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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

J.P. Green

GOP’s ACA ‘Reform’ Boils Down to Tax Cuts

Jonathan Weisman’s “With Health Law Cemented, G.O.P. Debates Next Move” at The New York Times does a good job of showing just how utterly bankrupt and bereft of ideas Republicans are when it comes to health care reform alternatives. As Republicans grudgingly accept that repeal and replace just isn’t going to happen, a few of them have ventured what they consider to be salable ‘reforms’. You will not be shocked to see that most of their ideas center around tax credits:

The bill would allow for insurance to be sold across state lines, push small businesses to pool together to buy insurance for their employees, expand tax-free health savings accounts, cap malpractice lawsuits, and offer tax credits of $2,163 for individuals and $5,799 for families to buy health plans.
…Mr. Ryan’s plan will build on one that he and Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, introduced in 2009, according to aides familiar with it. The proposal, called the Patients’ Choice Act, would have eliminated the tax break for employer-provided health care to finance a tax credit of about $5,700 for families and $2,300 for individuals. States would have been asked to create insurance marketplaces like the ones many have created under the Affordable Care Act.

It’s the old ‘throw money at taxpayers’ strategy, which has never delivered quality health care anywhere in human history. Rooted as it is in the cynical assumption that all American voters want is more money, it is likely to be a tough sell, especially to millions of voters who are already benefiting from the ACA, or who have reason to believe they can get better coverage under Obamacare in the near future.
The unavoidable flaw in the GOP’s tax cut/credit panacea is that most American voters will figure out that giving them more money to buy health insurance will probably give the go-ahead to insurance companies to raise their rates — again and again.
Weisman reports that other Republicans are still yammering about repealing the individual mandate. But we can file that one under “not gonna happen,” unless Republicans win the White House and a filibuster-proof majority of the senate in 2016, while holding a strong house majority. That’s asking a lot, especially since only 19 percent of Americans “approve of the way congressional Republicans are handling health care,” as Weisman notes.
Other Republicans are sending up trial balloons, like Rep.Tom Price (GA), who is pushing the ‘Empowering Patients First Act,’ which Weisman reports “would repeal the health care law but keep its prohibition on exclusions for pre-existing conditions in private health insurance.” Again, not gonna happen. More moderate tweaks of the ACA, like Sen. Kelly Ayotte’s proposal to expand health savings accounts and repeal the tax on medical devices may gain increasing currency with her fellow Republicans as they begin to sober up from their tea party hangovers.
Harsh as some of the findings of recent polls are regarding the ACA, the future looks encouraging for Dems, as increasing numbers of Americans enroll and find their coverage has improved — and the GOP has nothing substantial to replace it.


