For the sharpest analysis of the dust-up about Nate Silver’s “prediction” of a GOP takeover of the U.S. Senate in the November elections, you probably can’t do better than “What’s Being Overlooked About Nate Silver’s Senate Prediction” by Mark Blumenthal and Ariel Edwards-Levy at HuffPo Pollster. Here’s a taste:

‘Is Silver’s prediction an outlier?’ Jonathan Bernstein answers his own question: “Not at all. A toss up with a slight edge to Republicans is right in line with predictions by Sean Trende; the Cook Report’s Jennifer Duffy; the Rothenberg Political Report; political scientists Eric McGhee, Ben Highton and John Sides; and also political scientist Alan Abramowitz. Those forecasters come from different traditions and use different methods, but they all think Senate control is a toss-up, with slight variations about which party is the favorite.” [Bloomberg] DSCC pushes back – Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee: “Nate Silver and the staff at FiveThirtyEight are doing groundbreaking work, but, as they have noted, they have to base their forecasts on a scarce supply of public polls. In some cases more than half of these polls come from GOP polling outfits. This was one reason why FiveThirtyEight forecasts in North Dakota and Montana were so far off in 2012. In fact, in August of 2012 Silver forecasted a 61% likelihood that Republicans would pick up enough seats to claim the majority. Three months later Democrats went on to win 55 seats.” [HuffPost] What the reaction overlooks – First, expressing a forecast as a probability does not make it a certainty. If Silver says he is 60 percent certain something will happen, he should be wrong about it 40 percent of the time. As RealClearPolitics’ Sean Trende Tweeted on Monday, in reference to Mercer’s upset victory over Duke in the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, “Yes, @NateSilver538 said Duke was 93% fave over Mercer, but question is really whether teams he says are 93% faves lose > 7% of the time” [@SeanTrende]

There’s more worth reading in Blumenthal’s and Edwards-Levy’s post. Read it and follow the links they provide, and you’ll have a pretty good sense of the relevance of Silver’s ‘prediction.’ Snapshot analyses may have some value to campaign strategists in suggesting tweaks in resource allocation. But no campaign for a November election should be demoralized or too encouraged by poll analysis provided in March.

At NPR.org, Maria Liasson reports in “Democrats Count On The Fine Art Of Field Operations” that “The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is planning a massive investment to address that problem. It plans to spend $60 million to hire 4,000 staffers in the most competitive Senate race states. The goal is ambitious: to make the midterm electorate — which tends to skew older, whiter and more Republican — look more like a presidential year electorate: younger, browner, and with more single women. In short: more Democratic.” Liasson quotes Sasha Issenberg, the author of The Victory Lab: “Everything we know from basically 15 years of field experiments shows that high-quality, face-to-face contacts for a volunteer living in the same community as the voter is the best way to turn somebody out…So there is a road map to doing this. But it is expensive and it takes a lot of staff, and a lot offices and infrastructures to recruit and train those volunteers.”
Mark Sappenfield’s ‘DC Decoder’ post, “Nate Silver’s new Senate forecast could terrify Democrats into action (+video)” at The Monitor says that Silver’s statement that the odds favor a Republican takeover of the Senate in November may actually help Dems hold the Senate because “Democratic operatives have found that the most effective way to get a potential donor to open an e-mail is to put Silver’s name in the subject line, according to a report by National Journal’s Scott Bland…”
Drew Westen’s “A Southern Strategy for Democrats” in the Washington Post offers an interesting observation about addressing racial politics: “Too often, Democrats have dealt with racial issues by avoiding them. Research shows that’s the wrong strategy, particularly in the South. Speaking directly about race allows our conscious values — which tend to be intolerant of racial intolerance, even in the heart of Dixie — to override our unconscious prejudices, which control our behavior when we’re not looking, or when other people aren’t, as in the voting booth. The best way to handle this kind of dog-whistle politics is to expose it for what it is…A successful political message that addresses race or any other divisive issue tends to have three components. The first is a value-laden statement that connects with most voters, making clear that the candidate cares about people like them and understands their ambivalence. The second is a statement raising a concern that makes the average person anxious or angry enough to want to do something about the issue. The third is a statement of hope, wedded to a solution, which suggests that the problem is solvable in a way that reflects the values and interests of ordinary voters.”
Kimberly Beller’s Liberty Voice post “Red State Women: Propaganda for the 3rd Millennium,” illuminates the GOP’s women’s group — and the Repubican men behind it — tasked with defeating Wendy Davis’s bid for Governor of Texas.
Ashley Parker reports in the New York Times that ” Senate Majority PAC, a group that supports Democratic Senate candidates, is preparing a $3 million advertising campaign against Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch…The group’s effort will last for roughly two weeks and span five states — Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan and North Carolina.”
MSNBC’s Steve Benen reports on how a Canadian hospital president, Dr. Danielle Martin made Republican Sen. Richard Burr eat his smirk…Maybe you should see it for yourself:

