Right-wing media bias could soon get even worse. As Amy Chozick reports at The New York Times, “Now, Koch Industries, the sprawling private company of which Charles G. Koch serves as chairman and chief executive, is exploring a bid to buy the Tribune Company’s eight regional newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant.” Read Chozick’s article for more on an even broader takeover of media outlets by conservatives.
Also at the Times, Charlie Savage reports that Republican politicians are pushing “to declare the surviving Boston bombing suspect an enemy combatant in order to question him without a lawyer and other protections of the criminal justice system.” The point being to make Republicans look more concerned about national security than Democrats, most of whom want to keep the case in the criminal justice system.
At FiveThirtyEight, however, Micah Cohen’s “Small Majority Approved of Miranda Rights for Terror Suspects” indicates that the public may have more sympathy for the Democratic position.
Ilyana Kuziemko, associate professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School and Stefanie Stantcheva, M.I.T. doctoral candidate in economics, explore American attitudes towards inequality at the NYT Opinionator. They provided survey subjects with a “tutorial” on inequality before polling them, and found an interesting paradox: “Respondents reacted to our inequality tutorial by reporting lower trust in government, raising the possibility that Americans may have reacted to 30 years of rising income inequality by reducing their trust in government…On one hand, liberals can take heart in the news that Americans are deeply troubled about the current level of income inequality. On the other hand, conservatives may be glad to hear that despite this concern, Americans have a healthy skepticism that government can be trusted to do much about it.”
Post Politics’ Aaron Blake names 11 House Republicans who have been placed on the NRCC’s “Patriot’s Program,” a.k.a. the “incumbent protection program,” including: Rep. Mike Coffman (Colo.); Rep. Rodney Davis (Ill.); Rep. Jeff Denham (Calif.); Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (Pa.); Rep. Bob Gibbs (Ohio); Rep. Chris Gibson (N.Y.); Rep. Joe Heck (Nev.); Rep. David Joyce (Ohio); Rep. Steve Southerland (Fla.); Rep. David Valadao (Calif.); and Rep. Jackie Walorski (Ind.).
Paul Krugman has a a well-stated observation obstructionist politicians ought to think about : “…When future historians look back at our monstrously failed response to economic depression, they probably won’t blame fear, per se. Instead, they’ll castigate our leaders for fearing the wrong things…The key question is whether workers who have been unemployed for a long time eventually come to be seen as unemployable, tainted goods that nobody will buy. This could happen because their work skills atrophy, but a more likely reason is that potential employers assume that something must be wrong with people who can’t find a job, even if the real reason is simply the terrible economy. And there is, unfortunately, growing evidence that the tainting of the long-term unemployed is happening as we speak.”
Michael Tomasky’s ‘The Conservative Paranoid Mind” at The Daily Beast describes the “common thread linking conservatives’ positions on gun control, immigration, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: the constant need to stoke fear…They need to make gun owners fear that Dianne Feinstein and her SWAT team are going to come knocking on their doors, or, less amusingly, that they have to be armed to the teeth for that inevitable day when the government declares a police state. They need to whip up fear of immigrants because unless we do it’s going to be nothing but terrorists coming through those portals…”
If Chris Cillizza is right that the failure of the gun background checks bill makes it a little easier to pass immigration reform, we’ll take it, sad commentary that it is on the political morality of members of congress who make major decisions this way.
E.J. Dionne, Jr. shares a salient observation on “The way forward on guns“: “… The next steps are up to the supporters of gun sanity. They can keep organizing to build on the unprecedented effort that went into this fight — or they can give up. They can challenge the senators who voted “no,” or they can leave them believing that the “safe” vote is always with the NRA. They can bolster senators who cast particularly courageous “yes” votes — among them, Mary Landrieu and Kay Hagan — or they can leave them hanging.”
Have you ever read an article that so convincingly refutes it’s own premise as this one?

