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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Political Strategy Notes

In The Jacobin, via TNR, Touré F. Reed, associate professor of history at Illinois State University, explains why “Liberals Are Wrong to Separate Race from Class,” and presents a compelling argument that “the now-commonplace claim at the heart of the recent Black Lives Matter protests against Sanders is that white liberals have long reduced racism to class inequality in order to deflect attention from racial disparities…This is not just wrong, but the formulation–which ultimately treats race as unchanging and permanent rather than a product of specific historical and political economic relations–undermines both the cause of racial equality in general and pursuit of equitable treatment in the criminal justice system in particular.”
From Kate Kaye’s AdAge post “Democrats to Kick Off Digital Voter Targeting Effort at Summer Meeting“: “At the DNC’s behest, data services firm Experian and political data company TargetSmart Communications have spent the past several months turning the Democratic Party’s voter file into data that can be used readily to aim video ads, addressable TV spots and mobile and desktop display ads at specific voters…Voter File 2.0 reflects the party’s broader strategy of steering Democratic campaigns toward a preferred set of tools and vendors…The approach stands in contrast to that of the GOP, which historically has fostered a more competitive environment among multiple tech vendors. On the Republican side, firms including i360, the data company funded by the Koch Brothers, and Targeted Victory enable clients to send digital ads to specific voters using voter file data.”
The Upshot’s Josh Barro has a primer on “anchor babies,” and notes “According to Pew, in 2012 there were 4.5 million American children with at least one parent who was an unauthorized immigrant, and four million unauthorized immigrants living with an American child….There is one other myth in the debate: A citizen child is not necessarily a shield against deportation. In the second and third quarters of 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported that over 46,000 parents of citizen children were deported, accounting for 22 percent of all deportations.”
NYT columnist Frank Bruni sorts through the GOP rubble and pulls up John Kasich, explaining why Dems should not worry too much about him. Polls suggest he is electable in the general election — in the highly unlikely event he survives the primaries.
Marking the 10th anniversary of Katrina, NYT columnist Paul Krugman notes, “…Katrina was special in political terms because it revealed such a huge gap between image and reality. Ever since 9/11, former President George W. Bush had been posing as a strong, effective leader keeping America safe. He wasn’t…It took a domestic disaster, which made his administration’s cronyism and incompetence obvious to anyone with a TV set, to burst his bubble.” Krugman adds some devastating snapshots of GOP presidential candidates as “political poseurs,” including: “…Consider Jeb Bush, once hailed on the right as “the best governor in America,” when in fact all he did was have the good luck to hold office during a huge housing bubble. Many people now seem baffled by Mr. Bush’s inability to come up with coherent policy proposals, or any good rationale for his campaign. What happened to Jeb the smart, effective leader? He never existed.”
Ezekiel J. Emanuel, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, explains why “Why Republicans’ health-care plans are bad deals for Americans,” rooted as they are in three basic “reforms”: stingier subsidies, tax employer contributions to health care plans and allow plans to cross state borders (the ACA already has a provision, with regulatory standards). As Emanuel concludes, “Republican thinking on health-care reform has hardly advanced since 2008. The deals proposed then were bad and were defeated at the ballot box. And they remain bad deals for average Americans. This may be why few are willing to trust the “replace” part of the Republican pledge to “repeal and replace” the ACA.”
In addition to overwhelming public support for tougher background checks for gun purchases, here’s an even better reason why Dems could be bolder in their gun control messaging: “Among the 18 states that impose extra background check requirements for private gun sales, the average rate of gun deaths in 2013 was five fewer (out of every 100,000) than the rate among states that do not regulate background checks beyond the federal requirements,” according to Libby Eisenstein, writing in the National Journal.
At The Plum Line Greg Sargent posts on a new Democratic ad designed to obliterate whatever fading hopes for getting a respectable share of the Latino vote the GOP was harboring. “The GOP has given Democrats the raw material, if used properly, to potentially take the Hispanic vote off the table in 2016,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg tells me. “These ads signal that Dems understand they can dig the hole so deep for the GOP with Hispanics now that they will never get out no matter who the nominee is in 2016.”
The good bank.

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