Political Strategy Notes

A new CNN/ORC poll conducted 12/16-19 finds that “Negative attitudes extend to both sides of the aisle: 52% believe that the policies of the Democratic leaders in Congress would move the country in the wrong direction; 54% say the same about the policies of congressional Republicans…”
At The Atlantic, Molly Ball addresses “The Battle Within the Democratic Party: A schism between moderates and liberals over economic inequality is the first front in defining a post-Obama platform.” Ball notes that “Stan Greenberg, a longtime Democratic pollster who advised de Blasio’s campaign, insists that most Democrats, including Obama, are on the same page as Warren. In both presidential elections, he noted, “Obama ran on a future for the middle class of restoring prosperity, raising taxes on the wealthy, and an investment agenda. That’s the mainstream of the Democratic Party; it’s the mainstream of the country.”
I’ve always been interested in those comparison charts showing how the U.S. is doing in providing social benefits in comparison to other developed countries, although I’m not sure how effective such comparisons are in selling policy and candidates. If they are, however, Michael Tomasky’s Daily Beast post “America Joins the Developed World, Thanks to Obamacare” is a good one to share.
Sen. Rand Paul’s argument that “When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy” elicited this response from Wonkblog’s Ezra Klein: “This is a correlation/causation error of staggering size — and, because it’s coming from a sitting U.S. senator whose vote will help decide whether millions of unemployed families lose the paltry checks that are helping them buy food and shelter and fuel, of staggering consequence.”
Sen. Paul’s callous comments notwithstanding, Dems should make sure that the entire GOP owns it, and this video clip is a good start.
The Plum Line’s George Zornick explains what’s good about the video: “It’s a tough spot, and it relies on language that was popular through the 2012 election that paints the GOP as dedicated protectors of the powerful and wealthy at the expense of struggling Americans…What is particularly useful about this approach is that there’s no pressure coming from the other side — unlike, say, the debate over “Obamacare,” there are no well-funded conservative groups out there pressing for an end to the emergency unemployment program. Based on the polls showing bipartisan support for an extension, the conservative grass roots don’t appear to be fired up about the issue. The passion and activism over jobless benefits is essentially just running in one direction, which is a promising sign.”
Robert Kuttner has a part II HuffPo post, “More About a new Freedom Summer,” fleshing out his idea for a nationwide campaign to provide photo i.d.’s to voters in states where new suppression laws jeopardize their voting rights, backed up by an energetic voter registration mobilization. Kuttner adds, “…the same Roberts Court that overturned key sections of the Voting Rights Act also invalidated limits on political contributions. Donors friendly to Democrats could pour unlimited sums into non-partisan voter registration campaigns, whose net effect would be to help elect Democrats.”
At the Campaign for America’s Future website, Lori Wallach has an informative post, “Get Ready for the 2014 Trade Tsunami” on the fair trade battle that lies ahead. Wallach notes, “The fiery international debates over NAFTA and WTO gave birth to a new fair trade movement in our country. The devastating outcomes triggered by the trade pacts unified ordinary Americans against them. Polls show a majority of Americans – Republicans, Democrats and independents -think these sorts of pacts are bad not only for themselves and their families but for the nation.”
There is a downside to Gov. Christie’s blustering persona, which is apparently also reflected in some of his actions, as Kate Zernike reports in her New York Times article “Stories Add Up as Bully Image Trails Christie.”


Political Strategy Notes

Michael Tomasky has some good advice for Dems, along the lines of, ditch the crappy Obamacare ads and have the President get out there with a straightforward idealistic pitch: “He ought to give a speech or a few speeches on campuses aimed specifically at young people and say, “I know a lot of you were excited about me in 2008, and the polls tell me you think I’ve been disappointing, and that’s how things go in Washington. It’s a brutal place. But this is your generation’s chance to help your country become the last advanced democratic country in the world to make sure that all of its citizens have the peace of mind of health care.” It’s their Peace Corps and Vista.”
A.P.’s Steve Peoples reports that “Democrats Work to Raise Number of Female Governors,” pointing out that Republicans have four women governors, compared to the Democrats’ one (Maggie Hassan of NH). Clearly, Dems need to do better, although Peoples could have noted, as did J.P. Green that “10 percent of Republican House and Senate members are women, compared to 25 percent of all Democratic members of both houses, according to the congressional record. In 2012, “Of the more than 1700 women serving in state legislatures, roughly 60 percent are members of the Democratic Party,” reports the Center for American Women and Politics.”
A Media Matters for America Rob Savillo has a bit of good news about the top newspapers’ coverage of Obamacare — they are now reporting more about the benefits of Obamacare, as well as enrollment problems associated with the website rollout.
Mary C. Curtis’s “Holder Determined to Challenge Voter-Suppression Laws” at The Root provides an informative update, which describes the situation in N.C.: “North Carolina went from being the model of a voter-friendly state to the poster child for voting restrictions, in one session of a Republican-dominated state legislature…The North Carolina rules cover much more than the requirement for a photo ID, set to go into effect in 2016. If the law stands, other provisions of the law, set to take effect Jan. 1, would shorten early voting by a week, end preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds, eliminate same-day voter registration, Sunday voting and straight-ticket voting, increase the number of poll watchers who can challenge a voter’s eligibility, prohibit the counting of provisional ballots of eligible voters who mistakenly go to the wrong precinct and more.”
At TPM Muckraker, Eric Lach’s “Researchers Find Factors Tied To Voting Restriction Bills Are ‘Basically All Racial” notes, “In the paper, the researchers placed the recent restriction efforts in context, as part of a history of measures “trumpeted as protecting electoral legitimacy while intended to exclude the marginalized for a particular political party’s advantage.” They argue that the Republican Party has engaged in “strategic demobilization efforts in response to changing demographics, shifting electoral fortunes, and an internal rightward ideological drift among the party faithful.”
At Daily Kos, Ian Reifowitz has a worthy read, “A Democratic contract with America: How to retake the House and combat economic inequality.”
Now that Dems have successfully pulled off the trifecta in VA, party strategists are looking southward to another state that is rapidly turning purple. For a good update on Dem prospects in the Peach State, read Karen Tumulty’s “Michelle Nunn, Jason Carter hope to rechart the course of Georgia politics.”
Ezra Klein’s “Full employment gives people jobs. But it also gives them power” has a rave review of an important book you can get for free, “Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People,” by Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein.” As Klein notes in his conclusion, “Inequality can be attacked in ways that do very little for average workers. By contrast, full employment gives average workers the power to demand a better deal from their employers and thus reduces inequality by giving the working class an overdue raise. Baker and Bernstein’s book is that rarest of things: A read that could make next year much better.”
Sen Chuck Schumer makes the case why Dems should be ready to rumble on the minimum wage hike, job-creation and unemployment insurance, as Dems’ best issues for 2014, reports Evan McMorris-Santoro at Buzzfeed.


