From John Harwood’s New York Times article, “Democrats Seize on Social Issues as Attitudes Shift“: “Now the values wedge cuts for Democrats….Democrats profit politically — among young voters, college graduates, single women, blacks and Latinos — from the sense that they welcome these cultural shifts while Republicans resist them…”That’s why people are voting for us these days — not for our economic prowess,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. “They all reflect an underlying attitude. It’s openness, it’s tolerance, it’s respect for others and who they are.”
At The L.A. Times Michael A. Memoli and Lisa Ascara explain why “Obamacare loses some of its campaign punch for Republicans.”
CNN’s Dan Merica reports: “For the first time, a majority of Americans said they disapproved of their representative and thought they were part of the problem in Washington, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll out Tuesday. The poll found that 51% of Americans disapprove of the way their own member of Congress is handling his or her job, while 41% approve.” It’s a significant change, as Merica notes: “For decades, most Americans approved of the way their member of Congress was handling his or her job, but disapproved of the legislative body as a whole.”
For a map updating Crystal Ball’s assessment of the 2014 governorship races, click here. Accompanying article here.
At Gannett’s Baxter Bulletin Dick Polman reports “We’re on track for record-low midterm turnout this November, at least based on the voting evidence collected thus far. According to a new report by the non-partisan Center for the Study of the American Electorate, turnout in the first 25 statewide primaries was so anemic — down 18 percent from the early primaries in 2010 — that we’re “likely to witness the lowest midterm primary turnout in history…Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former Clinton White House adviser, tells NPR, “Gridlock is at an all-time high. The productivity in Congress is at an all-time low, and many Americans are asking themselves, ‘How much difference does it make who the people are, and what the party balance is, if nothing seems to change, election after election?'”
If Democrats needed another reason to get their midterm elections act together, Charlie Cook has it in his Government Executive post on “The Lessons of the 2010 Midterm Elections“: “While this year’s midterms won’t change the course set in 2010, what happens in the 2018 and 2020 gubernatorial and state legislative elections will be huge in establishing who controls redistricting in 2021, and which governors can veto or influence where the lines are drawn. For Democrats, those elections will determine whether they are going to be shut out of controlling the House for a second straight decade, or whether there will be a fairer fight for dominance of the lower chamber.”
Re Eric McWhinnie’s “10 States Most Dependent on the Federal Government” at the Wall St. Cheat Sheet, eight of the moochers delivered electoral votes for Romney and eight have government-bashing Republican governors.
Economist Jared Bernstein writes at The Upshot about findings from “the provocative new paper by the economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson that rigorously examines how the economy has performed under presidents since the 1940s.”: “The American economy has grown faster — and scored higher on many other macroeconomic metrics — when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican…The two looked at key macroeconomic variables averaged over 64 years (16 four-year terms), from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. Mr. Blinder and Mr. Watson focus mostly on the 1.8 percent annual difference in real G.D.P. growth. That is, over the full study, real G.D.P. growth averaged 3.33 percent per year. But under Democratic presidents the economy grew 4.35 percent and under Republicans 2.54 percent…Under Democratic presidents, the economy also spent fewer quarters in recession; added more jobs and more hours worked; and posted larger declines in unemployment and higher corporate profits than under their Republican counterparts. Stock market returns were a lot higher under Democrats as well, but because equity markets are so volatile, that difference is not statistically significant. (By the way, since March 2009, the S.&P. stock index is up 160 percent).”
Surely the good people of northern Alabama deserve better than this.

Dear Readers:
The Democratic Strategist is pleased to offer a significant new Strategy Memo by James Vega that presents a provocative and important argument.
Here’s how it begins:

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is facing a fundamental choice about political strategy.
There is no question that, as a recent Politico article stated,
“An ascendant progressive and populist movement” is increasingly
dominant in the Democratic coalition today.
The single most dramatic evidence of this rapid rise of the progressive-populist wing is, of course, the emergence of Elizabeth Warren in a few short years as the most widely popular and generally respected progressive leader in the Democratic universe since Teddy Kennedy in his prime.
But progressive-populist Democrats have not yet grasped the critical fact that Elizabeth Warren is not only a compelling progressive champion. She is also presenting progressive and populist Democrats with a very new and distinct approach to progressive political strategy. It is a new approach that inevitably requires progressive Dems to make a profound and fundamental choice regarding how they will relate to the rest of the Democratic Party.
You can read the memo HERE.

We believe you will find this memo both useful and important.
Sincerely,
Ed Kilgore
Managing Editor
The Democratic Strategist

E. J. Dionne, Jr. cuts through layers of fog in his Washington Post column, “Can the voters change the GOP?,” and clarifies Democratic strategy in the process. Dionne rolls out the choice that millions of voters face:

The central issue in this fall’s elections could turn out to be a sleeper: What kind of Republican Party does the country want?…It is, to be sure, a strange question to put to an electorate in which independents and Democrats constitute a majority. Yet there is no getting around this: The single biggest change in Washington over the last five years has been a GOP shift to a more radical form of conservatism. This, in turn, has led to a kind of rejectionism that views cooperation with President Obama as inherently unprincipled.

