At the Plum Line, Paul Waldman posts that “Democrats may have lost the battle over voter ID, but the war over voting isn’t over.” Regarding the Supreme Court Decision upholding the Wisconsin voter identification law, Waldman writes:

It may be time for liberals to admit that, barring a significant change in the makeup of the Supreme Court, this just isn’t a battle they’re ever going to win.
That doesn’t mean every challenge to a voter ID law should be dropped. Many of these cases are still important to pursue because the details vary from one state to another. Some laws are more restrictive than others, and it’s important for liberals to press the Court to clearly define what’s permissible and what isn’t. For instance, the Texas law (which is still working its way up to the Court) said that hunting licenses could be used as valid identification, but IDs issued by state universities couldn’t. Everyone understood why the Texas legislature wrote the law that way: hunters are more likely to be Republicans, while students are more likely to be Democrats…

But invalidating voter I.d. laws as a whole will have to wait for a different high court majority. As Waldman reiterates, “no one should fool themselves into thinking that this Court is ever going to rule that the basic requirement to present photo ID at the polls is unconstitutional.”
As for an alternative course of action for Democrats, Waldman suggests:

So where does that leave liberals and Democrats? The best-case scenario in this round of lawsuits is that the Supreme Court upholds the requirements to show ID at the polls (which it has since 2008), but also mandates that states make such requirements less onerous. So liberals have to acknowledge that this is primarily a legislative battle, not a legal one. Last week Oregon passed a law providing that everyone who gets a driver’s license or other ID from the state DMV will automatically be registered to vote unless they opt out. It should be the first of a wave of state laws to make registering and voting as easy and universal as possible.
Conservatives may have won the battle over voter ID. But liberals can still win the war over voting.

In a 2012 article in The Nation, Ari Berman cited another successful strategy:

In May 2011, a poll showed that 80 percent of Minnesotans supported a photo ID law. “Nearly everyone in the state believed a photo ID was the most common-sense solution to the problem of voter fraud,” says Dan McGrath, executive director of Take Action Minnesota, a progressive coalition that led the campaign against the amendment. “We needed to reframe the issue. We decided to never say the word ‘fraud.’ Instead we would only talk about the cost, complications and consequences of the amendment.” According to the coalition, the photo ID law would have disenfranchised eligible voters (including members of the military and seniors) dumped an unfunded mandate on counties and imperiled same-day voter registration. On election day, 52 percent of Minnesotans opposed the amendment.
The amendment’s surprising defeat has ramifications beyond Minnesota. “There’s been an assumption of political will for restricting the right to vote,” says McGrath. “No, there’s not.” The amendment backfired on the GOP. “Voter ID did not drive the conservative base to turn out in the way that Republicans thought it would,” adds McGrath. “Instead, it actually inspired progressive voters, who felt under siege, to fight stronger and turn out in higher numbers.” The minority vote nearly doubled in the state, compared with 2008. Minnesota was a microcosm of the national failure of the GOP’s voter suppression strategy.

In addition, opinion data indicates that Dems have good reason to put more resources into the fight to protect and expand early voting, as Ariel Edwards-Levy reports at HuffPo, citing a HuffPo/YouGov poll:

Sixty percent of Americans say it’s a good thing for states to allow early voting, while just 14 percent say it’s a bad thing. A 39 percent plurality say the current policy on early voting in their state is about right, while another 20 percent would like to see expanded access. Only 11 percent say access in their state should be reduced.

Right now it’s hard to envision a better Supreme Court. That’s going to require a broad Democratic victory in 2016. In the shorter range, however, Dems have plenty of promising alternative strategies for fighting Republican voter suppression.