For those who want to do something about the shameful vote in the U.S. Senate yesterday, Kos’s “In 2014, it will be the NRA against the American people,” notes two organizations you can contribute to who are committed to fight the NRA, with contributor page links added: “Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Gabby Gifford’s Americans for Responsible Solutions have already restored some balance in the public gun debate, pushing back against what was once a one-sided NRA attack. Bloomberg’s Independence USA SuperPAC has already shown a willingness to counter the NRA’s millions with millions of its own.”
The seats of thirteen Republican U.S. Senators in “Class 2” are up for re-election in 2014, including: Sessions; Chambliss (retiring); Risch; Roberts; McConnell; Collins; Cochran; Johanns (retiring); Imhoffe; Graham; Alexander; Cornyn; and Enzi. Only Collins voted with the Democrats on the background checks filibuster. Not all of them have announced opponents yet, but Sabato’s Crystal Ball names a few of their emerging opponents. Best bets for Dem pick-ups among this group are senate races in GA, KY and NE. But all would require upsets.
Every public appearance of the senators who voted wrong should be met with protesters bearing posters showing photos of the betrayed kids, and these senators should get photos of the kids in their office email and faxes — until we get some legislation.
if you had to pick one sentence in all the news coverage of the background check vote, this one from the Washington Post editorial board would do: “A COWARDLY minority of senators blocked a gun background-check proposal on Wednesday, in one vote betraying both the will of the American people and the charge voters gave them to work in their interest.” Rarely does the Post editorial board use all caps for emphasis in a sentence.
At The Washington Monthly Ed Kilgore flags Ezra Klein’s and Evan Soltas’s well-titled post, “The gun bill failed because the Senate is wildly undemocratic,” and adds “…For this to change, the first step is for political actors and political media to recognize and draw attention to the problem. I noted late yesterday that in a long report on the Manchin-Toomey vote in The Hill, the words “filibuster” and “cloture” do not appear, even though the vote in question was actually on a motion for cloture to end a filibuster. The defeat of the measure by a Senate minority was treated as just the way things are done. That is what has to change first, before real change can come to the Senate. And frankly, any post-mortem on the failure of gun legislation, however well-meaning, that doesn’t prominently mention the horrifically anti-democratic set-up of the current Senate is missing a crucial point.”
For Mitch McConnell, defeating yesterday’s background check initiative is not enough. he has to gloat.
It’s hard to see a ray of hope for a sane firearms policy in our future in yesterday’s senate vote on gun safety. But Jonathan Bernstein gives it a try at the Plum Line: “…While today is clearly a crushing setback for proponents of tougher gun legislation, overall the effort has been a very solid step towards eventual passage. If, that is, the people who strongly supported today’s amendment keep working to reward Senators who supported them, to make life difficult for those who opposed them; and, most of all, to make it a must-support for future candidates.”
There was a real hero in the U.S. Senate — up in the gallery. Maybe she should run.
I’m with those who would like to see some party discipline, perhaps in terms of funding or committee assignments, invoked on the four Democratic Senators who supported the filibuster. That would be Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Mark Begich of Alaska. I understand their perceived predicaments. But party should mean something. At least “Never filibuster against fellow Dems” ought to be a principle that comes with a price for breaking it.
At least Sen. Chuck Schumer put Ted Cruz in the clown car.