Dionne notes the Republicans’ most recent efforts to placate their nativist wing, while angering Latinos with increasingly mean-spirited immigration “reform” measures and rhetoric. Further, adds Dionne, “there is as yet no sense of the sort of tide that in 2010 gave a Republicanism inflected with tea party sensibilities dominance in the House. The core narrative of the campaign has yet to be established. Democrats seeking reelection are holding their own in Senate races in which they are seen as vulnerable.”
In addition,

Last week’s legislative commotion could change the political winds by putting the costs of the GOP’s flight from moderation into stark relief. House Republicans found themselves in the peculiar position of simultaneously suing Obama for executive overreach and then insisting that he could act unilaterally to solve the border crisis.

“On balance,” concludes Dionne, “Washington gridlock has hurt Democrats more than Republicans by dispiriting moderate and progressive constituencies that had hoped Obama could usher in an era of reform. The key to the election will be whether Democrats can persuade these voters that the radical right is the real culprit in their disappointment — and get them to act accordingly on Election Day.”

This week House Republicans have tied themselves in knots trying to pass a “border crisis” bill, in part because conservatives are demanding that any such legislation be accompanied by efforts to restrict or even repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, under which the president suspended deportations for DREAMers. You’d think to watch them that placating the nativist wing of the GOP was the only factor that mattered. But as I pointed out today at the Washington Monthly, a big price will be paid among Latino voters:

I would assume that Republicans are at least dimly aware that the anti-DACA provisions they are toying with to get conservatives on board a border refugee bill will come at a political cost. If not, they should check out this reminder from the polling firm Latino Decisions:

The push to dismantle DACA will significantly alienate Latino voters according to recent surveys carried out by Latino Decisions. President Obama’s 2012 administrative order on DACA, which provided temporary relief to more than 550,000 undocumented young people was overwhelming supported by Latino voters. In our June 2014 poll with the Center for American Progress, 84% of Latinos said they would be more enthusiastic toward the Democratic Party if DACA was renewed by President Obama in 2014. This high level of enthusiasm cuts across all segments of the Latino electorate….
DACA was a defining issue in 2012 for Latino voters and it continues to be a policy of utmost support. If Republicans wish to woo Latino voters, ending DACA is a severely misguided strategy as history proves. Back in 2013 the GOP already voted to defund DACA and in a July 2013 survey, we asked how favorable or unfavorable Latinos would feel toward the Republican Party if House Republicans voted to cancel all funding for the DACA program. In this survey, 75% of Latinos said they would be less favorable toward the GOP than they already were. Favorability also dropped significantly among likely GOP supporters: Evangelicals by 75%, political Independents by 73% and among Latinos who had previously voted Republican by 66%.

Messing with DACA is a really bad idea for a party that’s already struggling to cross the threshold of credibility with a Latino demographic that’s only going to become more important every year.

For those who are fed up with despairing about the Republicans’ obstructionist stranglehold on congress, I suggest reading Taylor Malmsheimer’s “The Future of Minimum Wage Will Be Decided in Cities” at The New Republic. It’s a little tonic for progressives who may be wallowing in mid-summer political doldrums. Have a swig:

In June, the City Council of Seattle made headlines when it voted unanimously to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour, the highest in the country. While Seattle wasn’t the first city to take minimum wage legislation into it’s own hands, it seems to be at the forefront of a national trend toward significant minimum wage hikes at the local level. In just over a year, at least six other cities and counties have mandated minimum wages as high as $15, and several more have legislation in the works.
In 2003, Santa Fe and San Francisco became the first cities to institute their own minimum wages, distinct from their states–and it wasn’t without opposition. Each city faced significant resistance from the business community: In San Francisco, organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and the Association of Realtors campaigned against the ballot proposition, arguing that it would lead to worker layoffs. In Santa Fe, the local chamber of commerce joined with New Mexicans for Free Enterprise and four other plaintiffs to sue the city, arguing that the municipality did not have the power to enact a minimum wage higher than the state’s. Despite the opposition, the San Francisco raise passed with 60 percent of a ballot vote, and the New Mexico Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Santa Fe’s legislation. But over the next eight years, only three other localities raised their minimum wage above the state level.

Malmsheimer cites three reasons why the cities are driving the trend: It’s easier to pass legislation at the city level; Concerted targeting by advocacy groups, and; Cities have higher costs of living. It’s not a cakewalk, and big biz is fighting tenaciously against the trend. But Malmsheimer points out that there is “no evidence of appreciable job losses or job relocation from urban-focused minimum wages.”
Might this may be the dawn of a new era of cities filling the void left by Republican obstructionists in Washington? The minimum wage increases in cities are significant. But there may be a lot more to look forward to in other urban reforms that can’t get traction in congress, such as environmental regulations, housing and education, as well as needed economic incentives and disincentives.
Democrats need to keep up the good fight to win elections to secure needed national reforms. But let’s also keep an eye on the cities and get more involved in local reform movements. There is something to be said for keeping faith that workable reforms are contagious.