In the New York Times Magazine, Jason Horowitz discusses “Do the Democrats and Israel Have a Future Together?” But the more interesting question might be “will the Administration’s policy toward Israel affect support for Democrats in the 2016 elections?” Not much, would be my guess.
CNN Polling Director Jennifer Agiesta reports findings of a new CNN/ORC poll: “The new poll finds 53% saying things are going well, 46% badly. That’s the highest share saying things are going well that CNN/ORC polls have found during Obama’s time in office…Assessing Obama’s presidency overall, 50% consider his time in office a success, 47% a failure. And for those who say his time in office has been a failure, 37% say that’s been because of his own actions, while just 9% attribute it to Congress blocking the President from action…Nearly two-thirds (63%) disapprove of the Democratic leaders in Congress, while 74% disapprove of the Republican leadership. That’s worse than in March 2011, when 64% said they disapproved of GOP leadership a few months after the party took control of the U.S. House of Representatives.”
From HuffPollster: “Support for gay marriage has become the majority opinion, and voters now also say they’re more likely to reject a presidential candidate opposed to gay marriage than one who backs it — something gay marriage advocates hope marks a political tipping point for 2016. In a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, more than a third of voters say they don’t care what position a candidate takes on the issue, but those who do care say they favor gay rights by an 8-point margin. Thirty-four percent of voters say they’d prefer a presidential candidate to support gay marriage, and just 26 percent say they’d prefer a candidate to oppose it.”
Here’s a good resource for Democratic campaigns — a quick guide to metro areas with the highest and lowest rates of L.G.B.T. residents.
I’m assuming John F. Harris overstates Hillary Clinton’s reaction to media probing about the emails fuss in this Politico post. Clinton has handled as much hostile questioning over the years as any elected official, and done pretty well. Still, even the most savvy political leaders get a little thin-skinned once in a while. Clinton and other Democratic candidates at every level should periodically review videos of their body language, tone and other temperament cues in pressers and interviews and get some guidance about it from media pros.
Kim Willsher’s “‘Abandoned’ French working class ready to punish left’s neglect by voting for far right” at The Guardian indicates that French progressives are struggling with some of the same internecine conflicts that plague the American left. It will be interesting to see how a progressive party with a strong identity and tradition of solidarity navigates against the rapidly-rising nativist right. And only the French could coin the term, “Bobos” (bourgeois bohemians) for a political demographic. (Correction: Looks like David Brooks invented the term in his 2001 book, “Bobos in Paradise”)
Once again, it appears that the MSM has gotten suckered by the conservatives’ manipulation of the terms of debate. “Mandatory” or “compulsory” voting are loser terms. Nobody wants to be forced to do anything, even vote. Call it a “voter incentive” or whatever, but the concept that just might resonate better is, “No, you don’t have to vote. But you do have to pay a small fee ($50 fed or state tax surcharge?) for the luxury of sitting on your ass and allowing your fellow citizens to do the work — and absorb the cost in time & money — needed to maintain democracy.” Coupled with strong protection against voter suppression, that’s an easier sell.
On April 7 the voters of Ferguson, MO will have a unique opportunity to provide an emblematic example of the game-changing power potential of the African American electorate, reports Mariah Stewart at HuffPo.
The follies begin today.

A lot of Democrats seem to think making seniors think about Medicare every time they are asked to think about any social programs is a silver bullet. This is why some Democrats did and still do think “Medicare for All” is the right model and message for universal health care, and why others think Republican efforts to play off Obamacare against Medicare are obviously absurd.
But there’s a problem with this approach, as I wrote about here at TDS in 2011, and discussed today at the Washington Monthly:

At TNR Danny Vinik takes a long look at a provocative new Brookings Institution report that indicates support among African-Americans and seniors for “government redistribution” programs has been declining gradually for decades. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in Vinik’s article, and probably even more in the report. But I want to zero in on one point that some of us have been trying to make for years to Democratic strategists who think Medicare is the perfect model for every social program:

Democrats can learn a lot from the elderly’s declining support for redistribution. As [the report’s authors] note, it’s a bit strange that the elderly have become less supportive of government health insurance. “One might ask how,” they write, “by the end of our sample period, seniors can be less supportive of the idea that government cover medical bills given that they, uniquely, are categorically entitled this coverage.” There’s a simple explanation: Seniors don’t think the government helps them pay for health insurance. A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that 93 percent of Americans over the age of 65 said they don’t receive a government subsidy to pay for health insurance. (Nearly all seniors receive a subsidy via Medicare.)