Political Strategy Notes

Despite the headline, “Uninsured Skeptical of Health Care Law in Poll,” New York Times article by Abby Goodnough and Allison Kopicki notes that “In addition, 64 percent of the uninsured and 54 percent of the general public said they thought providing access to affordable health care coverage for all Americans was the responsibility of the federal government…At the same time, only 37 percent of the general public and 33 percent of the uninsured said the law was so flawed that it should be repealed. That marks a slight shift since the CBS News poll in November, when the federal insurance marketplace was still plagued with technical problems and 43 percent of Americans said the law should be repealed.”
Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan report at The Fix that, despite skepticism about the implementation of the health care law revealed in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, “…When you ask people whether they would rather see Obama or the GOP in charge of that implementation, 42 percent pick Obama, while 37 percent pick Republicans. That’s actually the biggest advantage Obama has had on that question since 2010 — marginally bigger than the narrow three-point difference for Obama in September, before the botched rollout.”
Dems have an excellent chance to pick up an important governorship, with PA Republican incumbent Tom Corbett trailing two of his potential Democratic opponents by 12 points each in a new Quinnipiac poll.
At Time Swampland, Jay Newton-Small explains the minimalist “House Republican Strategy for 2014 Victory: Think Small, Do Little.”
From Robert McCartney’s WaPo wrap-up of the Virginia election: “First, in statewide elections, it’s now beyond doubt that Democrats start with a significant advantage. It turns out the 2009 GOP landslide, led by Gov. Bob McDonnell, was an exception fueled by the initial, tea party-led backlash against President Obama…Since then, Democrats have won five straight statewide elections: for president and U.S. Senate in 2012, and for governor, lieutenant governor and now attorney general in November. Democrats hold every statewide elective office for the first time since 1969.”
Also at The Fix, Chris Cillizza spotlights “the Ad Every Democrat Should Be Afraid of.” Clever ad that it might be for this political moment, if Obamacare’s cost savings and success stories are more widely understood by the public by next November, the ad could look like yesterday’s sour grapes.
At Hotline on Call, Alex Roarty reports that “The White House’s out-of-the-blue decision to name Sen. Max Baucus the next ambassador to China means the state’s Democratic governor must appoint a replacement long before next year’s Senate election. And that will fundamentally change one of 2014’s biggest battleground races: Instead of a free-for-all, open-seat battle, Democrats will get to rally behind a better-entrenched incumbent seeking a full term.”
If you are looking for a bellwether House district special election, try FL-13 coming up in March. As Crystal Ballers Kyle Kondik and Larry J. Sabato explain, “If ever there was an apparent bellwether special election, the one coming up in FL-13 this March would seem to be it. The district went 50%-49% for President Obama in 2012, quite similar to his 51%-47% national edge over Mitt Romney. Not only that, but the district is located entirely in Pinellas County, which can fairly be described as one of the key presidential swing counties in the entire country (Obama won this Tampa-area county with 52% of the vote in 2012). The seat, held for decades by the late Rep. Bill Young (R), is probably a necessary part of any future Democratic House majority.” All of the usual caveats about unique local issues and over-generalizing about one election apply, as Sabato and Kondik point out.
Apparently not.


