Anybody involved in politics is used to the challenge each election cycle of convincing people–perhaps casual voters, perhaps embittered cynics, perhaps just the un-enthused–that the election in question really matters. This has become a more urgent problem now that the Conventional Wisdom–not without some justification–is holding that partisan and ideological “gridlock” is keeping anyone from really governing.
But when you sit down to look at the consequences of various scenarios coming out of this next election in 2016, it quickly becomes clear that Republican extremism on issues that don’t require big congressional majorities for action is turning it into a high-stakes election for real. I ran through some of these consequences at TPMCafe this week:

[I]t’s extremely unlikely that 2016 will produce the kind of temporary governing capacity for either party that Democrats won in 2008, with a big majority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (for a year, at least, until the disaster of Scott Brown’s special election victory in January 2010). But a rapidly escalating series of Republican post-election promises that do not require a landslide are making this a “high-stakes election” nonetheless.
Most notably, Republican proto-presidential candidates are tripping over each other to promise to revoke Obama’s executive orders and regulations. This threatens to become a counterrevolutionary executive agenda that goes beyond high-profile items like immunity for prosecution for immigration violations and utility carbon emissions regulations and extend deep into everything Democrats were able to accomplish since 2009. It’s just a matter of time until a competition breaks out that culminates with demands and promises to repeal everything Obama ordered, including regulations needed to implement everything Congress passed since 2009. That’s obviously a pretty big deal.
A second major “high stakes” area involves the president’s power to use military force. In 2012 Republicans accused Barack Obama of weak leadership and predicted threats to American interests ranging from Palestine to Iraq to Russia to North Korea, with a particular emphasis on Iran. This time around Republicans both in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail are describing these threats as imminent, and advocating what amounts to a re-invasion of Iraq to deal with Islamic State and an ultimatum to Iran to abandon its entire nuclear program immediately or face U.S. or Israeli airstrikes. That’s aside from the equally radical but less immediately dire course of action the GOP is advocating with respect to Israeli-Palestinian relations (an abandonment of any two-state solution), and its treatment of the current Israeli government (which as of last night appeared likely to continue in power for the next four years) as the linchpin of U.S. foreign policy.
More generally, what looked as recently as a couple of years ago like a burgeoning intra-GOP debate over “non-interventionism” as a corollary of limited government conservatism has collapsed, and even Rand Paul is joining his party colleagues in trying to sabotage a nuclear deal with Iran at the risk of war, and rejecting any obligation to fulfill diplomatic commitments made by Obama. The fork in the road in November of 2016 appears as stark for foreign policy as it does for executive action on domestic policy.
A third “high stakes” area is legislative, and involves the strong possibility that Republicans will, if they control the White House and both chambers of Congress, use the budget reconciliation process to kill or at least disable the Affordable Care Act, cut taxes, boost defense spending, and radically “reform” entitlements–all in one bill that requires only majority votes in each House. There were reportedly plans in the works to do all that back in 2012, in a blitzkrieg action planned for early in 2013, had Mitt Romney won and Republicans reclaimed the Senate that year.
You could take any of these three areas of “high stakes” and invert the language to see how Republicans tend to view the coming election: If Democrats keep the White House, and particularly if they reclaim the Senate (a real possibility), Obama’s agenda of executive action on immigration and climate change will be solidified and extended; his weak and reckless foreign policy will “embolden” IS, Hamas, Russia, and various domestic terrorists; and the economic recovery will drown as high taxes, debt worries, red tape and class warfare discourage growth and innovation.
And both parties undoubtedly agree a deeply divided Supreme Court is an appointment or two away from a decisive conservative or liberal majority as challenges to Roe v. Wade, the Affordable Care Act, the Voting Rights Act, and perhaps even (if the wind blows strongly Democratic) Citizens United, all come to potential fruition. It’s likely that by 2017, legal challenges to net neutrality and electronic surveillance will also be making their way towards the Court.

If that’s not enough to make you want to vote and convince others to vote, I guess you are waiting for Armageddon.

Domenico Montenaro’s “Would Automatic Voter Registration Increase Turnout?” at NPR.org examines a tantalizing prospect for Democrats. As Montaro reports:

Go to renew your driver’s license in Oregon, and you will now be signed up to vote automatically…It’s the first state in the country with that sort of law, which is designed to make voting easier, and stands in contrast to the trend seen in the past several years in more conservative states…In Oregon, the law could swell voter rolls by hundreds of thousands. If other states follow suit, it could have a dramatic effect on the U.S. voting process.

