Jeffrey M. Jones writes that “Disapproval of Congress Linked to Higher Voter Turnout,” and explains at Gallup Politics:

Congressional job approval, currently 13%, is on pace to be the lowest it has been in a midterm election year. Moreover, a near-record-low 19% of registered voters say most members of Congress deserve re-election. This latter measure shows a similarly strong relationship to voter turnout as does job approval.
Voter turnout in midterm elections has ranged narrowly between 38.1% and 41.1% since 1994, considerably lower than the 51.7% to 61.6% range for the last five presidential elections. But there has been a clear pattern of turnout being on the higher end of the midterm year range when Americans were less approving of Congress. The correlation between turnout and congressional approval since 1994 is -.83, indicating a strong relationship.
The disapproval-turnout link is a fairly recent phenomenon. From 1974 — the first year Gallup measured congressional job approval — until 1990, there was only a weak relationship between turnout and approval, with turnout higher when approval was higher, the opposite of the current pattern. But that weak relationship was driven mostly by the 1974 midterm elections, when turnout was among the higher ones for midterms and Congress was relatively popular after the Watergate hearings that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation that summer.

Jones reviews the history of the relationship between turnout and congressional approval, post-Watergate and adds, “As a result, it is unclear how the current frustration with Congress will manifest itself in terms of party control of the two houses of Congress.”
If recent patterns prevail, the expectation is that Republicans will reap the benefit, with their traditional midterm turnout edge, although most recent polls show that voters are more displeased with congressional Republicans than with Democrats. If the Dems’ Bannock Street Project lives up to some of the more optimistic reporting, they will likely do better than expected in the Senate and hold their majority. The DCCC’s recent 13-seat expansion of its “Red to Blue” campaign may also get better results than expected with a turnout surge.
As always the “safe” bet is with recent patterns. But if Bannock Street and Red to Blue do a good job, all bets are off.

