Along with all the campaign financial disclosures rolling in this week, we’ve begun to see some assessments of the organizational efforts of the two leading Democrats in the polls and in fundraising, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. You might think that Bernie Sanders’ grassroots enthusiasm might be giving him an organizational lead over the top-heavy and Establishment-oriented Clinton in the early states, but that’s not automatically how it’s playing out, as I discussed today at Washington Monthly:

Journalists are just now coming to grips with this, and there’s always a danger on such subjects of buying campaign spin. But there does seem to be a growing recognition that Hillary Clinton’s campaign differs from its 2008 predecessor because of a pervasive emphasis on organization-building in the states.
WaPo’s Matea Gold and Anu Narayanswamy come at the story from a different angle today, noting that HRC’s high “burn rate” for contributions is being driven by systemic investments in campaign infrastructure:

Details in the newly filed reports paint a picture of a campaign harnessing the latest technological tools and constructing the kind of deep ground operation that Clinton lacked in her 2008 bid. That kind of organizing capability has gained importance as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of Clinton’s rivals for the Democratic nomination, has drawn large crowds and gained ground in polls….
Clinton’s operation is paying rent in 25 cities across nine states, Federal Election Commission filings show. Along with about 340 staff members on the payroll, the campaign had hired nearly 60 field organizers by the end of June.
“It’s a sign that she’s approaching the campaign differently than the last time,” [David] Axelrod said. “They didn’t have as thoughtful an approach to laying the foundation for that campaign, and it ended up hurting them when it ended up being an organizational fight.”

At the “Politico Caucus” subsite, where there’s a sort of large focus group of early-state “Insiders,” the judgment is even clearer, per Katie Glueck:

Asked to assess what Clinton is doing right, and wrong, in their states, almost every Caucus participant — Democrats and Republicans — answered the question of what she’s doing right by saying Clinton has pulled together a strong staff and is doing all of the little things right when it comes to being organized for the early state contests and beyond.
“Doing right: building and investing in a monster field operation. Scares the hell out of this Republican knowing that many of those staff will easily pivot to organizing for the general election,” an Iowa Republican said.
“HRC is building a campaign rooted in organizing,” added a New Hampshire Democrat. “I’ve been to several house parties & campaign events and there are always new faces present — faces that weren’t involved in the 2012 presidential race. There is absolutely no one taking this primary race for granted whatsoever.”
“The organizing strategy is straight out of the Obama 2007 playbook,” an Iowa Democrat added. “The crew is enthusiastic and well-trained on the basics (pledge cards, pledge cards, pledge cards). Sanders and O’Malley will find it impossible to compete with the sheer size of the organizing.”
In New Hampshire, in particular, Democrats also largely lauded Clinton for visiting more rural parts of the state that are often overlooked. And across the board, her staff was praised for keeping cool amid the rise of Bernie Sanders.

Meanwhile, there’s also some recognition that the impressive enthusiasm that suffuses Bernie Sanders’ campaign is not automatically transmittable into a good organization, helpful as it is. At TNR earlier this week, Suzy Khimm suggested that the Occupy-influenced passion for decentralized political organizing could be a problem for Team Sanders:

Sanders is betting that passion will enable him to surmount the serious obstacles he faces in broadening his base of support. But that also means the campaign needs to find a way to corral popular enthusiasm into more traditional, on-the-ground organizing if Sanders wants a real shot at expanding his base beyond largely white, liberal enclaves. That means convincing more supporters to embrace a more centralized, hierarchical type of organizing, while still preserving the authentic, grassroots populism that Sanders embodies for his fans.

It’s obviously early still. But Iowa, with its arcane Caucus rules and high expectations for hands-on politics, will likely be the acid test for Democratic candidates in terms of organization. Hillary Clinton’s experience there in 2008 was horrendous; not only did she finish third, but Iowa depleted most of her campaign treasury for a while there. As for Sanders, there’s also a recent precedent that should be instructive: the 2004 campaign of Howard Dean, whose troops had all the enthusiasm in the world, but also finished third in Iowa despite huge numbers of volunteers, good poll numbers and endorsements from Tom Harkin and Al Gore.