Ding! Ding! Ding! Jackpot! Democrats are forever trying to suggest that senior think about their Medicare benefits when forming opinions about “the social safety net” or “redistribution” or the moral qualities of Big Government. But to a remarkable extent, seniors view Medicare (like Social Security) as an earned benefit–a literal entitlement. In part that’s because, as Vinik notes, they erroneously think their own payroll deductions and premium payments finance their benefits (actually nearly one-half of Medicare benefits come from general revenues). But they also distinguish themselves from those people on welfare by virtue of considering themselves entitled to a comfortable retirement via a lifetime of work. This is why so many of them can simultaneously bridle at Republican efforts to reduce or means-test Medicare benefits while opposing similar benefits for others.

This is why making a moral and economic case for social programs targeted to poor and sick people–including Obamacare and the Medicaid program it builds upon–is essential. Just saying to seniors “everybody should get the same benefits you’ve been given” will make many of them furious.

Timothy Egan has an interesting column at The Times, “Traitors to Their Class,” which takes a jaundiced look at three children of the white working-class, who have become advocates of screwing the poor and privileges for the rich.
Egan is talking about U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, Speaker John Boehnor and Governor Scott Walker, all of whom love citing the economic hardships of their upbringings as preface to their advocacy of large tax cuts for the rich and deep cuts in social programs benefitting the poor and working families.
Egan doesn’t get into the phenomenon of good class treason, which would include such exemplars as FDR, Sen. Ted Kennedy and perhaps Warren Buffet. FDR’s class treason still excites extraordinary animosity from conservative historians and the like, and his “I welcome their hatred” may be the most frequently cited utterance of class treason in modern memory. Senator Kennedy, also born into wealth, fought like hell throughout his career for social programs to benefit working people, supported unions and greater economic justice. Warren Buffet’s call for higher taxes on the rich has earned him the distinction of being the most well-known living class traitor — in a good way. Hats off to these class traitors who didn’t let self-interest prevent them from urging a better deal for their fellow citizens.
Egan’s treasonous trinity is quite another matter. They carry on about bread bags on feet (Ernst), serving fries at McDonald’s (Walker) and bartending through college (Boehner), just before they urge tax cuts for the rich and budget cuts for social programs. They prattle on about picking themselves up by their bootstraps and being self-made success stories — just before they pull up the ladder for others.
Never mind that they attended public schools they would now privatize for everyone else. They sure as hell used government roads and public transportation throughout their respective government-bashing careers and quietly accept the privileges of their office without any noise about cutting their perks. And don’t be surprised if revelations surface that they did in fact benefit from government programs of one sort or another in their respective journeys to success.
All of three of them get downright splenetic in denouncing proposed modest increases in the minimum wage or calling for repeal of the Affordable Care Act. As Egan concludes:

Giving the people who flip burgers, clean floors and stock grocery shelves a few dimes more an hour is not a handout. Offering working people some help on their insurance premiums does not promote dependence. Nor do those things hurt the economy — just the opposite.
So where is this coming from? The class traitors guiding the Republican Party, and the harsh new federal budget unveiled this week, usually promote their policies using personal anecdotes. Their condescension toward the poor springs from their own narratives: They are virtuous because they made it, or vice versa. Those who haven’t made a similar leap are weaklings. It’s a variant of Mitt Romney’s view that 47 percent of Americans are moochers. Stripped to its essence, it’s a load of loathing for their former class, delivered on a plate of platitudes.

They’ve got the megaphones now. But one day they will be seen as narcissistic elitists who turned their backs on the working people they grew up with, when they could have used their offices to awaken the conscience of their party and make life better for all Americans, instead of just the wealthy patrons of their political campaigns. A missed opportunity and a sad legacy indeed

From Jay Bookman’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution column on the Republicans’ proposed budget as a moral document:

So what does it tell you about morals and values when the proposed budget is “balanced” solely on the backs of the most vulnerable, the struggling, those too young and too old to fend for themselves, those needing access to education?It repeals ObamaCare, of course, but it also slashes more than $900 billion from Medicaid, the system that today provides health-care coverage for millions of poor Americans, including children, and also covers some 60 percent of grandparents and great-grandparents in long-term nursing care. Overall, the Obama administration estimates that some 37 million Americans would be stripped of health insurance.It cuts Pell grants for those going to college. It cuts Medicare and turns it into a voucher program in which senior citizens will be forced to buy private insurance. It slashes food stamps and housing programs. At a time when Republicans are professing concern for the middle class and working people, this is how that rhetoric is transformed into actual policy.And at a time when corporate profits at all-time highs, the stock market is at all-time highs, and income inequity at all-time highs, what does it tell about morals and values when those prospering the most from this country’s productivity and hard work are asked to make absolutely zero sacrifice on its behalf?In fact, quite the contrary. The animating theory behind “tax reform” in the House budget is that those already prospering the most need and deserve additional rewards, must be enriched still further, while additional tax burdens are placed on those lower on the economic scale.

NYT’s Paul Krugman takes a different angle on it:

But the just-released budgets from the House and Senate majorities break new ground. Each contains not one but two trillion-dollar magic asterisks: one on spending, one on revenue. And that’s actually an understatement. If either budget were to become law, it would leave the federal government several trillion dollars deeper in debt than claimed, and that’s just in the first decade.
You might be tempted to shrug this off, since these budgets will not, in fact, become law. Or you might say that this is what all politicians do. But it isn’t. The modern G.O.P.’s raw fiscal dishonesty is something new in American politics. And that’s telling us something important about what has happened to half of our political spectrum.
…Outrageous fiscal mendacity is neither historically normal nor bipartisan. It’s a modern Republican thing. And the question we should ask is why…Does this mean that all those politicians declaiming about the evils of budget deficits and their determination to end the scourge of debt were never sincere? Yes, it does.
Look, I know that it’s hard to keep up the outrage after so many years of fiscal fraudulence. But please try. We’re looking at an enormous, destructive con job, and you should be very, very angry.

The question arises, how do Democrats awaken the needed outrage to hold the con artists accountable?

An excerpt from TDS co-founding editor William Galston’s contribution to a CNN forum on “mandatory voting”:

Let’s imagine a future in which Americans must vote, or face a penalty.
It’s April 2021. Media outlets around the country headlined major agreements between Democrats and Republicans on the long-stalled issues of tax and immigration reform. Commentators marveled at the momentous shift in American politics away from the polarization and gridlock of the previous two decades.
What happened? Although opinions differed, observers agreed on one key point: The decision to follow the lead of countries such as Australia and institute mandatory voting in national elections transformed the political landscape. As turnout rose from 60% to 90%, citizens with less intense partisan and ideological commitments flooded into the electorate. Campaigns could no longer prevail simply by mobilizing core supporters. Instead, they had to persuade swing voters to come their way. They soon discovered that these new voters preferred compromise to confrontation and civil discourse to scorched-earth rhetoric. Candidates who presented themselves as willing to reach across the aisle to get things done got a boost while zealots went down to defeat.
…And somewhere, James Madison was smiling. Reforming institutions to change incentives is always the most effective course, and once again it had worked.

It’s an appealing vision, one which Democratic strategist Donna Brazile supports in her contribution to the same forum:

I know some bristle at the idea of having to cast a vote, even a protest vote for Lassie. Yet, voting is the essential, central and indispensable feature of democracy. We require jury attendance, paying taxes, and public education attendance because those are also essential functions. Is voting less important?

In his Washington Monthly post on the topic, Ed Kilgore notes that Obama didn’t actually come out in support of “mandatory voting” per se, and getting a Constitutional amendment such as that passed is not going to happen anytime soon.
Kilgore is surely right. Is it possible, however, that a few blue states could experiment with economic incentives for voting? But fergawdsake, let’s not call it “mandatory” or “compulsory” voting, as do Fox News and other right-wing media outlets. Dems need not let wing-nuts define the terms of debate about reforms without challenge. We’re not talking about criminal penalties for those who don’t vote.
Galston’s vision and Brazile’s point about voting as a civic duty merit more consideration, as do a range of other electoral reforms. Accepting the current low levels of voter participation is not an option.

