washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

J.P. Green

How Dems Can Help Prevent the Next Labor Defeat

In addition to Ed Kilgore’s excellent post on the “Chattanooga Labor Fiasco” below, you may want to take a gander at Chris Kromm’s Facing South post “3 lessons from the VW union defeat in Tennessee,” which notes, “If 44 workers at Volkwagen’s factory in Chattanooga, Tenn. — less than 3 percent of the plant’s 1,560 hourly employees — had voted “yes” instead of “no” in last week’s closely-followed union election, the United Auto Workers and labor would be celebrating a “historic” victory in the South.”
Kromm continues, noting “three takeaways” from the failed UAW campaign, abbreviated here:

1) Where Was the “Neutrality?”…Make no mistake, the UAW was operating in a hostile, anti-union climate…In the weeks leading up to the vote, Republican Tennessee lawmakers unleashed a steady stream of threats about the supposed economic consequences of voting in a union, variously claiming that, if the UAW were successful, VW would nix future plans to produce a mid-size SUV in Tennessee and that state lawmakers would halt business subsidies to VW. Nationally, an offshoot of GOP activist Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform sponsored billboards around Chattanooga warning that the UAW spends millions to elect liberal politicians including “BARACK OBAMA” and that “UAW Wants Your Guns.”…
2. Union Organizing Takes Time:…Interestingly, Tennessee is where labor made one of its first attempts to organize international auto makers, at the Nissan Motors plant in Smyrna. As The Christian Science Monitor reported, the Tennessee Nissan workers “voted by a 2-to-1 margin not to accept UAW representation,” 1,622 to 711…Compared to the Nissan campaign, the UAW did much better in Chattanooga last week, winning more than 47 percent of the vote in their first effort since VW opened the plant in 2011. While certainly a setback, the results suggest the UAW and other unions have a base of support they can build on — if they dig in for the long haul.
3) The Importance of Community and Education:..Given the deep resistance to unions among many Southern leaders, a key ingredient to most successful organizing campaigns in the region has been mobilizing community support. Building alliances with faith, civic and other leaders, creating a sense of movement that goes beyond the workplace, has been critical to winning many union drives in the South…One criticism leveled at the UAW is that organizers didn’t fully engage its allies in Tennessee. As Elk reports, some in Chattanooga felt the UAW was “lukewarm” in its relations with the broader community: “Community activists said they had a hard time finding ways to coordinate solidarity efforts with the UAW, whose campaign they saw as insular rather than community-based.”

And, as Kilgore notes “…Now the very existence of private-sector unions, a familiar part of the American landscape for most of the last century, is under attack from Republican politicians.” This gets at the crux of the problem. Democrats have got to get a lot more vocal on this topic. Republicans are able to do their worst because they are operating in a vacuum created by too much silence on the part of Democratic leaders.
It’s good that President Obama and a few other Dems have spoken out on the topic. And there certainly should be an investigation into violation of labor law in the VW vote. Our fortunes are inextricably tied to the future of the Labor movement. All of that said, it does appear that too many Democratic leaders have been a little mousey on the topic. It’s time for the lions to roar.


