For a good while, Democrats have wondered how far back the rightward trend in the GOP would take Republicans. There are signs, as I discussed earlier this week at New York, that they are arriving at 1964 in their wayback machine:

For Republicans with a sense of history, chills might have gone down their spines at this passage from a Jonathan Martin piece in the New York Times about big donors warming to Ted Cruz:

What is more striking, and will cause deep consternation among Republican strategists, is that … donors are beginning to embrace Mr. Cruz’s argument that he can win a general election by motivating core conservatives to come to the polls rather than by appealing to swing voters.
Andrew Puzder, chief executive of the conglomerate that owns Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., supported both of Mr. Romney’s campaigns and has contributed to a number of “super PACs” and candidates this year, including Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. But after spending a couple of hours eating brisket with Mr. Cruz on Sunday at his campaign headquarters, Mr. Puzder said he was “very seriously considering” getting behind him, in part because of his appeal to the conservative base.
“I’ve become a one-issue voter,” Mr. Puzder said. “My one issue is whether somebody is going to win. My big question is: What is your path to a general election victory?”
Unhappily recalling that Mr. Romney won among self-described independents but still was soundly defeated by President Obama, Mr. Puzder said, “Part of the reason was that the base didn’t turn out to vote, and Senator Cruz understands that needs to happen.”

This is, of course, an argument a certain kind of conservative has been making for decades, back to and beyond Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign based on the idea of offering (to use the title of the pro-Goldwater campaign book written by a young right-wing activist named Phyllis Schlafly) “a choice, not an echo,” in repudiation of the Republican Establishment’s perpetual idea of “moving to the center” to win swing voters.
The cataclysmic defeat incurred by Goldwater drove this conviction underground for a while, and even the Goldwater veteran Ronald Reagan ran a conventional swing-voter-oriented “referendum on the incumbent” campaign in 1980. This hasn’t kept his hagiographers from remembering it differently, and so there has been a regular debate within the GOP over base versus swing-voter strategies ever since. Sometimes campaigns blurred the strategies, as in 2004, when George W. Bush’s reelection effort focused to a considerable extent on base mobilization, but only after four years of careful and systematic swing-voter pandering via Karl Rove’s famous initiatives targeted to married women (No Child Left Behind), seniors (Rx Drug Benefit), and Latinos (comprehensive immigration reform) — initiatives conservatives are still deploring to this day….
Cruz is the first viable candidate in a while who has gone wall-to-wall with a path to the nomination and an electability argument founded entirely on the theory that, when united and energized, conservatives can win the presidency on their own. Sometimes he strains his credibility even with true believers by talking of many tens of millions of conservative Evangelicals waiting to be called to arms as Christian soldiers by someone like his own self. Nonetheless, the quite factual decline in the number of swing voters and various theories of “missing white voters” have made the old-time religion of ideological mobilization tantalizing if not entirely convincing. Perhaps today’s conservatives think that a reincarnation of Barry Goldwater could win today and that the vast rollback of New Deal and early Great Society programs Goldwater demanded is still possible.
In any event, big donors and Republican Establishment opinion-leaders used to exist in order to refute such dangerous talk. If they are beginning to buy it instead, this could be a fascinating and dangerous year for the GOP even if Donald Trump is vanquished and then domesticated.

If Cruz’s campaign adopts the slogan: “In your heart, you know he’s right,” then we’ll know the half-century regression is complete.

Thomas B. Edsall’s “The Republican Party’s 50-State Solution” delves deep into the Republican edge in state politics. It’s a sobering read for Democrats, and Edsall’s insights could prove invaluable, if Democrats refine and implement a more effective strategy to challenge the GOP’s domination at the state level. Here’s a couple of his more interesting observations:

Seven years ago, Democrats had a commanding lead in state legislatures, controlling both legislative chambers in 27 states, nearly double the 14 controlled by Republicans. They held 4082 state senate and house seats, compared to the Republicans’ 3223.
Sweeping Republican victories at the state level in 2010 and 2014 transformed the political landscape.
By 2015, there were Republican majorities in 70 percent — 68 of 98 — of the nation’s partisan state houses and senates, the highest number in the party’s history. (Nebraska isn’t counted in because it has a non-partisan, unicameral legislature.) Republicans controlled the legislature and governorship in 23 states, more than triple the seven under full Democratic control.