Molly Parker’s “Democrats roll out new strategy to motivate folks to the polls” at the Southern Illinoisian” describes the challenge Dems face in Illinois — and a template Dems can use in other states: “…5.1 million Illinoisans voted in the last presidential election, compared to 3.6 million that voted in the last midterm election. That means some 1.5 million people sit out midterm elections. Of those 1.5 million, roughly 1.2 million of those non-voters are Democrats…so-called “drop-off voters” have been identified in every county and every precinct in the state. Party leaders are going door-to-door and asking these folks to sign a card pledging to vote in November. The cards will be mailed back to them before the election as a reminder of their pledge, in addition to three separate mailers they will receive…” She quotes Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin: “”If we bring theses people out, a large portion of these people out, we’re going to win elections.”
At Daily Kos Jeff Singer’s “Want to make sure every vote counts? Get involved in these key races for secretary of state” spotlights often-overlooked, but critically-important election contests, which deserve more attention from Democratic political operatives.
At the Atlantic Molly Ball’s “Inside the Democrats’ Plan to Save Arkansas–and the Senate” notes “To beat the odds, across the country Democrats have mounted an ambitious political organizing effort–the first attempt to replicate the Obama campaign’s signature marriage of sophisticated technology and intensive on-the-ground engagement on a national scale without Obama on the ballot. The effort is particularly noticeable in states like Arkansas and Alaska, which have small electorates and which haven’t been presidential battleground states for a decade or more. (In 2004, John Kerry initially tried to compete in Arkansas, but pulled out of the state three weeks before the election and lost it by 10 points.) In Arkansas, campaigns traditionally begin after Labor Day; this year, the airwaves have already been blanketed with campaign ads, from both the candidates and deep-pocketed outside groups, for months…This year marks Democrats’ attempt to roll out the program on a national scale. Dubbed the Bannock Street Project, after the Bennet campaign’s Denver headquarters, it will, by the time the election is over, comprise a 4,000-employee, $60 million effort in 10 states. The voter-contact metrics recorded in each state are uploaded in real time to the Washington headquarters of the senatorial committee. While such efforts are commonly described as turnout operations, Matt Canter, the committee’s deputy executive director, says there’s more to it than that. “This is about much more than [get-out-the-vote],” he tells me. “This is not just identifying supporters and turning them out. This is actually building sustained voter contact programs through multiple face-to-face conversations that can persuade voters to change their minds and vote Democrat.”..Democrats believe they have a technological edge in their ability to use data to model and target voter preferences. Republicans, who have invested heavily in technology since 2012, are working to catch up. But on a basic level, turning out voters relies on the simple arithmetic of the application of resources–bodies on the ground, close to their communities, tirelessly recruiting volunteers who will work to activate their neighbors and family and friends…”
Re the recent UNH/WMUR poll showing Scott Brown down just two points from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Blumenthal, Ariel Edwards-Levy and Rachel Lienesch say “Stop Freaking Out Over The Results Of One Poll.”
At Forbes, pollster John Zogby concludes from a new Zogby Analytics poll that “In 2010, it was older, whiter, and more conservative voters who turned out, while many of the Democrats’ base voters stayed home. Thus far in 2014, it looks like Democrats may show up at the polls and independents may just stay home because they don’t like either party.”
Susan Davis illuminates why “Alaska becomes crucial frontier for Senate Democrats” at USA Today.
It appears that President Obama’s “economic patriotism” meme may have sturdy legs. Americans are at long last ready to take a stand against corporate ex-pats exploiting U.S. taxpayers, then skipping out on the bill. Anne Tucker’s “Curbing Corporate Inversions Through Public Pressure for Economic Patriotism” includes this observation: “Feared negative public reaction tipped the scales in favor of remaining a U.S. company for Walgreens, with market pressure nearly causing the opposite result. Public pressure for economic patriotism and corporate stewardship must be a part of any permanent solution. It will mitigate market-based profit maximization pressures. Brand identity and consumer loyalty are not subject to the kind of loopholes that riddle the tax code or the partisan gridlock in Washington, D.C.” It’s a great slogan for Democratic candidates looking for creative ways to call out their Republican opponents’ refusal to protect American jobs. UPDATE: This report suggests Burger King may also need to be challenged on its “economic patriotism.”
The National Journal’s Scott Bland and Adam Woolner report on the larger contributions to pro-Democratic Super-PACs to help Dems hold their senate majority.
The “voting with your wallet” app gets a lot of diss, but I’m thinking Buypartisan is a good tool for identifying companies which fund Republicans. Sure it’s maybe too much of a hassle to use for groceries and everyday purchases. But for bigger ticket items like stocks, phones, cell services services and cameras etc., why not? If Google and Facebook are supporting ALEC, or Verizon, ATT and T-Mobile support Ted Cruz, why should Dems give them any play?

“MIcrosoft Ditches ALEC In Latest Blow To Conservative Group,” reports Dylan Scott at Talking Points Memo Live Wire. Scott adds: “Microsoft joins Coca-Cola, General Motors, Bank of America, and Proctor & Gamble as some of the major corporations that have severed their relationship with ALEC, according to CNET. Others — like Google, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, and Yelp — remain involved with the group.”
Via Plum Liner Greg Sargent’s “From a vulnerable red state Democrat, a strong pro-Obamacare ad“:

Nate Cohn explores several reasons why “Alaska Might Be More Friendly to Democrats Than It Appears” at The Upshot.
Also at The Upshot, however, Josh Katz argues that “Georgia Is the Reason the G.O.P. Is Edging Up in the Overall Senate Race.”
New Suffolk University/USA Today poll has Democratic U.S. Sen. Hagan up 2 percent with LVs in NC, a stat tie.
The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin is not so dismissive as others of the likelihood that Texas Governor Rick Perry may lose a ruling on the two-count indictment (“abuse of official capacity” and “coercion of a public servant”) that has been filed against him, as Toobin explains in his article “Why Rick Perry May Be Out of Luck.”
At Fox News Latino Elizabeth Llorente explains why “Despite Expected Low Turnout, Latino Voters Could Prove Crucial In Some Midterm Races.” She quotes Fernand Amandi, a managing partner at polling company Bendixen & Amandi International: “The question for the midterm elections is, given the extra emphasis on immigration, and the economy and the impact of the healthcare program,…will that cause a Hispanic spike in voting, like we saw in 2006, or will Hispanics revert to the historical pattern of less than a regular turnout?”
A paragraph from Al Hunt’s latest Bloomberg View column suggests an important messaging point that might bear some repetition: “The U.S. economy has turned around with the unemployment rate dropping from as high as 10 percent in the first year of the Barack Obama presidency to a little over 6 percent now. That hasn’t registered with many voters. In the most recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, the public was dissatisfied with the economy by an almost two to one ratio. Almost half of Americans thought the U.S. still was in a recession; the deep downturn caused by the financial crisis actually ended five years ago.”
Maybe not. But the gender gap suggests she will more likely vote Democratic.

