At The American Prospect Anna Clark reports on the next step being taken by We Are Michigan organizers to resist the Republicans’ campaign to eviscerate unions in Michigan: “…Right-to-work could still be overturned, not as a referendum but as a ballot initiative to “approve or reject” the law…It has to meet the higher threshold of turning in petitions with enough signatures to equal 8 percent of the turnout in Michigan’s last gubernatorial election–more than 258,000 signatures. Organizers will have 90 days to do it, starting after the legislature adjourns. If they are successful, right-to-work would then go to a state-wide vote.”
Dems must have better monitoring of future ‘right-to-work’ sneak attacks. The Washington Post’s Felicia Sonmez and David A. Fahrenthold survey the GOP’s prospects for mobilizing ‘Right-to-work’ campaigns in other states.
Republicans had high hopes for getting a hefty bite of the Asian-American vote, but Bobby Cervantes Politico post “Poll: Obama won 71% of Asian vote” makes short work about that pipe dream.
Also at Politico, David Catanese reports that Dems are going after the SC governorship. SC’s senate seats are a bigger stretch, as Nate Silver explains.
If you need more evidence that Speaker Boehner has boxed himself into a political nightmare, check out Jonathan D. Salant’s Bloomberg post “Poll Says Republicans Get More Blame if Budget Talks Fail,” which notes: “The NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey also showed that more than three-fourths of respondents — 76 percent — would accept as part of a deal taxes increasing as scheduled on families with annual incomes exceeding $250,000, the position Obama has staked out. Additionally, twice as many people said they trusted Obama over U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, in the talks on avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff.”
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich makes an airtight case for reforms to require full disclosure of large campaign donors and matching federal grants for small donations.
Charles M. Blow coins an alliterative term, “the Ecru Era,” to describe the demographic transition, which was so powerful in the 2012 presidential race, long-ago projected by TDS Founding Editor Ruy Teixeira and John Judis in their prophetic “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” Blow observes, “The browning of America is very real and unrelenting. Our task is to find a way to move into this new Ecru Era with as much ease and grace as we can muster. ”
Steve Benen reports at The Maddow Blog that Republicans in Virginia (as well as in PA and OH) are planning to tweak VA voting law to end “winner take all” electoral vote allocation.
Here we go with the ‘middle class malaise.’ But Annie Lowrey’s NYT article about middle-class income stagnation as an increasingly pivotal political force suggests Dems will have to factor it in the policy mix better, tempered by the party’s cornerstone commitment to help the working and unemployed poor.
Politifact gives Mitt the prestigious “Lie of the Year” honors for his silly distortions of Chrysler’s Jeep production plans.