Happy Tax Day! Well, maybe not for you. As Nobel Prize laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz explains at At the New York Times Opinionator blog, in his “A Tax System Stacked Against the 99 Percent,”: “About 6 in 10 of us believe that the tax system is unfair — and they’re right: put simply, the very rich don’t pay their fair share. The richest 400 individual taxpayers, with an average income of more than $200 million, pay less than 20 percent of their income in taxes…consider Germany, for instance, which has managed to maintain its status as a center of advanced manufacturing, even though its top income-tax rate exceeds America’s by a considerable margin. And in general, our top tax rate kicks in at much higher incomes…The top rate in the United States, 39.6 percent, doesn’t kick in until individual income reaches $400,000 (or $450,000 for a couple). Only three O.E.C.D. countries — South Korea, Canada and Spain — have higher thresholds.”
Jeffrey M. Jones reports at Gallup.com that only 55 percent of Americans believe their taxes are fair, according to a Gallup Poll conducted April 4-7 — the lowest figure since 2001. Interestingly, “…Democrats and political liberals much more likely than Republicans and conservatives to believe their taxes are fair.”
For an instructive history of a problematic word Democrats shouldn’t even be using, check out Hedrik Hertzberg’s “Senses of Entitlement” at the New Yorker. “The word, that is, not the thing. “Entitlements”–alternatively, “entitlement programs”–is now the standard descriptor for what ought to be called, more accurately and less tendentiously, social insurance. In the early days of Social Security, politicians and bureaucrats occasionally talked of it as an “earned entitlement.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr. clarifies the role of the Newtown families in forcing progress towards enacting background checks. Dionne makes a convincing counter-intuitive argument — that the Newtown families have restored reason to the debate — while the NRA political minions have pitched emotional arguments devoid of reason.
Joan McCarter’s Daily Kos post “Remembering the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage debacle: What happens when you piss off seniors” is an instructive read, which notes “…See this week’s AARP survey. Seventy percent of voters age 50 or older are opposed to the chained CPI for Social Security. That increases to 78 percent opposed to having it applied to retired and disabled veterans’ benefits. But the number politicians really need to consider: 66 percent. That’s the group that will be more inclined to vote against a senator or representative who voted for any kind of deal including chained CPI.”
Also at Kos, John Perr explains why “Raising payroll tax cap is the best fix for Social Security“: Compared to President Obama’s chained C.P.I. proposal, “…Raising the payroll tax cap from its current $113,000 to $200,000 will generate far more revenue and deficit reduction for Uncle Sam without trimming benefits for millions of seniors already so close to the edge of financial distress.”
At The Daily Beast Bob Shrum’s “Democrats Need to Stop Attacking Obama’s Budget and Wake Up to Reality” notes in a nut graph: “The Obama budget does raise taxes on the wealthy by capping their deductions–which is one reason Democrats should rally to it. And there’s another: it increases spending now, while back-loading steeper deficit reduction, to support and speed the pace of the recovery. Do Democrats really think it’s smart to go into the midterms weighed down by the vulnerability of a sluggish economy? That didn’t work out so well for them in 2010.”
At The Nation, however, John Nichols warns that “Obama’s Chained-CPI Social Security Cut is Smart Politics… For the GOP.” Nichols explains that NRCC head Rep. Greg Walden is taking a new tack: “…ripping the president’s decision to go with “Chained-CPI.” And it explains why austerity opponents are ripping Walden – they fear any rips in the fabric of fantasy that suggests only a cuts agenda (as opposed to a growth agenda) will balance budgets.” But Nichols adds that Walden is one of the GOP’s smartest and most experienced strategists. “…He knows that a Democratic president talking about Social Security cuts is a winning issue for Republicans.”
In Jonathan Martin and John F. Harris’s Politico post “President Obama, Republicans fight the class war“, they quote GOP pollster Whit Ayres: “”We had Obama beating Romney by 11 percentage points on the question of who would do more to help the middle class,” said Ayres. “And that was absolutely critical. Demographics don’t explain our losses in Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa. What explains those losses is that Republicans were not deemed to be the party of the middle class…”Whichever party is the voice of the middle class ends up winning presidential elections,” said Ayres. “When Republicans were winning five of six presidential elections we were the voice of the middle class and Democrats were the voice of special interests and minorities. And just as Reagan pinned the tag of special interests and minorities on Democrats, Obama pinned on us the party of the rich this time. And then we did what Democrats did in the 1980s — we played into the caricature.” Say the authors: “Class warfare works.”
Mother Jones notes that Mitch McConnell’s “I’m the victim here” act has not impressed Kentucky’s flagship Louisville Courier-Journal, which ran an editorial yesterday saying: “Mr. McConnell has masterfully diverted public attention from the offensive content of the tape–which is the real story here–to his outrage over how it was obtained….He has long ceased to serve the state, instead serving the corporate interests he counts on for contributions and leading obstruction that continues to plague Congress. He needs a credible opponent and a serious effort by people ready to advance the interests of Kentucky and its citizens.”