Re the debate about “tax inversion,” loopholes allowing corporations to relocate their HQs overseas to avoid taxes, Justin Sink notes in his post “White House betting ’14 midterm elections on economic patriotism” at The Hill: “A poll commissioned by the Americans for Tax Fairness found that half of all voters were aware of the issue, and that large majorities — including 86 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of independents and 69 percent of Republicans — disapprove of it…”Tax fairness stuff polls really well across the board,” said ATF executive director Frank Clemente…He said voters are “very sensitive to offshoring of profits and offshoring of jobs, and this inversion stuff feeds very much into that.”..His polling leaves him “extremely” confident it will resonate with independent voters.”
Rand Paul tries to sell his “big government is to blame” snake oil to exploit the tragic slaying of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO for political gain. If you were thinking that budget cuts resulting in poorly-trained police had something to do with it, just never mind.
Other Republicans are treading gingerly around the Ferguson tragedy, but that probably won’t last, since they rarely miss an opportunity to gin up racial divisions. Ferguson may not be front-page news by November, but the development Republicans would fear most would be an energized movement to register African American voters emerging from it and spreading nation-wide. As Tommie Dale, a former resident of Ferguson who has set up a voter registration drive in the community, explains “It’s the only way we can make a change,” she said standing in front of a boarded-up Chinese restaurant, damaged during a night of violent unrest. “People don’t understand. Looting and rioting aren’t going to get it.”

Most political observers seem to have their favorite bellwether state, and NYT columnist Frank Bruni makes a good case for monitoring CO political trends. As Bruni describes the political demography: “In many ways, Colorado is the new Ohio, a political bellwether. The percentage of its voters who chose Barack Obama in each of the last two presidential elections almost precisely matched the percentage of voters who did so nationwide. And nearly all the currents that buffet national politics swirl around the Rockies…bursting with agriculture and booming with high tech, outdoorsy and urbane, a stronghold of the religious right (Colorado Springs) and a liberal utopia (Boulder)…In other ways, “Colorado is the new California,” in Hickenlooper’s words. It floats trial balloons — marijuana being one example, education reforms being another — while other states watch to see which take flight and which wheeze and crumple to earth.”
Moshe Z. Marvit of In These Times reports on a new labor organizing technique — creating “micro-units” of unions, which represent only workers who join the union. Marvit explains, “…A micro-unit is a traditional, NLRB-certified union, containing the majority of the workers in the unit and serving as the exclusive bargaining representative for the entire unit–it just represents a specific department or job classification…For labor, the potential advantage of micro-units is that they tend to draw from those departments that have higher levels of worker support, as opposed to wall-to-wall units, which may include departments where support is lower. Therefore, they’re harder to crush during the organizing phase.”
Meanwhile George’s Zornick’s post at The Nation, “A Bill to Get the Labor Movement Back on Offense” provides a backgrounder on a reform that would get the right to organize into labor unions included in both the Civil Rights Act and the National Labor Relations Act. The legislation, introduced by Reps. John Lewis and Keith Ellison, would “give workers a broader range of legal options if they feel discriminated against for trying to form a union. Currently, their only redress is through a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board–an important process, but one that workers and labor analysts frequently criticize as both too slow and often too lenient on offending employers.” This one may require a Democratic landslide to enact, but a dialogue about the concept is overdue.
Jack Healey reports at The Times that Montana Dems are running a 34-year old one-term state legislator/math teacher to replace Sen. John Walsh, who quit his candidacy after a plagiarism scandal. Amanda Curtis has no money and only three months to make her case to hold the U.S. Senate seat for Dems, who have held the seat for a century. Still, she has a populist message, a working-class background and an opponent who has lost his only two previous statewide campaigns.
Great headline, cute picture.