One of the keys, adds Edsall, is a new way of financing state campaigns:

“What’s changed seems to be the result of the relatively recent nationalization of state campaign financing,” Morgan Kousser, a professor of history at Caltech (and, as it happens, Thad Kousser’s father), wrote in an email:
The Koch brothers understand the importance of controlling state legislatures; George Soros doesn’t. I’m not sure why this should be the case, but since we’re really talking about a relatively small number of mega-donors who have caused this, it’s a rather restricted question.
Liberal foundations, in the view of Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the New America foundation, “have for a long time got perpetually distracted by fads and short-term metrics, whereas conservative foundations were willing to invest much more in long-term organizational capacity.”
“How the Right Trounced Liberals in the States,” by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and Theda Skocpol, in the Winter edition of the journal Democracy, documents the failure of the left to keep pace with the substantial investments by the right in building local organizations.
Liberals, according to Hertel-Fernandez, a graduate student at Harvard, and Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology there, “have left behind little more than a litany of abandoned acronyms.”

Ouch. Edsall goes into much more detail explaining the mechanics behind the conservative takeover of most states and credits the GOP with “the most effective gerrymandering of legislative and congressional districts in the nation’s history.” He concludes that “the right has institutionalized a dangerous power vacuum on the left.”
Read the entire article here.

The following article by William A. Galston is cross-posted from Brookings:
Something is stirring among Iowa Democrats. In the four surveys of likely Democratic caucus-goers conducted between December 7th and December 21st, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by an average of 13 points, 50 to 37. In the four surveys of likely caucus-attenders taken between the 2nd and 10th of January, the race is a dead heat.
This trend echoes the contrasting results of two Quinnipiac polls, one conducted in early December, the other released at noon today. The former gave Clinton a 51-40 lead; the latter gave the edge to Sanders, 49 to 44. Fortunately, Quinnipiac releases a number of key cross-tabulations, so we can see the key building-blocks of Sanders’ lead and to some extent, what’s driving the shift between early December and now.
To begin, there is a huge gender gap: men back Sanders by 61-30, while women break for Clinton, 55-39. In December, by comparison, Sanders’ lead among men was only 52-39, so Sanders has gained 9 points among men in less than a month, with Clinton losing the same number. During the same period, he has cut into Clinton’s lead among women, which was 27 points a month ago but only 16 points today. He has also reduced Clinton’s lead among Democrats with college degrees from 17 points to 4 while turning her 4-point edge among non-college Democrats into a 10-point deficit.
There has been no change in the issues Democrats care most about. In both December and January, 35 percent of likely caucus-goers named jobs and the economy as the most important issue, 15 percent selected health care, and 11 percent climate change. In each of these issues, however, Sanders has improved his standing at Clinton’s expense.

Read more…

The Nikki Haley response to President Obama’s SOTU continues to reverberate as a rebuttal to Trumpism, not the President.
“For one moment, at least,” writes WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. about Haley’s SOTU response, “Obama had realized his dream: A part of red America came together with his blue America to share responsibility for the nation’s frustrations.”
TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore notes at New York News & Politics that Haley “certainly did no harm to her veep prospects unless Trump is the nominee or Trump has a veto over the second spot on the ticket (not an implausible thought). And indeed, conservative opinion-leader Erick Erickson said she had become “the only logical choice for vice presidential nominee of the GOP” (it should be noted Erickson was an early supporter of Haley’s 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidacy, back when she was mainly known as a hard-core, movement conservative disciple of Mark Sanford).”
“There has been a debate within the party — and the political class — about whether Republicans need to diversify to win or whether it just needs to attract more of its core constituencies. So far in 2016, led by Cruz and Donald Trump, the election has moved decisively toward the latter. The exceptions, such as Jeb Bush and Lindsey O. Graham, are either out of the race or on the edges of it.” — From “Republican hopefuls agree: The key to the White House is working-class whites” by Phillip Rucker and Robert Costa. The authors note, further, “the urgent imperative of Republicans — historically the party of business, money and power — to broaden their coalition with many more white working-class voters. As the nation diversifies and the GOP struggles to adapt, the presidential hopefuls see this demographic bloc as the key to taking back the White House.”
GOP hatin’ on Wall St.? If you buy that, you probably believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
Too bad about Al Jazeera America folding. Hey wealthy Democratic sugar daddies and mommas, how about a “Working America” progressive TV Network?
In her article, “Snyder legacy will be Flint water crisis,” The Freep’s Rochelle Riley goes medieval on Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder, and with good reason.
The ‘low-information voter’ thing may be more of a BFD than we thought. According to “Poll Reveals Voters are Uninformed About Major Issues” by James Agresti at Just Facts, “The poll consisted of 23 questions about education, healthcare, taxes, government spending, global warming, Social Security, energy, hunger, pollution, and the national debt…Overall, the majority of voters gave the correct answer to only six of the 23 questions. This indicates that many voters may be casting ballots based on false views of reality.”
So here come the Republicans with filibuster finagling.
Just when you thought the GOP presidential candidates demolition derby couldn’t get much tackier, here’s Jeb Bush with a “Short People” diss of Rubio.

James Hohman’s Daily 202 column at WaPo, “The Daily 202: Trumpism rejected by Obama in State of the Union and Nikki Haley in GOP response,” spotlights a host of interesting reactions to President Obama’s State of the Union speech. Here we’ll just share some responses to the GOP rebuttal by Governor Nikki Haley:

— In the latest sign that the GOP establishment fears an electoral debacle if Trump is the nominee, the official Republican response from Nikki Haley also made the case – albeit a little more gently – against going down the path Trump offers. “During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices,” the South Carolina governor said. “We must resist that temptation.”
— Haley’s speech has become a Rorschach test on the right…The far right hated it.
Breitbart headlined its story: “Republican Party Uses State Of The Union Response To Attack Trump.”
“Trump should deport Nikki Haley,” Ann Coulter wrote in one of six-anti Haley tweets.
Radio host Laura Ingraham chimed in: “The country is lit up w/ a populist fever & the GOP responds by digging in, criticizing the GOP candidates dominating polls?! NOT SMART.”
Former Ted Cruz aide Amanda Carpenter wrote: “Haley’s speech would’ve been good except for the GOP self-loathing.”
More mainstream elites in the right-leaning media loved Haley’s speech:
Charles Krauthammer, on a Fox News panel, called it the best State of the Union response he can ever recall hearing.
The Washington Examiner’s David Drucker said Haley’s response “will likely elevate her to the top of the list of potential vice presidential contenders.”
National Review editor Rich Lowry said it’s “always a tough assignment”: “Haley was a little shaky at beginning, but moving treatment of Charleston shooting and nice riff on GOP agenda.”

If one of Obama’s goals was to out the Republicans’ internal divisions, the President succeeded admirably.

We have become accustomed to superb speeches by President Obama, and his final State of the Union Speech not only documented his remarkable accomplishments as our national leader, but also charted an inspiring path to the future for the nation and for Democrats. Video and text of his speech follow:

OBAMA: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, my fellow Americans: tonight marks the eighth year that I’ve come here to report on the state of the Union. And for this final one, I’m going to try to make it a little shorter. (APPLAUSE)
I know some of you are antsy to get back to Iowa.
(LAUGHTER)
I’ve been there. I’ll be shaking hands afterwards if you want some tips.
Now, I understand that because it’s an election season, expectations for what we will achieve this year are low. But, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the constructive approach that you and other leaders took at the end of last year to pass a budget and make tax cuts permanent for working families.
So I hope we can work together this year on some bipartisan priorities like criminal justice reform, and helping…
(APPLAUSE)
… and helping people who are battling prescription drug abuse and heroin abuse.
(APPLAUSE)
So who knows. We might surprise the cynics again.
But tonight, I want to go easy on the traditional list of proposals for the year ahead. Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty, from helping students learn to write computer code to personalizing medical treatments for patients.
And I will keep pushing for progress on the work that I believe still needs to be done: fixing a broken immigration system…
(APPLAUSE)
… protecting our kids from gun violence, equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage.
(APPLAUSE)
All these things — all these things still matter to hardworking families. They’re still the right thing to do, and I won’t let up until they get done. But for my final address to this chamber, I don’t want to just talk about next year. I want to focus on the next five years, the next ten years and beyond. I want to focus on our future.
We live in a time of extraordinary change — change that’s reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our planet, our place in the world. It’s change that promises amazing medical breakthroughs, but also economic disruptions that strain working families.
It promises education for girls in the most remote villages, but also connects terrorists, plotting an ocean away. It’s change that can broaden opportunity, or widen inequality. And whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.
America has been through big changes before — wars and depression, the influx of new immigrants, workers fighting for a fair deal, movements to expand civil rights.
Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future, who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, who promised to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears.We did not, in the words of Lincoln, adhere to the dogmas of the quiet past. Instead we thought anew and acted anew.
We made change work for us, always extending America’s promise outward, to the next frontier, to more people. And because we did, because we saw opportunity where others saw peril, we emerged stronger and better than before.
What was true then can be true now. Our unique strengths as a nation — our optimism and work ethic, our spirit of discovery, our diversity, our commitment to rule of law — these things give us everything we need to ensure prosperity and security for generations to come.
In fact, it’s in that spirit that we have made the progress these past seven years. That’s how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations.
(APPLAUSE)
That’s how we reformed our health care system and reinvented our energy sector.
(APPLAUSE)
That’s how — that’s how we — that’s how we delivered more care and benefits to our troops coming home and our veterans.
(APPLAUSE)
That’s how we — that’s — that’s how we secured the freedom in every state to marry the person we love.
(APPLAUSE)
But such progress is not inevitable. It’s the result of choices we make together. And we face such choices right now. Will we respond to the changes of our time with fear, turning inward as a nation, turning against each other as a people? Or will we face the future with confidence in who we are, in what we stand for, and the incredible things we can do together? So let’s talk about the future, and four big questions that I believe we as a country have to answer, regardless of who the next president is or who controls the next Congress.
First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy?
(APPLAUSE)
Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us, especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change?
(APPLAUSE)
Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?
(APPLAUSE)
And finally, how can we make our politics reflect what’s best in us, and not what’s worst?
(APPLAUSE)
Let me start with the economy and a basic fact. The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.
(APPLAUSE)
We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history.More than 14 million new jobs, the strongest two years of job growth since the 1990s, an unemployment rate cut in half. Our auto industry just had its best year ever.
(APPLAUSE)
That’s just part of a manufacturing surge that’s created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years. And we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.
(APPLAUSE)
Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction. Now…
(APPLAUSE)
What is true — and the reason that a lot of Americans feel anxious — is that the economy has been changing in profound ways, changes that started long before the Great Recession hit, changes that have not let up. Today, technology doesn’t just replace jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated. Companies in a global economy can locate anywhere, and they face tougher competition.
As a result, workers have less leverage for a raise. Companies have less loyalty to their communities. And more and more wealth and income is concentrated at the very top.
All these trends have squeezed workers, even when they have jobs, even when the economy is growing. It’s made it harder for a hardworking family to pull itself out of poverty, harder for young people to start their careers, tougher for workers to retire when they want to. And although none of these trends are unique to America, they do offend our uniquely American belief that everybody who works hard should get a fair shot.
For the past seven years, our goal has been a growing economy that also works better for everybody. We’ve made progress, but we need to make more. And despite all the political arguments that we’ve had these past few years, there are actually some areas where Americans broadly agree.
We agree that real opportunity requires every American to get the education and training they need to land a good-paying job. The bipartisan reform of No Child Left Behind was an important start, and together, we’ve increased early childhood education, lifted high school graduation rates to new highs, boosted graduates in fields like engineering.
In the coming years, we should build on that progress, by providing Pre-K for all and offering every student…
(APPLAUSE)
… offering every student the hands-on computer science and math classes that make them job-ready on day one. We should recruit and support more great teachers for our kids.
(APPLAUSE)
And — and we have to make college affordable for every American.
(APPLAUSE)
No hardworking student should be stuck in the red. We’ve already reduced student loan payments by — to 10 percent of a borrower’s income. And that’s good. But now we’ve actually got to cut the cost of college.
(APPLAUSE)
Providing two years of community college at no cost for every responsible student is one of the best ways to do that, and I’m going to keep fighting to get that started this year. It’s the right thing to do.
(APPLAUSE)
But a great education isn’t all we need in this new economy. We also need benefits, and protections that provide a basic measure of security. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that some of the only people in America who are going to work the same job, in the same place with a health, and a retirement package for 30 years are sitting in this chamber. For everyone else, especially folks in their 40’s and 50’s, saving for retirement, or bouncing back from job loss has gotten a lot tougher. Americans understand that at some point in their careers, in this new economy, they may have to retool, they may have to retrain, but they shouldn’t loose what they’ve already worked so hard to build in the process.
That’s why Social Security and Medicare are more important than ever, we shouldn’t weaken them, we should strengthen them.
(APPLAUSE)
And for American short of retirement, basic benefits should be just as mobile as everything else is today.
That, by the way, is what the Affordable Care Act is all about. It’s about filling the gaps in employer based care so that when you lose a job, or you go back to school, or you strike out and launch that new business you’ll still have coverage. Nearly 18 million people have gained coverage so far, and in the process…
(APPLAUSE)
In the process health care inflation has slowed, our businesses have created jobs every single month since it became law.
Now, I’m guessing we won’t agree on health care anytime soon.
(APPLAUSE)
A little applause right there.
(LAUGHTER)
Just a guess.
But there should be other ways parties can work together improve economic security. Say a hardworking American loses his job, we shouldn’t just make sure he can get unemployment insurance; we should make sure that program encourages him to retrain for a business that’s ready to hire him. If that new job doesn’t pay as much, there should be a system of wage insurance in place so that he can still pay his bills. And even if he’s going from job to job, he should still be able to save for retirement and take his savings with him. That’s the way we make the new economy work better for everybody.
I also know Speaker Ryan has talked about his interest in tackling poverty. America is about giving everybody willing to work a chance, a hand up, and I’d welcome a serious discussion about strategies we can all support, like expanding tax cuts for low-income workers who don’t have children.
(APPLAUSE)
But there are some areas where we just have to be honest. It has been more difficult to find agreement over the last seven years, and a lot of them fall under the category of what role the government should play in making sure the system’s not rigged in favor of the wealthiest and biggest corporations.
(APPLAUSE)
And it’s an honest disagreement. And, the American people have a choice to make.
I believe a thriving private sector is the lifeblood of our economy. I think there are outdated regulations that need to be changed, there is red tape that needs to be cut.
(APPLAUSE)
There you go. Yes.
(APPLAUSE)
See?
But after years of record corporate profits, working families won’t get more opportunity or bigger paychecks just by letting big banks or big oil or hedge funds make their own rules at everybody else’s expense.(APPLAUSE)
Middle-class families are not going to feel more secure because we allowed attacks on collective bargaining to go unanswered. Food Stamp recipients did not cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did.
(APPLAUSE)
Immigrants aren’t the principal reason wages haven’t gone up. Those decisions are made in the boardrooms that all too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns. It’s sure not the average family watching tonight that avoids paying taxes through offshore accounts.
(APPLAUSE)
The point is, I believe, that in this new economy, workers and start-ups and small businesses need more of a voice, not less. The rules should work for them. And…
(APPLAUSE)
… I’m not alone in this. This year, I plan to lift up the many businesses who’ve figured out that doing right by their workers or their customers or their communities ends up being good for their shareholders…
(APPLAUSE)
… and I want to spread those best practices across America. That’s part of a brighter future. In fact, it turns out many of our best corporate citizens are also our most creative.
And this brings me to the second big question we as a country have to answer: how do we reignite that spirit of innovation to meet our biggest challenges?
Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn’t deny Sputnik was up there.
We didn’t argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight, and twelve years later, we were walking on the moon.
(APPLAUSE)
Now, that spirit of discovery is in our DNA. America is Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers and George Washington Carver. America is Grace Hopper and Katherine Johnson and Sally Ride. America is every immigrant and entrepreneur from Boston to Austin to Silicon Valley racing to shape a better future.
(APPLAUSE)
That’s who we are, and over the past seven years, we’ve nurtured that spirit. We’ve protected an open Internet, and taken bold new steps to get more students and low-income Americans online.
(APPLAUSE)
We’ve launched next-generation manufacturing hubs and online tools that give an entrepreneur everything he or she needs to start a business in a single day. But we can do so much more.
You know, last year, Vice President Biden said that, with a new moon-shot, America can cure cancer. Last month, he worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources that they’ve had in over a decade.
(APPLAUSE)
Well, so — so tonight, I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done. And because he’s gone to the mat for all of us on so many issues over the past 40 years, I’m putting Joe in charge of mission control.
(APPLAUSE)
For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the families that we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all. What do you think? Let’s make it happen.
(APPLAUSE)
And medical research is critical. We need the same level of commitment when it comes to developing clean energy sources.
(APPLAUSE)
Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. You will be pretty lonely because you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it.
(APPLAUSE)
But even if — even if the planet wasn’t at stake, even if 2014 wasn’t the warmest year on record until 2015 turned out even hotter — why would we want to pass up the chance for American businesses to produce and sell the energy of the future?
(APPLAUSE)
Listen, seven years ago, we made the single biggest investment in clean energy in our history. Here are the results. In fields from Iowa to Texas, wind power is now cheaper than dirtier, conventional power. On rooftops from Arizona to New York, solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills and employs more Americans than coal — in jobs that pay better than average.
We’re taking steps to give homeowners the freedom to generate and store their own energy — something, by the way, that environmentalists and Tea Partiers have teamed up to support. And meanwhile, we’ve cut our imports of foreign oil by nearly 60 percent and cut carbon pollution more than any other country on Earth.
(APPLAUSE)
Gas under $2 a gallon ain’t bad either.
(LAUGHTER)

Read more…

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Today, Monday, January 11, will have a big impact on the American Middle Class and all of those who aspire to it.
Today, the United States Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association.
This case has been brought to the Court by the Koch-sponsored “Center for Individual Rights (CIR) ” — an outfit that made its reputation challenging civil rights laws. The CIR is asking the Court to break with forty years of precedent to impose radical new limits on the rights of workers to negotiate together for higher wages and better working conditions.
Four decades ago, the Supreme Court ruled — unanimously — that since public sector unions must represent all of the employees in a bargaining unit, labor agreements can require all employees that benefit from that representation to pay a fair share contribution to support the costs of negotiating and servicing the labor agreement.
This does not mean that all employees are required to join a union and contribute to its lobbying and political work — or to anything else it might do that is not directly related to negotiating and enforcing the terms of a contract.
And recall that public sector unions represent only groups of workers that have voted to form — or join — a union to represent them.
The Supreme Court found that it would make no sense to allow a situation where employees get the benefit of wage increases, paid holidays, health care benefits, etc. that are negotiated by the union leaders elected by the employees — but they can simply refuse to pay the costs of getting those benefits.
Billionaires like the Koch Brothers think otherwise. They want to make it as hard as possible for all workers to bargain together for higher wages, because they actively support a low-wage economy where CEOs, big corporations and Wall Street Banks can pay employees as little as possible and they can keep as much as possible for themselves.
The Friedrichs case itself deals only with public employees. But the Koch Brothers would like to weaken the rights of all employees to organize unions — and they think that a sharp reversal by the Supreme Court would be a great first step in that direction.
Trouble is, if the Koch Brothers get their way it will deliver a body blow to the chances of ordinary Americans to live secure, middle class lives. Remember, the wages of ordinary people have not increased in the United States since 2000. In fact, virtually all of the considerable economic growth that we’ve seen in America over the last three decades has gone to the wealthiest 1%.
That’s because people like the Koch Brothers have used massive campaign contributions and an army of lobbyists to rig the rules of the American economy.
We desperately need to reform government so it will once again level the economic playing field and build an economy that benefits all ordinary Americans — not just the wealthy, CEOs and big corporations.
If the Kochs get their way at the Supreme Court, it will do just the opposite. It will tilt the game even more in the favor of huge CEO salaries, enormous Wall Street bonuses, and gigantic corporate profits.
And it will make it harder for people like teachers, firefighters, road workers, and paramedics to negotiate for the kind of wages that allow them to live secure, middle class lives.
These are the kinds of people that were the foundation of the American Middle Class. It was their skill that educated and protected Americans for generations. And it was their middle class incomes that provided the buying power that allowed the American economy to explode — to become the economic envy of the rest of the world.
And let’s remember that it was the ability of public sector employees to organize and negotiate together for decent wages and safe working conditions that lifted so many out of poverty and made them part of the Middle Class.
Next week Americans celebrate a national holiday to commemorate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King. Fifty-one years ago, Dr. King was shot in Memphis where he had gone to support a strike by mainly black sanitation workers who were organizing to demand the ability to negotiate together for better wages and safer working conditions
The event that touched off that strike was the death of two sanitation workers who were crushed by an unsafe, malfunctioning garbage truck compactor. It had been cheaper to pay the occasional death benefit to a low income, African American sanitation worker’s family, than to invest in safety equipment on those garbage trucks.
The ability of those workers to organize together to negotiate — to form a union — not only brought them higher incomes and safer working conditions. It gave them dignity. In fact, the slogan of that organizing campaign — and the civil rights marches that supported it was: “I am a Man.”
Dr. King always believed that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Organizing campaigns like the Memphis sanitation workers strike bent that arc. So did the Supreme Court case that legitimated the rights of public employees to organize and provided them the ability to succeed.
It’s not surprising that an organization like the CIR — that has tried to weaken civil rights laws for decades — wants to bend that arc back toward injustice — to gut the ability of working people like those sanitation workers to organize to secure a decent middle class income and the dignity that accompanies it.
When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the rights of people like those sanitation workers 40 years ago, it did so unanimously. Every member of the Court — the most conservative Justices and the most progressive Justices — all of them certified the notion that when a majority of workers vote to form or affiliate with a union, then everyone who benefits should be asked to pay their fair share of the costs associated with increasing their pay or making them safer on the job.
Every one of them agreed with the sentiments of teachers like Reagan Duncan, a first grade teacher in Vista, California, who was quoted last week in The New York Times:

It’s not right for some people to get union benefits for free while others have to pay. If I went to a grocery store, I wouldn’t walk out with my groceries and not pay while the guy behind me had to pay for my groceries and his groceries. She added: “It’s corporate special interest that are backing this…”

Precisely.
And frankly. it would be shocking if the Supreme Court of the United States were to over turn a 40-year-old unanimous precedent and make it even harder for ordinary people to restore the American Middle Class.

Karl de Vries reports at CNN Politics that former NY Mayor “Bloomberg commissioned poll to test 2016 waters, source says” — as a third party candidate.
In “The Democratic Party in the South Has Changed for Good: The party has been decimated in the South in the Obama era. But it is rebuilding itself in his image” in The New Republic, Michael A. Cooper, Jr. quotes Dr. Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at North Carolina’s Catawba College: “Southern Sun Belt states may ultimately become more important for Democratic campaigns than the aging Rust Belt. North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida already have a higher percentage of liberals than Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, New Hampshire, or Ohio. And “if Democrats win Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina, they deny Republicans the White House,” says Bitzer, all else staying equal.”
At Ring of Fire, Farron Cousins warns that “Low Voter Turnout Will Hand 2016 Election To The GOP.”
And Kira Lerner flags “Voter Suppression Battles To Watch In 2016” at ThinkProgress.
In similar vein, Salon.com’s Paul Rosenberg has “This is how they’ll gut American democracy: Scott Walker and the Kochs want to f**k America as bad as they did Wisconsin — Dark money, gerrymandering, super-majorities, undemocratic actions that leave the plutocrats in charge. It’s coming.”
And if all of that wasn’t enough to worry about, Herbert Gans details “The Republican Establishment’s Overthrow Project” at HuffPo.
“YouGov’s latest research shows that Americans tend to describe themselves as working class (46%) rather than middle class (41%). Among Americans who live in households with incomes under $50,000 a year, 62% call themselves working class and only 25% think of themselves as part of the middle class. Among households who earn $50,000 to $100,000 a year 34% still call themselves working class and 60% middle class. People earning over $100,000 a year are the most likely to call themselves middle class, with 75% saying that they are middle class and only 11% describing themselves as upper class,” notes Peter Moore at yougov.com.
At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall reports that “a White Nationalist Super PAC (yes, that’s now a thing) is now blanketing Iowa with Robocalls on behalf of Donald Trump.”
“Has Trump Made Political Ads Obsolete?,” asks Leslie Savan at The Nation. An interesting question, well-underscored in the observation in the subtitle: “His first TV spot was standard racist fear-mongering, as cheesy as a Trump hotel lobby. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush has spent over $100 million on ads, only to reach a humiliating 3.3-percent in the polls.” But it may be a long time before either party produces another candidate, who manipulates the media as consistently as does Trump. Savan asks and answers another interesting question in the article “So, again, why is Trump bothering to spend $2 million a week on TV spots? Howard Fineman has speculated that Trump is “spreading” around money to keep the local TV stations happy–it’s walking-around money for small-state media owners.”