At Roll Call, Meredith Shiner’s “Obama Budget Strategy Irks Democrats” quotes a senior administration official” saying that the President’s much criticized budget proposals are “intended as more of an olive branch to Republicans than an outline of Obama’s view of the budget and economy…The president has made clear that he is willing to compromise and do tough things to reduce the deficit, but only in the context of a package like this one that has balance and includes revenues from the wealthiest Americans and that is designed to promote economic growth.”
NYT’s Jackie Calmes clarifies President Obama’s proposed chained c.p.i. reform: “Under the president’s budget, the government would shift in 2015 from the standard Consumer Price Index — used to compute cost-of-living increases for Social Security and other benefits and to set income-tax brackets — to what is called a “chained C.P.I.” The new formulation would slow the increase in benefits and raise income tax revenues by putting some taxpayers into higher brackets sooner, for total savings of $230 billion over 10 years…Even so, he emphasized that his support is contingent on Republicans agreeing to higher taxes from the wealthy and new spending, in areas like infrastructure, to create jobs.”
Greg Sargent notes in his Plum Line post “Obama makes Republicans an offer they will refuse” that “The response from liberals to Obama’s latest offer has been threefold: They have denounced Chained CPI as terrible policy. They argue offering concessions to Republicans up front can only lead to giving up more concessions. And they note that positioning to win over the Very Serious People either won’t work — since the deficit scolds will never acknowledge that one side is more to blame than the other — or won’t politically matter over time.”
Tim Dickenson has “The Five Most Outrageous Facts About Our Broken Voting System” in Rolling Stone. They include: 1. African-American voters wait in line nearly twice as long as white voters; 2. Hispanic voters wait in line one-and-a-half times as long as white voters; 3. True-blue Democrats wait in line 45 percent longer than red-bleeding Republicans; 4. Voting in Florida remains a shitshow – even compared to other big states; and 5. The federal Election Assistance Commission is on its last legs. It is supposed to have four commissioners. It currently has four vacancies. All five of these facts were created by Republicans.
So how popular is same-day voter registration, which the Republicans have been trying to repeal in various states and localities across the country? An editorial at The Cap Times says that “In Maine, after Gov. Paul LePage and his Republican allies in the legislature ended the 38-year-old practice of allowing voters to register on election day, citizens petitioned in 2011 to overturn the governor’s assault on voting rights…Maine voted 60-40 percent to restore same-day registration…In Milwaukee, voters were asked if they wanted to retain election day registration. By a 73-27 percent margin they said “yes.”…In Dane County [WI], they faced the same question. The vote was even more lopsided, with 82 percent voting “yes.”…The Maine referendum was binding. The Wisconsin votes were advisory. But the message is the same.”
Micah Cohen takes stock of “Which Governors Are Most Vulnerable in 2014?” at FiveThirtyEight, and finds that “The two most unpopular governors up for re-election in 2014 are Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, an independent, and Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois, a Democrat. But the remaining eight governors with net negative job approval ratings are Republicans, including four who rode the Tea Party wave to power in blue and purple states in 2010 and now appear to be in some danger: Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, Gov. Paul LePage of Maine and Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan.”
Lois Beckett’s ProPublica report “Voter Information Wars: Will the GOP Team Up With Wal-Mart’s Data Specialist?” provides an interesting update on the Dem-GOP data mining race. Beckett notes, for example, “…The [Obama] campaign used the television-watching data it acquired to figure out exactly what shows the voters they wanted to reach were watching, all of which made for more cost-effective ad placements…The result? The Obama campaign bought more targeted ads, while spending less per television spot than the Romney campaign, according to data collected by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group.”
Cass R. Sunstein, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University, has an interesting review article “Moneyball for Judges: The statistics of judicial behavior” at The New Republic. There are no huge surprises in the data Sunstein presents from ” The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice” by Lee Epstein, William M. Landes and Richard A. Posner. As one passage notes “Justice Scalia is significantly more conservative than Chief Justice Roberts, and Justice Ginsburg is significantly more liberal than Justice Sotomayor…The authors find that a large number of justices change over time. Of the twenty-three justices who served for a minimum of fifteen terms, four drifted to the right, and no fewer than eight drifted to the left. In general, those shifts were not massive–not a wholesale conversion experience, but an unmistakable movement toward a greater degree of moderation.” Yet, as Sunstein concludes, “The good news is that statistical analysis and quantitative measures are enabling us to go far beyond the intuitions and anecdotes that have long dominated academic and public discussions of government’s third branch.”
John Avlon’s CNN.com headline says it well — “GOP’s cowardly gun filibuster threat.” As Avlon says, “Republicans are doubling down on irrational appeals and trying to block debate…That’s another reason this position is infuriatingly stupid — it compounds the number one negative perception about the Republican Party. Namely, that it is “inflexible and unwilling to compromise.”
Yet more evidence that the AFL-CIO needs it’s own television network: At Truthout MIke Ludwig’s “Labor Report: Four Major TV News Networks Ignore Unions” reports “During the years of 2008, 2009 and 2011, less than 0.3 percent of news stories aired on four major news broadcasting networks involved labor unions or labor issues, according to analysis recently released by Federico Subervi, a professor of media markets at Texas State University.”