Campaign for America’s Future’s Dave Johnson argues “Dems Should Campaign On Trade And Jobs, Not On Being Like Republicans.”
Put Egberto Willies’s Daily Kos post, “Obama slams reporter’s right-wing adopted talking point as bogus” on your must-read list for the day. Willies does an excellent job of showing how President Obama shreds both the neo-con critique of his Iraq policy and shallow MSM reporting with surgical precision.
Meanwhile at Post Politics, Sean Sullivan reports that “Fully 65 percent of Americans say they approve” of the Iraq airstrikes ordered by President Obama. Only 23 percent disapprove.
“You can argue that the number of bills passed isn’t an ideal measure of how successful a Congress is. What you cannot argue is that there aren’t oodles of unresolved issues that people of all political stripes want to see addressed — and that could benefit from some sort of congressional action…Pennsylvania Avenue isn’t a one-way street, and the GOP controls the House…And just like it means Obama didn’t get more gun control, it also means Republicans haven’t gotten more border security.” – from Aaron Blake at the Fix.
Some politicians run against Washington. But, as Matea Gold reports, in NC Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan is doing pretty good running against Raleigh.
And The Nation’s John Nichols explains why Democratic candidate for Governor Mary Burke has a solid chance to defeat Scott Walker in Wisconsin.
Some states actually make it, gasp, easier to vote.
Shane Goldmacher reports at the National Journal that NRCC decepticons have launched two dozen faux news sites to reach low-information voters.
In shameless name-dropping, Hollywood celebs who have given the max ($5,200) to Alison Lundergan Grimes’s campaign to unseat Mitch McConnell include (according to Judy Kurtz at the Hill): Ben Affleck; Jack Black; James Cameron; Nicolas Cage; Danny DeVito; Cameron Diaz; Leonardo DiCaprio; Jennifer Garner; Steven Spielberg; Tom Hanks; Jerry Seinfeld; Mike Myers; Jon Hamm; producer J.J. Abrams; DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg; Woody Allen; Ted Danson; America Ferrera; Leonard Nimoy; Barbara Streisand; Aaron Sorkin; Ben Stiller; and Chris Rock. It appears that poor Mitch will have to make do with warbucks from his corporate masters.

Alex Isenstadt’s Politico post “Running as a Dem, Sounding Like a Republican” suggests a “blue dog rising” trend aborning among Dems running for House seats in 2014, incumbents and challengers alike. Isenstadt argues that Dems are embracing Republican memes not only in red states, but also “in purple or even blue territory.”
Isenstadt does provide some examples:

Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff, who’s running in a district that Obama won in 2012 and 2008, has started airing a commercial that strikes a tea party theme. It highlights his record as speaker of the state House of Representatives when, he says, he helped balance the state’s budget…”It’s really pretty simple. You don’t buy things you can’t pay for,” Romanoff states.
As Romanoff narrates, a graph of the nation’s soaring debt pops up on the screen. The image looks strikingly similar to one that appears in a Web video Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan released in 2011 to sell his controversial budget plan, though a Romanoff spokeswoman insisted that the campaign hadn’t borrowed from the former GOP vice presidential contender.
New Hampshire Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, whose district broke for Obama by a yawning 11-percentage-point margin in 2012, is running an ad that touts her support for small-business tax cuts while showing her touring a local microbrewery. Separately, former Iowa state Sen. Staci Appel, in a district Obama won by 4 percentage points two years ago, underscores her record of fighting overspending in state government, a populist theme often heard from tea party-aligned conservatives.
Democratic Rep. Ron Barber, in a swing southern Arizona district that is slightly more conservative than the others, uses his first TV spot to highlight his support for increasing border security funds. The ad — complete with the image of a border patrol car — doesn’t mention elements of immigration reform that are typically more popular among Democratic voters.
Like the commercials aired by Romanoff, Kuster and Appel, Barber’s doesn’t mention his Democratic Party affiliation.
Democrats who have the especially high hurdle of competing in deep-red districts are striking multiple conservative themes. Democrat Patrick Henry Hays, the North Little Rock mayor who’s running in an Arkansas district that Mitt Romney won in 2012, uses his first TV ad to discuss the need for a balanced budget, limited government regulations and less wasteful spending. Like Romanoff, Hays includes a graphic to depict the national debt…”I approve this message because it’s simple,” Hays says. “You cut waste, you pay your bills, and you do everything in your power to create jobs. That’s what we need in Congress.”