Political Strategy Notes

At The PlumLine Greg Sargent reports that “Dems hatch new strategy to pressure GOP on unemployment insurance,” explaining: “Dems who are pushing for an extension have hatched a new…: Once Congress returns, they will refuse to support the reauthorization of the farm bill — which will almost certainly need Dem support to pass the House — unless Republicans agree to restart unemployment benefits with the farm bill’s savings. “Under no circumstances should we support the farm bill unless Republicans agree to use the savings from it to extend unemployment insurance,” Dem Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a top party strategist, told me today. “This is a potential pressure point. We’re going to have to resolve differences in the farm bill because otherwise milk prices will spike. If past is prologue, they are going to need a good chunk of Democrats to pass the farm bill.”…Van Hollen said that a “minimum of $15 billion in savings” was expected from the farm bill, much of it “from the elimination of direct subsidies,” and said it would be unconscionable not to use this money for some form of an extension of unemployment benefits (rather than deficit reduction), which would not only help 1.3 million people, but the economy, too.”
Dan Merica of CNN Politics has a good update, “Democrats’ dream of a blue South: Moon pie in the sky?,” with a focus on Mississippi: “Ask a Southern Democrat if he or she can win statewide, and you will get a wide array of anecdotes and theories. Some point to the last Democratic governor in each state, while others to President Barack Obama winning 43.5% of the vote in Mississippi without spending any money there in 2012…But the most often-cited anecdote — by far — is the success that Southern Democrats had in 2013 municipal elections in Mississippi…For the first time in nearly 30 years, a Democrat was elected mayor of Tupelo, while Meridian elected its first-ever black mayor — a Democrat. After the win, Southern Democrats heralded the day as “Blue Tuesday” and celebrated the victories as a sign of things to come.”
In his post “Are Young Workers the Future of Labor?,” James Cersonsky of In These Times has unearthed a hopeful, though unsourced, statistic: “…Nearly two-thirds of 18-29-year olds have a favorable impression of unions, more than any other age bracket. The time is ripe for labor leaders to bring the next generation into the fold.” If this stat is solid, it is encouraging, given the decline of union membership and the MSM news blackout on union accomplishments.
The Pew Research Center reports a significant decline in the ‘enthusiasm gap’ favoring the GOP between Democratic (and Dem-leaning) vs. Republican (and GOP-leaning) registered voters — about 6 percent today, vs. 14 percent four years ago.
At National Journal’s Hotline on Call, check out Alex Roarty’s “Democrats Divided on How to Recover from Obamacare: Former Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg argues Obamacare could be a political winner. Other Democratic strategists are more nervous.” Roaty writes, quoting Greenberg, “On Thursday, senior Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg told reporters that the Republican focus on hitting Democrats over Obamacare was a political “trap.” Citing a new Democracy Corps poll he helped conduct, Greenberg said if Republican dwell on repealing the law while Democrats focus on fixing the economy, Democrats will come out on top….”I know there is an initial opportunity in going after the rollout … I would argue this is a trap,” he said. “The more they’re on this, the more voters say they’re just part of this extreme partisan gridlock [in Congress], and they’re not addressing the economy and jobs.”
Here’s an interesting quote, from a Forbes Magazine article, no less: “During four years of the hapless George W. Bush administration Republicans actually did control all three branches, but the size of government hardly decreased. It grew…You see, the Republicans talk a big game about small government, but they do so with a forked tongue. A major driver of the busted spending caps was Republican aversion to reductions in defense outlays. This is puzzling. Supposedly it’s in our national security interest to force a weaker economy on Americans so that some of the richest countries in the world can be defended by our military for free.”
In the wake of Kshama Sawant’s election to the Seattle City Council, Bhaskar Sunkara and Micah Uetricht address the question “Can Socialists Win Elections in the U.S.?“, also at ITT.
Required reading for every Democratic candidate preparing to deliver a speech or be interviewed on the topic of education: Blake Fleetwood’s HuffPo post “If You Want the American Dream, Go to Finland,” which includes this nugget: “Not so long ago America had the best school system in the world and the best access to education. Land grant colleges created the largest, most educated middle class in history, which, in turn, led to world supremacy in education, civil liberties, social mobility, science, medicine and a host of other areas…Our education system is static and falling behind other advanced countries — an economic time bomb — whereas Finland is an educational superpower, the best in the west, according to the PISA studies of 470,000 15-year-old students from 65 countries…Our educational progress is merely mediocre compared to the rapid advances being made in other industrialized countries and Asian cities such as Singapore and Shanghai. American students rank 37, behind such countries — in math, the basic sciences and even languages.”
At Wonkblog Dylan Matthews has a discussion with Gawker’s Tom Scocca about the virtues of negativity in politics and the harm done by political ‘smarm,’ which serves to enable conflict-avoidance.


