abel cried out to God.” Christian Right activists would have every reason to treat all four of these gentlemen as beyond the need for vetting, so thoroughly have they incorporated the requisite world view.
But there are other candidates who can be expected to compete with these claims of Christian warriorhood. Gov. Bobby Jindal has beaten the “religious freedom” drum more loudly than just about any other public figure in the debate surrounding the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby case, and his controversial school voucher program in Louisiana seems designed to shovel public money towards religious schools with a minimum of oversight. Gov. Mike Pence has been one of several proto-candidates cozying up to David Lane, a Christian Right impresario who is especially active in organizing clerical audiences for would-be presidents in Iowa. Gov. Scott Walker is a conservative evangelical who often speaks of carrying out his anti-union, pro-corporate agenda on instructions from the Almighty. Sen. Marco Rubio is (like Jindal) another traditionalist Catholic who likes to attend conservative evangelical churches, and has gone out of his way to embrace not only the Christian Right’s issue agenda but its more fundamental denial of church-state separation.
Rand Paul and his father have a longstanding connection to the openly theocratic U.S. Constitutional Party, and are especially close to Christian home-schoolers. Ben Carson was recently the keynote speaker at a fundraising event for The Family Leader, Iowa’s premier Christian Right group; he’s notorious for embracing comparisons of America to Nazi Germany, a particularly strong habit among antichoice activists. And even Establishment favorite Jeb Bush, lest we forget, was the politician who touched off the Terri Schiavo hysteria in 2003 by intervening in a family’s end-of-life decisions.
It is entirely possible that Christian Right activists will fatally split among different candidates, just as they did in 2008 and 2012 (George W. Bush was the last to unite the various tribes of conservative Christian political warriors, in 2000 and 2004). Corresponding splits among “Establishment” candidates, or the successful launching of a “crossover” candidacy (which Bush, Pence, Rubio or Walker might be able to pull off), could make that possibility matter less.
But there’s little risk of a sworn enemy of the Christian Right winning the nomination. Every “mentioned” GOP candidate for 2016 favors making abortions illegal again, and if there are any who dissent from the latter-day conservative litmus-test position defining “religious freedom” as justifying defiance of anti-discrimination laws, they have been very quiet about it.

Maybe some day we’ll learn not to issue premature obituaries for the Christian Right. This would be a very good time to stop.

Jennifer Granholm, who knows how to deliver a fierce convention speech, has some message tips for Dems heading into 2016.
A little louder on this, Dems.
Larry Sabato & co. tier out the Dem and GOP presidential fields. It’s early yet, but it’s hard to see any of the GOP wanna-bes generating much excitement, while Dems have two big-buzz potential candidates already.
Why the turnout trend is even scarier than we thought.
Here’s a disturbing look at the Alabama Democratic party, which is not atypical of the problems state Democratic parties face throughout the South. At least someone is writing about how to begin fixing them.
Mona parrots the GOP is “the manly Daddy party” meme and shows what columnists on deadline do when they have nothing to say.
Sheri and Alan Rivlin have a good Huffpo roundup of mid-term post mortems, including some salient thoughts of TDS editors and contributors.
Heaven forbid students should learn anything from one of history’s most influential thinkers, says the neo-McCarthyist Weekly Standard.
These guys are hilarious. Here’s hoping they get more into political satire.