Those are five interesting examples of Dems putting on a little blue dog lipstick to steal a quick kiss from high turnout seniors and other demographic groups who tend to show up at midterm polling sites. But it’s a bit of a stretch to imply that 5 races out of 435 constitute a big trend. Nor do Republicans have a monopoly on budgetary prudence. There have always been Democrats who are more concerned about moderation in spending than many of their party fellows, and there always will be. That’s life in the big tent.
Isenstadt quotes a grumbling Democratic strategist, who is concerned about Dems losing their populist edge and his Republican counterpart, who says it just goes to show how lame are Dems who copy Republicans. Both are stock characters in this biennial playlet.
What we are not seeing much of among such Democrats is the over-the-top government, immigrant, union or gay-bashing that prevails among many tea party types and, increasingly, Republicans in general. There’s none of the pod-people finger-pointing contagion that afflicts today’s GOP.
Maybe the better story is that so few Republicans are embracing moderate messages in their campaigns. Isenstadt offers only one example.
It’s pretty much biz as usual for Democratic mid term candidates. As congressional races begin to narrow, there will be some movement toward moderation in messaging, perhaps more so on the Democratic side. But anyone looking for a sea change in Democratic policy will likely be disappointed.

Newsmax, frequently a source for Republican spin, has an interesting post, “Democrats Cashing In on Email Strategy” by Drew Mackenzie. Among the share-worthy nuggets is this one from Brandon English, hailed as the Dems’ top email fund-raising wizard: “English estimates that one-third of the people who read the DCCC emails do so on a mobile phone, so he makes certain that no messages are longer than 70 words before the first donation link…We know we have to get to the point quick,” he said. “I’m very incredibly nit-picky about every single word in our emails. Any extra words, extra sentences, unnecessary anything can just kill an email.”
There’s “No dominant issue leading into midterm elections,” say Washington Post opinion poll analysts.
NYT’s Adam Nagourney reports that “Midterms Give Parties Chance for Sweeping Control of States,” reminding Dems that a lot more is at stake in November than just control of the U.S. Senate. “Republicans now control 59 of the 99 partisan legislative chambers, and have complete political control — both legislative houses and the governor’s mansion — in 23 states, while Democrats control 13. The total number of states ruled by a single political party, 36, is the highest in six decades…Today, Republicans, even after losing some chambers in 2012, control about 55 percent of all state legislative seats.”
Amid pessimistic reports about Democratic prospects for actually picking up seats in the U.S. House in the midterms, Susan Davis notes that Charlie Cook sees only 16 or so seats as genuinely competitive, with 13 of them being defended by Democrats. However, writes Davis, “Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., who runs the House Democrats’ campaign operation, maintains that the election climate is still unfolding. He believes Democrats could easily benefit from mounting voter frustration at the House GOP’s ongoing struggles with governing. “You’re going into a midterm election with voter revulsion aimed at Republicans,” he says.”
At the Wall St. Journal Beth Reinhard’s “GOP Ads Go On Attack Over Border: TV Spots Slam Democratic Senate Candidates on Immigration Policy” exposes the Republicans’ media strategy to whip up nativist frenzy for the midterms.
Michael Barbaro writes at the New York Times that Republicans are exploring all kinds of gimmicks in a dubious attempt to distract Latino voters from their party’s embarrassing track record on immigration and other issues.
The Plain Dealer’s Thomas Suddes’s “Ohio’s out-of-power Democrats need to emulate ’80s GOP in the grass-roots grunt work that can turn the political tide” offers some advice for Ohio Dems that might work in lots of places: “…Three years and a cloud of dust…That is persistence, not spectacle…Rank-and-file grunt work – and that’s what electing state legislators is – seems to offer too little glamor (compared to, say, a Hillary Clinton appearance) to draw workers. But…running opponents even in politically hopeless General Assembly districts at least had a chance of distracting the other party’s campaign managers.” Suddes has other insights meriting consideration by Dems in other states.
Despite all of the pundit doom-saying for Democratic midterm prospects, Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik observes “…It’s possible — though perhaps not plausible — for Republicans to net the six seats they need to flip the Senate simply by winning six Democratic-held Senate seats in six states where President Obama won less than 42% of the vote.” As for the House of Reps, Kondik says “for now we’re sticking with a GOP gain of five to eight…Unlike this year’s Senate map, the competitive races this year are not being held on obviously Republican turf.”
Here’s some evidence that we may have reached a turning point at which Obamacare is becoming more of an asset in wooing voters. As Greg Sargent reports, “The other day, Gallup released a major new survey finding that the steepest drops in uninsured rates had occurred in two states that could decide control of the Senate — Arkansas and Kentucky. The sharpest drop in the nation was in Arkansas, where the uninsured rate was practically cut in half…Dem Senator Mark Pryor is greeting this development as good news, and — get this — is even noting that he voted for the policy that has helped make this happen.”

At The New Republic Andrew Levison explains why “Democrats Have a White Working Class Problem–and Not Just in the South.” Among Levison’s insights: “Every political campaign manager knows that in the practical world of political campaigns, white working class people in places like Wichita, Yuma, or Sioux City are not strikingly more “pro-Democratic” than white working class people in Baton Rouge, Augusta, or Memphis…If the notion that “the problem is just the South” fails to properly account for the real regional political divisions in America, however, it also fails to recognize the critical importance of another aspect of the political divisions within the white working class: the substantial difference between the more urban and less urban members of the group, regardless of the region of the country.”
The Guardian’s Dan Roberts reports that “Obama doubles down on threat to act against ‘tax inversions’ by US firms” — a good example of the kind of bold executive action that scares Republicans but enhances Democratic cred as the party of working people.
NYT columnist Charles M. Blow chronicles the GOP’s rancid history of race-baiting, of which Republican Rep. Mo Brook’s “war on whites” comment is merely the latest installment.
From Janet Hook’s “5 Takeaways from the August WSJ/NBC Poll“: “Republicans have a much bigger image problem than the president and his party, as the poll found that only 19% held positive views of congressional Republicans, while 54% held negative views. Frustration about the political system and ongoing economic problems is directed at both parties: Asked what message they wanted to send with their vote in November’s midterm elections a plurality of 33% said they wanted incumbents of both parties to lose.”
But new Associated Press-GfK poll gives GOP slight edge in ‘faith/trust,’ within MOE.
At Salon.com Jim Newell and Joan Walsh explain why Sen. Rand Paul is likely to tank in the glare of a presidential race.
Democratic political ad-makers have an angle to mine at At ThinkProgress.org, where Tara Culp-Pressler reveals that “The States With The Highest Uninsurance Rates Are All Led By Republicans.”
RMuse argues “The Truth Is That It’s Republicans Who Have Been Waging War On Poor Whites” at PolitcusUSA.
Chartheads may get a kick out of Phillip Bumps post, “Who wants to impeach President Obama? A visual scorecard” at The Fix, which provides a quick visual guide to the who’s who of GOP impeachment denialists, vacilators and advocates.