At HuffPo AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka explains the importance of President Obama’s initiatives to address a major injustice in America — mass incarceration: “Simply put, mass incarceration is ineffective, racist, and morally bankrupt. It is up to all of us — business and labor, Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative — to do something about it.” Trumka expressed the Federation’s support for: Removing questions about criminal records from job applications (Ban the Box); Increasing job training to enhance prisoner reentry to society; The elimination of mandatory minimum sentencing in non-violent drug cases; A federal review of prison overcrowding and the use of solitary confinement; Restoring voting rights for ex-felons.
Details are still a little sketchy. But it appears that the killings in Chattanooga provide yet another tragic example of why sale of automatic/semi-automatic assault weapons to civilians should be banned, as a narrow majorities affirmed in 2013 Pew and CBS News polls.
Evan Halper of the L.A. Times posts on “The savvy tech strategy fueling Bernie Sanders’ upstart 2016 campaign.”
It’s encouraging that Democratic presidential candidates are putting more emphasis on reforms to improve workplace justice. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has proposed “a new tax credit on Thursday to encourage more businesses to offer profit-sharing to their workers, sharpening her campaign’s focus on raising middle-class incomes,” as John D. McKinnon reports at the Wall St. Journal.
The Cascadia Advocate’s Rennie Sawade writes about the deliberations of a Netroots Nation panel “A new fifty state strategy: Reversing the Democratic collapse in the states.”
Maria J. Stephan and Errin Mazursky make a strong case for reorienting U.S. foreign policy to give more support to authentic, home grown and nonviolent reform movements.
They keep saying he won’t last, but Trump leads the GOP field as Republican strategists cringe and grimace because…
…”Among Latino voters, 71% have an unfavorable view of Trump, compared with 17% who see him favorably, the poll showed. Matched in a hypothetical horse race against Clinton, Trump would lose 70%-16%,” according to a Univision survey by Bendixen & Amandi, a Democratic firm, and the Tarrance Group, a GOP firm, David Lauter reports at the L. A. Times.
Pundits are beginning to realize that Obama may be one of the shrewder long-term strategists to occupy the White House, as indicated most recently by Todd S. Purdum’s Politico post on “Barack Obama’s Long Game.”

In his Campaign for America’s Future post, “The GOP Sugar Daddies of 2016,” Terrance Heath notes “When Republicans finally choose their nominee for president, he or she will be already bought and paid for by one or more of the GOP sugar daddies of the 2016 election.” Heath has some observations about the cost of presidential campaigns and why so many Republican candidates think they can launch one nonetheless:

Getting a viable primary campaign off is so prohibitively expensive that almost none of the 15 current GOP candidates could afford to do it on their own. Fortune magazine called it a “$50 million vanity project.” That’s roughly the cost just to launch a primary campaign, and keep it going long enough to have an impact. That’s a grand total of about $750 million for the entire GOP field. This estimate may be too low, given that GOP candidates will have to spend more on media, to make themselves heard in such a crowded field.
So, why are there so many GOP candidates? We have the billionaire GOP sugar daddies of 2016 to thank for that. Since Citizens United opened the door to super PACs, which can collect unlimited donations from individuals and corporations, an influx of new Republican donors and bundlers has driven a money boom on the right.

Heath’s post is accompanied by a video clip to bring the issue into focus:

Heath provides a list of recent GOP sugar-daddies, with their income source, net worth and the surnames of Republican presidential candidates they are supporting:
Sheldon Adelson; Casino tycoon; $22.9 Billion; Christie, Rubio (Maybe)
Norman Braman; Car dealer, Philadelphia Eagles Owner; $1.88 Billion; Rubio
Harlan Crow; Real estate, Crow Holdings CEO; Hundreds of millions; Christie
Larry Ellison; Oracle founder; $54 Billion; Rubio, Paul
Foster Friess; Mutual fund financier; $350 Million; Santorum
Ken Griffin; Citadel hedge fund founder; est. $4.4 billion; Walker
David and Charles Koch; $40.7 billion each; $81.4 billion combined; Bush, Cruz, Paul, Rubio, Walker
Robert Mercer; hedge fund magnate; $23 billion; Cruz
Robert Rowling; TRT Holdings founder $5.5 billion; Cruz
So what do the Republicans’ sugar daddies get for their largess? Heath explains:

The GOP’s sugar daddies are buying influence over lawmakers, according to a study by Martin Gilens, professor of politics at Princeton University, and Benjamin I. Page, professor of decision making at Northwestern University. After examining how politicians handled 1,779 issues, Gilens and Page found that, “… economic elites stand out as quite influential – more so than any other set of actors studied here – in the making of U.S. public policy.” Giles and Page conclude: “In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.” Giles and Page echo a 2014 joint Yale/University of California at Berkeley study, which found that campaign donors are more likely than constituents to get meetings with lawmakers.
…The GOP candidates, however, all seem to be saying the same thing, because they are all appealing to the same set of billionaires who all want the same things: financial deregulation that lets them further pad their bottom line, corporate tax cuts, tax “reforms” that favor the wealthy, and so on. The GOP sugar daddies are willing to spend lots of money to get what they want. Now they can, until they have enough lawmakers in their pockets to get what they’re paying for.

