GOP strategist Ed Rogers worries at WaPo that Democrats could well benefit from stock market and oil booms, and be sitting pretty come next November.
Elizabeth Warren says she is not running for president, and The Fix’s Sean Sullivan explains some of the reasons why.
…And Esquire’s Charles Pierce channels a little Gore Vidal to explain (via Reader Supported News) why that’s a good thing.
At Real Clear Politics, Sean Trende analyzes “Democrats’ 2013 Drop-Off Problem” and what it might mean for 2014. “What does this mean for 2014? Possibly nothing. There is a lot of football left to be played, the president’s job approval rating could rally significantly, the Democrats could become enthused, and drop-off could become a non-issue…But if that doesn’t happen, Democrats have a real headache coming on. Let’s assume they can expect a drop-off of four to five points from Obama’s 2012 performance, all other things being equal. Twenty-eight House Democrats occupy seats where Obama won less than 55 percent of the vote…”
Kyle Kondik notes at Sabato’s CrystalBall that “Late filing deadlines give Republicans a chance to find better candidates in places where they’re lacking.” Same is true for Dems, however.
A new poll of 2,089 18- to 29-year-olds, which was conducted online by GfK between Oct. 30 and Nov. 11 by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics suggests Dems need a better Obamacare pitch to young voters. As Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports at the News York Times, “A solid majority, 56 percent, disapproved of the law when it was called the Affordable Care Act. Just 17 percent said the measure would improve the quality of health care; 78 percent said quality would either stay the same or get worse. Half said the law would increase costs, while 46 percent said costs would decrease or stay the same.”
Be that as it may, Tracy Seiple reports at the San Jose Mercury-News that “The startling finding by the Public Policy Institute of California says that young and healthy people are overwhelmingly more likely to seek health insurance than older and sicker people…The PPIC numbers on young people who plan on signing up for insurance appear to mimic an early analysis by Covered California, the state’s online health exchange, that trumpeted its first-month enrollment figure of 30,830 people, including 6,900 who are between 18 and 34.”
Mark Blumenthal and Ariel Edwards-Levy point out at HuffPollster: “In a CNN poll released in November, opinion on the health care bill was split among those aged 18 to 34, with 48 percent supporting the law, 33 percent opposing it because it was too liberal, and 12 percent because it was not liberal enough. Younger Americans were also more optimistic on the law’s prospects. Just 25 percent in that age group called the law a failure, compared with 40 percent or more in older age groups. Seventy-one percent said the law’s problems would be solved, while 50 percent or fewer of older Americans predicted they would.”
One of the most potentially-powerful, but most underutilized message points Dems could use more aggressively to mobilize young voters against the GOP is conservatives’ unflagging assault on the environment, nicely documented in “ALEC calls for penalties on ‘freerider’ homeowners in assault on clean energy” by The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg and Ed Pilkington.