Political Strategy Notes

In her NYT article “On Health Act, Democrats Run to Mend What G.O.P. Aims to End,” Ashley Parker notes, “…Party leaders have decided on an aggressive new strategy to address the widespread unease with the health care law, urging Democratic candidates to talk openly about the law’s problems while also offering their own prescriptions to fix them…The shift represents an abrupt change from 2010, when House Democrats tried to ignore the law entirely and “got their clocks cleaned,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, referring to the more than 60 seats that Republicans picked up to regain control of the House…”Part of what we learned in 2010 is that this is a real issue of concern to voters and you can’t dodge it, you have to take it on, and I think Democrats are much more ready and willing to do that in 2014,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who has done surveys for Democrats on the law. “We certainly have enough evidence now that this is not a fight you can win if you are in a defensive crouch.”
At The Fix, Sean Sullivan reviews — and shows — “…the four distinct types of Obamacare ads flooding the airwaves.”
The New Republic’s “Want to Realize the Civil Rights Act’s Dream? Apply it to Union Rights, Too” by Richard D. Kahlenberg and Moshe Z. Marvit leads with “It’s the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act and here is what it needs as a birthday present: a big push to strengthen unions–the institutions best positioned to help African American and Latino workers more fully enjoy the American Dream.”
Robert Reich explains “America’s ‘We’ Problem.”: “The pronouns “we” and “they” are the most important of all political words. They demarcate who’s within the sphere of mutual responsibility, and who’s not. Someone within that sphere who’s needy is one of “us” — an extension of our family, friends, community, tribe — and deserving of help. But needy people outside that sphere are “them,” presumed undeserving unless proved otherwise.”
At The Cap Times, Jesse Opoien reports on “A musical marketing campaign to encourage people to sign up for health insurance has entered its next phase: the remix…In November, a group of local musicians and music promoters recorded a song called “Sing Forward,” with Wisconsin-themed lyrics promoting the Affordable Care Act’s new health insurance exchanges.”
In their New York Times article “Trade Pact With Asia Faces Imposing Hurdle: Midterm Politics,” Mark Landler and Jonathan Weisman probe the politics of pending trade agreements and note the challenge Dems face in formulating a winning trade policy in the context of the 2014 elections: “Trade has long divided Democrats, pitting their business-friendly moderate wing against key allies in organized labor. And in the midterm elections, when key Democratic voting blocs tend to stay home, the party badly needs the unions to get out the vote in November.”
in his post, “How the Government Blows Away the “Private Sector” in Delivering Services Cities like Tulsa, San Diego and Minneapolis are turning the tide back to public ownership,” Alternet’s David Morris shreds a much-treasured GOP myth.
WaPo’s Dan Balz and Philip Rucker ask “For Democrats looking to post-Obama era, how populist a future?” and they offer a number of interesting observations, including “”We’ve seen a gender gap for two decades now, but what we saw in 2012 was a larger step toward women voters standing with the Democrats in a much, much larger way,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily’s List, a group that helps elect pro-choice Democratic women. “There’s such a contrast right now between the two parties on issues impacting women and families.”
Mark Blumenthal’s “HUFFPOLLSTER: Do Polls Find Support For Obama Executive Orders? It Depends On How Pollsters Ask” shows how inherent bias in poll questions can skew results.


Can Dems Break Second Mid term Jinx and Win House Control?

From Ed O’Keefe’s WaPo article “House Democrats plot strategy against long odds to win back chamber“:

…Democrats are likely to crow about how House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) relied overwhelmingly on Democrats to approve an extension of federal borrowing authority. Just 28 Republicans voted for the measure, joined by all but two voting Democrats.
“This feels like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ — totally upside down,” said Rep Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “The majority is supposed to be the party that moves us forward because they run the ship.
“If Republicans shirk their responsibility as the majority party in the House of Representatives, we’re ready to be responsible, we’re ready to lead,” he added.
Rep. Jim Larson (D-Conn.), who preceded Becerra as caucus chairman, said that Democratic unity will give voters a clear choice this year. “More years of obstruction or at least two more years of a presidency where there’s a shot to get something done,” he said.

Not a bad pitch. Still winning 17 or more seats in the House during an Administration’s second midterm election has proven to be a daunting challenge. O’Keefe didn’t discuss the possibility of an anti-incumbent wave, which would help Dems in the House, while hurting them in the Senate. Nor did he get into the Democrat’s growing edge in ground game voter-targeting, demographic transformations or recent public opinion trends indicating that high-tuirnout seniors, particularly senior women may be souring on the GOP.
O’Keefe quotes House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer, who told reporters this week that “GOP divisions and his party’s impressive fundraising totals “give me great optimism that we’re going to win back the House.” While the Koch Brothers may give the GOP a fund-raising edge leading up to election day, it does seem as if Republicans’ internal divisions are on track to widen, rather than narrow.
It’s not like the Republicans can impress voters with their charismatic candidates or creative policy ideas. Indeed, their confidence about keeping a House majority rests almost entirely on historical precedent, continued economic decline and worsening Obamacare problems, as well as denial of their identity as the party of gridlock. Given all of that, a Dem pick-up of 17 House seats doesn’t seem so impossible, especially if Dems get a break or two in the months ahead, such as an economic uptick and an improved image for Obamacare.