No matter who the GOP nominates after the billionaire primary, the nominee’s agenda will be basically the same — policies which fatten the assets of the super-rich at the expense of the middle class. That’s a key part of the message Democrats must get across to end the Republican blockade and move America forward.

The following post comes from a Democracy Corps E-blast:
A quick headline might say, “Democrats are doing a little better with the white working class than they were in 2012,” though their vote still hugging 35 percent may give you pause. A more considered headline would tell you a big gender story. Hillary Clinton and congressional Democrats (in a named ballot) are running considerably better with white working class women, produced by a sharp pull back from the Republicans. But amazingly, Democratic gains with working class women are partially offset by losses with white working class men. With the men, Clinton is trailing Obama’s performance by 5 points.
For now, the white working class women are having their say and Clinton and the Democrats are eroding some of the Republicans’ working class firewall.

Based on a national survey of 950 likely 2016 voters conducted June 13-17, 2015 by Democracy Corps, 60 percent cell, and national post-election surveys among 3,617 2012 voters conducted by Democracy Corps in 2012.
Read at DCorps website.

From Betsy Woodruff’s Daily Beast post, “Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton Just Had a (Sorta) Lovefest“:

The combative Vermont senator, who’s currently polling in second place (very distant second place, but hey, second place nonetheless) behind Clinton in the contest to be Democrats’ 2016 presidential nominee, rubbed shoulders with her Tuesday on Capitol Hill when she made a quick pit stop there to shmooze with old congressional pals.
…Several senators said Sanders joined his fellow liberals to stand and applaud the former secretary of state when she entered the room and indicated that the exchange between the two former colleagues was complimentary.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said Clinton name-checked the Vermont senator early in her remarks, giving him “real praise for carrying the Democratic flag high with a lot of excited supporters, some comment like that that was real positive right at the start of her comments.”

Sanders reportedly appreciated the compliment, affirmed his intention to run a civil campaign, even while noting that they disagreed in varying degrees on issues like the Keystone pipeline, restoring Glass-Steagal and climate change: “I don’t like negative campaigns, I’ve never run a negative ad in my life,” Bernie Sanders said. “I believe the American people are entitled to serious discussion about serious issues.”
Despite their differences, adds Woodruff, “the interactions between Sanders and Clinton in the Capitol on Tuesday indicate the pair may not campaign in the knock-down, drag-out slugfest style that dominated the 2008 Democratic primaries.” Woodruff quotes Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill’s summation of the luncheon meeting: “We were all grown-ups, we all like each other, we’re all in the same party,” We all want the same result.”
And that result begins with a blue wave on the first Tuesday of November, 2016

The following article by Brookings Senior Fellows in Governance Studies William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck, is cross-posted from Brookings:
In her economic speech in New York on Monday, Hillary Clinton did what no one thought she would do–she took on the excesses of Wall Street. We couldn’t agree with her more. It is good policy and good campaign strategy.
As the American economy has struggled to regain its footing in the wake of the great recession we’ve heard many explanations for slow growth and stagnant incomes in the 21st century American economy. High on the list are globalization and the role the information technology revolution is playing in the disappearance of manufacturing jobs and, more recently, routine service sector jobs as well.
Although the decisions we make can shape their effects, these big trends are here to stay. But another set of problems is in principle more malleable. These problems arise from the “financialization” of the American economy–problems that we have written about and which Hillary, in a bold speech, has now placed square on the 2016 agenda.
In recent years, certain incentives have become so powerful and pervasive in the private sector that they have tilted corporate decision-making in the direction of short term gains. No one set out to create this myopic system, which arose piecemeal over a period of decades. But taken together, these perverse new micro-incentives have created a macroeconomic problem–the taking of short term profits at the expense of investment in long term growth. These incentives include: the proliferation of stock buybacks and dividends, the increase in non-cash compensation, the fixation on quarterly earnings and the rise of activist investors.
The proliferation of share repurchases, we argue in a recent paper, has had numerous bad effects on investments, on wages for average workers, and on the willingness of firms to adopt a long-term perspective. The surge in non-cash compensation for CEOs has intensified these problems. In the name of better aligning managers’ incentives with the interests of their companies, it has created perverse incentives to manage earnings and to report results that diverge from actual corporate performance. It diminishes incentives to seek productive investments and to make the kinds of commitments–to research and development, for example–that will show up in the bottom line five or ten years hence, not in the next quarter’s earnings.
There is a compelling case, we conclude, for reining in both share repurchases and the use of stock awards and options to compensate managers. To this end, we propose the following steps:

• Reverse Reagan-era regulatory changes that opened the floodgates for massive stock buy-backs
• Improve disclosure practices
• Strengthen sustainability standards in 10-K reporting
• Toughen executive compensation rules
• Reform the taxation of executive compensation

We are not against having investors make a good profit but, like many in the business community itself, we have come to believe that the incentive structure today is creating a short term mindset that is detrimental to the kind of long-term growth that produces good jobs and rising wages. To re-balance our economy we must restructure the incentives that shape the decisions of CEOs and boards of directors. By reining in stock buybacks and reducing short-term equity gains from compensation packages, we have argued, we can move significantly down this road. And we should.
PDF of the Galston/Kamarch paper
Galston elaborates on Clinton’s strategy in his latest Wall St. Journal column.

It is easy to predict that the Republican attacks on the agreement negotiated with Iran will carefully avoid one major topic: the alternative the U.S. should pursue in order to force Iran to dismantle its nuclear program. If the deal is rejected, the U.S. will have to have some kind of alternative policy other than just letting Iran resume its nuclear development program at full speed.
The alternative policy, floated by various Neo-Cons this spring, is to bomb Iran’s nuclear installations.
Several weeks ago I took a look at the military arguments for this alternative. Click on the link below in case you missed the original piece.
For many Neo-Cons the real objective of bombing Iran’s nuclear sites is to build support for an invasion. For this, a failure could be more useful than success. That’s why they seem untroubled by the unrealistic assumptions on which they rest their case.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
In 2002, the so-called Neo-Cons like Dick Cheney stampeded many in Congress to vote to authorize the War in Iraq. It was a vote most of them will regret for the rest of their lives.
We are fast approaching another “Iraq War Moment.” A vote to prevent President Obama from implementing the just-announced agreement that prevents Iran from getting a nuclear weapon will result in one of only two outcomes: a nuclear Iran, or another major U.S. war in the Middle East.
After months and months of negotiation, the United States, five other world powers and Iran have signed an agreement that will prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon — in exchange for the elimination of international financial sanctions.
That deal was possible because of monumental diplomatic effort. It began when the Obama Administration forged a coalition of the world’s major powers to invoke the sanctions in the first place. Then the United States persuaded those same powers to stick together until they got deal that actually cuts off all of the major pathways for Iran to obtain a nuclear bomb. Altogether an extraordinary achievement.
And remember, the agreement was achieved because the Administration successfully maintained a truly international sanctions regime that included Russia and China as well as the major European powers.
If the United States Congress derails a deal that is considered fair by the other permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, those international sanctions will collapse — the moderate, pro-western forces in Iran will be discredited in Iran — the hardliners in Iran will be empowered — and Iran will be free to develop a nuclear weapon. That is exactly the opposite of what opponents of the deal say they want as an outcome.
In the event that the U.S. Congress rejects the internationally negotiated agreement, we will not be able to just “toughen our sanctions” and force the Iranians to bend to our will. International sanctions were the vehicle that has brought Iran to the negotiating table. The Iranians faced sanctions from all of the world’s major economies.
If the Congress stops the deal, the United States will be blamed for its failure – not Iran — and those international sanctions will simply disappear. And if international sanctions collapse, so will our leverage with Iran.
If, on the other hand, Iran signs the deal and then cheats – it will be Iran that wears the jacket — and international action against Iran will once again be possible in order to enforce the deal’s terms.
There is, of course, one other alternative: another Middle East War. The United States could try to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capacity with a military attack. But as many military experts have attested, airstrikes will not be enough.
If the United States takes unilateral military action against Iran, it will unify the country behind the hardliners in Iranian politics. What would be necessary would be a full-blown invasion – regime change.
And that is exactly what many of the leading opponents of the nuclear deal really want.