At the Hill Brent Budowsky explains how “Dems can win O-Care war“: “Will Democratic athletes, movie stars, television stars, rock stars and best-selling novelists fight for the future of their country as hard as the Koch brothers and the Chamber of Commerce? They will — if they are asked. Can they move the market, increase sign-ups and inform voters of the benefits of ObamaCare? They can — if they try…Democrats today have their backs against the wall. They need to think big, take names and kick butt. If the president extends the enrollment deadline and the all-out war against ObamaCare is answered by the full force and power of the Democratic world, the battle of ideas will be won, the Democratic base will be roused and the elections of 2014 will be saved for Democrats.”
The Libertarian fantasy of charity as the best way for a modern society to address social problems is consigned to its rightful place on the dungheap of history by Mike Konczal at Democracy, flagged by E. J. Dionne, Jr.
Re CREATIONISTS DEMAND AIRTIME ON ‘COSMOS’ FOR THE SAKE OF SCIENTIFIC BALANCE: AUDIO, no, it is not a parody from The Onion.

The on-again, off-again debate among Democrats about the limits of party heterodoxy flared back up this week. I had some irenic thoughts about it at Washington Monthly.

Like a lot of intraparty political disputes, the protest filed by Third Way senior veeps Matt Bennett and Jim Kessler at Politico Magazine against Markos Moulitsas’ alleged effort to “fold up” the “big tent” of a Democratic Party is largely based on what might be charitably called a misunderstanding.
The fiery Big Orange Satan founder did a post the other day observing and celebrating the more progressive cast of Democratic Senators today as opposed to a decade ago. In passing he observed that he thought Mark Pryor would lose this year, and that Mary Landrieu might lose as well. He didn’t celebrate the replacement of either Democrat by a Republican, but generally suggested that for progressives a similar partisan balance in the Senate accompanied by a significantly more leftbent Democratic Caucus was a sign of progress since 2004.
Bennett and Kessler viewed this (from Kos’ perspective) reasonable assessment as a declaration of war on the idea of a “Big Tent” Democratic Party that could win seats in red states.

If we are to make progress in a divided Washington–and if we are to protect the Democratic Senate majority–we simply must embrace a big tent for the Democratic Party. Even in purple states, there are not enough self-identified liberals to elect Democrats without their winning significant pluralities or majorities of moderates. The idea that more liberal candidates could win in places like Arkansas, Indiana or Alaska is pure fantasy. And to write off those states would consign Democrats to long-term congressional minority status.

I didn’t see where Markos said “more liberal candidates” could win in places like Arkansas, Indiana or Alaska, or that such states should be written off. He simply said that for purposes of achieving progressive policy objectives, both partisanship and ideology are factors.
Now playing off the Third Way protest, Hullabaloo‘s David Atkins goes where Markos didn’t quite go, and argues that the kind of “economic populism” Third Way tends to dislike is exactly the kind of political message that can work in red states.

Attacking Wall Street…is excellent politics in conservative districts. Hammering against unrestricted bailouts and cocaine-freebasing, prostitute-expensing billionaire vulture capitalists in Manhattan makes for a compelling argument in rural Missouri. Taking broadsides against outsourcing, Cayman Islands tax havens and corporate welfare queens is a superb strategy in suburban Colorado. It was Democrats who ran on these and similar campaign themes who won against the odds in 2012. Most Americans, including in conservative districts, are strongly in favor of reducing income inequality, raising the minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits.