Political Strategy Notes

From Ashley Parker’s New York Times article, “Democrats Aim for a 2014 More Like 2012 and 2008“: “The Democrats’ plan to hold on to their narrow Senate majority goes by the name “Bannock Street project.” It runs through 10 states, includes a $60 million investment and requires more than 4,000 paid staff members. And the effort will need all of that — and perhaps more — to achieve its goal, which is nothing short of changing the character of the electorate in a midterm cycle…”The question is whether the party’s Obama-era volunteer base will replicate itself for a Mark Pryor or a Mary Landrieu or a Kay Hagan,” said Sasha Issenberg, author of “The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns,” referring to three vulnerable incumbent Democratic senators…Campaigns are realizing that the smartest way to win the next vote is by mobilizing a nonvoter than by trying to win over a voter.”
Here’s a very interesting stat from CNN Political Ticker: “According to the CNN/ORC International poll, which was released Friday, 55% of Americans surveyed say the GOP doesn’t understand women. That number rises to 59% among all women and 64% among women over 50.” It suggests that the Democrats’ best shot at getting a bigger bite of the high-turnout senior vote in non-presidential election years might be to focus on the concerns of senior women.
And here’s an encouraging report from Dan Roberts’ post at The Guardian “Senior Democrats set out strategy in preparation for tough Senate battle“: “Democrats face a common challenge of midterm election due to the propensity for low turnout and are spending millions on voter registration drives in cities such as Atlanta, where an estimated 400,000 African Americans are unregistered.”
What is it with the Republicans’ utterly shameless penchant for deceit as a political tactic? Apparently voter suppression is not enough. Now we have ‘decepticon’ political ads by the NRCC, as Dan Rothberg reports in his L.A. Times post “Republican Party wing creates 18 fake websites for Democrats.” Is it too much to ask that they be called to account for violating FEC rules and the spirit of honest discourse?
At the Plumline Greg Sargent addresses an important question: “Can Dems go on offense over Medicaid expansion in red states?” and notes “The politics of the Medicaid expansion have taken on a kind of life of their own, separate from Obamacare overall. It has allowed red state Dems to embrace parts of the law while implicitly hitting Republicans over their ideological fixation on full repeal, which would take health coverage away from millions. These Dems don’t talk about Obamacare, obviously. But they stand up for the core goal of expanding coverage to those who lack it (as Michelle Nunn has done by calling for the expansion in Georgia), and criticize Republicans for wanting to take it away from folks (as Alison Lundergan Grimes has done in Kentucky, where the expansion is in full force).”
Democrats who want to win statewide elections should be encouraged by the example of Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, who is riding a 54 percent approval rate, according to a new Bluegrass poll conducted by SurveyUSA for the Louisville Courier-Journal, WHAS11, the Lexington Herald-Leader and WKYT-TV in Lexington. According to Joseph Garth’s Courier-Journal report, “The poll also found that a small plurality of Kentucky voters said they will vote for Democrats in state House races this year” and a plurality of voters favor Beshear in all age groups.
At CBS News Anthony Salvanto probes “How presidential approval can make or break a midterm.”
For an assessment of Democratic prospects in other “red” states, read “How progressives can turn the deep South blue” by former NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. Among the insights provided by Jealous in his MSNBC post: “There are more than 600,000 unregistered black Americans in Georgia, plus thousands of unregistered Latinos, Asian-Americans, women and millennials. At an average cost of $12 per registration, it would cost less than $8 million to register virtually all of Georgia’s unregistered black voters. If even half of them had voted for President Obama in 2012, we would be having a very different conversation today.” Jealous quotes Stacy Abrams, Minority Leader in the GA state assembly: “2014 is a transformational year. Demography may be destiny, but voter registration is the pathway to the future in Georgia.”
Focusing on the defeat of unemployment benefits extension for the long-term jobless, at The Atlantic James Fallows shames his colleagues in the media for characterizing legislation defeated by filibusters as “failed” measures, and provides several examples in which they don’t even mention that the bill was filibustered. Fallows adds: “Fun fact for the day: By my ballpark count, the 59 senators who voted for the bill represented states with just less than 70 percent of the U.S. population. The 41 who voted no represented just more than 30 percent of the population. With only 70 percent support, no wonder the bill “failed.”