If it seems to you that the death of Margaret Thatcher evokes a sense of deja vu, it is because we went through the same MSM myth-mongering routine when President Reagan died. Their supporters pulled out all stops in glorifying these twin reactionaries, who were said to greatly admire each other’s uncanny ability to screw everyone but the wealthy and get away with it.
You have to look around a little bit to set the record straight about Thatcher’s record, because her beatification as a saint of the super-rich is still commanding lots of coverage. But it’s out there for the willing. As Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers write at Counterpunch:

When Mrs. Thatcher took power, 1 in 7 of the England’s children lived in poverty. By the end of her reforms that number had risen to 1 in 3. She polarized the country in a ‘divide & conquer’ strategy that foreshadowed that of Ronald Reagan and more recent American politicians such as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. The effect of her policy was to foreclose on the economic mobility into the middle class that ironically she believed her policies were promoting.
Pundits the world over are chirping about her role in “saving” Britain, not as indebting it – destroyed an economy in order to save it. Her rule was historic mainly by posing the conundrum that has shaped neoliberal politics since 1980: How can governments nurture and endow financial kleptocrats in the context of rule by popular consent?
…Nowhere in the world is banking more short-term than in Britain. Nobody better exemplified this narrow-minded perspective than Lady Thatcher. Her simplistic rhetoric helped inspire an inordinate share of simpletons conflating supposed common sense with wisdom.

Thatcher’s real socio-economic legacy (said to have inspired the term “sado-monetarism”) needs to be outed more honestly, as it undoubtedly will be in the days ahead, at least in the progressive press. But weep not for the Iron Lady — it’s not like she doesn’t have plenty of defenders to whitewash her record. The critics will surely be drowned out in a tsunami of glorification.
Meanwhile, enjoy this performance of “Stand Down Margaret” by the English Beat, flagged by Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly.

After conceding that Margaret Thatcher was a tough adversary for the UK’s progressives, no one should feel any obligation to gloss over the great harm she did as Prime Minister. As Gerry Adams, president of the Irish party Sinn Féin, put it: “Margaret Thatcher did great hurt to the Irish and British people during her time as British prime minister…Working class communities were devastated in Britain because of her policies. Her role in international affairs was equally belligerent …. Here in Ireland her espousal of old draconian militaristic policies prolonged the war and caused great suffering. She embraced censorship, collusion and the killing of citizens by covert operations …. Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and ’81. Her Irish policy failed miserably.” Tony Benn, a 1970s labour minister and Thatcher’s political opponent, added “She did make war on a lot of people in Britain, and I don’t think it helped our society.”
However, there is something important American progressives can learn from Thatcher’s reign, as the late Christopher Hitchens pointed out in his article “Lessons Maggie Taught Me” at The Nation.
A (barely) bipartisan initiative may yet revive a modest proposal for background checks on gun purchases, report Ed O’Keefe and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post.
Bill Scher, executive editor of LiberalOasis.com and the Online Campaign Manager at Campaign for America’s Future, explores “The top 5 issues dividing Democrats ” at The Week. They are Social Security, trade, guns, taxes and climate.
WaPo’s Paul Kane reports on a new pitch for Democratic House candidates: “The best way to defeat the conservative, ideologically driven GOP, Democrats say, is to field non-ideological “problem solvers” who can profit from the fed-up-with-partisanship mood of some suburban areas. These districts will offer some of the few competitive House campaigns in the country.”
Michael Tackett has an extensive Bloomberg update on the campaign to turn Texas into a purple state.
Plum Line’s Greg Sargent calls out the majority leader, and argues that it’s time for Sen. Reid to put up or shut up: “By my count, this is at least the third time a Dem Senate leader has threatened to revisit rules reform. Yet the obstructionism continues with no action on Reid’s part….Reid needs to stop threatening to revisit the filibuster unless he actually means it. Empty threats accomplish nothing. Indeed, they’re counterproductive. They make Dems look weak. They inflate expectations among Dem base voters — and supporters who worked hard to reelect Obama and Dems to Congress — that we may soon enjoy a functional Senate.”
At National Journal’s ‘Hotline on Call.’ Michael Catalini, Naureen Khan and Peter Bell report that the GOP sees it’s top Senate targets as Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan and Mark Begich.
At FiveThirtyEight, Micah Cohen looks at what may be the highest-profile House race and explains “Why Sanford vs. Colbert Busch Could Be Competitive.”
Some say President Obama’s latest Social Security and Medicare proposals are intended more theater than reality. But someone in the white house should nonetheless read Lynn Stuart Parramore’s Alternet post, “7 Chilling Facts About Retirement in America That Should Make Obama Tremble Before Cutting Social Security and Medicare: Obama’s plan would be economically irresponsible, socially disruptive and morally repugnant.”

