At The Daily Beast Democratic speechwriters/strategists Kenneth Baer and Jeffrey Nussbaum have a suggestion for the Democratic nominee in their post, “Here’s Hillary’s Debate Knockout Punch—Will She Use It?: When the topic is cultural politics, Trump bites back. But when it’s class politics, his answers are lame—or he’s just silent. Therein lies the key.” Among their insights: “A little over a week ago, that ex-pugilist, Senator Harry Reid, leveled a blistering attack on Donald Trump as a “scam artist” who “rips off working people” and is hiding his tax returns, playing footsy with Vladimir Putin, and running a fake charity all to enrich himself…Trump’s response? Silence. It’s amazing to think that there’s anything that will quiet Trump, but after examining the political campaign to date, it’s clear that Donald Trump is well aware of what attacks hurt him, and which ones don’t. Trump’s tell is simple: he ignores the attacks he can’t parry, the ones that could open a conversation that would hurt him with the voters who (currently) support him most strongly.”

USA Today’s Heidi M. Przybyla lists “5 things Hillary Clinton needs to do on debate night,” including: “play offense”; “Be more likeable”; “Outline a positive vision”; “go off script”; and “Have a compelling answer about Iraq and Syria.” At Roll Call, Jonathan Allen offers “Five Objectives for Hillary Clinton in the Debates,” including: 1. Tell us what you’ll do for the country; 2. Let baby Donald hide behind your skirt; 3. Destroy Trump’s economic message; 4. Talk tougher on national security; and 5. Stop talking in paragraphs and pauses. Greg Sargent explains at The Plum Line “Clinton can win the debate even if Trump doesn’t act unhinged. Here’s how,” and suggests, “Job One for Clinton is to project as much steadiness, sobriety of purpose, and mastery of complex issues as possible, on the theory that voters will reward the candidate who actually takes the debates seriously as a proving ground for the excruciating pressures and brutally tough choices required of a president.”

“With by far the largest debate audience in history expected, working the refs could have an unusually rich payoff for the perceived “winner.” But the race is going to have to wind up being very close for a single debate to really matter. In the end, it did not in 2012.” — from Ed Kilgore’s New York Magazine post, “These Are the Lessons To Take — and Not To Take — From the First Debate in 2012”

New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg sees the first presidential debate, conducted by Lester Holt, a registered Republican, as “A Moment of Truth for Presidential Debate Moderators.” Rutenberg writes, “Can the moderators this fall turn their debate stages into falsehood-free zones? What does that look like in this election? Debate organizers say they want to avoid a situation in which the debate becomes one big fact-checking or hectoring exercise and never gets to important policy differences…Nobody wants a repeat of Matt Lauer’s performance a couple of weeks ago when he let Mr. Trump’s claim that he always opposed the Iraq war go unchallenged …Actually, scratch that. One person does — Mr. Trump, who portrayed critics of Mr. Lauer as liberals seeking to push debate moderators to be tougher on him than on Mrs. Clinton.”

E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains why “Debate Monitors Shouldn’t Duck“: “Holt and his colleagues Martha Raddatz, Anderson Cooper and Chris Wallace need to keep in mind that they are far more affluent than most of the people watching the debates. They should think hard about what life is like for those — from Appalachia to Compton, Calif., from the working class in Youngstown, Ohio, to the farm workers in Immokalee, Fla. — who find themselves in less comfortable circumstances than those at the media’s commanding heights…I want Trump pressed about whether foreign interests have helped prop up his business empire and then asked how voters can possibly judge the truthfulness of his answer if he refuses to release any tax returns…In the short term, I’d be worried that the talk of Trump’s “low expectations”at the first debate is a tip-off that the media hivemind might frame a debate tie as a Trump win.”

In “Election Update: Where The Race Stands Heading Into The First Debate,” Nate Silver sets the statistical stage for tonight’s debate. “…Clinton is a pretty good bet at even-money. As of Sunday morning, she’s a 58 percent favorite according to both our polls-only and polls-plus models…FiveThirtyEight shows somewhat better odds for Trump than most other forecast models. Not all 2-point leads are created equal, and Clinton’s is on the less-safe side, certainly as compared with the roughly 2-point lead that President Obama had over Mitt Romney on the eve of the 2012 election…about 18 percent of the electorate isn’t yet committed to one of the major-party candidates, as compared with 6 percent late in 2012.¹ The number of undecided and third-party voters has a strong historical correlation with both polling volatility and polling error — and in fact, the polls have been considerably more volatile this year than in 2012.”

Meanwhile, “Trump is trying to rig the debate by kneecapping Lester Holt,” argues Colbert I. King at Post Politics. “Holding them both to the same standard should do the trick. Anticipating tricks from Trump, a master trickster, is Holt’s challenge. Good refs know the game, and the characters out to game the system…Trump’s public argument being that Holt will throw off the debate if he tries to correct Trump. Trump’s objective: reduce Holt to a potted plant in the moderator’s chair.”

At Vox, Dara Lind explores “The real reason debate moderators don’t want to fact-check Donald Trump” and notes, “…On the eve of the first debate, the head of the Commission on Presidential Debates, Janet Brown, crushed those daydreams into finely ground dust…”I don’t think it’s a good idea to get the moderator into essentially serving as the Encyclopedia Britannica,” she told CNN. In her view, it’s the candidates’ job to fact-check each other — not the moderator’s job to fact check them.” However, the monitors absolutely should badger the candidates to answer the question at hand. No free passes.

CNN reports that the first debate will “likely be the most-watched political event in history.” A cord-cutter alert from Daily Beast’s Amelia Warshaw: “All the major news networks will also be offering free live streams in addition to those provided by YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Viewers without a cable subscription can view the debate live on CNN.com, for free and without a cable provider login.”

The New York Times editorial board opines today on “The Success of the Voter Fraud Myth” and offers a credible explanation. First, some facts about voter fraud, from the editorial:

Last week, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that nearly half of registered American voters believe that voter fraud occurs “somewhat” or “very” often. That astonishing number includes two-thirds of people who say they’re voting for Donald Trump and a little more than one-quarter of Hillary Clinton supporters. Another 26 percent of American voters said that fraud “rarely” occurs, but even that characterization is off the mark. Just 1 percent of respondents gave the answer that comes closest to reflecting reality: “Never.”

As study after study has shown, there is virtually no voter fraud anywhere in the country. The most comprehensive investigation to date found that out of one billion votes cast in all American elections between 2000 and 2014, there were 31 possible cases of impersonation fraud. Other violations — like absentee ballot fraud, multiple voting and registration fraud — are also exceedingly rare. So why do so many people continue to believe this falsehood?

