At The Week Scott Lemieux examines the strategic flaws of a single-issue campaign — even when the cause is a very good one.
This is fun. At Politico Sen. Claire McCaskill explains “How I Helped Todd Akin Win — So I Could Beat Him Later.” from her book “Plenty Ladylike: A Memoir.”
At Roll Call’s Rothenblog, Nathan L. Gonzales notes “Democrats haven’t given up their effort to dig out of the minority in the House…Democrats face a difficult road to gain 30 seats and get back into the majority, but their prospects improved in a handful of races over the last few months.”
National Journal’s Alex Roarty, Andrea Drusch, Scott Bland and Josh Kraushaar present “Hotline’s Senate Rankings: The Senate Seats Most Likely to Flip in 2016,” and 10 of their top 12 are now held by Republicans.
From Gallup, a potentially-useful metric for identifying swing states: “The difference between the percentage of state residents identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic and the percentage identifying as Republicans or leaning Republican.” States closest to zero (and under +/- 2.0) include: NV, 0.5; LA, -0.5; OH, -0.7; CO, 1.3; AZ, -1.3; NC, 1.4; and WI, 1.6. Louisiana is the surprise — any theories?
Not such a big surprise: The disrupter of the Bernie Sanders rally reportedly supported Sarah Palin and the tea party.
Nate Silver explains why “Donald Trump Is Winning The Polls — And Losing The Nomination.” Among Silver’s most cogent insights: The polls “contemplate a winner-take-all vote, but most states are not winner-take-all.”
At The American Prospect Rachel M. Cohen reports on “The Growing Movement to Restore Voting Rights to Former Felons.” Cohen observes, “According to the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice advocacy group, there are roughly 5.85 million disenfranchised American citizens with felony convictions, and 2.2 million of them are black. That’s one out of every 13 African Americans…Eighteen states considered loosening ex-felon voting restrictions this year, up from 13 states in 2014. But passing legislation, as Maryland activists witnessed first-hand, is difficult. Only one state–Wyoming–ended up successfully loosening its restrictions.”
How a Georgia Democrat won a seat in the state legislature in a heavily-Republican district, and by a large margin, despite being outspent 2-1.