Political Strategy Notes

A Daily Kos Jed Lewison comments on Gov. Christie’s latest shift to the “incompetent buffoon defense,” which Lewison describes as: “Christie is basically saying that people shouldn’t hold it against him that he’s got a bunch of staffers who did something bad because he’s such an out-of-touch boss that he didn’t know what they were up to.” Or how about, “Don’t blame me just because my judgement in selecting people for major staff posts and appointments sucks bad.”
NYT’s Michael Barbaro, Nicholas Confessore and Jonathan Martin explain how “Democrats Aim to Capitalize on Christie Problems,” basically by making him poster-boy for GOP Governors: “…Democrats are determined to transform him into a toxic figure, whose name is synonymous with the ugliest elements of politics: partisan bullying and backslapping cronyism…”If Republican governors want to keep embracing him as their chair, as their model for the future, we’re happy to help them out,” said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.”
Olivia Nuzzi has a Politico profile, “The man Who Keeps Christie Up at Night,” of the most likely beneficiary of the Christie mess, Assemblyman John Wisniewski, whose impressive commentary on the Christie debacle has put him on the short list for Democratic nominations for Gov. in New Jersey.
Can the Koch Brothers buy the 2014 elections? WaPo’s Matea Gold has a scary update on record-level early spending to attack Democratic candidates by the Koch Brother’s Americans for Prosperity.
Greg Sargent elaborates at The Plum Line: “Meanwhile, in North Carolina, the source says, AFP as of today has spent a staggering $7.2 million against Senator Kay Hagan, versus only $1.4 million by the SMP…Those are lopsided imbalances. And it’s going to get a lot worse. Dems expect the Koch network to spend as much as $200 million this cycle. Meanwhile, the money from the left just isn’t there yet, Dems say privately. If it were, you’d see groups like the Senate Majority PAC, Emily’s List, and the League of Conservation Voters (which is up with an ad hitting Scott Brown in New Hampshire) spending much more in these races, to match AFP’s spending.”
Good news for Marianne Williamson: Sandra Fluke has decided to run for CA state senate instead of Waxman’s House seat. But Williamson will likely face formidable opposition anyway.
David Callahan has an interesting post at Demos Policy Shop discussing the political ramifications of the terms “middle class” and “working class.” He crunches some self-i.d. data and observes “The term “working class” isn’t uttered so often by politicians in a stand alone way..The term almost seems dated, as if whoever uses it is stuck in a Laverne and Shirley re-run. Sure, we hear a lot about low-wage workers and “working families,” but the clear class component here has drifted quietly out of political and media discourse — even though tens of millions of Americans still think of themselves as working class…You’d think that progressives, at least, would talk often about the working class, but that’s not really the case. Instead, we prefer “working families,” which is bad choice for a few reasons — starting with the fact that many affluent professionals actually work longer hours than low-wage workers, who are more likely to be underemployed or unemployed. But the big problem is that when we drop the word “class,” we lose that all-important reminder that there is a rigid economic hierarchy in America, more rigid than in many European countries, according to mobility research.”
At ProPublica Charles Ornstein addresses “As the Media Gets Bored With Obamacare, Is the Public Starting to Get on Board?” Lots of interesting detail here, including: “…we are close to being able to say that the March 31 open enrollment period is already a success. And let me break it down for you. We have 2.2 million people who’ve already selected plans through the exchanges [as of the end of December], which is about 30 percent of what CBO [the Congressional Budget Office] predicted. We have about 6 million people who have been found eligible to enroll in Medicaid, and we have 3 million young adults who weren’t previously insured who are now insured under their parents’ policies. …You’ve got about 11 million people who’ve been touched by the law, maybe as many as 15 million. That’s really quite an astonishing number for the first six months.”
Here’s why Georgia Democrats are hoping that Rep. Paul Broun will get the keys to the GOP clown car.