More to the point, why is the GOP so successful in selling this snake oil? As the editorial puts it, “How does a lie come to be widely taken as the truth?…The answer is disturbingly simple: Repeat it over and over again. When faced with facts that contradict the lie, repeat it louder.”

The editorial correctly attributes this “mass deception” to “Republican lawmakers.” Further,

Behind closed doors, some Republicans freely admit that stoking false fears of electoral fraud is part of their political strategy. In a recently disclosed email from 2011, a Republican lobbyist in Wisconsin wrote to colleagues about a very close election for a seat on the State Supreme Court. “Do we need to start messaging ‘widespread reports of election fraud’ so we are positively set up for the recount regardless of the final number?” he wrote. “I obviously think we should.”

Sometimes they acknowledge it publicly. In 2012, a former Florida Republican Party chairman, Jim Greer, told The Palm Beach Post that voter ID laws and cutbacks in early voting are “done for one reason and one reason only” — to suppress Democratic turnout. Consultants, Mr. Greer said, “never came in to see me and tell me we had a fraud issue. It’s all a marketing ploy.”

A few well-crafted googles will retrieve many more such examples. And yes, it does have the intended effect of targeting  African American voters, who tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic, in particular. The editorial cites a study which found that, in elections from 2006 through 2014 “voting by eligible minority citizens decreased significantly in states with voter ID laws and “that the racial turnout gap doubles or triples in states” with those laws.”

In addition to the effectiveness of repetition, and despite the discriminatory intent, voter i.d. laws are unfortunately a fairly easy sell. Polls have indicated that large majorities of survey respondents favor voter i.d. laws (80 percent in this Gallup poll reported August 22nd). On a common sense level, requiring some sort of identification just seems reasonable when put in simplistic terms, especially to “low-information” voters who may not be aware that many low-income people and people in high-density urban areas often don’t have a driver’s license, or an “official” i.d.

The tougher sell for Republican politicians is restrictions on early voting, which are also designed to target African American citizens. Republican office-holders have been able to get away with it in many states mostly because they have gerrymandered hefty majorities in state legislatures, despite the fact that polls indicate early voting is broadly-popular, even with Republican rank and file (74 percent in the  Gallup poll noted above). Republican officials are reduced to phony “early voting is too expensive” arguments when confronted. They should be confronted on this topic more frequently and more intensely.

One reason repetition works so well in fostering myths about voter fraud is that the GOP echo chamber and message discipline are so efficient. You will often hear the exact same verbiage in sound bites and buzz-phrases from conservative commentators on radio and television and in print and digital media.  There is also an unofficial blackout of honest discussions about voter suppression among higher-brow conservative columnists, who don’t want to sully themselves with cheesey arguments, lying about voter fraud and favoring voter i.d. and restrictions on early voting.

Democrats are going to need a landslide election or two to cut into the GOP’s domination of state legislatures. But Dems should also focus on developing a more efficient echo chamber, so they can also benefit from repetition in challenging the myth of voter fraud. Message discipline doesn’t come as easy to the Democratic Party, with its more diverse constituent groups. But there is surely room for improvement in the way Dems “market” reforms and hone the messages needed to make the sale.

At U.S. News Stan Greenberg, CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, co-founder of Democracy Corps and author of “America Ascendant,” reports on “The Trans-Partisan Trade Revolt: Voters of both parties are pressuring politicians to oppose corporate influence over trade.” Noting that “A stunning 62 percent of white working class men oppose the [TPP] deal, a third strongly,” Greenberg argues that Hillary Clinton’s critique of the proposed deal resonates well with two significant groups of voters: “We should avoid some of the provisions sought by business interests, including our own, like giving them or their investors the power to sue foreign governments to weaken their environmental and public health rules.” Greebeerg adds, “That is the kind of message that moves the most pro “free trade” Democrats to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership but also engages the Republican base voters activated by Trump.”

In his nationally-syndicated column, “What have you got to lose with Trump? For working class, a lot,”  E. J. Dionne, Jr. quotes from President Obama’s recent speech in Philadelphia that “across every age, every race in America, incomes rose and the poverty rate fell,” that “the typical household income of Americans rose by $2,800, which is the single biggest one-year increase on record” and that 3.5 million people were lifted out of poverty, “the largest one-year drop in poverty since 1968”? Dionne adds, “He wasn’t exaggerating. The median household income hit $56,516 in 2015, an increase in real terms of 5.2 percent from 2014, and the gains of Americans with lower incomes were bigger than those of the well-to-do. We have a long way to go to ease our inequality problems, but we haven’t seen broadly shared income growth like this since the late 1990s when, as Clinton would point out, her husband was president.” Dionne continues, “Should blue-collar voters risk blowing the gains by taking a chance on Trump? Obama had something useful to say about this Tuesday: “He spent most of his life trying to stay as far away from working people as he could. And now this guy is going to be the champion of working people? Huh?”

Paul Krugman addresses a question of growing concern in his “The Conscience of a Liberal” blog at The New York Times, “Why Are The Media Objectively Pro-Trump?” Krugman explains, “…It’s not even false equivalence: compare the amount of attention given to the Clinton Foundation despite absence of any evidence of wrongdoing, and attention given to Trump Foundation, which engaged in more or less open bribery — but barely made a dent in news coverage. Clinton was harassed endlessly over failure to give press conferences, even though she was doing lots of interviews; Trump violated decades of tradition by refusing to release his taxes, amid strong suspicion that he is hiding something; the press simply dropped the subject.”

At slate.com Jim Newell’s “Gary Johnson Is Not Worth Any Liberal’s Protest Vote: He’s a free-market ideologue who would work to undermine large pieces of the left’s program” notes: “…in Thursday’s fresh new New York Times/CBS News national poll…Clinton and Trump are tied at 42 percent apiece in a four-way race. “The third-party candidates draw their strongest support from younger voters,” the Times writes. “Twenty-six percent of voters ages 18 to 29 say they plan to vote for Mr. Johnson, and another 10 percent back Ms. Stein,” about the same as in the just-released Quinnipiac poll.

Kevin Drum’s Mother Jones post “Why Are There Any Liberals Supporting Gary Johnson?” shows that the Libertarian presidential candidate’s economic policies are more right-wing than those of Trump on some major issues. At Rolling Stone Tessa Stuart has Johnson quotes on many of these issues.