Klein: ‘Inequality’ Isn’t All That

Ezra Klein’s “Inequality isn’t ‘the defining challenge of our time‘” adds some useful perspective to the latest political buzzword. Klein argues that reducing unemployment is a more urgent policy priority than addressing “inequality”:

…Joblessness is still endemic. Growth simply isn’t producing enough jobs. This is a more severe and more urgent problem than inequality. Moreover, fixing it is necessary, though not sufficient, to making real headway against inequality.
It is, however, a harder problem to mobilize a political coalition around. It doesn’t offend our moral intuitions so much as confuse them. Someone making $85,000 annually can look at the incomes of the top one percent and be angry and scared. They can hear that Germany has more social mobility than the does the United States and be offended. The plight of the long-term unemployed and the economy’s stubborn refusal to generate catch-up growth are more abstract concerns to someone with a good job. It’s harder to build a political movement around the intense pain of the few than the more generalized anger of the many.
It’s fair to wonder whether any of this matters. The Obama administration would like to boost demand. But Congress isn’t going to let them. Asking whether inequality or joblessness or growth is the defining economic challenge of our time is like asking how many John Boehners can dance on the head of a pin.
But the same logic applies to inequality: The policies Obama mentioned in his speech — like raising taxes on the rich — also don’t have a shadow of a prayer of passing the House.
The game being played here is a longer one. Of late, inequality become a much more popular research topic — and much more money has been devoted to researching it. Obama consigliere John Podesta founded the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a think tank dedicated to funding research into inequality. The political system’s focus on the issue is leading to more thinking, more concern, more ideas and more pressure for action.
None of that will matter much now. But it will matter eventually. When the left next gets a chance to make economic policy, what will they choose to do? A world in which inequality is the top concern is a world in which raising taxes on the rich is perhaps the most important policy choice the government can make. A world in which growth and unemployment are top concerns are worlds in which very different policies — from stimulus spending to permitting more inflation — might be the top priorities.

Difficult as the challenge is, reducing unemployment is a more politically-coherent policy priority than addressing “inequality.” Yet tax hikes for the rich and pubic service employment or infrastructure investment, for example, may be popular with the public, but neither one is possible with the Republican blockade in the House.
Economic inequality and unemployment are intertwined to a great extent — it’s hard to envision substantial progress in either without some benefit to the other, provided you define employment in terms of “a job at a living wage.” Too many of the jobs created in recent years, however, provide inadequate pay, which enables festering economic inequality. An increase in decent jobs would likely reduce prevailing pay gaps.
What is certain is that neither malady will be addressed until Democrats secure working majorities in both houses of congress. Klein is right that putting jobs first makes more sense than arguing about how to divide a shrinking pie.


Political Strategy Notes

From E.J. Dionne, Jr.’s column on the Murray-Ryan budget deal: “The bad news is not only that the proposal unconscionably lets unemployment insurance lapse for millions, which will cost the economy some 300,000 jobs next year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It also comes very close to enforcing a spending freeze after this year….This is not a good deal. It is, at best, a necessary deal, given the alternatives available in a political system whose priorities have been twisted away from the needs of the struggling majority. It’s this majority that has to make the noise

Dem oppo researchers should check out the Winter 2014 issue of Democracy Journal, which includes insightful articles about the current clout of the tea party. As editor Michael Tomasky explains in his introduction to the issue: “Theda Skocpol tells us why the movement has some staying power. Alan Abramowitz shows why the GOP leadership won’t cut it loose any time soon. Christopher Parker weighs in on whether, and how, the movement might outlast President Obama. Sean Wilentz enters the debate over its historical roots. Leslie Gelb and Michael Kramer consider the Tea Partiers’ impact on Republican internationalism and U.S. foreign policy. And Dave Weigel weighs the chances of a Tea Party candidate winning the 2016 GOP nomination.”