Montenaro reports that Vermont and Pennsylvania are considering similar proposals. If it catches on in other blue states, it could dramatically increase voter registration rolls, political participation and perhaps spread to purple and even red states, as the public realizes the savings in taxpayer dollars. Sean McElwee recently reported, “if all states used a “motor voter” system, which allows voters to register at local DMVs, it would increase registration by 18 million. These measures have reduced political inequality, particularly in states with registration bias. EDR consistently leads to higher turnout.”
As Oregon Gov. Kate Brown put it at the law’s signing ceremony, “We have the tools to make voter registration more cost-effective, more secure and more convenient for Oregonians, so why wouldn’t we?” Voters are allowed to opt out of the system in Oregon, with three weeks notice.

A CNN/ORC poll conducted 3/13-15 indicates that Senator Cotton’s letter signed by 47 Republican Senators was a net negative for the GOP, as reported by Jennifer Agiesta, CNN’s Polling Director. Was Agiesta reports:

Direct diplomatic negotiations with Iran are broadly popular, 68% favor them, while 29% oppose them. That support cuts across party lines, with 77% of Democrats, 65% of Republicans and 64% of independents in favor of diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran in an attempt to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
…All told, 49% of Americans say the letter went too far, while 39% think it was an appropriate response to the way negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program were going. Opinions on the letter were divided along partisan lines, with 67% of Democrats saying it went too far while 52% of Republicans called it appropriate. Among independents, 47% thought it went too far, 42% that it was appropriate.

The poll found that nearly half of respondents, 49% say “some Republican senators went too far by sending a letter to Iran’s leaders warning that any agreement with the Obama administration would require Senate approval” with 39% agreeing that “the letter hurt U.S. efforts to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” reports Agiesta.
Agiesta concludes, “Americans have greater confidence in President Barack Obama than the Republicans in Congress in dealing with major issues, whether those are domestic or related to foreign policy.” Approximately half said they have faith in President Obama “on major issues and major foreign policy issues,” while 4-in-10 expressed more confidence in the GOP, with 1-in-10 saying they “trust neither side on the big issues.”

Demos research associate Sean McElwee has a post up at Al Jazeera America, “If everyone voted, progressives would win,” which makes a strong case that recruiting new progressive voters may be a more productive strategy for Dems than targeting likely voters. McElwee explains:

…Progressives do not need a charismatic leader. Instead, they need to invest in unleashing the disgruntled progressive majority. A longer-term strategy for progressives should be to strengthen unions and boost turnout among politically marginalized populations.
“If everybody in this country voted,” the economist John Kenneth Galbraith said, “the Democrats would be in for the next 100 years.” There is strong evidence to support his claim. A 2007 study by Jan Leighley and Jonathan Nagler found that nonvoters are more economically liberal than voters, preferring government health insurance, easier union organizing and more federal spending on schools. Nonvoters preferred Barack Obama to Mitt Romney by 59 percent to 24 percent, while likely voters were split 47 percent for each, according to a 2012 Pew Research Center poll. Nonvoters are far less likely to identify as Republican, and voters tend to be more opposed to redistribution than nonvoters.
In a recent nationwide study, Stockton College professor James Avery found a strong correlation between the electorate’s class bias and the Gini coefficient, a commonly used measure of inequality. In short, the lower the turnout, the higher the class bias and the greater the support for policies that lead to inequality. His study builds on previous research by political scientists Christopher Witko, Nathan Kelly and William Franko showing how class bias in voting reinforces economic inequalities. Their findings are not confined to the U.S. Around the world, voter turnout is correlated with redistributive policies. For example, the turnout of low-income voters has been linked to regressive state tax systems and higher social spending.

While some of McElwee’s conclusions will be familiar to those following voter turnout trends, he includes some interesting new revelations which suggest a new turnout tactic or two. For example, McElwee notes, “72.8 percent of those who do not vote because of weather support the Democratic Party. In fact, weather may have contributed to Electoral College victories for the Democrats in 1960 and the Republicans in 2000.” Improving bad weather contingency plans might make a significant difference in close elections. McElwee cites data which suggest that, in some circumstances, governors may have coattails that help turnout in presidential elections — producing as much as a 6.4 percent edge for Dems.
McElwee also cites overwhelming evidence that “electoral structures dramatically affect turnout.” and that “the more black people in a county — a group that tends to vote for Democrats — the fewer early voting sites there are.” He argues that existing get-out-the-vote campaigns tend to target those who already have high turnout rates, under-investing in turning out new voters who are overwhelmingly inclined to vote for Democrats. And for Dems, election day registration is the pivotal reform, which would increase registration by 18 million nationwide.
Concluding on a hopeful note, McElwee adds “Democrats should mobilize the marginalized progressive majority…Now with Democrats on the defensive across the country, conservatives fighting full franchise and progressives realizing the limits of hero leftism, there may be an effort to mobilize the marginalized progressive majority.”
Perhaps the clincher for McElwee’s contention is that even a small improvement in turnout of these voters could make a huge difference. An extra effort to get marginalized voters to the polls in some key battleground states may be the most cost-effective investment Democrats could make in the 19 months until election day 2016.

At WaPo’s Wonkblog Lydia DePillis and Jim Tankersley explain that “To Fix inequality, Democrats are Pushing Unions,” including Democratic economic moderates, like Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, as well as the more progressive wing. One or the more interesting quotes in the article: “Some of us have been saying for a while that the right wing has a much greater appreciation for what unions do than Democrats and progressives do,” says Steve Rosenthal, a progressive campaign consultant who served as political director of the AFL-CIO for seven years.
Mike Lillis reports at The Hill that “Nancy Pelosi, Democrats chart their own path for 2016,” which raises concerns about message fragmentation. All of the “big tent” constituencies have to find a way to articulate their concerns in the context of the mothership message, “Democrats are the party for working families. Republicans are for the rich elite.”
In her Salon.com post “The Democratic Party is facing a Catholic apocalypse,” Patricia Miller writes: “There’s no “Catholic vote” in terms of Catholics representing an electoral bloc that votes according to what their bishops tell them, or in lockstep with the tenets of their religion. Yet winning Catholic voters has been essential to almost every presidential victory in modern times. And the defection of Catholics voters has played a role in some of the most consequential congressional turnovers in recent history — from 1994 to 2014 — making Catholics the ultimate swing voters. And for Democrats, that could be bad news.
At HuffPo Michael McAuliff reports that “Tom Cotton, Arkansas Rep., Took Student Loans, Voted Against Them.”
Seth Freed Wessler’s NBC News post, “Middle-Class Betrayal? Why Working Hard Is No Longer Enough in America” is a good read for Democratic candidates wondering how to connect with discontented younger voters.
Ditto for Anne Fisher’s “American Millennials are among the world’s least skilled” at Fortune.com. Fisher notes, “Researchers at Princeton-based Educational Testing Service (ETS)…administered a test called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). Sponsored by the OECD, the test was designed to measure the job skills of adults, aged 16 to 65, in 23 countries…When the results were analyzed by age group and nationality, ETS got a shock. It turns out, says a new report, that Millennials in the U.S. fall short when it comes to the skills employers want most: literacy (including the ability to follow simple instructions), practical math, and — hold on to your hat — a category called “problem-solving in technology-rich environments.”
Chris Cillizza explains that “In 2016 race, an electoral college edge for Democrats”: “…if you add up all of the states that are either “safe” for the eventual Democratic nominee or “favor” that nominee, you get 217 electoral votes. (A candidate needs to win 270 to be elected president.) Do the same for states safe or favoring the Republican standard-bearer, per Gonzales’s rankings, and you get just 191 electoral votes.” I was expecting for a larger lead.
Dara Lind’s Vox post, “Don’t say “papaya” in Miami, and other lessons for wooing Latino voters” has some excellent tips for Democratic campaigns.
As the nation cranks up for the St. Patrick’s Day celebration tomorrow, this seems like a good video to get the juices flowing. Dropkick Murphys Frontman Ken Casey explains the band’s blistering take town of WI Gov. Scott Walker, who tried to use their song, “I’m Shipping Out to Boston” at an Iowa confab, (@ScottWalker @GovWalker please stop using our music in any way…we literally hate you !!! Love, Dropkick Murphys),” reported by Matt Juul at Boston.com…Casey said. “If you don’t know that our politics and lyrics are certainly Democrat — and certainly pro-working class and organized labor — it is who we are. That’s what we’ve been during our time as a band, so for Scott Walker, there are plenty of bands out there to choose from, just don’t choose us.”

Remembering the events in Selma a half-century ago this last weekend got me thinking about the claims we hear so often about today’s conservative folk having to live under “government oppression.” The parallels are not very forgiving, as I noted at TPMCafe this week:

One of the regular features of our contemporary political life is conservative complaints about being victims of “government oppression.” You know what I mean: having to pay taxes to help “losers” is an outrage. Having to buy health insurance is tyranny. Not being allowed to discriminate against gay people is a denial of religious liberty. Letting employees enrolled in government-subsidized health care plans choose types of contraceptives you don’t approve of is complicity in murder. Not being able to expect the IRS to rubber-stamp your application for tax-exempt status for your political group so you can hide your donors is living under fascism, making one fear jackboots kicking down doors in the night. No wonder the most terrifying fear harbored by many of these folk is that Big Government will take away the guns they keep under their pillows!
The 50th anniversary of the violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, should have served as a graphic reminder of what real “government oppression” looks like: police dogs; fire hoses; truncheons; deputized thugs. An entire state mobilized to deny the rights of free speech and peaceful assembly, in the broader aim of denying the right to vote. And all this orchestrated by conservative politicians supposedly devoted to an ideology of decentralized government power and individual rights.
Indeed, there are unsettling parallels in the rhetoric of the racist thugs of 1965 and that of today’s brave resisters of Big Government, as the president noted on Saturday:

[A]t the time of the marches, many in power condemned rather than praised them. Back then, they were called Communists, half-breeds, outside agitators, sexual and moral degenerates, and worse – everything but the name their parents gave them. Their faith was questioned. Their lives were threatened. Their patriotism was challenged.

And the cause of equality was slandered again and again–as “government oppression.” Here’s how George Wallace greeted the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

Never before in the history of this nation have so many human and property rights been destroyed by a single enactment of the Congress. It is an act of tyranny. It is the assassin’s knife stuck in the back of liberty.
With this assassin’s knife and a blackjack in the hand of the Federal force-cult, the left-wing liberals will try to force us back into bondage. Bondage to a tyranny more brutal than that imposed by the British monarchy which claimed power to rule over the lives of our forefathers under sanction of the Divine Right of kings….
It threatens our freedom of speech, of assembly, or association, and makes the exercise of these Freedoms a federal crime under certain conditions.
It affects our political rights, our right to trial by jury, our right to the full use and enjoyment of our private property, the freedom from search and seizure of our private property and possessions, the freedom from harassment by Federal police and, in short, all the rights of individuals inherent in a society of free men…

Yes, George Wallace was a constitutional conservative before his time. I don’t personally remember that speech, but I do remember watching in awe in early 1965 as Georgia segregationist Lester Maddox, weeping actual tears, blubbered, “My government’s taken my business away” as he closed his Atlanta restaurant rather than serve African-Americans. Less than two years later Maddox was governor of Georgia–another symbol of defiance to “government oppression.”

It’s pretty clear in retrospect–and in the present, when you look at phenomena like the policing tactics used in Ferguson, Missouri, and many other places–who’s the oppressor, and who’s the oppressed.

From the text of the Logan Act, passed in 1799:

§ 953. Private correspondence with foreign governments.
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply himself, or his agent, to any foreign government, or the agents thereof, for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.

From Justice Sutherland’s majority Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation, 299 U.S. 304 (1936):

“[T]he President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation. He makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude; and Congress itself is powerless to invade it. As Marshall said in his great argument of March 7, 1800, in the House of Representatives, ‘The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.’

As of this morning more than 264,000 Americans have signed a petition designating the 47 Republican senators’ letter warning Iran against making an agreement on nuclear arms with President Obama as “treason” and urging that charges be filed for violation of the Logan Act. It’s not likely to happen but it is a growing protest nonetheless, and some of the signatories are beginning to squirm, equivocate and suggest that it was all a big “cheeky” joke.
More temperate progressives, like Slatsg at Daily Kos, are urging a less over-the-top response. Daily Kos also has an on-line petition which takes a slightly different tack, urging Senators who signed it to “Recant your signature from this outrageous letter immediately.”
An interesting side-show is what this political boomerang will do to Sen. Cotton’s grandiose political ambitions. The GOP’s new golden boy may end up replacing Ted Cruz as poster boy for wing-nut lunacy.

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Ever since Republicans published their letter trying to sabotage U.S. negotiations to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, right-wing pundits have searched in vain to find historic parallels for their action.
They have twisted themselves into knots trying to argue that past actions by Democrats are even remotely similar. None even come close.
MSNBC’s Steve Benen reports that the U.S. Senate Historian’s Office has been unable to find any other example “in the chamber’s history where one political party tried to deal with a foreign power against a presidential policy.”
A report by McClatchy quotes Alan K. Henrikson, director of Diplomatic Studies and professor of diplomatic history at Tufts University as saying: “Neither the Senate nor the House has sought to interfere with actual conduct of negotiations by writing an open letter to the leadership of a country with which the U.S. is negotiating.”
And of course, neither has sought to discourage an adversary from signing an agreement that would avoid war by arguing that our own government cannot be trusted to keep the terms of the deal. That is exactly what the 47 GOP saboteurs did in their letter to Iran on Monday.
The right has dragged out House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria in 2007 trying desperately to draw a parallel. But Pelosi’s trip had nothing in common with the GOP letter to the Ayatollah’s.
For those who don’t recall, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a bi-partisan delegation went to meet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a trip to the Middle East in late 2007.
The delegation included two of the most ardent backers of Israel then in the United States Congress, Representatives Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Tom Lantos (D-Calif.). It also included a senior Republican, Representative David Hobson (R-Ohio), as well as Arab American, Representative Nick Rahall (D-WV), Muslim Keith Ellison (D-MN), and Rules Committee Chair Louise Slaughter (D-NY).
Pelosi notified both the White House and the State Department in advance of the trip, received a policy briefing from the Bush administration and was told that the staff of the U.S. embassy in Damascus would be available to provide support if needed.
Most important, no one in the bi-partisan Pelosi-led delegation tried to encourage President Assad to ignore the Republican White House, or distrust American foreign policy.

Read more…