Atkins seems to have in mind the 2012 Senate winners Heidi Heitkamp, Martin Henriech, and Jon Tester, who are not from Arkansas, Indiana or Alaska (I’m guessing he’s not a big fan of Indiana’s Sen Joe Donnelly). I don’t know if progressives would generally agree that, say, the support of Heitkamp and Tester for the Keystone XL pipeline is entirely consistent with an “economic populist” position of brave opposition to the corporate Man. And for that matter, Third Way supports both a minimum wage increase and extended unemployment benefits. So some of his argument seems a bit off. But he’s right that Third Way totems like free trade tend to be very unpopular in southern and midwestern red states.
But if “economic populism” is such a big potential winner for red state Democrats, why isn’t it deployed more often, particularly in the South (Lord knows Louisiana has a tradition of this kind of politics)? Is it a corporate conspiracy? Would Mary Landrieu really foreswear any winning message that might save her seat? Would Kay Hagan?
Truth is, progressive disgruntlement with “conservadems” is as often about disagreement over cultural issues as it is about economics, so there’s nothing inherently progressive about elevating one set of issues over another, as Atkins seems to do. And so long as the U.S. Senate is set up as it is, with its anti-democratic (and anti-Democratic) tilt and internal rules, it’s inevitable that Democrats will need a broader coalition than Republicans to gain and hold a working majority.
So the Third Way folk are right about the need for a Big Tent, and wrong about accusing Markos of trying to “fold” it. And Atkins is right that a simple “move to the center” strategy for red state Democrats could foreclose successful messages, but perhaps wrong in suggesting “economic populism” is either a cure-all or a general point of fracture in the party (associating Third Way’s investment-banker-heavy board of directors with the views of Democratic “centrists” generally–or in some cases with Third Way’s own positions–isn’t really fair or accurate).
In the end I mainly want to defend Markos’ sorting out of what goes in to an assessment of political “progress:” it involves both policy goals and the political assets necessary to achieve them.

This year, right now, though, I doubt there’s any disunity on the desire that all Democratic Senate campaigns pull through to victory, grudging as the respect may be in some circles for candidates who help form a majority but make governing difficult.

From Donna Cassata’s AP story “Democrats see openings in congressional departures“:

…Republican retirements in a half-dozen swing districts provide Democrats with an opportunity to grab a handful of seats this November. The party has cleared a path for its preferred candidates while the GOP faces some messy primaries that underscore the divide between conservatives and the establishment.
In a Virginia district stretching from wealthy enclaves overlooking the Potomac River to the Shenandoah Valley, Republican Rep. Frank Wolf announced in December that he would step down after 34 years, giving Democrats a shot in a district that Republican Mitt Romney won by just 1 percentage point in the 2012 presidential election.
Democrat John Foust, a Fairfax County supervisor for the past seven years, already had set his sights on the seat, declaring his candidacy days before Wolf’s announcement. Last fall’s 16-day partial government shutdown, felt hard among the tens of thousands of federal employees in the district and outside contractors, was the deciding factor.
“The government shutdown was so indicative of the way Congress is working,” the soft-spoken Foust says in an interview in which he describes himself as mainstream and pragmatic. “The Republicans are willing to sacrifice ordinary people to pursue a partisan agenda. It’s just not acceptable.”

Despite the ‘Dems in Disarray’ squeeky bandwagon MSM pundits seem to be riding at the moment, Republicans are not exactly unified, nor is their party brimming with bright congressional prospects. Further, “Polls numbers are not where we would want them to be, but Republican congressional poll numbers are at an historic low and a fraction of where the president is. So everything is relative,” adds Rep. Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Cassata continues,

Elsewhere on the political map, Democrats are upbeat about their chances in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, where Republican Rep. Tom Latham, a close confidante of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, made the surprise announcement that he would retire after 10 terms. Obama won the district by 4 percentage points in 2012.
New Jersey, where two-term Republican Rep. Jon Runyan is retiring, offers a chance for Democrat Aimee Belgard, a member of the Burlington County Board of Freeholders, the county’s governing body…Obama won the district by 4 percentage points in 2012. The primary is June 3.
Democrats in the Philadelphia suburbs are counting on Dr. Manan Trivedi, an Iraq War veteran, to flip a seat held by Republican Rep. Jim Gerlach for six terms…
Democrats are all but certain to flip the California seat held by eight-term Republican Rep. Gary Miller, who is retiring. Obama won the district by 16 percentage points in 2012.