According to a new AP/GfK poll conducted 12/5-9, “Democrats have a slim edge as the party Americans would prefer to control Congress, 39 percent to 33 percent. But a sizable 27 percent say it doesn’t matter who’s in charge.”

A Gallup Poll conducted 12/5-8 found that “The Republican Party’s favorability has improved slightly to 32% from an all-time low of 28% in October during the government shutdown, while 61% now view the GOP unfavorably. The Democratic Party — on the defensive recently for the flawed rollout of the healthcare website — maintains a favorable rating of 42%. But a majority of Americans, 53%, now see the party unfavorably, up from 49% in October.”
David Freedlander’s Daily Beast post “It’s DINO Hunting Season as the Democrats Gird for Their Own Civil War” spotlights and probably overstates the divisive potential of the rift between Dem progressives and conservatives.

But Richard Eskow of the Campaign for America’s Future argues at HuffPo that “It’s a fight to determine whether that party will represent the public’s interests unsparingly in the years to come, or will continue to be swayed by corporate interests.”

This Third Way study doesn’t indicate that Dems have a lot to worry about in terms of attrition in voter registration, with a 1 percent overall decline. But it does spotlight some key states where Dems have slipped and must do better, including PA, NH, NC and FL.

The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent provides a couple of perceptive observations: “Here’s a point that keeps getting lost…Inequality is already a disproportionally huge issue among Democratic base voters, and they believe overwhelmingly that government can — and should — do something about it…A new poll captures this nicely. The Bloomberg survey found that huge majorities of Americans say the U.S. no longer offers everyone an equal shot, and that the gap between the rich and the rest is getting bigger….if Dems can keep the focus on actual policies in response to GOP screams of “class warfare” (a war cry that seems to make centrist Dems quake in fear), inequality could prove more favorable political turf for them.”

Chri Cillizza’s post “The best campaign of 2013” offers this interesting observation about mobilizing women voters in the McAuliffe campaign for VA Governor: “…the McAuliffe campaign invested heavily (and early) in efforts to turn out drop-off female voters as well as those in the black community and those aged 18-29.”Our drop-off universe was disproportionately young, disproportionately minority, very heavily disproportionately female. But particularly young people, and particularly younger women, the way you get them is over the Internet,” McAuliffe campaign manager Robby Mook told Reid.”