In their Politico post, ‘Republicans’ Uncivil War,” fellow Republicans Scott Faulkner and Jonathan Riehl lament the transformation of the GOP from a once-competent political party into an circus of bickering ideologues. While the authors view of the glorious GOP past is somewhat overstated to put it charitably, their take on the current predicament of their party includes some insights worth sharing:

The Republican Party is at war with itself and it is losing. For every successful Republican governor, there are Republican state legislators who embrace personally oppressive and interventionist initiatives. For every reasonable Republican member of Congress, there are more who embarrass. Every compelling soundbite from Republican candidates and pundits is overwhelmed by others that repel.
…Bush 43 added his own straw to the political camel’s back by his willingness to allow cronyism to trump competence. By promoting amateurs to bungle the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and allowing the once noble Federal Emergency Management Agency to make an epic mess of Hurricane Katrina relief, Bush eviscerated the longstanding Republican reputation for competent management. The Republican echo chamber remained silent to this dismal record, violating another of the GOP’s core principles — holding power accountable. A Republican world view that was devoid of facts and critical thinking was taking hold. Like Thelma and Louise, Republican politicians and pundits grasped hands and floored the gas peddle into the abyss.
Except for some stellar governors, the Republican movement has been in free fall since late 2005. Like a cancer patient on remission, the tea party-fueled 2010 election blowout offered a fleeting and aberrant reversal of fortune. It remains to be seen if Republicans can heal themselves or whether the Democrats will overreach clearing the way for a GOP comeback by default. Either way, America’s political landscape is denuded when rational thought and competence are edged out of the picture.

And when the Republicans are not likening President Obama to the anti-Christ himself, it seems their preferred fallback similes are Hitler and Stalin, as Lincoln Mitchell notes in his post “Mike Huckabee’s Reductio ad Hitlerum” at HuffPo:

…The Tea Party and right wing penchant for comparing President Obama to Hitler and Stalin is evidence not of any totalitarian tendencies on the part of Obama. Instead it is evidence that right wing contempt for science is now rivaled by contempt for learning anything about history.
Stalin and Hitler are among the most brutal murderers and dictators of the 20th, or any other, century. Most of the world knows this. To the right wing of the Republican Party, apparently, Stalinism is a system of governance where the marginal tax rate exceeds 35 percent, while the Nazi regime, according to Huckabee’s newest insight, was one characterized by gun control.
…Using Communists and Nazis as a way to bludgeon one’s political opponents with powerful, if poorly constructed, political arguments is nothing new, but it is seems much more frequent now, with Obama a much bigger target than any previous president. Most of the more aggressive of these attacks come not from powerful Republican politicians but from media personalities like Huckabee, Tea Party activists or people on the fringes of political life. The failure of Republicans in more senior positions to speak out against this has now become so ordinary that it is rarely remarked upon, but it is still significant.

Yes, that Mike Huckabee, the one who reportedly told a gathering at an Ohio pancake breakfast

“Make a list,” said Huckabee, referring to supporters’ family and friends. “Call them and ask them, ‘Are you going to vote on Issue 2 and are you going to vote for it?’ If they say no, well, you just make sure that they don’t go vote. Let the air out of their tires on election day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date. That’s up to you how you creatively get the job done.”

In case you thought he was just joking, it wasn’t the only time. As the Huck told a crowd in Virginia, according to HuffPo:

While campaigning for Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee jokingly made reference to voter suppression. He told supporters that it’s “their job” to keep McDonnell opponents from the polls: “Let the air our of their tires … keep ’em home. Do the Lord’s work.”

In a way, Huckabee was just giving voice to the GOP’s extensive voter suppression project. Whatever criticisms can be fairly leveled at President Obama, he has never displayed anything like the utter contempt for the integrity of American Democracy that distinguishes the modern Republican Party.

Having caught the tail end this morning of some inside-the-beltway pundit snarkage about President Obama doing some (gasp) campaign fund-raising for his own party, I was delighted to stumble upon Alec MacGillis’s post, “The Amusing Alarm Over Obama’s 2014 Fixation” in The New Republic. MacGillis bares the silly hypocrisy of it all in this excerpt:

…Underlying the tut-tutting about Obama’s fundraising is a broader, longstanding confusion in the Washington establishment over what is to be expected of Obama. We scorn him for seeking to hold himself above the fray and then lash him with high dudgeon as soon he deigns to descend into the muck. Never mind that he is following in the footsteps of his two-term predecessors–as the Post noted, “Ronald Reagan participated in 20 fundraisers for Republicans in 1985, and George W. Bush did 14 in 2005…. Bill Clinton, committed to helping the Democratic Party eliminate debt after the 1996 campaign, appeared at a whopping 77 fundraisers in 1997.”