From John Harwood’s New York Times article, “Democrats Seize on Social Issues as Attitudes Shift“: “Now the values wedge cuts for Democrats….Democrats profit politically — among young voters, college graduates, single women, blacks and Latinos — from the sense that they welcome these cultural shifts while Republicans resist them…”That’s why people are voting for us these days — not for our economic prowess,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. “They all reflect an underlying attitude. It’s openness, it’s tolerance, it’s respect for others and who they are.”
At The L.A. Times Michael A. Memoli and Lisa Ascara explain why “Obamacare loses some of its campaign punch for Republicans.”
CNN’s Dan Merica reports: “For the first time, a majority of Americans said they disapproved of their representative and thought they were part of the problem in Washington, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll out Tuesday. The poll found that 51% of Americans disapprove of the way their own member of Congress is handling his or her job, while 41% approve.” It’s a significant change, as Merica notes: “For decades, most Americans approved of the way their member of Congress was handling his or her job, but disapproved of the legislative body as a whole.”
For a map updating Crystal Ball’s assessment of the 2014 governorship races, click here. Accompanying article here.
At Gannett’s Baxter Bulletin Dick Polman reports “We’re on track for record-low midterm turnout this November, at least based on the voting evidence collected thus far. According to a new report by the non-partisan Center for the Study of the American Electorate, turnout in the first 25 statewide primaries was so anemic — down 18 percent from the early primaries in 2010 — that we’re “likely to witness the lowest midterm primary turnout in history…Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former Clinton White House adviser, tells NPR, “Gridlock is at an all-time high. The productivity in Congress is at an all-time low, and many Americans are asking themselves, ‘How much difference does it make who the people are, and what the party balance is, if nothing seems to change, election after election?'”
If Democrats needed another reason to get their midterm elections act together, Charlie Cook has it in his Government Executive post on “The Lessons of the 2010 Midterm Elections“: “While this year’s midterms won’t change the course set in 2010, what happens in the 2018 and 2020 gubernatorial and state legislative elections will be huge in establishing who controls redistricting in 2021, and which governors can veto or influence where the lines are drawn. For Democrats, those elections will determine whether they are going to be shut out of controlling the House for a second straight decade, or whether there will be a fairer fight for dominance of the lower chamber.”
Re Eric McWhinnie’s “10 States Most Dependent on the Federal Government” at the Wall St. Cheat Sheet, eight of the moochers delivered electoral votes for Romney and eight have government-bashing Republican governors.
Economist Jared Bernstein writes at The Upshot about findings from “the provocative new paper by the economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson that rigorously examines how the economy has performed under presidents since the 1940s.”: “The American economy has grown faster — and scored higher on many other macroeconomic metrics — when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican…The two looked at key macroeconomic variables averaged over 64 years (16 four-year terms), from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. Mr. Blinder and Mr. Watson focus mostly on the 1.8 percent annual difference in real G.D.P. growth. That is, over the full study, real G.D.P. growth averaged 3.33 percent per year. But under Democratic presidents the economy grew 4.35 percent and under Republicans 2.54 percent…Under Democratic presidents, the economy also spent fewer quarters in recession; added more jobs and more hours worked; and posted larger declines in unemployment and higher corporate profits than under their Republican counterparts. Stock market returns were a lot higher under Democrats as well, but because equity markets are so volatile, that difference is not statistically significant. (By the way, since March 2009, the S.&P. stock index is up 160 percent).”
Surely the good people of northern Alabama deserve better than this.

For those who are fed up with despairing about the Republicans’ obstructionist stranglehold on congress, I suggest reading Taylor Malmsheimer’s “The Future of Minimum Wage Will Be Decided in Cities” at The New Republic. It’s a little tonic for progressives who may be wallowing in mid-summer political doldrums. Have a swig:

In June, the City Council of Seattle made headlines when it voted unanimously to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour, the highest in the country. While Seattle wasn’t the first city to take minimum wage legislation into it’s own hands, it seems to be at the forefront of a national trend toward significant minimum wage hikes at the local level. In just over a year, at least six other cities and counties have mandated minimum wages as high as $15, and several more have legislation in the works.
In 2003, Santa Fe and San Francisco became the first cities to institute their own minimum wages, distinct from their states–and it wasn’t without opposition. Each city faced significant resistance from the business community: In San Francisco, organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and the Association of Realtors campaigned against the ballot proposition, arguing that it would lead to worker layoffs. In Santa Fe, the local chamber of commerce joined with New Mexicans for Free Enterprise and four other plaintiffs to sue the city, arguing that the municipality did not have the power to enact a minimum wage higher than the state’s. Despite the opposition, the San Francisco raise passed with 60 percent of a ballot vote, and the New Mexico Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Santa Fe’s legislation. But over the next eight years, only three other localities raised their minimum wage above the state level.

Malmsheimer cites three reasons why the cities are driving the trend: It’s easier to pass legislation at the city level; Concerted targeting by advocacy groups, and; Cities have higher costs of living. It’s not a cakewalk, and big biz is fighting tenaciously against the trend. But Malmsheimer points out that there is “no evidence of appreciable job losses or job relocation from urban-focused minimum wages.”
Might this may be the dawn of a new era of cities filling the void left by Republican obstructionists in Washington? The minimum wage increases in cities are significant. But there may be a lot more to look forward to in other urban reforms that can’t get traction in congress, such as environmental regulations, housing and education, as well as needed economic incentives and disincentives.
Democrats need to keep up the good fight to win elections to secure needed national reforms. But let’s also keep an eye on the cities and get more involved in local reform movements. There is something to be said for keeping faith that workable reforms are contagious.