Political Strategy Notes

Just to set the record straight, not all of those Republicans now saying nice things about Mandela supported his cause when it counted, as Jordan Michael Smith reports in his New Republic post, “All the Terrible Things Republicans Used to Say About Nelson Mandela: Reaganites called him a terrorist and a phony.” Smith points out that Reagan put Mandela on the “terrorist” list and Cheney also called Mandela a terrorist, while Norquist supported the apartheid government.
Now that the Obamacare website is functioning well, Republicans are shifting their attack meme to highlight cases in which individual policy-holders are paying more to get less under the ACA, report Bloomberg’s Mike Dorning, Derek Wallbank and Alex Wayne.
But Bloomberg’s John McCormick explains why “Angry Self-Insured Voters Dim Democratic House Takeover Strategy.” McCormick notes “… House Democrats represent more than a third of the districts with above-average proportions of residents who get health insurance through individual policies, Census Bureau data compiled by Bloomberg shows.” The article goes on to note cases in which some of these policy-holder end up paying more and getting less, but it’s unclear what percentage of self-insured are having this experience.
From Ari Berman’s The Nation post (via Moyers & Company) “Ohio GOP Resurrects Voter Suppression Efforts“: “…Ohio Republicans are once again resurrecting efforts to make it harder to vote. Last month, the GOP-controlled Ohio Senate, on a party-line vote, voted to cut early voting by a week, eliminating the “Golden Week” when Ohioans can register and vote on the same day during the early voting period (Senate Bill 238). The legislation was introduced and passed in one week, with almost no time for substantive debate. The Senate also passed a bill preventing the secretary of state or individual counties from mailing absentee ballots to all eligible voters unless the legislature provides the money, which they are unlikely to do (Senate Bill 205)…These restrictions — and additional measures being considered by the legislature — have the potential to impact millions of voters in the Buckeye State: 600,000 Ohioans voted early in 2012, more than 10 percent of the state’s electorate and 1.25 million voted by mail, 22 percent of the electorate.”
The first fruits of filibuster reform will soon ripen, as Timothy M. Phelps reports in his L.A. Times article “Filibuster rule’s end should help Obama reshape a key court.” As Phelps explains “On Monday, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to cast a historic vote to confirm Patricia Millett, an experienced Supreme Court advocate and taekwondo black belt, as a judge on the second-most powerful court in the land, tipping that court’s balance of power to Democrats for the first time in nearly three decades.”
Beth Reinhard asks a good question at the National Journal: “Can Democrats Make 2014 About the Minimum Wage?” She notes “…Democrats see the opening that Garcia and other low-income, typically Republican voters appear to be offering on the issue. A Gallup poll last month pegged support for raising the minimum wage at 76 percent and found majority support across the board, including Republicans (58 percent), whites (72 percent) and southerners (80 percent)…”It’s almost like political malpractice not to push the minimum wage at this time,” said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank that hosted Obama’s speech on income inequality.”
DCCC head Rep. Steve Israel marshals a shrewd argument in favor of the Undetectable Firearms Act, which is being opposed by the NRA and Republicans: “I can’t understand why anybody would want to make it easier and more convenient for bad guys and criminals to smuggle plastic guns onto airplanes…To me, this is the consummate example of common sense.”
Here’s a disturbing Reuters report that “Democrats wouldn’t reject U.S. budget deal over jobless aid: senator” by Caren Bohan and Aruna Viswanatha.
At The Nation Reed Richardson has a brutal critique of Third Way centrism in the wake of their latest round of liberal-bashing: “So if Third Way really doesn’t offer much besides run-of-the-mill Republican-lite boilerplate,why does it merit any media oxygen in the first place? The question, essentially, answers itself–Third Way’s corporate-heavy, economic austerity agenda dovetails with the likes of the Beltway media’s “pain caucus.” That an ineffectual advocacy outfit like Third Way can still command a healthy pick of establishment op-ed perches is no coincidence. In its 2012 tracking study of think-tank citations, media watchdog FAIR found centrist and conservative groups overwhelmingly dominated. Only two center-left–and no progressive groups–cracked the top 10. (And true to its word, the academically lightweight Third Way didn’t even make the list.)”


Three interesting reactions to Third Way’s malicious ad-hominem attack on Elizabeth Warren and progressive Dems

It appears that some of the chaps at The Third Way have overestimated their cred as critics of liberalism, along with their assessment of thoughtful voters’ appetite for ad hominem attacks.
In her Daily Kos post, “Social Security expansion now very real. Thanks, Third Way!,” Joan McCarter explains:

Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-PA.), honorary co-chair of Third Way and gubenatorial candidate, is now a cosponsor of a bill to expand Social Security. That’s after Third Way president Jon Cowan, Jim Kessler, the group’s senior vice president for policy called the legislation “exhibit A of this populist political and economic fantasy.” The “fantasy” that is going to doom, DOOM, Democrats. Of course, Schwartz isn’t leaving Third Way. And she’s also coming pretty late to the “expand Social Security” party.
…Schwartz isn’t running on that, on her pro-austerity, cut Social Security record, but is instead essentially repudiating it. Not just that, she’s now embracing that “populist political and economic fantasy” that Third Way swears is political ruin for any Democrat. Go figure.
When Sen. Sherrod Brown signed on to the bill to expand Social Security, it made news. It gave the movement real momentum. When Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined the team it catapulted the issue into what could be a centerpiece in the 2014 and 2016.
And that’s what put Third Way and the whole world of Wall Street “Democrats” into panic mode, coordinating a full-frontal assault against her and this issue. That assault has fallen completely flat. Nothing proves that more than Allyson Schwartz’s name on the Strengthening Social Security Act.
So thanks, Third Way! Now we’ve got ourselves a real rallying point for real Democrats.