Read more…

Early though it is, Dante Chinni explains “Why the GOP Should Worry About Hillary Clinton’s Poll Numbers” at NBC’s MTP web page: “The Urban Suburbs (about 29 million votes in 2012) should be the place the GOP nominee aims to sway voters, and going by these numbers, Rubio would be the best candidate there. He loses by only 17 points. But, it’s very early — and losing by 17 points probably isn’t going to get it done for the GOP. That’s worse than Romney did.”
Here’s a revealing tidbit which shows how low the NC GOP will go, from Bob Geary’s “It’s time to rise up against voter suppression by Republicans” at IndyWeek: Geary explains that NC’s “monster” voter suppression law “reduces the number of early-voting days from 17 to 10. (In the 2012 elections, 70 percent of black voters came early, compared to 52 percent of whites.) It eliminates same-day registration and voting during the early voting period. (Blacks, who are 22 percent of the voting population, were 34 percent of the same-day registrant-voters.) And if you vote in the wrong precinct–say, because you moved–none of your votes count, even for president….One upshot is that people who come to an early-voting site and aren’t properly registered will be too late to get properly registered in time to vote on Election Day. North Carolina, in the top 12 states for voter turnout since same-day registration began in 2008, may sink back to the bottom.”
Freddie Allen reports at The Charlotte Post that “”The number of voters silenced because of the new [NC voter suppression] law likely exceeds 30,000 and could reach 50,000 or more,” according to analysis by Democracy North Carolina, a watchdog group that monitors elections.”
On a more positive note, at Newsweek, Fred Askin’s excellent update “The Battle to Keep the Vote: State by State” notes, “A number of states have adopted online voting registration, making it easier for eligible voters to get on the rolls in states like Illinois, Virginia and West Virginia. And Maryland expanded early voting and allowed same-day registration during early voting…But most significantly, Oregon adopted universal registration of anyone over 18 who does not opt out….Democrats have successfully extended Election Day registration in the blue states of Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, California and Rhode Island, bringing the number of EDR states to 13 plus the District of Columbia…Republicans in Maine went so far as to repeal their long-standing Election Day Registration law (EDR); however, voters reinstated it in 2011 when Democrats managed to place the issue on a referendum ballot.”
Paul Krugman shreds “The Laziness Dogma,” which undergirds much Republican myth-mongering, most recently in Jeb Bush’s clumsy, walked-back diss of American workers.
In his syndicated column, E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes on Hillary Clinton’s emerging economic policy strategy: “Her package includes new benefits for individuals (family leave, child care, more affordable access to college)…Other incentives will promote profit-sharing, and…proposals on executive compensation along the lines of a bill introduced by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. It would give CEOs less favorable tax treatment for their bonus packages unless they offered wage hikes to their workers matching increases in productivity and the cost of living…Ms. Clinton’s ideas reflect a wide center-left consensus on behalf of bottom-up or, as many progressives call it, “middle-out” economics. They also underscore how the nomination challenge she faces from Sen. Bernie Sanders differs from the problem created for Republicans by Mr. Trump.”
At National Journal, S. V. Date takes a look at “Hillary Clinton’s White Male Voter Problem.” Date quotes Democratic campaign activist Steve Schale: “Every point of white share you lose, you have to win Hispanics by 4 to 5 points more” to make up for it, Schale said. “In ’08, we knew if we really focused on keeping whites above 40 (percent), we couldn’t lose. To me, that makes more sense than always trying to cobble out a tight win. And at some point we are going to max out (with) Hispanics.” But Date adds, “Republican pollster Bill McInturff scratches his head while watching all this hand-wringing over a demographic group that will continue to decline in significance. For one thing, he said, the 27-percentage point advantage Republicans built among white men in 2012 is probably about as bad as it can get for Clinton, given that a sizeable percentage of white men are white-collar liberals…McInturff has prepared an analysis that even increases the Republican advantage with white men, to 31 percent, and decreases the GOP’s disadvantage among black and Latino voters slightly. But it still shows Republicans losing the next election by 3 points.”
Alex Seitz-Wald reports at MSNBC that Democratic presidential candidate former Sen. Jim Webb is crafting his pitch as a centrist, appealing to white working-class and southern white voters, while dissing Dems on the left.
But in his NYT Sunday Review article, “The Dream World of the Southern Republicans,” long-time observer of racial politics in the south Howell Raines explains “…Republican officeholders live in a dream world where they think rhetoric and repetition will somehow cause minority voters and center-left whites to turn into Republican voters. Alarmed Republican political professionals warn that unless their candidates stop obstructing on health care and make progress on gender issues, the party will lose the White House in 2016 and in quadrennial spurts see its Southern hegemony dismantled by new voters in the New Sunbelt….The longer they take to get it, the greater the odds that multiethnic Democrats will finally break the Republican lock on the solidly red South.”