Democratic Leaders Huddle for 2014

When the only two Democratic Presidents to get re-elected since FDR huddle with fellow Democrats on 2014 campaign strategy, it’s a good idea for those who would rather not see a Republican takeover of congress to start paying attention. Begin with Marshall Cohen’s CBS News post “Obama, Bill Clinton huddle with Democrats to plot 2014 strategy,” which sets the stage for the meeting, which begins today at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.
Cohen touches on some key concerns about the current political moment, including:

Democrats are in a precarious position right now: Mr. Obama’s approval ratings are sagging, and Democrats are fighting to hold onto the Senate. Some insiders have already given up on winning back the House.
Senate Democrats currently have a 55-45 majority, but they could lose that edge in November.
Top Republican targets include Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mark Begich of Alaska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina. Democratic retirements in West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana and Iowa haven’t made the map any friendlier for the party as it tries to cling on to control.
“Republicans have no equivalently vulnerable incumbents up in blue states,” CBS News elections director Anthony Salvanto recently wrote. “In fact, none of the Republican seats (up for re-election), except Maine, are in states carried by President Obama.”

Holding the Senate, let alone cutting into the Republicans’ House majority, is a daunting challenge. Cohen’s emphasis on the negative political fallout of the Affordable Care Act seems a little overstated, since there are some very encouraging trends which could offset GOP messaging on the issue (see here, here and here, for example). On the other hand, he doesn’t discuss what may be the GOP’s biggest asset, the Koch brothers early money-bombing, which is well underway and has been cited in turning polls against Dem incumbents like Sen. Kay Hagan.
But Cohen does note what will likely be the Democrats’ strongest messaging point: “Meanwhile, top Democrats hope their new message of income inequality will strike a chord with voters this election cycle.” But Jackie Calmes has noted in the New York Times:

To Republicans, talk of income inequality smacks of class warfare and redistribution of wealth, of taxing the rich to give to the poor. They prefer to emphasize opportunity and upward mobility, and Democrats, too, have come to see that frame as more appealing to middle-class voters in this midterm election year.

Opportunity and upward mobility for the middle class is a solid aspirational theme for Democrats. But it shouldn’t distract Dems from the compelling need to call out the Republicans, loud and clear, for their all-out assault on the economic well-being of the middle class. Indeed, runaway economic inequality has become so grotesque that Democrats must make it a central theme of campaign 2014 until a critical mass of swing voters get it that today’s Republicans are united around one key goal — screwing working people to enrich the wealthy even more.


Political Strategy Notes

Chris Cillizza’s “2014 Senate races may be a referendum on Obama; if so, Democrats should worry” at The Fix doesn’t entertain the possibility that an economic uptick, divisions within the GOP and an improved profile of Obamacare could help the Dems in this year’s elections. But he does acknowledge that “even a slight comeback for the president would probably do a world of good for someone like Hagan. It’s also possible — per the Heitkamp example cited above — that people like Begich and Pryor can effectively turn the focus of their races from national concerns to state ones.”
Meanwhile Karen Tumulty and Robert Costa explain, also at the Washington Post, why “Republicans face 2016 turmoil” at The Washington Post: “The party is divided and in turmoil, with a civil war raging between its establishment and insurgent factions. For the first time in memory, there is no obvious early favorite — no candidate with wide appeal who has run before, no incumbent president or vice president, no clear establishment pick…An enormous number of potential contenders are looking at the race, including, perhaps, a return of virtually everyone who ran in 2012. Come this time next year, 15 or more of them could be traveling the early primary states, jockeying for attention and money.
Evan McMorris-Santoro takes a peak “Inside The Plan To Get More Young Americans To Enroll In Obamacare” at Buzzfeed Politics. Hint: it’s about targeting young women.
At the Tucson Weekly David Safier explains what you get when you vote for a Republican state legislature in AZ: “Last year, Republicans passed a voter suppression bill in the AZ Lege. People who objected to it managed to gather 146,000 signatures to put an referendum on the ballot that would let Arizona voters decide if they wanted to keep the new law or repeal it. In a “To hell with the voters” move, Republicans wrote another bill to repeal their own bill. If the new bill passes, they plan to vote the suppression measures back in piece my piece, making them referendum-proof.” Yet another indication that Dems should make Republican voter suppression a messaging issue everywhere in November.
The Washington Post editorial board explains why “Government has to make voting easier” — and how to do it.
Sean Trende’s “The 2020 Reapportionment and the Voting Rights Act” at the Crystal Ball touched on a delicate problem for Dems, among other redistricting issues: “…Many Democrats would prefer to weaken majority-minority districts. Part of the Democrats’ challenge in winning the House is that the VRA forces them to place their most loyal supporters into districts with one another. If Democrats could weaken these districts, they could dilute Republican strength in the suburbs and create more Democratic districts. We see this with the ongoing Florida litigation, where Democrats are urging the dismantling of two African-American plurality districts in the hopes of weakening neighboring districts currently held by Republicans.”
It looks like Sandra Fluke may be running against Marianne Williamson for the congressional seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Henry Waxman.
At The New Yorker Steve Coll writes about Colorado’s political transformation as a possible preview of the future of the Democratic Party.
At L.A. Times Politics Now Maeve Reston explains why Democratic women were the key to getting President Obama to hike the minimum wage.


Political Strategy Notes

Mark Blumenthal and Ariel Edwards-Levy explain why we shouldn’t take instant poll reactions to the SOTU very seriously. And despite the impressive audience for the SOTU, I find it hard to disagree with Charlie Cook’s take.
Paul Krugman has a gem of a blog post “Obama and the One Percent,” noting “…there’s a danger, especially for progressives, of confusing the proposition that Obama’s billionaire haters are stark raving mad — which is true — with the proposition that Obama has done nothing that hurts the plutocrats’ interests, which is false. Actually, Obama has been tougher on the one percent than most progressives give him credit for…the one percent does have reason to be upset. No, Obama isn’t Hitler; but he is turning out to be a little bit of FDR, after all.” How he gets there is worth the read.
At NBC Politics Domenico Montanaro’s “Christie numbers tank as scandals continue” pegs the NJ Governor’s favorable ratings at 22 percent in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Regarding the weak responses of Republican governors to the weather disaster in the southeast endangering tens of thousands, the finger-pointing has begun. Jim Galloway reports at the Atlanta Journal Constitution that GA Republican Gov. Nathan Deal “opened a late-night press conference on Tuesday with this: “As you know, we have been confronted with an unexpected storm that has hit the metropolitan area.” Galloway quotes Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society: “Meteorologists from the National Weather Service (NWS) in Atlanta issued Watches and Warnings BEFORE the event and provided ample time for decisions to be made. Yet, as soon as I saw what was unfolding with kids being stranded in schools, 6+ hour commutes, and other horror stories, I knew it was coming…Some in the public, social media or decision-making positions would “blame” the meteorologists. I began to hear things like…”there were no Watches or Warnings until snow started falling or “weather is just unpredictable.” Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, and Wrong!” Gov. Deal’s weak management of the emergency relief effort could be a potent message point for Democratic candidate for Governor Jason Carter in the north GA suburbs.
Yet another important victory for VA Democrats. As Laura Vozella puts it at the Washington Post, “Democrats prepared to seize control of the Virginia Senate on Monday after winning a recount by just 11 votes in a razor-thin special election, giving Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s first-year agenda a crucial boost.”
In the comments following Politico’s “The Case Against Early Voting” by Eugene Kontorovich and John McGinnis, a commenter named “Jane” responds, “The article also seems to conflate extremely long periods of early voting with early voting in general; as the article suggests, a voting period of one to two weeks certainly wouldn’t interfere with the debate schedule, as the candidates would have ample time to debate whichever issues they wished in the preceding months, and it is..I would simply like to remind the authors of the lines in Ohio precints during the ’08 and ’12 elections, and to consider how many people gave up and went home, despite being in a fiercely contested state, simply because they didn’t have time left in the day to exercise their right to vote; isn’t that more likely to sway an election? Early voting is the simplest and easiest solution to address this problem, even if it is an imperfect answer – if other proposals cannot find support and be enacted before midterm elections, we should settle for expanding early voting to all precincts.”
The Nation’s Ari Berman reports on “The New Nullification Movement: Some states are reviving disenfranchisement schemes that date back to the antebellum South.”
But it’s not only the south. Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld posts on “The Subtle – And Not-So-Subtle – Strategies of Voter Suppression” at HuffPo, noting the gamesmanship that goes on in selecting early voting poll locations even in Ohio: “The proposed relocation would place in-person early voting at a site far removed from downtown with severely less access by public transportation. Whereas the current downtown location of early voting has greater bus connectivity than any site in the entire County, for the vast majority of riders the new location would require any combination of long commutes, bus transfers, hour-long waits to catch the next bus, and half-mile walks from where the bus line ends.”
In a NYT op-ed Ezekiel J. Emanuel eviscerates the GOP’s long awaited “alternative to Obamacare.”