“The share of religiously “unaffiliated” people in the country — atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” — increased from about 16 percent in 2007 to about 23 percent in 2014, according to a Pew Research study last year…A Pew poll this year found that religious “nones” make up one-fifth of all registered voters in the country — about in line with the percentage of white evangelical Protestants, who comprise a crucial piece of the Republican coalition…In the Pew poll this year, more than a quarter of Democratic and Democrat-leaning voters were religiously unaffiliated. Overall, about two-thirds of the unaffiliated said they supported Mrs. Clinton over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump — about in line with the percentage who supported President Obama at the same point in 2012 over Republican nominee Mitt Romney.” — from David Sherfinski’s “Candidates face rising ‘nontheist’ voting bloc” at the Washtington Times.

NYT reporter Michael Wines has unearthed a host of videos and quotes by Republican officials bragging about and acknowledging their efforts to suppress voting and voting rights of groups who tend to vote Democratic. Among those quoted, Todd Allbaugh, 46, a staff aide to a Wisconsin Republican state legislator, explains why he quit his job and party: “I was in the closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP Senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters. Think about that for a minute. Elected officials planning and happy to help deny a fellow American’s constitutional right to vote in order to increase their own chances to hang onto power.”

Charlie Cook spotlights a mistake the Clinton campaign may be making, which he has seen in many other campaigns: “One of the biggest mis­takes that cam­paigns make is to over-sched­ule a can­did­ate…A lot of can­did­ates are over-sched­uled, something that of­ten leads to polit­ic­al mis­takes, men­tal er­rors, or health is­sues. Some­times it is the fault of cam­paign op­er­at­ives pil­ing too much in­to the sched­ule; oth­er times, it is a can­did­ate who won’t say no, adding events to an already full sched­ule. But bad things hap­pen to ex­hausted can­did­ates. Either their brains lose track of their tongues, or they break down phys­ic­ally, of­ten at in­op­por­tune times… It would be per­fectly nor­mal for someone with a back­break­ing sched­ule to dial it back and re­cu­per­ate. Be­sides, it could double as some quiet de­bate prep.”

Both Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium and Sabato’s Crystal Ball poll analysts see a very clear narrowing of the presidential race improving Trump’s chances. But their analyses probably does not reflect the disgust of swing voters in reaction to Trump’s ugly, unapologetic walkback of his birther lies. Wang does qualify his analysis of this political moment by citing the plausible scenarios in Glen Thrush’s Politico post, “5 reasons Trump might fall in autumn: The GOP nominee’s surge is real, but perishable.”

I was glad to read that the Clinton campaign is going to put some effort into reaching out to voters, especially young voters, who are considering casting their ballots for Libertarian or Green Party presidential candidates.

As Jonathan Martin and Amy Chozick report at The New York Times, “Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies, unnerved by the tightening presidential race, are making a major push to dissuade disaffected voters from backing third-party candidates, and pouring more energy into Rust Belt states, where Donald J. Trump is gaining ground.” Chozick and Martin add that “leading Democrats have been alarmed by the drift of young voters toward the third-party candidates.”

Green nominee Stein and Libertarian Johnson are together inching into double-digit territory in some recent polls. I think there is a belief that Stein voters are generally Naderite Democrat-haters and therefore not persuadable, while Johnson draws more from Republicans, which has historically been the case with the Libertarians.

But this year is a little different, as the authors note,

The New York Times-CBS survey this week showed, in a four-way race, both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton receiving 42 percent, with Mr. Johnson drawing 8 percent and Ms. Stein 4 percent.

What is striking is that Mr. Johnson, despite being a former Republican governor who supports limited government, appears to take just as many votes from Mrs. Clinton as he does from Mr. Trump. When asked to choose between the two major party nominees, 23 percent of Mr. Johnson’s supporters said they would back Mrs. Clinton while 20 percent said they would favor Mr. Trump.

Martin and Chozick report that the Clinton campaign hopes to enlist Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Al Gore to focus on reversing the drift of young voters toward the Libertarians and Greens. Sanders and Warren, in particular, are held in very high regard by young voters, and they have the credibility to get a hearing with those who are genuinely persuadable. Gore’s experience in 2000 is instructive, even if he doesn’t have the juice to excite today’s younger voters.

Pro-Democratic Super-PAC Priorities USA is also going to make a significant contribution to the project. “We’ll be launching a multimillion-dollar digital campaign that talks about what’s at stake and how a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for Donald Trump, who is against everything these voters stand for,” said Justin Barasky, a strategist for Priorities USA.”

That’s the meme all Democrats should repeat until it sticks: “A vote for the Libertarian or Green presidential candidate is, in effect, a vote for Trump.”

This is a good project the Clinton campaign should support — but not at the expense of investing in African American GOTV projects in swing states, which is certainly where they can elicit the most pivotal Clinton votes for every dollar and minute invested.

Grudgingly credit Republicans with doing an effective job of branding Clinton as “not trustworthy,” albeit with skimpy evidence. Republicans have long relied on the power of sheer repetition to implant their memes, and it is working better than ever in 2016. It’s a dark art, but it works frighteningly well, as they have refined their techniques. Sadly, too many in the traditional media have proven to be gullible accomplices.

As for the Green Party, it is disappointing that it has degenerated into a spoiler role with respect to the Presidential election. The Greens could do a lot of good if they would focus on down-ballot contests, while supporting the Democratic nominee, who is always far better than the Republican on environmental concerns. They could really improve the Democratic Party by electing savvy environmentalists who could strengthen the Democratic environmental comittment at the grass-roots level — a far more promising strategy than going down in a blaze of glory while contributing to the election of Trump.

Of the two candidates, Johnson may be more of an asset to Trump this year, since he draws less-informed liberal voters, who are hustled by the Libertarian stances on personal freedoms like same-sex marriage and smoking marijuana, while ignoring the fact that the Libertarians are like Republicans on steroids with respect to economic policies. Johnson does draw some support away from Trump in terms of the shrinking number of moderate Republicans. But some of them may also be otherwise ready to vote for Clinton, when reminded that Johnson is astoundingly clueless about foreign policy.

Stein’s suporters are more in the vein of inflexible hard-core lefties. The Greens have morphed into more of an all-purpose Naderite/Democrat-bashing party. The environmental movement deserves a political organization that focuses more on an anti-pollution reform agenda.

In the recent past, third parties have helped the Democratic presidential candidate by dividing conservative voters and drawing them away from the Republicans. Indications are that it could be different this year, with Johnson drawing slightly more from Clinton, owing to the success of GOP parroting the “untrustworthy” meme. When addressing young voters, especially, Democrats should repeat their own meme with equal fervor and dedication, “A vote for the Libertarian or Green presidential candidate is, in effect, a vote for Trump.”