Citing “feinting spells on the right” in response to the “news” that the president is now going to raise some dough for 2014 Democratic candidates, MacGillis continues:

…Can you imagine? A president who passed a lot of stuff when his party held both houses of Congress and has been all but totally stymied since losing the House has decided that it would be in his interest to…win back the House. Next thing you know, he’s going to try to help a Democrat get elected president in 2016 to make sure achievements like the Affordable Care Act are preserved.

MacGillis faults the naivete of those purist souls who believe that A President can use the bully pulpit alone to stop well-funded opponents and quotes David Jones, a former fundraiser for Clinton and Al Gore: “The opponents of his agenda are spending tens of millions of dollars to derail his agenda and he can’t unilaterally disarm. In today’s world it takes resources to get your message out to the public and in order to raise resources you have to have fundraisers and send out emails and make phone calls.”
I would just add the obvious fact that the president is the leader of his party and, as such, is supposed to be its top fund-raiser. I would be joining the outraged reaction if he didn’t help raise funds for the 2014 campaign. In fact, he should be doing more fund-raising if he wants to accomplish anything in 2015-16.
The purist whiners need to get real. No president in U.S. history has had to deal with a more obstructionist or more lavishly-funded opposition, nor one more wholly dedicated to reversing the hard-won gains of the Democratic party over generations. We would all like more bipartisan kumbaya. But the only thing this Republican party understands is defeat and it is President Obama’s duty to do all that he can to open another big can of ass-whupping for them in 2014.

These shameless voter suppression efforts –even for Republicans — in North Carolina may actually reflect an encouraging trend — that the state President Obama lost by the smallest of margins in 2012 is turning blue so fast Republicans are running scared and getting desperate.
Robert Borosage, president of the Institute for America’s Future, has a warning for Democrats at HuffPo: ” The rising American electorate is looking for help: a forward strategy that will rebuild the country, educate the young, put people to work, capture a lead in the green industrial revolution that is sweeping the world, while insuring that the rewards of growth are widely shared. This requires fierce battles with those standing in the way — not simply the Tea Party zealots, but Big Oil and Big Pharma, Wall Street and the global corporate lobby that will spend lavishly to protect their privileges and subsidies. Without that vision and courage, the rising American electorate will continue to sink together. And Democrats will discover that a status quo party has little attraction to voters looking for change.”
I do hope the Organizing for America ‘List’ is as powerful as this conservative e-rag says it is.
At the New York Times Opinionator, Thomas B. Edsall’s assessment of “The GOP’s Digital Makeover” shows why the Republicans’ top-down culture may be a barrier to their achieving digital parity with Dems: “…The biggest obstacle facing the Republican Party may be how to get its leaders, including those in charge of the R.N.C., to accommodate and accept the freewheeling approach to innovation — the invention of invention — that made the digital revolution now transforming American politics possible in the first place.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr. rallies progressives to save background checks from Republican obstruction. “…Gun-control advocates need even more discipline, and they cannot stop organizing after this fight is over. It will take years to build the kind of muscle the gun lobby has. Doing so will create the political space for other measures, including an assault weapons ban.”
If Elizabeth Colbert-Busch can make the word ‘integrity’ the issue, this U.S. House contest should result in a Democratic pick-up. It’s not just Mark Sanford’s philandering and lying about it; it’s his abuse of taxpayer money. As Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand put it in a fund-raising e-blast for the Democrat: “This is the same Mark Sanford who, as governor, disappeared from office and used taxpayer money to visit his mistress.”
Bob Shrum’s Daily Beast post, “Be Afraid, GOP: Hillary Clinton Is Back and She Will Beat You in 2016” has me thinking maybe we should put all this Hillary euphoria to work sooner, rather than later — and send her out to help rally women to elect Dems to congress, like Elizabeth Colbert-Busch.
At The Plum Line, Greg Sargent reports on a new pro-Democratic messaging initiative: “The American Bridge 21st Century Foundation Web site, “C-Quest,” which is “designed to focus attention on how the sequester is impacting actual communities around the country, as a corrective to the Beltway’s emphasis on the sequester as a political story, one that the White House has supposedly botched by over-hyping the sequester’s impact…The Web site is also accompanied by a Web video that collects local news segments from around the country on the sequestration’s cuts, and makes the point that Paul Ryan’s budget cuts would dwarf those of the sequester:”
David Callahan’s “The Right Way to Create Jobs” at Demos ‘Policy Shop’ has an argument every Democratic congressional candidate should be able to articulate, particularly in the 7 states that have an unemployment rate above 9 percent: “…Huge numbers of construction workers lost their jobs when the housing bubble imploded, and many of these people are still unemployed. In fact, construction workers have the highest jobless rate of any group of workers — 15.7 percent, over twice the national rate and three times higher than most white-collar professions. So infrastructure spending would help those workers who are still suffering most from long-term unemployment…We tried a surge in Iraq and another in Afghanistan. How about one at home?”
You go, guys.