Why Whining About Obama’s SOTU Initiatives Won’t Help GOP

Re MSM denial about the need for executive action, Greg Sargent says it well at The Plum Line:

Few pundits have been willing to reckon directly with the fundamentals of GOP obstructionism. A real reckoning would acknowledge that implacable GOP opposition to the Obama agenda, which began when the country was facing a dire, open-ended economic emergency, has for years been rooted in a combination of deliberate strategic choices and structural factors that have created a deeply unbalanced, unconventional situation. Commentators refuse to deal seriously with all of this — even though it is the actual cause of the very paralysis and dysfunction they regularly claim consternation about — and it will probably be absent from discussions of whether Obama’s planned executive actions are defensible

As for public opinion regarding Republican proclivities for bipartisan cooperation, Sargent explains:

…The new NBC/WSJ poll, for instance, finds that a majority of Americans, 51 percent, believe Republicans will be “too inflexible” with Obama, while only 25 percent say they have the balance right (one wonders about the faculties of the 17 percent who say Republicans have been “too quick to give in” to the president). By contrast, only 39 percent say Obama has been too inflexible with Republicans….Yesterday’s Pew poll found that by a huge margin of 52-27, Americans say Dems are more willing than Republicans to work with the opposition. While the GOP holds a narrow lead on the economy, it also found lopsided Dem advantages on which party is viewed as extreme and which party is more concerned with ordinary people — suggesting, again, awareness of the basic imbalance…Beyond all this, let’s remember that the minimum wage hike is popular – and Congressional Republicans aren’t.”

Republicans can whine all they want. But the public gets it, and it’s hard to see how the GOP’s complaining about popular — and much-needed — executive order is going to win them any swing voters in November.