“Other countries have mandatory voting…It would be transformative if everybody voted — that would counteract money more than anything,” said President Obama in calling for mandatory voting in an Ohio speech. Eleven other nations have mandatory voting, reports Stephanie Condon at CBS News. Might be strategically better to call it a “nonvoter surcharge” instead of a “fine” or “tax,” or pitch it more colloquially as “the slacker surcharge” on those who are eligible to vote, but don’t. Assess all taxpayers a $50 federal elections charge, with refunds to those who vote in presidential or congressional general elections. It would have to be coupled with easier access provisions, like internet voting, expanded early voting and a universal federal i.d. (photos on social security cards?). Why should voters bear all of the hardships of the elections needed for a viable democracy?
One reason why Colorado ranked third in voter turnout in 2014, as reported by Adrian D. Garcia at the Coloradoan: “The 2014 Colorado election cycle was the first time ballots were mailed to every registered voter two to three weeks in advance of Election Day. Last year, the state also implemented Election Day Registration (EDR), meaning voters could correct registration problems at polling centers Nov. 4….Seven of the top 10 turnout states have EDR; none of the bottom 10 turnout states do…”
Jonathan Chait shreds the GOP’s health care “plan”: “Six years after the start of the health-care debate, Republicans keep telling reporters that they’re working on a plan. (Jeffrey Young has a hilarious, frequently updated timeline of the perennially just-over-the-horizon Republican Obamacare replacement plan.) In fact, the Republicans do have a health-care plan: It is to repeal Obamacare and replace it with what we had before Obamacare. They don’t want to admit that’s their plan, but it is. It’s right there, in the new budget released by House Republicans this week…”
“Could Pot be a Game-Changer in 2016?” Megan R. Wilson mulls over the possibilities at The Hill. “Efforts to revive marijuana policy reform for next year’s elections have begun in a half-dozen states, including Nevada, Florida, Arizona and California. All of these states will be important in the presidential primaries and/or the general election.” Wilson quotes Democratic pollster Celinda Lake: “”It could have major, major impacts. Point No. 1 is, marijuana definitely increases [voter] participation of young people…The other nice thing about marijuana is that there’s no backlash. It doesn’t motivate [opponents] to vote — so it’s a unilaterally net positive effect.”
…And Phillip Smith’s “March Is a Big Month for Marijuana! 5 States Move Toward Legalization” sets the stage. “…we’re not even talking about medical marijuana or decriminalization bills, we’re talking about outright legalization bills.”
In his HuffPo post, “A Bumper Crop of Banana(s) Republicans,” John Bradshaw, Executive Director of the National Security Network, nails a worthy meme: “Under the new “Cotton doctrine,” unveiled in the now-infamous letter from Senator Tom Cotton and 46 other Republican Senators to the government of Iran, America’s commitments are only good for as long as the President who signed them remains in office. This is the way banana republics do business, not the United States…”
NYT’s Abby Goodnough reports that the Affordable Care Act’s “favorables” are up 4 percent since July in the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll. Further, “Forty percent of respondents said they would like to see Congress repeal or scale back the law, while 46 percent said they would prefer that Congress move forward with carrying out the law or expand what it does.”
Arguments about the effectiveness of televised political ads will rage on. But there isn’t much doubt that television news analysis of political issues falls somewhere between the “miserable” and “poor” spectrum. As David Knowles explains in his Bloomberg Politics article “Study: Political Ads Dwarfed News Stories About Actual Political Issues in 2014”: “A new study by Philly Political Media Watch finds that during evening newscasts leading up to the 2014 midterm elections the airtime given to political ads dwarfed stories about political issues by a ratio of 45:1.” In his USA Today report on the study, Rem Reider notes that Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, finds the performance of the television stations “pathetic.” Also, “There’s no way for a citizen to make his way through the bombardment and onslaught (of political ads) and make an informed decision,” says the study’s author, Danilo Yanich, a professor at the University of Delaware…The short answer is that political reality is bought,” it says. “Political ads spout their versions of the truth and, with all that money, the sponsors make their claims over and over again. The repetition works.”
Could this actually be a very shrewd plot to make some other GOP presidential candidates, like Huck, Paul and Cruz look a little less silly?