Lydia Saad reports at Gallup Politics on the leading criticism of Republicans: “…Rank-and-file Republicans, independents, and Democrats voice the same primary criticism of the GOP: it is “too inflexible” or “unwilling to compromise.” When asked to say what they most dislike about the Republican Party, 26% of Republicans, 17% of independents, and 22% of Democrats offer this critique — leading all other mentions.” Only 8 percent said the same about Democrats. The second-ranking concern of respondents (12 percent) was that the GOP is “for the rich/protecting the wealthy, not the middle class.”
The Center for American Progress has a revealing forum on “What the Public Really Thinks About Guns,” featuring contributions by Margie Omero, Michael Bocian, Bob Carpenter, Linda DiVall, Diane T. Feldman, Celinda Lake, Douglas E. Schoen, Al Quinlan, Joshua Ulibarri, and Arkadi Gerney.
The National Journal’s Michael Catalini’s “To Hold Senate Majority, Democrats Target the Most Conservative States in the Country” reveals an innovative strategy: “…the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s plans to compete in the most inhospitable territory for Democrats — for open seats in Georgia, South Dakota, West Virginia, and possibly, even in Kentucky against the powerful and well-funded Senate minority leader. Facing a challenging political landscape in 2014, the party is close to landing credible candidates in all of those states….Already the committee is boasting that Georgia is their best pickup opportunity; the field of Republican candidates there for the seat of retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss currently looks underwhelming.”
Jamelle Bouie posts at The Plum Line on “The next big target for liberals: State legislatures,” observing “It’s hard to overstate how smart a way this is for liberal groups to invest their time and money…Winning control of governorships and state legislatures is key if Democrats want to build political strength, advance key goals and priorities, and secure their policy gains over the long term. Howard Dean’s new plan is a small — but important — step in the right direction.”
At The Nation, Ari Berman explains why “New Voter Suppression Efforts Prove the Voting Rights Act Is Still Needed.” Notes Berman: “According to a report by Project Vote, fifty-five new voting restrictions have been introduced in thirty states so far this year….By my count, 235 new voting restrictions have been introduced in forty-four states over the past three years.”
Meanwhile President Obama has issued an executive order setting up “the Presidential Commission of Election Administration.,” charged with “…making recommendations that will “promote the efficient administration of elections in order to ensure that all eligible voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots without undue delay…and to improve the experience of voters facing other obstacles in casting their ballots, such as members of the military, overseas voters, voters with disabilities, and voters with limited English proficiency.”
GOP efforts to raise the cap on high-skilled worker visas is shaping up as an important issue for Democrats, as Jennifer Martinez reports at The Hill. Labor is calling on Dems to provide leadership to oppose “off-shoring jobs abroad or businesses that seek to bypass hiring American workers.”
Socialism in North Dakota? So says Alternet’s Les Leopold in “Why Is Socialism Doing So Well in Deep-Red North Dakota?,” in which he reports (via TruthDig)on “one of America’s best-kept secrets,” the “state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND), a socialist relic that exists nowhere else in America.” Leopold observes “Since the crash, the financial community has largely managed to wriggle off the hook…After all, the big banks seem to own Washington, as too-big-to-fail banks are permitted to grow even larger and more invulnerable to prosecution and control…But this new public banking movement could have legs, especially if it teams up with those fighting for a financial transaction tax…The state-owned and operated Bank of North Dakota proves that it doesn’t have to be that way. This is the time to fight for public state banking in a big way.”
One still hears the occasional “mistakes were made” lame apology, but there are better ways. Politico explores the art of the political apology in this video.
At The Daily Beast ‘Politics Beast,’ Lloyd Green writes that “the once-Republican Solid South is starting to look like a blue-and-red checkerboard, with Democrats now owning some of the biggest squares.”