Political Strategy Notes

NYT columnist Paul Krugman has a message suggestion for President Obama’s Tuesday SOTU: “There’s an enduring myth among the punditocracy that populism doesn’t sell, that Americans don’t care about the gap between the rich and everyone else. It’s not true. Yes, we’re a nation that admires rather than resents success, but most people are nonetheless disturbed by the extreme disparities of our Second Gilded Age. A new Pew poll finds an overwhelming majority of Americans — and 45 percent of Republicans! — supporting government action to reduce inequality, with a smaller but still substantial majority favoring taxing the rich to aid the poor…of the two great problems facing the U.S. economy, inequality is the one on which Mr. Obama is most likely to connect with voters.
Yawn, as many do, at state of the union addresses. But Mike Dorning reports at Bloomberg.net that “Though the 33.5 million viewers Obama drew last year is half the number Bill Clinton had 20 years earlier, the address remains a major TV event, topping both the Emmy Awards and World Series in viewership.” And team Obama is putting a lot of digital muscle into leveraging the speech: “The speech, usually about an hour long, “is the biggest engagement of the year” for the White House’s digital media operation, said its acting director, Nathaniel Lubin…The campaign includes Google Hangouts and Facebook (FB) chats by cabinet members and senior administration officials, a flood of advance Twitter messages under the hashtag #InsideSOTU, and an “enhanced” web live stream of the speech with graphics and data amplifying Obama’s themes. As part of the build-up, speechwriter Cody Keenan did a one-day “takeover” of the White House’s Instagram Account featuring photos of preparations.”
For their part, NYT’s Jeremy W. Peters explains that the Republican response to Tuesday’s SOTU will be largely balkanized, with the official response from the relatively unknown Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers being drowned out by bomb-throwers like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, who will be capering all over social media.
At CBSnews.com, Walt Cronkite’s “Schumer offers Democrats a strategy to defeat tea party” explains: “…in framing the debate with the tea party, Democrats should focus on four or five simple and easily explainable examples where government can help the average family. Schumer’s examples included: raising the minimum wage, assisting with college affordability, investment in national infrastructure, promoting equal pay for women, and ensuring America has fair trading relationships and isn’t exploited by countries like China.”
Although only 17 states and Washington, D.C. now approve same-sex marriage, that’s nine more than just a year ago. Further, regarding key bellwether states, WaPo’s Juliet Eilperin reports, “A decade after 62 percent of Ohio voters approved a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, a recent Quinnipiac poll showed a narrow majority now backs gay-marriage rights…The changing political dynamics were on full display this week as Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) announced he would not defend the state’s ban on same-sex marriage on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. Herring won a close election with strong support from gay-rights groups, and his decision infuriated conservatives, who accused him of violating his oath to uphold state laws.”
Re Michelle Nunn’s chances for picking up a U.S. Senate seat in GA for Dems: “Her campaign will test whether the rapidly changing demographics of Georgia — where state elections data show that the white vote dropped to 61 percent of the total in 2012 from 75 percent in 2000 — have shifted enough to return a Democrat to Washington. And it will reveal how much legacy still matters in politics. from Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s NYT article “Old Democratic Name (Nunn) Stakes Bid on Shifting Georgia.” Further adds Stolberg, “Two of his closest Republican friends, former Senators John W. Warner of Virginia and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, are now donors to Ms. Nunn. Mr. Warner attended the breakfast, he said, and walked away impressed. So did Mr. Nunn; watching his daughter tackle military policy questions changed his view of her race…”That morning,” he said, “was when I said to myself, ‘Hey, she’s got as good a shot as anybody in this race, maybe better.’ “…If Ms. Nunn has a path to victory, Democratic strategists say, it will be by increasing minority turnout while attracting independent-minded whites, especially young voters and women. Democrats hope that a potentially fractious Republican primary, with eight candidates, will produce a far-right opponent whom Ms. Nunn could defeat.
Melanie Trottman of the WSJ reports a small gain for unions in the private sector during 2013.
At ThinkProgress Aviva Shen’s “Conservative PAC Targets Secretary Of States Who Won’t Back Voter Suppression Laws” alerts Dems to a new GOP focus: “A new conservative super PAC hopes to proliferate more voter suppression laws by pouring money into secretary of state races. The group, SOS for SoS, is looking to spend $10 million in nine states in support of candidates who will champion “smart voting,” such as restrictive voter ID laws, voter purges, and proof of citizenship requirements. Secretaries of state set elections procedures and can determine mundane but crucial aspects like voting hours, provisional ballot rules, and recounts…The announcement, per Politico, comes days after a judge overturned Pennsylvania’s hotly contested voter ID law because it could disenfranchise 750,000 voters. A Democratic counterpart, SoS for Democracy, launched in December to promote secretary of state candidates who are against voter suppression measures. Currently, 29 secretaries of state are Republican, while 21 are Democrat…A recent study found that states with higher minority turnout are more likely to try to pass voter suppression laws.”
At The Monkey Cage Alan I. Abramowitz crunches recent opinion data on reproductive rights explains why “Americans may be divided on abortion, but it won’t matter for the midterms”: “abortion could have been a major wedge issue in 2012 — potentially prompting defections among those whose views differed from those of their party’s candidates. But despite efforts by candidates in both parties to exploit divisions among the opposing party’s supporters, such defections were limited. Only a small minority of voters whose opinions on abortion conflicted with their own party actually voted for the opposing party’s presidential candidate. Moreover, these defections essentially canceled each other out. According to the data from the 2012 ANES, 17 percent of strongly pro-life Democrats voted for Mitt Romney, and an identical 17 percent of strongly pro-choice Republicans voted for Barack Obama. Neither presidential candidate gained a clear advantage from voter defections on the issue of abortion in 2012…This is likely to be true in the 2014 midterm elections, as well…” Moreover, adds Abramowitz, exceptions tend to favor Democrats: “In 2012, two Republican Senate candidates, Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana, lost what appeared to be very winnable races because of defections by Republican voters. According to state exit polls, Republican defectors outnumbered Democratic defectors by 21 percent to 4 percent in Missouri and by 20 percent to 7 percent in Indiana. It seems likely that Akin’s and Mourdoch’s outspoken opposition to abortion even in the case of pregnancies caused by rape contributed to these extraordinarily high defection rates among Republican voters and to their defeats.”