Here’s Eric Alterman writing in The Nation:
….the most damaging of [The New York Times political] narratives is the one that posits a Republican Party with competing factions, one “conservative” and the other “moderate” or even “centrist.” In fact, the party has been wholly taken over by ideologues so extreme that their views–and policy proposals–bear no resemblance to the laws of science, economics or, in many cases, reality. But the Times’s reports consistently elide this truth, up to and including omitting crucial facts in order to craft a false and far more comforting fable.
The latest beneficiary of this tendency is soon-to-be presidential candidate Jeb Bush. According to the recent Times coverage, Bush is a “moderate” and “centrist” who wonders “whether he can secure the Republican nomination without pandering to the party’s conservative base,” as it explained in one story, and “whether he can prevail in a grueling primary battle without shifting his positions or altering his persona to satisfy his party’s hard-liners,” as it explained in another.
Reporter Jonathan Martin adds: “Though [Bush] is deeply conservative on some issues such as taxes and abortion…he has pushed for an immigration overhaul that would include a path to citizenship for people who are here illegally.” In fact, Bush did do this, before changing his mind because of opposition from Republican crazies and deciding that “permanent residency” for unauthorized immigrants “should not lead to citizenship,” calling that “an undeserving reward for conduct that we cannot afford to encourage.”
…Because at least Martin allowed for the fact that Jeb Bush is “deeply conservative on some issues such as taxes and abortion,” let’s take a look at some of the other positions he holds that apparently do not disqualify him from being called a “moderate” and “centrist” according to theTimes.
On economic matters, Bush endorsed Paul Ryan’s punitive budget that seeks to zero out virtually all federal assistance to the poor. He also supported George W. Bush’s deeply unpopular plan to privatize Social Security.
On social matters unrelated to abortion, Jeb sees “very strong justifications” for restrictive voter-ID laws that are transparently designed to reduce minority participation. He not only opposes gay marriage but says he “personally” believes that gay couples should be denied legal adoption rights; he also opposes all legal protections for LGBT people, calling them “special rights.”
He happily signed the NRA’s “stand your ground” legislation, which led to the legal murder of Trayvon Martin. Regarding science, he has moved from the completely ridiculous position of disputing the fact of global warming to the only slightly less ridiculous one of questioning whether it is “disproportionately man-made”–a position that puts him at odds with approximately 97 percent of the world’s qualified climatologists. On Cuba, he has also sided with the crazies. The list continues almost indefinitely.
True, Jeb Bush may be a “moderate” or “centrist” in a context where one of America’s two political parties has all but gone insane. But without such context, those labels are a lie–one that not only misinforms readers but also dishonors a great newspaper.

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:
There is a lot of talk in Democratic party circles about populism (which among Democrats is generally of a more progressive nature) vs centrism. All three terms — progressive, populism, and centrism — are thrown around way too loosely by pundits who rarely know what they are talking about. For some, it all boils down to the differences (stylistically as well as substantively) between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. For others, it is a debate about whether Democrats should talk about growth or inequality — a recent report from Benenson Strategy Group and SKDKnickerbocker ominously warned that swing voters want the focus to be on growth rather than inequality. Some pundits talk about whether Democrats should be pro-business or more for income distribution.
Even though I happily identify myself as a proud populist progressive, I think these kinds of pundit-driven definitions don’t do much to build a winning message or agenda for either Democrats or the progressive movement. I think we need a populism that doesn’t just repeat old formulas but answers voters’ real concerns about progressive policies. Here’s what I think a winning populist progressive program entails:
1. Fairness leads to growth. I am so tired of polls asking people to choose between economic fairness and growth. These two things are the furthest thing from being opposites — in fact, there is a great deal of economic research and analysis that documents the exact opposite conclusion. The economy grows faster when most workers are getting raises and have more disposable income. The wealthiest 1 percent are more likely to hoard their money, or speculate with it in trades, than to actually invest it in something that creates good jobs. And when the wealthy pay more in taxes and government invests more in human capital, infrastructure, and R&D, the economy tends to boom. Note that the three most prosperous decades in American history — the 1950s, 1960s, and 1990s — were when taxes on the wealthy were high, or had just been raised, and major investments were being made in public goods.
2. Don’t talk to voters about income inequality. I know I am a progressive and am supposed to be in favor of talking about inequality, and I don’t mind hearing about in academic circles or high level wonkfest forums in DC. But I have bottom line rule when it comes to talking to voters: don’t ever talk to them using words they would rarely use. When I knock on doors or hang out in bars and cafes back home in the Midwest, I never hear people talk about income inequality. I hear them talk about how they haven’t gotten a wage increase in years, whereas the company they work for seems to be making a lot of money; I hear them say they don’t know how to make ends meet; I hear them bitch about wealthy special-interest lobbyists getting sweetheart deals, and how the rich keep getting richer and no one else seems to have any money; I hear them talk about the way big businesses screws regular folk; how ridiculous the prices being charged for the most simple health care procedures; and how Wall Street banks are too big and have no morals. But the phrase income inequality never comes up, and that is not how we political folks should be framing these issues either.
3. Being for small business, innovation, entrepreneurialism, and fair competition are progressive values. In our language and our policies, progressives should embrace all of those things. We are for the corner retailer making a good living, without having to worry that Walmart will crush them. We are for innovators being able to compete in a fair marketplace, without bigger competitors being able to corner the market. We are for small family farms being able to compete successfully with bigger agribusiness, and for them not having to kowtow to the big meatpackers and food industry giants. We are for small community banks lending to local businesses without their mega-competitors on Wall Street being subsidized by the federal government. We want fair regulations to level the playing field for the small guys, and we want the Anti-Trust division at DOJ to start enforcing the law again so that small businesses and start-ups have a chance.
4. We believe that long-term deficits matter and waste in government should be eliminated. There are plenty of ways to reduce waste in government and the federal deficit both. Weak safeguards on government contracting waste probably a hundred billion a year, according to studies by groups on both the left and the right. Billions of dollars in farm subsidies to highly profitable agribusiness giants are wasted every year. Programs like the Export-Import bank and Commerce Department trade junkets waste more billions in subsidies to highly profitable corporations. Big, mega-profitable oil and coal companies get billions in subsidies every year. And the military budget hasn’t had a decent audit in decades and wastes huge amounts of money on weapons programs that aren’t needed and don’t work, military bases that have no strategic use anymore, and luxury perks for generals that are outrageous by any standard. Then there is the tax side of things: closing corporate tax loopholes and raising taxes for the wealthy would do an enormous amount to cut the deficit.
5. We are not pro-government. We want government to be on the side everyday folks. Chuck Schumer is as wrong about his pro-government message as he is about Credit Default Swaps- we should not be pro-government, we should be for a government that is on the side of the 99%. Let’s be honest: government does a lot bad stuff. As referenced above, government should be a lot smaller when it comes to wasteful Pentagon spending and military intervention into countries where we usually make things worse, big corporate farm subsidies, NSA spycraft, CIA torture, police brutality, subsidies for coal and oil and nuclear power, overseas junkets for big business CEOs, wasteful no-bid/no-penalty for overrun contracts, and a host of other things. Government needs to stop being on the side of Wall Street, and needs to start prosecuting them for the serious crimes they commit. I don’t want a bigger government, and I’m not all that interested in defending government in general. What I hunger for is a government that is fighting like a demon for everyday folk instead of the big money guys. I want a government that helps senior citizens through Social Security and Medicare, and helps poor children through Head Start, public education, and school lunches. I want a government that takes on big businesses who are trying manipulate markets, squeeze out their smaller competitors, and screws consumers.
I have never seen the progressive movement as all about promoting government. Organizing unions, launching boycotts, holding corporations accountable and hurting their brands when they do wrong, starting a hundred thousand local immigrant legal/social services and domestic violence orgs, creating Alinsky-style community orgs that hold both businesses and local government accountable — it’s all a part of progressive organizing and none of it is about a bigger government, only a more responsive one to the needs of the people. But where more government makes sense — a bigger regulatory stick against big business, more schools, more Social Security and health care benefits, safer roads and bridges? Hell, yes, we need more government.
Progressive populists have the ability to have a clear, strong economic agenda and message that appeals to and inspires both the Democratic base and working and middle class folks who are swing voters. We should not let pundits and DC centrists pigeonhole us into language and beliefs that we don’t have. We should tell our story about a movement that is about taking the country back from the big money special interests and putting it on the side of the rest of us.

Writing at The Hill, Democratic strategist James Carville addresses a question much on the minds of Democratic activists and operatives everywhere: “Why do people vote against their interests?” Carville, co-author of “It’s the Middle Class, Stupid!” with TDS founding editor Stan Greenberg, focuses here more on the phenomena of well-off voters casting their ballots for Republicans — even when the record shows that the economy and the stock market do substantially better under Democratic Administrations.

A chief complaint of many Republicans is that Asian-Americans and Jews strongly support and vote for Democrats despite the affluent economic standing many have achieved. Similarly, Democratic strategists struggle to understand why 77 out the 100 poorest and most government-dependent counties in the United States voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.
But the people who consistently and overwhelmingly vote in large numbers against their interests are stock market investors.
I have no earthly idea why a stock market investor would vote Republican — all you have do is look at the numbers. The numbers are staggering, breathtaking and unimaginable. How anyone with even a penny in the market would vote for their interests and choose a Republican is unexplainable.

It’s true. One of the biggest myths in American politics is that the Republicans are better for business. Carville continues:

Since Obama was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009, Standard & Poor’s 500 index has gone up approximately 115 percent, the Dow Jones industrial average has experienced a growth rate of 146 percent and, perhaps most impressively, Nasdaq has grown in size by 188 percent. Two thousand days into his presidency, the major stock indexes under Obama have had average gains of 142 percent — compare that to the record under Reagan, who saw gains at 88 percent during that same time period.
Russ Britt of MarketWatch notes, “the average stock-market gain under four post-Depression Democrats through each one’s 2,000th day in office has outpaced the average gain of the four Republicans in the era by a factor of nearly 4 to 1. Democratic gains have averaged 133%, while Republican market advances have had a mean of 33%.”

Obviously such stats have not been lost on Warren Buffet and a few more of the most savvy business leaders. For the most part, however, stock market investors and other well-off business leaders parrot the GOP party line that Obama and Democrats are bad for business — against all credible evidence. Nonetheless, as Carville concludes,

Political pundits will spend the next few months asking questions about presidential candidates’ qualifications and if they will be able to make tough decisions. The one thing we do know, thanks to history, is that that stock market is likely to do well if Democrats win. If the stock market is among your considerations, I will close with the findings of the two foremost experts on this topic and the larger comparisons of economies under Republican and Democratic presidents, Princeton University professors Mark W. Watson and Alan Blinder:
“The U.S. economy not only grows faster, according to real GDP and other measures, during Democratic versus Republican presidencies, it also produces more jobs, lowers the unemployment rate, generates higher corporate profits and investment, and turns in higher stock market returns. Indeed, it outperforms under almost all standard macroeconomic metrics.”
With such glaring facts and evidence, I ask stock investors to reexamine, reconsider and reinvest their confidence in the Democratic Party. Franklin Roosevelt was famously called by his fellow affluent Americans a “traitor to his class.” Well, if history was any guide, FDR wasn’t a traitor at all. He was the first in a series of Democratic presidents whose policies benefited the same wealthy people who railed against him.

Carville doesn’t probe the psychology of political self-delusion that leads so many business people to vote against their economic interests. A list of possible reasons might include the fact that not all successful business people are that smart, or even well-informed about the record Carville examines. Then there’s also the politics of resentment — some people are more comfortable voting their knee-jerk resentments over their interests. In the case of business people who voted against Obama and other Democratic candidates, there is probably some racism, thinly-disguised with a veneer of economic cliches that don’t hold up under scrutiny. And there will always be the tax-haters who like Republicans because they advocate reducing their taxes, along with gutting programs that benefit less well-off people.
In recent years, there has been an even larger discrepancy between the voting patterns of white working-class voters in many states and their economic interests, which are under almost constant assault by Republican politicians. From tax cuts for the rich financed by massive budget cuts for needed services, to undermining unions, opposing an increase the minimum wage, to restricting health care coverage, to outsourcing to refusing to invest in infrastructure upgrades, Republicans are engaged in relentless pursuit of policies that reduce the real income of workers. Yet majorities of white workers continue to vote for Republicans in most states.
It’s regrettable that so many voters don’t look at the big picture, and get it that the economy does better under Democratic leadership, which benefits everyone and gives America a more livable society. No magic cures here. As always, the only remedy for ignorance is education. Dems have to do a better job of widely-sharing the economic realities Carville has presented here.