“If you see the poll averages and models settle into a steady Clinton lead of 2 points or less, or have the race tied or Trump ahead, then Clinton backers can break out their worry beads,” observes Charlie Cook in his post “The Race Tightens, But It’s Still Clinton’s to Lose” at the Cook Political Report. “Trump supporters can take heart at the recent tightening, but I don’t think we are anywhere near a tossup race yet.”

Simon Maloy nails Trump and the false equivalency lapdogs masquerading as journalists in his Salon.com post, “Trump’s successful tax dodge: Months of lying and stonewalling somehow aren’t a major scandal: Donald Trump Jr. confirmed that his dad’s tax info will remain hidden and that transparency hurts Trump politically”

At Roll Call Jason Dick explains why “Democrats Believe Long Shots Can Deliver a House Majority.”

But Maddowblog’s Steve Benen reports “The New York Times’ Upshot…maintains a frequently updated forecasting model showing which party is favored to control the Senate in the next Congress. A month ago, by a roughly two-to-one margin, Democrats were favored to be in the majority. As of this morning, however, according to this model, there’s a 51% chance Republicans will be in charge…Daily Kos has its own projections, and it too shows the GOP favored to keep its Senate majority. The Huffington Post’s forecasting model tilts even more heavily in the Republicans’ favor.”

Meanwhile Susan Page, focusing on Chester County, PA, argues at USA Today that “A suburban tide against Trump could sink his election bid.” Seh quotes Ruy Teixeira: “In Donald Trump, you have a perfect storm of a candidate in terms of pressing buttons to sending white, college-educated voters, particularly women, in the other direction,” says Ruy Teixeira, co-director of “States of Change,” a nonpartisan project that studies the impact of demographic trends on elections. “These are not voters who are protectionist or anti-immigrant. He represents a type of Republicanism or strand of the Republican Party that they probably like the least.”

Here come the Koch Brothers big money to rescue Republicans down-ballot. “Of its roughly $250 million budget for the election, Freedom Partners said it would spend $42 million on TV and digital advertising, all told. The rest will now be focused on its ground game in addition to voter contact by phone and mail, and events.”

Apropos of my post on health care yesterday, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee reports on a new push for a “Senate resolution calling for every American to have the choice of a public health insurance option.” According to the announcement, “With Hillary Clinton actively campaigning on big ideas like a public option, debt-free college, and expanding Social Security benefits, Democrats will earn a mandate in 2016 to govern boldly and progressively in 2017. Bernie Sanders’ partnership with Senate leaders and grassroots groups on this push shows increasing Democratic unity around big progressive ideas…Hillary Clinton called for a public option on May 9 and reaffirmed this support in a big economic speech on August 11.”

“Is Arizona A Swing State This Year?” Jude Joffe-Block reports on the latest developments at npr.org.

Reporting on the possibilities for women office holders in this year’s election, at The American Prospect  Peter Dreier offers some statistics to ponder: “Since the 1970s, the number of women in Congress and in other levels of government has steadily grown. Women now comprise 20 percent of the Senate, 19.3 percent of House members, 24.6 percent of state legislators, 12 percent (six) of the nation’s 50 governors, and 19 percent of the mayors of the nation’s 100 largest cities. Even so, American women still are still far less represented in government than their international peers…There are currently 20 women in the Senate—14 Democrats and six Republicans—according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University…Twelve women—including three incumbents—are currently running for ten Senate seats. (There are 34 Senate races this year)…If things break well for the Democrats, the next Senate could have 24 women—19 Democrats and five Republicans. This would be a record number of women in the Senate.”

Democrats everywhere have work to do in order to make the most of the unprecedented opportunity presented by the 2016 election. But there is nonetheless a need for thinking longer-term, beyond 2016, to reconnect with core Democratic party values as we chart a better future for America.

So take a mini-break with Matt Grossman and David A. Hopkins, authors of Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats, who have an interesting post up at Vox, “Health reform: trying to achieve Democratic goals through Republican means: American policy compromises Democrats’ pragmatic goals with Republicans’ ideological objections.”

Grossman and Hopkins explain,

During the congressional debate over the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Republicans successfully undermined overall popular support for the law by characterizing it as a “government takeover” of the American health care system — even though most of its specific provisions remained quite popular with the public.

As many frustrated Democrats pointed out, the ACA was far from the exercise in single-payer socialized medicine implied by Republican critics. In fact, the law’s structure is striking for the many ways in which it attempts to avoid conservative accusations of “big government” liberalism.

Republicans favor federalism over nationalization. The ACA creates state-based insurance exchanges and uses state Medicaid partnerships to deliver services.

Republicans favor private sector implementation over increasing government bureaucracy. The ACA delivers benefits mainly through private insurance companies.

Republicans favor free market incentives. The ACA uses internet-based shopping marketplaces, which allows consumers to compare prices and requires insurers to compete for their business.

In an earlier era, back when Republicans would actually negotiate in good faith, the ACA would have been considered a moderate Republican bill, grudgingly suported by Democrats. Many Democrats would still describe it that way, even though nearly all of today’s Republicans bash the ACA at every opportunity.

Hopkins and Grossman go on to argue that Democrats are trapped in a frame of Republican making. “Political leaders typically pursue the goals of Democratic constituencies using tools and approaches that respond to conservative critiques of big government…the Republican Party characterizes each set of new initiatives as expanding the role of government in violation of constitutional values.”

To pass the ACA, Democrats had to adjust, not only to their constituent group concerns, but also to conservative criticism, to get anything passed. “Democrats have even internalized conservative criticisms of federal agencies and programs,” say the authors, “As a result, public policy responds to conservative critiques.”

Grossman and Hopkins present some startling charts, showing that “big government” in the sense of a dominant federal sector, is largely a myth. The actual increase federal employees since 1946 has been miniscule in both real and percentage terms. Most of the growth in the government workforce has been at the state and local level, which Republicans certaimly prefer to a growing federal sector. Worse, they show that, despite the perception of ‘big government’ domination, a lot of what should be in the public sector has been privatized

Public policy increasingly relies on private sector government contractors and recipients of competitive grants (usually nonprofits) to deliver services. Although it is difficult to measure the size of this “shadow government” with precision, it now eclipses that of the direct federal workforce.

While federal government and goveernment grantee employment and the military personnel, has been fairly stable since 1990, there has been an enormous uptick in spending on federal contractors. More gravy for the private sector.

The authors present data showing that, “American social welfare spending nearly matches that of large European nations — but a large fraction of our welfare spending passes indirectly through private companies, usually employers.” America’s “subsidized private welfare expenditure” share of gross domestic product is enormous compared to that of other nations, which opens up irresistible turf for private sector corruption. We get the knee-jerk parroting of the “big government is wasteful/corrupt” meme in the media, while the private sector often loots taxpayers, with very little in the way of media accountability.

To provide an example of wasteful spending in health care, I recently had an asthma attack which required about 3 hours of routine hospital treatment and monitoring, nothing all that extraordinary. The bill was over $8K, with the profits being gobbled up by various private sector health contractors. Three months later, my out-of-pocket share remains unclear. Shortly afterwards, my nationally-respected health insurer dumped me because of my new zip code.

A few years before that, I cut my hand on a broken glass and had to get some stitiches at a different hospital. When the bill came, I noticed a $60 charge for “tray removal.” I asked the billing office what that meant, and the staff responded, “That’s when they took off the first bandages and put them in a tray and emptied it.” No doubt, millions of Americans have similar stories.

Grossman and Hopkins write, “Democrats have collectively expanded the scope of government authority but have been forced to implement their initiatives in cooperation with the private sector, by relying upon market competition and tax incentives, and by decentralizing services to states, localities, contractors, and grantees.”

On balance, the Affordable Care Act has been a step forward in terms of providing health security for additional millions of Americans who had been denied decent coverage, although a number of Republican governors and state legislatures have weakened the ACA by refusing to accept Medicaid Expansion.

Democrats must create a consensus that quality health care for all Americans should be the top national security priority. All evidence suggests that the private sector can’t meet this challenge. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton favors reforms that strengthen the ACA’s coverage to include every citizen and every illness and condition. After electing Clinton and a working Democratic majority of congress, Democrats and progressives should urge Clinton to press the case for a single-payer health care system.

It’s unclear as of this writing how long Hillary Clinton’s pneumonia diagnosis will prevent her from campaigning and we can expect Republicans will try to amp up doubts about her health. Gabrielle Debenedetti writes at Politico that she is in high demand by Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate, and “Democrats’ fight for Senate control is dicey enough that both Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and his expected successor, Chuck Schumer, have been directly urging the nominee’s campaign to start piling more resources into the battle for control of the chamber. She will, after all, need a Democratic Senate to get anything done come January, Reid has insisted…The senators have been making the case that the candidate’s cash-rich political operation — the hub for party money and resources in 2016 — should start playing a greater role to ensure she has at least two years to move legislation through the Senate before Democrats face a brutal 2018 map, according to people familiar with the discussions…Democrats need to win four seats to take control of the Senate, and they are currently in a good position to do so: They seem likely to win Republican-held seats in Illinois and Wisconsin and are favored in Indiana, too. Up to eight other Republican seats are in play, with only one Democratic seat — Reid’s — currently looking like a toss-up.”

At The Plum Line Greg Sargent reports on a focus group of suburban Philadelphia white women, “a mix of mostly “soft” Democrats and a few Republicans and independents” organized by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg on behalf of Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund. Sargent was most struck by the low regard they had for GOP nominee Donald Trump, noting “these voters appeared entirely closed off to reconsidering Trump, describing him and his public statements in the harshest of terms: Liar. Narcissist. Egotist. Racist.” The women were selected because they were possible ‘ticket-splitters,’ to determine whether their feelings about Trump would affect their votes down-ballot. Sargent observes that PA’s Republican Senator Pat Toomey thus far seems to have escaped becoming collaterall damage of the Trump campaign. “They were reluctant to blame the GOP for Trump’s rise or to see Toomey through a Trumpian prism,” writes Sargent. “Others noted specifically that Toomey has not backed him, either, and that seemed to mean a lot to them. Indeed, one sentiment I heard expressed was that as long as GOP officials didn’t endorse Trump, they deserved to be evaluated as independent of him.”

Will Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s “What is Aleppo?” comment brand him as a lightweight, not a serious alternative for voters who want a president who is up to speed on international affairs? Before the comment Johnson was receiving some favorable reviews from a few Republicans, like Romney. Johnson may lose some of them, while other of his supporters will simply not vote for President and some may now vote for Clinton. It’s hard to imagine many Johnson supporters switching back to Trump. Johnson’s “What is Aleppo?” moment was not a ‘gotcha’ set-up. MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle was clearly anticipating a substantive answer to his question about the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis when he asked it. Before the incident some polls indicated Johnson drew slightly more from Clinton than Trump. Whatever ‘spoiler’ potential he had before the gaffe is probably gone:

What about Clinton’s “deplorables” gaffe? Republicans will try to leverage the hell out of it as an example of class elitism. But those who would get hustled by that meme are likely already supporting Trump. I doubt it will drive many swing/undecided voters to Trump. In the long run, notes Phillip Bump at The Washington Post, it may even call more attention to the fact that he welcomes racists. Clinton has said what she needs to say about it, and, when asked for further comment, she could use the opportunity to publicize Trump’s anti-worker record.

Florida’s Democratic Senate candidate Parick Murphy, who has comparatively low name-recognition, is  now campaigning as a “scrappy underdog” moderate against Republican Senator Marco Rubio. Calling Rubio “Senator No-Show“ is one way to remind Florida voters that Rubio has the U.S. Senate’s worst attendance record and is ripping off taxpayers by not showing up for work. Murphy could also pound away at Rubio’s brother-in-law mess, the way Rubio waffled on his decision to run again, and use video footage of Rubio’s deer-caught-in-the headlights, water-jar moment in ads. Florida likes moderate Democrats, and, with good ads, Murphy can win.

I agree with the conclusion of authors Matt Grossman and David A. Hopkins in their Monkey Cage post that “no single theory of party organization can accurately define both U.S. parties. They’re organized differently; they appeal to voters differently; they nominate candidates and seek policies differently.” Credit Democrats with at least trying to represent the interests of a majority of Americans, while the GOP exists primarilly as an instrument of obstruction in service to the rich. For Democrats to become a full-fledged progressive party like some in other countries, however, they will need much stronger local structure, party-building and candidate recruitment.

Theo Anderson’s In These Times post “The Stories We Live By: Why the White Working Class Votes Conservative” reviews Arlie Russell Hochschild’s “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right” explores the roots of discontent among white workers, primarilly in the south. Anderson observes that “government is perceived as the greater evil, coddling and giving breaks to the people who get ahead without putting in the hard work—the “line cutters,” in the shorthand that Hochschild uses, or the “takers” in the epithet favored by the Tea Party. This makes conservatives’ sense of loss double-barreled: Industry destroys their land and their health, while government and progressivism shatter, they believe, the old moral frameworks and rules of fair play. The result is a vicious cycle of dysfunction. Anti-government anger leads to deregulation of industry, which is then free to inflict more havoc, which intensifies the sense of loss and anger, which is then directed primarily at the government.”

From Matt Fuller’s HuffPo post, “Are Democrats Blowing Their Chance To Take Back The House?“: “There are just over 50 congressional districts held by Republicans with a PVI of R+4 or better, and seven seats even have a Democratic rating. In a year when Trump is the nominee, many of those R+4 districts could go for Clinton. And that’s before considering that districts with even more favorable PVIs could go for her too…the DCCC notes that PVI isn’t always the best indicator of a seat’s vulnerability. The DCCC has its own rating system, the Democratic Performance Index, which better takes into account the demographics of a district and voter willingness to break with the top of the ticket…Split-ticket voters have been disappearing in politics. The number of districts that went for one party for president and the other for the House reached a 92-year low in 2012 ― 5.7 percent…But a national average isn’t really the best way to look at the race for the majority. Clinton could severely run up the score in some areas, and still, with so many of these districts neatly carved out in the GOP’s favor, Republicans could hold on to the House.”

Joan Walsh’s article, “Can the Democrats Win Back White Working-Class Voters? Maybe—but first we need to understand why they left the party,” at The Nation sheds light on a leading concern of Democratic strategists.

Noting that the white working-class vote “was nearly 50 percent of the total electorate in 2012,” Walsh addresses four key questions of concern to Dems in 2016:

Did the white working class flee the Democrats because the party abandoned them economically? Is Clinton, as the establishment favorite, uniquely unqualified to lure them back? Is their economic suffering really driving the Trump campaign? And can it be enough to carry the racist bully to the White House?

Walsh provides a strong “No” answer to all of these questions. She acknowledges the pessimism of this large constituency, but adds, “the conviction that’s common on both right and left—that the Democrats deserted the white working class by chasing “identity politics” and Wall Street donors and now show little interest in winning it back—is undone by the evidence. To bring these voters back, we have to understand what made them turn away in the first place.”

Walsh takes particular issue with Thomas Frank’s contention that “the Democrats betrayed their own base” by supporting NAFTA , coddling Wall St. and other ‘neo-liberal’ ideas. She acknowledges a significant decline in Democratic share of white working-class voters since the early 1960s, when the Democratic presidential candidates recieved about 55 percent of their votes, on town to 2012, when “Barack Obama dropped to 36 percent of that vote in 2012, 25 points behind Republican Mitt Romney.”

But Walsh argues that “a deeper dive” indicates very significant regional differences have emerged in surveys of the Democratic presidential candidates’ share of their votes, particularly in the last preesidential election:

In 2012, Obama convincingly won the white working-class vote in New England, essentially tied with Romney in the Midwest, and ran competitively in the coastal West and Mid-Atlantic states, according to the polling group Democracy Corps. Only in the Deep South (where he won 25 percent) and the Mountain West (where he won a third) did Obama crater.

Jimmy Carter (in his first campaign) and Bill Clinton were able to slow the southern regional exodus of the white working-class to the GOP presidential candidates. But now New Yorker Trump, taking a lesson from Reagan, has shown that regional identity is no longer much of a force. “Donald Trump didn’t invent this nativist, racist, paranoid  appeal,” says Wash. “He just dialed into it.”

Walsh shares concerns exprressed by white working-class voters gleaned from interviews and insights from the AFL-CIO’s Working America project headed by Karen Nussbaum, who conducted “front-porch focus groups” in rust belt cities, which found significant suppport for Trump. But their support was not so much based on Trump’s issue positions. Walsh notes,

But the project learned that although these voters’ No. 1 issue was the economy, Trump’s economic solutions (such as they are) weren’t driving his popularity. Despite Frank’s insistence that Trump’s opposition to trade deals is the core of his appeal, only 8 percent of those who favored Trump said it was because of his “policies.” Nearly half said they liked him because he “speaks his mind,” Nussbaum noted. “They have a strong feeling that government isn’t working for them, and they want political leadership that helps them. If we move them to clarify who’s really to blame and who really will help, we can help make sense of a frightening situation.”

Walsh cites polls indicating that Trump’s white working-class support has been somewhat overstated, and adds,

I asked Ruy Teixeira what the Democrats could do to attract more of these voters. In their 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority, Teixeira and John Judis identified the rising “Obama coalition.” But now, both writers warn the party against forsaking struggling white voters entirely. Judis makes a persuasive case in his forthcoming book, The Populist Explosion, that the remarkable candidacies of Sanders and Trump, along with the right-and left-wing insurgencies in Europe, have their roots in the white working class’s economic dislocation—something that the left must address. “Maybe you don’t need the white working class in order to win the presidency,” Teixeira says, “but you need them to accomplish anything else you want to do.” He’s right: Democrats can’t win majorities in the Senate or House, or prevail in state legislatures, without a stronger showing among this cohort.

But when it comes to what the party can do to win more of them back, Teixeira is less certain. Though many of these struggling voters believe that Democrats, especially Obama, have turned their backs on them, in fact “people fail to realize how much [Obama] has accomplished,” he argues, citing the 2009 stimulus, the Affordable Care Act, and the auto-industry restructuring, all of which helped white workers. For the last few years, Teixeira and I have participated in a roundtable (along with other scholars, labor activists, and writers, including Judis and Nussbaum) on the white working class, organized by Democratic strategist Ed Kilgore. Virtually every position the group recommended to appeal to white working-class voters has been incorporated into the Democratic platform. What more can Hillary Clinton and the party do?

Teixeira believes that Clinton’s domestic program—from expanded infrastructure spending and paid family leave to debt-free college and subsidized child-care programs—“will make it easier for [white working-class voters] to get ahead.” But he thinks winning back a majority will require “a full-employment economy with rising wages”—the kind of economy fostered by the Keynesianism of the mid-20th century. Yet policies to re-create that kind of economy would need at least some support from Republicans, Teixeira points out. And right now, Republicans rely on white working-class voters to support their filibuster against any Democratic agenda.

Wash concludes on an optimistic note: “The resurgent populist, pro-opportunity, and anti-oligarchy left wing of the Democratic Party has pushed politicians, including Clinton, to embrace many policies—on trade, union rights, Social Security, and education—that many hope will win back this cohort…If Clinton and the Democrats can find a way to fuse the Obama coalition with the remains of the mainly white New Deal coalition, they will be unbeatable.”

Hillary Clinton has run an impressive campaign so far, and there is good reason to hope that she she is on track to meet the challenge posed by Walsh. The dream of an enduring Democratic coalition that can secure a stable, working majority is closer to becoming a reality than it has been for many years. If progressive activists, particularly in the swing states, will pour their energies and resources into making it happen in the closing weeks of the 2016 campaign, the Republican road-block will be ended and a new era of forward progress can finally begin.

At New York Magazine Jonathan Chait blisters NBC moderator Matt Lauer for his weak interviews of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at the “Commander-in-Chief Forum” sponsored by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans. “Lauer’s performance was not merely a failure, it was horrifying and shocking…Most voters, and all the more so undecided voters, subsist on a news diet supplied by the likes of Matt Lauer. And the reality transmitted to them…is a world in which Clinton and Trump are equivalently flawed.” Chait adds that “a third of Lauer’s questioning time” focused on Clinton’s private email server. As for Lauer’s softball interview with Trump, Chait cites Lauer’s “completely ineffectual technique of asking repeatedly if he is ready to serve as commander-in-chief,” while giving Trump a fairly easy ride on his relations with Putin. Chait’s summation: “The average undecided voter is getting snippets of news from television personalities like Lauer, who are failing to convey the fact that the election pits a normal politician with normal political failings against an ignorant, bigoted, pathologically dishonest authoritarian.”

Also at New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore faults Lauer for weak follow-up: “Worse yet, the fast pace seemed to have emptied moderator Matt Lauer’s brain of any goal other than asking hard-hitting questions and moving on, providing the impression that the two candidates’ answers were equivalent expressions of reasonable approaches to U.S. security challenges.” Regarding Lauer’s Trump interview, Kilgore notes the Republican nominee’s “calls for much higher defense spending, a larger military, and the elimination of any restraints of use of military force against civilians.” Kilgore cites Trump’s “expressions of admiration of Vladimir Putin,” which did nothing to alleviate concerns that “Trump might emulate his Russian friend in “uniting” his country and Making It Great Again via radical curbs on dissent and diversity.”

Michael M. Grynbaum’s New York Times report on the interviews, “Matt Lauer Fields Storm of Criticism Over Clinton-Trump Forum,” noted the complaint that Lauer allowed Trump room to ramble, while clipping Clinton’s remarks at several points: “Lauer interrupted Clinton’s answers repeatedly to move on. Not once for Trump,” Norman Ornstein, the political commentator, wrote in a Twitter message, adding: “Tough to be a woman running for president.”

The headline for Aaron David Miller’s CNN report on the interviews, “A good night for Putin and those damn emails” puts it well. Miller elaborates, “it’s striking how many serious foreign policy issues weren’t covered. Indeed, instead of asking tough questions on China, nuclear weapons, under what conditions would a candidate use force, NBC chose to play off the same thoroughly politicized and well-worn themes: support for the Iraq war and Clinton’s emails. There was very little that was productive or new…What the night demonstrated clearly, though, is that Trump is not comfortable with the substance of foreign policy issues, nor is he able to engage in detailed or even general conceptions of how to formulate policies…On balance, Clinton acted and sounded more serious and more presidential.”

Shane Goldmacher has a revealing Politico story explaining the central role of the largely unknown Elan Kriegel, the Clinton campaign’s director of analytics. Goldmacher writes, “What cities Clinton campaigns in and what states she competes in, when she emails supporters and how those emails are crafted, what doors volunteers knock on and what phone numbers they dial, who gets Facebook ads and who gets printed mailers — all those and more have Kriegel’s coding fingerprints on them….When Clinton operatives talk about their “data-based” campaign, it’s invariably Kriegel’s data, and perhaps more importantly his models interpreting that data, they are talking about. It was an algorithm from Kriegel’s shop — unreported until now — that determined, after the opening states, where almost every dollar of Clinton’s more than $60 million in television ads was spent during the primary…To understand Kriegel’s role is to understand how Clinton has run her campaign — precise and efficient, meticulous and effective, and, yes, at times more mathematical than inspirational. Top Clinton advisers say almost no major decision is made in Brooklyn without first consulting Kriegel.”

A widely-cited CNN/ORC national poll that showed Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton by two points failed to re-weight the survey sample to match the 2012 electorate. Correcting the sample to reflect demographic reality shows a four-point lead for her. As Louis Nelson explains at Politico, quoting NBC’s Chuck Todd, “Whites without a college degree appear to make up nearly half of their sample. In 2012, by the way, whites without a college degree was slightly more than a third of all voters,” Todd said. “The point is, your numbers may not be wrong but your weighting may be, your assumptions. So the CNN folks assumed an electorate that is not an impossible scenario for Trump, but it would be an historic shift if it occurred….With the numbers adjusted to reflect how the electorate shook out four years ago, Clinton’s two-point deficit shifted to a four-point lead, 46 percent to 42 percent.”

The New York Times editorial on “Voter Suppression in North Carolina” reveals the GOP’s strategy “one month after a federal appeals court struck down the state’s anti-voter law for suppressing African-American voter turnout “with almost surgical precision…Election boards in 23 of the state’s 100 counties have now reduced early voting hours, in some cases to a small fraction of what they were in the 2012 presidential election, according to an analysis by The Raleigh News & Observer. Boards in nine counties voted to eliminate Sunday voting. Both early voting and Sunday voting are used disproportionately by black voters…While boards in 70 counties voted to expand the number of early-voting hours, the counties that moved to cut hours back account for half of the state’s registered voters. In heavily Democratic Mecklenburg County — the state’s largest, with about one million residents — Republican board members voted to eliminate 238 early-voting hours despite near-unanimous appeals from the public to add more. In 2012, African-Americans in Mecklenburg used early voting at a far higher rate than whites.”

Matt Zapotosky’s Washington Post report “Former secretary of state Colin Powell told Hillary Clinton he used personal computer for business” includes the following: “Former secretary of state Colin Powell told Hillary Clinton in 2009 that he used a personal computer attached to a private phone line to do business with foreign leaders and State Department officials and was generally scornful of the notion that his mobile devices might be accessed by spies, according to an email exchange released by U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) on Wednesday…In a statement, Cummings suggested the exchange showed that Republicans were unfairly singling out Clinton and alleged that Powell “advised Secretary Clinton with a detailed blueprint on how to skirt security rules and bypass requirements to preserve federal records…If Republicans were truly concerned with transparency, strengthening FOIA, and preserving federal records, they would be attempting to recover Secretary Powell’s emails from AOL, but they have taken no steps to do so despite the fact that this period — including the run-up to the Iraq War — was critical to our nation’s history,” Cummings said.”

Paul Waldman’s Plum Line post, “Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?” should be distributed to every swing voter in America. Waldman cites a dozen major Trump scandals glossed over by the same media who badger Clinton relentlessly email mistakes and paranoid conspiracies promoted by sleazy tabloids. “If any of these kinds of stories involved Clinton,” adds Waldman, “news organizations would rush to assign multiple reporters to them, those reporters would start asking questions, and we’d learn more about all of them. In his column, “Trump’s best example of political corruption is himself,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. also notes, “Trump would have us believe that it is pure coincidence that the Trump Foundation’s $25,000 contribution to Bondi on Sept. 17, 2013, was made four days after the Orlando Sentinel reported that Bondi’s office was considering joining a class-action lawsuit against Trump University. It was brought by customers who felt victimized by what sure looks in retrospect like a shameless rip-off operation. Weeks later, Bondi announced that Florida would not join the lawsuit after all.”

In his Vox post, “Confessions of a Clinton reporter: The media’s 5 unspoken rules for covering Hillary,” Jonathan Allen rolls it out raw and ugly: “1) Everything, no matter how ludicrous-sounding, is worthy of a full investigation by federal agencies, Congress, the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” and mainstream media outlets; 2) Every allegation, no matter how ludicrous, is believable until it can be proven completely and utterly false. And even then, it keeps a life of its own in the conservative media world; 3) The media assumes that Clinton is acting in bad faith until there’s hard evidence otherwise; 4) Everything is newsworthy because the Clintons are the equivalent of America’s royal family; 5) Everything she does is fake and calculated for maximum political benefit.” Given all that, how large would Clinton’s lead be if the media covered her fairly?

At FiveThirtyEight.com Harry Enten has “13 Tips For Reading General Election Polls Like A Pro,” an excellent checklist for analyzing opinion surveys.

It’s just one poll, but boy, it’s a big one, “the largest sample ever undertaken by The Post.”  As Dan Balz and Scott Clement report at The Washington Post, “…The state-by-state numbers are based on responses from more than 74,000 registered voters during the period of Aug. 9 to Sept. 1. The individual state samples vary in size from about 550 to more than 5,000, allowing greater opportunities than typical surveys to look at different groups within the population and compare them from state to state.” The overall take: “With nine weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump is within striking distance in the Upper Midwest, but Hillary Clinton’s strength in many battlegrounds and some traditional Republican strongholds gives her a big electoral college advantage, according to a 50-state Washington Post-SurveyMonkey poll.” Also, Trump is way behind former GOP presidential nominees with white, college-educated voters, as well as women and voters in AZ, GA and TX.

As the post-Labor Day campaign begins, Ed Kilgore notes at New York Magazine “Polls-only forecasters unsurprisingly project Clinton as the favorite. FiveThirtyEight’s polls-only projection has Clinton’s win probability at 69%; The Upshot’s has it at an overwhelming 84%…If the elections were to wind up precisely as indicated by today’s state polling averages (giving Trump the tied state of NC), Clinton would win with 326 electoral votes to Trump’s 212…The difficulty of getting to 270 for Trump is illustrated by Daily Kos’ state-by-state projections, which award not only Iowa and North Carolina but also Florida, Nevada, and Ohio to the Republican. Clinton still wins 290/248.”

From Rowena Lindsay at The Monitor, why early voting ought to be a bigger concern for Dems: “..Early voting has favored the Democrats in some key states, and in 2008 35 percent of votes are cast before the election according to the Associated Press…In 2008, for example, Barack Obama won 58 percent of the pre-election day votes to Sen. John McCain’s 40 percent and managed to win Colorado, Florida, Iowa and North Carolina even though on election day more people in those states voted for Senator McCain – which speaks to the overall enthusiasm young and minority American Democrats felt for Obama.”

Some numbers to keep in mind when politicians blither about “family values”: “This election year has both parties still talking about families, but the family structure itself has changed dramatically over time. There are now more unmarried women of voting age than married women. The loving couple down the street may be unmarried (8.3 million such households existed in 2015, compared to 523,000 in 1970, according to the U.S. Census Bureau). They may not be heterosexual, either (nearly 450,000 U.S. households were same-sex couples in 2014, the bureau reports). Young adults may be living with parents as they pay off college loans, while middle-aged adults might have elderly, ailing parents living with them so they can provide round-the-clock care. And some may not be coupled or caring for children at all: a full 28 percent of American households are people living alone, up from 17 percent in 1970, Census says. As for the man of the house bringing home the bacon, that pattern has been upended. Women are now the sole or primary breadwinners in 40 percent of homes with children, up from less than 11 percent in 1960, the Pew Research Center reports.” – from Susan Milligan’s U.S. News report “Yearning for the Past Politicians aren’t addressing the needs of the new American family.”

Facebook may be fine for choir-preaching, but here’s a good clip and share NYT op-ed for your conservative uncle, from a former Bush Administration official, James K. Glasman: “Save the Republican Party: Vote for Clinton.”

Despite the protests of recent years, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which provides “template” state and local legislation to suppress voting (among many other anti-consumer and anti-worker bills) by people of color and other pro-Democratic constituencies, still bosts dozens of major corportions among it’s members. Some of the largest companies that are not only members, but are also active on ALEC’s corporate board include: AT&T; Diageo (brands include Crown Royal, Johnnie Walker, J&B, Bushmills, Smirnoff, Baileys, Captain Morgan, Jose Cuervo, Tanqueray, and Guinness); ExxonMobil; Koch Companies (brands include Angelsoft, Brawny, Quilted Northern, Sparkle, Dixie products), Pfizer; State Farm; United Parcel Service; and others. What would happen if millions of progressives took this list into consideration when they do their shopping?

The throw-down in NC, where polls show stat-tie races for President, U.S. Senator and Governor is intensifying. For some inside skinny, check out Chris Kromm’s Facing South report, “Why North Carolina is the biggest battleground of 2016.” Kromm reports one troubling gap in the U.S. Senate race: “[Republican incumbent] Burr is sitting on a war chest of $8.7 million compared to Ross’ $3.9 million. That doesn’t include super PACs and outside groups like Karl Rove’s One Nation, which recently announced it was pulling money out of Ohio’s U.S. Senate race to focus on Missouri and North Carolina, where it will spend $1.5 million to help Burr, and the Senate Leadership Fund, which has reserved $8.1 million in ads for Burr. But Democratic groups haven’t responded in kind, a move which the progressive website DailyKos called “baffling.”