There is no question that Dems face a tough 2014 map. But the doomsayer pundits being hustled by the GOP’s echo chamber may have some explaining to do first Tuesday in November.

The argument over the current status of the Tea Party–is it dying, winning, or something in between?–rages on, pointing to some elements of confusion over how one measures the success of a political movement. Here’s how I addressed it today at Washington Monthly:

For hardly the first time, but with greater conviction than ever, there’s a big media meme this week that the apparent weakness of right-wing primary challengers to Republican senators means the Tea Party Movement has finally run its course and the Republican Establishment is fully back in the saddle again. Josh Kraushaar makes this judgment by looking at the support garnered by the GOP primary challengers. Molly Ball comes to the same conclusion by focusing on the ability of GOP congressional leaders to head off Tea Party-led kamikaze missions.
But at The Federalist Ben Domenech reminds the obituarists that you judge the power of a political movement not just by horse-race victories or even legislative battles, but by its influence over its targets. And by that measure, the Tea Party Movement has come a very long way since Santelli’s Rant:

The Tea Party’s success is not gauged by primaries alone. It’s gauged by how much the Tea Party’s priorities become the Republican Party’s priorities.
The Tea Party’s impact in primaries is largely about putting fear into establishment candidates, whether they knock them off or not.
It took them two cycles, but the traditional Republican establishment took the right lessons from the Bennett and Lugar losses. Orrin Hatch spent 2011-12 voting lockstep with Mike Lee. Primary threats made Mike Enzi part of the organizing group for the defund push. Pat Roberts is doing his best to don the winger apparel. Lindsey Graham is trying like mad to re-establish his conservative credentials. Thad Cochran is the exception that proves the rule: it’s no accident that a traditional Washington appropriator who hasn’t modified his ways is the most vulnerable GOP Senator this cycle. So if establishment Republicans understand that they are vulnerable in primaries, and have to pretend to be Tea Partiers when they’re in cycle, is that a sign that the Tea Party is dead – or a sign that it’s had a significant political impact?
Within the realm of Senate primaries, there’s not as clear-cut of a field of candidates this time in the challenger side with appropriators on one side and strong limited government types on the other (see Nebraska, where Tea Party folks are split between Sasse and Osborn). And the story hasn’t been finalized in North Carolina or Georgia. But even considering the relatively narrow issue of primaries, it’s clear that establishment guys who run as establishment guys lose: their path to winning is to appeal to the Tea Party, champion opposition to Obamacare, hoist the musket and run as right-wingers. Is the fact Mitch McConnell is winning his primary today because of Rand Paul a sign of Tea Party weakness? I think not.
This also speaks to the generational point, where we see Tea Partiers elected to lower level offices rise to take more prominent positions, backed by a new infrastructure of groups which can offset traditional fundraising routes.

These are precisely the points I tried to make in responding to the “death of the Tea Party” assessments of the Texas primary earlier this month. The gap between conventional conservative Republicans and the Tea Folk has always been exaggerated; it’s mainly a matter of strategy and tactics rather than ideology or policy. Even on strategy and tactics, the “Establishment” has mainly tamped down Tea Party demands for fiscal confrontations by adopting the Tea Folk obsessions with Obamacare and the pseudo-scandals involving the IRS and Benghazi! (now extended to an indictment of Obama’s “weakness” and anti-American instincts with respect to Ukraine). And if you look at actual primary elections, Senate “Establishment” victories–which many are proclaiming before they actually occur–are being achieved by vast concessions to the conservative activist “base,” which in turn is doing very well down-ballot.

Just because the Tea Party didn’t succeed in creating a 2014 government shutdown or may not knock off Lindsey Graham, it should by no means be adjudged as unsuccessful or even in decline. But beyond the debate over the Tea Party, it’s worth remembering that every viable political movement has multiple objectives can that usually be achieved in multiple ways.

Eric Brown’s “Blue Georgia: Can Jimmy Carter’s Grandson Turn Georgia Into A 2016 Swing State?” at International Business Times discusses prospects for Michelle Nunn’s Senate campaign and Jason Carter’s bid to win the GA governorship. An excerpt:

…Though, all of Georgia’s U.S. senators and statewide officials, and most of its House delegation, are Republicans, so can Carter and Nunn turn the tide? According to Emory University professor Dr. Alan Abramowitz, who specializes in party realignment in the U.S., Georgia’s demographics are changing enough that if Carter and Nunn can’t do it this year, someone else might soon.
“Georgia is going to be the next purple state. It’s trending the same way Virginia was a few years ago, though it’s not as far along,” Abramowitz said.

Brown adds, “From 2000 to 2010, Georgia’s non-white population increased from 37 percent to 45 percent, putting it on track to becoming a majority-minority state…Given the GOP’s continuing failures at reaching out to minority groups, and rising black voter turnout, the era of conservative domination in Georgia is likely on its way out.”
However, Brown, sees challenges facing Dems in GA before it can be rated as purple as Virginia, “including “a significantly stronger evangelical Protestant base, giving conservative white voters a stronger voice than in many other states.” Further,

One of the leading Republicans in the Senate race, Rep. Paul Broun of Athens, is well known for his firm evangelical beliefs. But the increasingly powerful voices of young voters and minorities in Georgia have the power to turn the state into a battleground for coming elections…Carter and Nunn have better chances than any Democrat in the 21st century, but it will still take work to pull off a win.
“For the Democrats to win either election, they need help from the Republicans,” Abramowitz explained. “What I mean is, in the Senate race, Republicans would need to elect someone a little too extreme for most people. If you ask most Democrats who they’d like to run against, they’ll pick Paul Broun. Not just because he’s very conservative, but because he has a knack for saying unusual things.”
.. In 2011, for instance, Broun appeared at a church-sponsored event and claimed that the theories of evolution and the Big Bang were “lies straight from the pit of hell.”…Rhetoric like that might sit well with Broun’s largely rural district, but he’ll have a harder time making a similar case to cosmopolitan Atlanta residents…
Meanwhile, Carter’s greatest chance at a win doesn’t just come from his own experience and endorsements from other politicians, but from weaknesses on his opponent’s part. Since 2010, [GA Gov.] Deal has been the subject of federal probes looking into possibly criminal misuse of his campaign funds during the 2010 gubernatorial election. If anything comes of the probe in the coming months, it could spell disaster for Deal and good news for Carter.
Even if Carter tries and fails against Deal this year, he’ll have positioned himself into a good place for 2018. As a Democrat who gave a good fight to an incumbent Republican, he’ll be able to make a strong case for his nomination once again, and since Georgia only allows two terms per governor, he won’t have to face another incumbent…

“And by then,” concludes Brown, “Carter will have benefited even more from Georgia’s shifting demographics.” Put that together with the fact that African American voters had a higher turnout rate than white voters in GA’s 2010 midterms, and the fact that Obama polled almost 47 percent of GA voters in 2012, and it looks like Dems might make a smart bet on a ‘two-fer’ by investing more substantial resources in turning out their base in GA this year.

Obamacare-bashers are not going to like Rick Ungar’s Forbes article (flagged at Kos), “The Real Numbers On ‘The Obamacare Effect Are In-Now Let The Crow Eating Begin,” signifying the awakening of the reality-based business community.
Democratic strategist Bob Shrum argues that Dems should run hard on Obamacare. As Linda Feldmann reports in The Monitor: “And the right way, he says, is to play up all the popular aspects of the law: barring insurers from denying coverage to unhealthy people; a ban on lifetime limits; a ban on charging women more than men; allowing adult children up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ plan; and enhanced drug coverage for seniors.”
From The Fix: More evidence that the tea party is spinning wheels.
Hotline on Call’s Karyn Bruggeman explains why “Why Pot Won’t Help Democrats In 2014.” She acknowledges, however, that “Pot earned its reputation as a Democratic turnout trick in 2012, when measures to expand access to it appeared on the ballot in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. In those states, turnout among voters between 18 and 29 spiked, increasing the youth share of the electorate between 5 and 12 percentage points from 2008. Nationally, the share of youth turnout grew by just 1 point between the two elections, from 18 percent to 19 percent.”
At The Progressive Ruth Conniff reports that progressives are bringing the heavy linguistic artillery to Wisconsin, framing wizard George Lakoff, to do battle with Scott Walker and his Republican minions in the state legislature.
Donna Brazile’s “3 lessons Democrats must learn after Florida loss” at CNN Politics notes that “Public polling in the run-up to Election Day showed that the electorate was going to skew toward Republicans by around 10%. The actual Republican margin of victory? About 2%….Luckily, we’ll have another chance to win this seat back in November — and with more people voting, we’ll have an even better shot at picking up the seat.”
For a graph-rich analysis of the historical relationship of the war on unions to accelerating economic inequality, read Colin Gordon’s Dissent article “The Union Difference: Labor and American Inequality.”
Here’s hoping that Democrat Jason Carter, running for Georgia Governor, and Michelle Nunn, running for U.S. Senate read the report “America Goes to the Polls: Voter Participation Gaps in the 2010 Midterm Election,” which notes “Black turnout – 44% in 2010 – continues to trail white turnout, with the gap widening during midterm elections… In several states, most notably Georgia and Alabama, the black turnout rate exceeded the white turnout rate.”
Neocon Chickenhawk gets TOLD.

Dave Weigel addresses an important question in his Slate.com post “Obamacare’s Next Top Model: Why aren’t Democrats running ads showcasing the people who have been helped by Obamacare?”
We’ve asked versions of this question before. But no one seems to have a good answer. Weigel notes a good pro-Obamacare ad that got a lot of plaudits, featuring a woman, Mary Francis Perkins, who praised the Affordable Care Act for allowing her to get coverage for her Parkinsin’s illness — coverage that was denied to her before the ACA.
Regrettably, however, the ad was an exception, explains Weigel, one buried in Tsunamis of ads designed to discredit the ACA — and elect Republicans. Weigel adds,

The Perkins video appears to be an outlier–the only ad in which Democrats defended the health care law by talking to someone who benefited from it. Steve Spencer, who shot the video, said it was easy to shoot but hard to find a taker for it.
“There are compelling stories out there,” says Spencer, “but who can afford to air enough ads to balance the Koch brothers?”
That’s the irony: Democrats perfected this strategy, and Republicans have turned it against them. Americans for Prosperity, founded and partially funded by David and Charles Koch, has found tremendous success with its sob-story ads. When Democrats or fact-checkers have complained about them, they’ve been accused of bullying “cancer patients,” and the search for victims has proceeded.

While the Republicans and their supporting front groups are highly-organized in seeking testimony for ACA-bashing ads, Dems and progressives are apparently leaving it up to individual campaigns to fend for themselves. It shouldn’t be all that hard, since a quick youtube search turns up lots of positive video testimony.
Weigel says, “Democrats need to find Obamacare success stories when few want to fund the work, during a midterm election when all the key races are on Republican turf, while the donors are already thinking about 2016.” Weigel quotes Democratic strategist Paul Begala:

“There simply is no liberal Koch operation…Rather than a national ad campaign, which is not realistic, Dems should look to smart 2014 candidates to engage this issue along [these] lines. Once someone does it, and it works, others will replicate in their states/districts. Do I think Dems should respond to the Koch ads? Absolutely. But it is going to be a piecemeal response.”

Some observers believe Alex Sink did a fair job of challenging her opponent’s Obamacare bashing, though it fell short. Clearly Republicans and their surrogates are going to increase their attacks against the ACA and Dems who voted for it in the months ahead. A more assertive ad strategy featuring positive testimony about the ACA, whether piecemeal or nation-wide, seems overdue.