The Third Way’s populist-bashing seems tethered to a long-dead template, which mistakenly assumes that most voters are ideologues who actually care where candidates fit on political spectra. As Paul Waldman puts it in his Politico post, “Left Turn = Dead End?Why class warfare won’t defeat Hillary in 2016“:

The real question isn’t so much whether there’s ideological room to stake out on Clinton’s left flank–there certainly is–but whether another candidate could capture the liberal imagination the way Obama did in 2008. Part of the problem is that when your party is in power, the hunger for victory doesn’t gnaw nearly so intensely at your gut as when you’re on the outside. Liberals felt a powerful combination of anger and hope in 2008, but today their sentiments are a much quieter mix of defensiveness and disappointment. The president they elected then has done some admirable things, but his second term is likely to be defined largely by defending those gains and fending off an increasingly reckless GOP. It’s necessary work, but it’s not the kind of thing you write songs about.
Obama might have been the liberals’ choice in the 2008 primaries, but it wasn’t because he was the most liberal. It was because he embodied almost everything liberals wanted in a candidate, most of which had little to do with ideology. He was new and fresh, multiracial and cosmopolitan, and untainted by the compromises and cowardice Democrats saw their party gripped by in the previous decade.
Most of all, Obama made voters understand what a vote for him said about them. If you were an Obama supporter, you were supposed to be forward-thinking, creative, optimistic, courageous and youthful. (That was the genius, for instance, of hip-hop artist will.i.am’s viral campaign video.) It wasn’t too different from the marketing message that has worked so well for Apple, and after feeling beaten down for eight years, it was just what liberals wanted.
It’s possible that another Democratic politician could make people feel something like that again, even with the idealism of the 2008 Obama campaign ground down in the messy reality of governing. Some believed Elizabeth Warren could be that candidate, and no one has spoken more often or more eloquently about inequality in recent years than the Massachusetts senator. But Warren now says she isn’t going to run (though, of course, she could change her mind). There might well be a governor or senator out there who could emerge as a liberal champion, but if so, whoever it is is lying low at the moment.

As for the Third Way’s cred in the wake of their Warren-bashing, Paul Krugman says it well in his “Pathetic Centrists” post:

I mean, going after Warren and de Blasio for not being willing to cut Social Security and their “staunch refusal to address the coming Medicare crisis” ??? Even aside from the question of exactly what the mayor of New York has to do with Medicare, this sounds as if they have been living in a cave for years, maybe reading an occasional screed from the Pete Peterson complex.
On Social Security, they’re still in the camp insisting that because the system might possibly have to pay lower benefits in the future, we must move now to cut future benefits. Oh, kay.
But anyway, they declare that Medicare is the bigger issue. So what’s this about “staunch refusal” to address Medicare? The Affordable Care Act contains lots of measures to limit Medicare costs and health care more generally — it’s Republicans, not progressive Democrats, who have been screaming against cost-saving measures (death panels!). And health cost growth has slowed dramatically, feeding into much better Medicare projections…
…So what does Third Way think it would mean to “address the Medicare crisis”? They don’t say. But my strong guess is that they mean raising the Medicare age; living in their cave, they probably haven’t gotten the memo (literally) from CBO concluding that raising that age would hardly save any money.
It’s just so tired and tiring. If being a “centrist” means fact-free denunciations of progressives for not being willing to cut entitlements, who needs these guys?

None of this is to disparage the legitimate role of political centrists in the Democratic party’s internal debates. But next time they pop off, Third Way polemicists might try bringing their ‘A game,’ and give the juvenile liberal-bashing a rest.


Special AKA Tribute to Nelson Mandela

Writers all over the world are today mining their stock of superlatives to honor Nelson Mandela. And there have been many musical tributes to Mandela. Senegalese super-star Youssou N’dour did an entire album in tribute to him, and numerous artists have recorded songs honoring Mandela, including Nickleback, Johnie Clegg, Raffi, Elvis Costello, Dolores Keane, Christy Moore, Hugh Masekela, Zahara and many other African musicians. Probably the biggest global hit was “Free Nelson Mandela” by The Special AKA from Coventry U.K., which goes like this: