Laura Vozella reports at The Washington Post that “Nearly a third of Virginia Republicans will vote for Hillary Clinton, pick a third-party candidate or sit out the election if Donald Trump is the GOP’s nominee for president,” according to a newly-released Christopher Newport University poll.
Republican state legislators and governors in several southern states have stepped in it big time, with the growing reaction to a rash of their gay-bashing legislation in GA, NC, MS, VA and TN. Following threats of an NFL and NCAA boycotts, Georgia’s Republican Govenor Nathan Deal vetoed a bill that would have allowed faith-based organizations to deny services to LGBT citizens and VA’s Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe also vetoed a bill passed by the GOP legislative majority that permitted businesses and individuals to “cite their religious beliefs as a reason for refusing services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.” Springsteen has already cancelled a Greensboro, NC concert because of the “newly-enacted Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, which prohibits transgender individuals from using the bathroom of their choosing.” UPDATE: Canadian singer Bryan Adams has cancelled his upcoming show in Biloxi, MS.
It’s one thing when a northeastern rocker boycotts your state. But TN Republicans ought to be a little worried when top country artist Emmylou Harris issues a statement saying “Those who love and make country music do so because at its best it speaks to the pain and suffering everyone shares in this life…Let’s not make that life harder still for some, with this mean spirited and unnecessary legislation” in response to a bill which “seeks to prohibit students in public institutions from using the bathroom that does not conform to their gender at birth” and another, which would let counselors refuse mental health services to clients based on their religious beliefs. Country music stars Chely Wright and Ty Herndon have also released statements condemning the legislation, as has TN-born Miley Cyrus.
“A new study out of the University of California at San Diego…found that the turnout gap between Republicans and Democrats in states with voter ID suppression laws jumped from 2.3 to 5.6 percentage points after those voter ID laws went into effect.” — from Truthdig’s “The GOP Is Now Bragging About Voter Suppression.”
WaPo’s Amber Phillips explains why “The Senate map is looking better and better for Democrats,” and provides an insightful look at key contests in 10 states.
At HuffPo Robert Reich writes, “The recent kerfluffle about Bernie Sanders purportedly not knowing how to bust up the big banks says far more about the threat Sanders poses to the Democratic establishment and its Wall Street wing than it does about the candidate himself…The biggest are far larger today than they were in 2008 when they were deemed “too big to fail.” Then, the five largest held around 30 percent of all U.S. banking assets. Today they have 44 percent.”
In These Times posts an interesting interview with Ian Haney Lopez, author of Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class and Matt Morrison, Matt Morrison, deputy director of the AFL-CIO’s 3.2-million member community affiliate, Working America on the topic, “Understanding What Makes Donald Trump Voters Tick: Is It Just Racism? In Trump’s appeal, the Left seeks clues on winning back the white working-class.”
Wilson Andrews, Kitty Bennett and Alicia Parlapiano provide some nifty graphics that illustrate the “2016 Delegate Count and Primary Results” at The New York Times.
But, if the delegate hunt strikes you as unseemly, and you think presidential elections ought not be decided by about seven states, check out the National Popular Vote initiative, which is moving forward, regardless of what happens this year.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is taking some heat for his statement that Hillary Clinton is “not qualified” to be president. Here’s what NYT columnist Paul Krugman said about it:

Mr. Sanders wasn’t careful at all, declaring that what he considers Mrs. Clinton’s past sins, including her support for trade agreements and her vote to authorize the Iraq war — for which she has apologized — make her totally unfit for office.
…This is really bad, on two levels. Holding people accountable for their past is O.K., but imposing a standard of purity, in which any compromise or misstep makes you the moral equivalent of the bad guys, isn’t. Abraham Lincoln didn’t meet that standard; neither did F.D.R. Nor, for that matter, has Bernie Sanders (think guns).
…The Sanders campaign has brought out a lot of idealism and energy that the progressive movement needs. It has also, however, brought out a streak of petulant self-righteousness among some supporters. Has it brought out that streak in the candidate, too?

At The Daily Beast Michael Tomasky wrote:

…Sanders’s blunt statement Wednesday night that Clinton “is not qualified” to be president ratchets up the arms race considerably.
…Now–Sanders apologists will scream that she started it, and even neutral observers, if there are any, may be confused. But there’s a big difference between saying “raises serious questions” and “I’ll leave it to the voters to decide,” and saying flat out that one’s primary opponent is “not qualified.”
…At the end of the process, Clinton will be ahead, and Sanders will have to endorse her. Not certain, of course, but likely. So the question is, how can he endorse her after saying flat out that she’s not qualified to be president?…won’t it ring awfully hollow? For her part, Clinton, looking toward a future mending of fences, brushed off Sanders’s remarks. It’s worth noting, too, that back in 2008, Clinton gave up the fight in early June right after the primaries ended and endorsed Obama. One has trouble picturing Sanders doing the same, if it comes to that, and what he said Wednesday night makes it even less likely.

For Democrats that’s a worrisome scenario. The Sanders campaign has so far done a lot of good in advanciing the issues of Wall St. reform, reducing income inequality and restricting unfair trade as Democratic priorities. It has also mobilized younger voters, who could help defeat Republicans in the fall.
Until recently, the Clinton-Sanders contest has provided a model of civility, in stark contrast to the Republicans’ increasingly ridiculous mud-slinging. The value of being perceived as the party for grown-ups at a time when Republicans are acting like unusually-immature jr. high schoolers should not be underestimated. There are swing voters out there who are looking for evidence of maturity and wisdom. Let’s not make them stay home on election day.
Democrats have not had a better opportunity for a game-changing, landslide election in decades. To risk blowing it now with escalating intemperance would feed the meme that both parties are pretty much the same, even though the policy priorities are vastly different.
To be fair, the Clinton campaign has flirted with unduly harsh personal criticism of Sanders on occasion, but it has wisely stopped short of saying outright that Sanders is “unqualified” to serve as president. Going forward, the Sanders campaign should exercize similar restraint, and get back on track with the high road tone that has served it so well.
It is understandable that the Democratic presidential primaries would heat up at this juncture. But the Democratic party has two excellent presidential candidates, either one of whom has the record, policies and debate skills to beat Trump, Cruz or Kasich decisively. Let’s keep it that way.

Crystal Ball wizards Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley see several Senate and Governor’s races “Move Toward Democrats.” The authors note, “the Crystal Ball is changing six Senate race ratings, all in a Democratic direction.” As for the governorships, “A weak Republican presidential nominee could endanger GOP incumbents running for reelection in Indiana and North Carolina, prompting us to also shift the ratings for those contests in the Democrats’ direction.” Read the article for more details.
For those interested in the races in the state legislatures of America, keep an eye on Tennessee, where an interesting down-ballot strategy is taking shape — 23 Democratic women are running for seats in the state senate and house, supported by Women for Tennessee’s Future. “It’s the latest strategy unveiled by Democratic activists, and it could have some legs,” writes Dave Boucher in The Tennessean. “Organizers of the effort — including longtime Tennessee Democratic operative Krissa Barclay and Lisa Quigley, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Nashville — believe a combination of Hillary Clinton atop the Democratic ticket and Trump atop the Republican ticket only helps strong Democratic women.”
Nate Cohn argues that “If Cruz Keeps This Pace, Trump Won’t Get a Majority of Delegates.”
Jonathan Chait discusses “The Pragmatic Tradition of African-American Voters” to help explain why Sen. Sanders lags with this constiuency well behind former Secretary of State Clinton — despite Sanders’ participation in civil disobedience protests against racial segregation as early as 1963.
Here’s a simply-explained summary of the new Treasury Department rules curbing corporate “inversions” that cut billions from their taxes and force American workers and small businesses to pick up a larger share of the tab for needed benefits and services. Republicans, particularly those who have benefited from Pfizer’s support, are quite bent out of shape about it. But the measures give Democrats a tangible policy to support, while Repubican candidates argue that large corporations bailing out of their obligations to the U.S. is a good thing.
WaPo’s Sari Horwitz provides a disturbing profile of “The conservative gladiator from Kansas behind restrictive voting laws.”
Democratic rising stars, Sens. Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren explain at HuffPo why the Obama Administration’s “new guidelines that establish a professional and legal obligation for retirement advisors to provide advice that puts their clients’ interests first.” But they also offer a critique of the quality of retirement for middle class Americans that could resonate with senior voters: “Americans are retiring later in their lives than ever before. Hardworking families struggling to make ends meet have a difficult enough time saving money for retirement. Over 30 percent of Americans don’t have any retirement savings…More than half of lower income Americans don’t believe a comfortable retirement is attainable…Americans who work hard and play by the rules deserve to be able to retire comfortably with the dignity and security they have worked so hard for.”
Those who like graphic explanations of political trends should check out “What’s Driving Trump and Clinton Voters to the Polls” by Jon Huang and Karen Yourish at The New York Times.
Often remembered for his hippie-bashing “Okie from Muskogee,” the late Merle Haggard matured into a gernuine working-class bard, who suported some progressive causes. “Haggard’s truest allegiance was to the working class and anyone struggling, hard on their luck,” writes Kim Ruehl at CNN.com. “He didn’t want us to feel bad for anyone; he wanted us to recognize their humanity.” AP’s Kristin M. Hall reports, “More recently, he was a backer of prominent Democrats. In 2007 he unveiled a song to promote Hillary Clinton and two years later he penned “Hopes Are High” to commemorate Obama’s inauguration. In “America First,” he even opposed the Iraq War, singing “Let’s get out of Iraq, and get back on track.”

Ed Kilgore’s “Not Much Evidence Donald Trump Can Win the Presidency on the Shoulders of the White Working Class” at New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer provides some awfully bad news for the Trump campaign. Among Kilgore’s onbservations: “Andrew Levison has examined the relative performance of all candidates from both parties in three recent midwestern open primaries, and shown that Trump’s share of the total white working-class vote ranged from 26 percent in Illinois to 30 percent in Ohio (where he actually lost the primary to John Kasich).”
At Esquire Charles Pierce explains how “Your Taxes Are Being Spent on Making It Harder for Americans to Vote” through “the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an institution created with good intentions in the aftermath of the Great Florida Heist in 2000. One of the things the commission is tasked with is overseeing the national voter registration form. It is supposed to be staffed by two members from each party. Now, however, to the surprise of approximately nobody, there are two Republicans and one Democrat because a vacancy has gone unfilled.”
From Daniel Dale’s “New ID laws, long lines raise allegations of U.S. voting discrimination” at The Toronot Star: “Canada had its own voter ID controversy when Stephen Harper’s Conservatives tightened the law in 2014. But Canada still allows more than three dozen kinds of identifying documents, including bank cards, library cards, even blood-donor cards….In Wisconsin, only a few kinds of identification are now accepted: a licence, a passport, a military card, a college student card, or the free non-driver ID. And some would-be voters still have no idea they need these kinds of ID at all. Wisconsin’s Republican government, led by Gov. Scott Walker, has failed to fund the public education campaign that was promised under the new law.”
With less than 9 months to go in President Obama’s second term, Nobel laureate/NYT columnist Paul Krugman takes a look at his presidency and offers a well-documented set of conclusions about the Administration’s accomplishmens regarding the economy, financial reform and health care that will set Republican teeth to grinding, especialy Krugman’s summation that: “All in all, it’s quite a record. Assuming Democrats hold the presidency, Mr. Obama will emerge as a hugely consequential president — more than Reagan.”
NYT columnist Frank Bruni addresses “The Republicans’ Gay Freakout” and illuminates another demographic wedge in the GOP rank and file: “While the marriage of the party’s evangelical and business wings has never been a cuddly one, it’s especially frosty now, their incompatible desires evident in the significant number of prominent corporations that have denounced the North Carolina law and that successfully pressed the Republican governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, to veto recent legislation that would have permitted the denial of services to L.G.B.T. people by Georgians citing religious convictions… Corporations want to attract and retain the most talented workers, and that’s more difficult in states with discriminatory laws. They want to reach the widest base of customers and sow loyalty among young consumers in particular, and the best strategy for that is an L.G.B.T.-friendly one, given that eight in 10 Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 support non-discrimination laws, according to a 2015 Public Religion Research Institute survey.”
David M. Herszenhorn’s NYT article, “Largely Forgotten and Hugely Influential: The Race for Marco Rubio’s Senate Seat” provides a reminder of the importance of a U.S. Senate race in a key state, and this one is full of drama.
At The Upshot Lynn Vavreck writes, “The increasing alignment between party and racial attitudes goes back to the early 1990s. The Pew Values Survey asks people whether they agree that “we should make every effort to improve the position of minorities, even if it means giving them preferential treatment.”…Over time, Americans’ party identification has become more closely aligned with answers to this question and others like it. Pew reports that, “since 1987, the gap on this question between the two parties has doubled — from 18 points to 40 points.” Democrats are now much more supportive (52 percent) of efforts to improve racial equality than they were a few decades ago, while the views of Republicans have been largely unchanged (12 percent agree)…But recent work by Stanford University’s Shanto Iyengar and his co-authors shows something else has been brewing in the electorate: a growing hostility toward members of the opposite party…Democrats and Republicans like each other a lot less now than they did 60 years ago in part because they have sorted into parties based on attitudes on race, religion and ethnicity.”
Seung Min Kim and Burgess Everett have an update on the Merrick Garland confirmation battle at Politico, which notes “On Friday, one of the three GOP senators who had said Garland deserves a confirmation hearing — Jerry Moran of Kansas — backtracked after a firestorm of criticism from the right. The other two are the most moderate Republicans in the chamber: Maine’s Susan Collins and Illinois’ Mark Kirk, who faces the longest odds of getting reelected this year of any senator in the country. Despite the lack of momentum for the nomination, the Democrats’ “Do Your Job” campaign provides a handy cudgel for publiciizing the obstructionist policy of Republican senators.
With about 7 months left in campaign 2016, the front-runner for the quadrennial ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ award has to be Gov. John Kasich for this observation.

From E. J.Dionne, Jr.’s column, “Arizona’s voting outrage is a warning to the nation” at The Washington Post:

It’s bad enough that an outrage was perpetrated last week against the voters of Maricopa County, Ariz. It would be far worse if we ignore the warning that the disenfranchisement of thousands of its citizens offers our nation. In November, one of the most contentious campaigns in our history could end in a catastrophe for our democracy.
…The facts of what happened in Arizona’s presidential primary are gradually penetrating the nation’s consciousness. In a move rationalized as an attempt to save money, officials of Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, cut the number of polling places by 70 percent, from 200 in the last presidential election to 60 this time around…Maricopa includes Phoenix, the state’s largest city, which happens to have a non-white majority and is a Democratic island in an otherwise Republican county…As the Arizona Republic reported, the county’s move left one polling place for every 21,000 voters — compared with one polling place for every 2,500 voters in the rest of the state……There were fewer voting locations in “parts of the county with higher minority populations.”
…Many people had to wait hours to cast a ballot, and some polling stations had to stay open long after the scheduled 7 p.m. closing time to accommodate those who had been waiting — and waiting. The Republic told the story of Aracely Calderon, a 56-year-old immigrant from Guatemala who waited five hours to cast her ballot. There were many voters like her.

If all this summons up a fading memory, try Florida in 2000. In adition to the hanging chads, the “Brooks Brothers riot” and other Repubican electoral atrocities, similar crimes against democracy were very much a part of that notorious election year in the ‘Sunshine State’ under the rule of Gov. Jeb Bush, to his eternal shame.
Dionne quotes Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, noting that “Republicans have “moved with strategic ferocity” to pass a variety of laws around the country to make it harder for people to cast ballots. The Brennan Center reports that 16 states “will have new voting restrictions in place for the first time in a presidential election.”
Looking forward, Dionne warns,

Imagine voting debacles like Arizona’s happening all across the country. Consider what the news reports would be like on the night of Nov. 8, 2016. Are we not divided enough already? Can we risk holding an election whose outcome would be rendered illegitimate in the eyes of a very large number of Americans who might be robbed of their franchise?

“This is not idle fantasy,” Dionne concludes. “Arizona has shown us what could happen. We have seven months to prevent what really could be an electoral cataclysm.”
The progressive media has done a decent job in reporting on the disgrace in Arizona, and the MSM has begun to follow up on the story. In this already embarrassing year for the GOP, the leading conservative columnists have so far continued their appalling silence about the Republicans’ racially-driven voter suppression. In so doing, they betray both genuine conservatism and the values of democracy.

Most observers of political attack ads will tell you that it’s easy to overdo it. Some recent examples could include Alan Grayson’s campaign ad referring to his opponent for a Senate seat as “Taliban Dan” or Kentucky Democrat Jack Conway’s senate campaign “Aqua Buddha” ad knocking Republican candidate Rand Paul. Both of these ads backfired and actualy helped the targeted Republican.
In 2016 Democratic ad makers have a unique problem with respect to the 2016 presidential campaign, an overflowing embarrassment of riches, owing to Trump’s never-ending stream of gaffes, bullying comments and tasteles insults. There is so much material that the challenge for attack ads is what to leave out.
At The New Republic Laura Reston’s “Can Democratic Attack Ads Tear Down Donald Trump?: Republican groups’ attacks haven’t done the trick. But one big-money Democratic super PAC believes it has the formula” previews the approach of one anti-Trump group:

Republican groups in the #NeverTrump camp have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the real estate mogul in the last two months–mafia connections, failed business ventures, flagrant misogyny, racism, you name it. But Trump has continued to rack up delegates and now looks likely to secure the GOP nomination before the convention in July. This has generated some alarm in Democratic quarters: What if Donald Trump is this resilient in the general election?
You’ll find no such pessimism around the Washington, D.C., headquarters of Priorities USA Action. The wealthiest Democratic super PAC bent on taking down Trump in the general election is the same one that successfully portrayed Mitt Romney as a heartless corporate titan in 2012…Since last summer, Priorities USA’s small team has been planning a frontal assault on the next Republican nominee. The strategists at Priorities are now sketching out a plan to boost the Democrats’ probable nominee, Hillary Clinton, assembling dossiers on both Trump and Ted Cruz, and getting a head start on reserving prime television time in crucial battleground states. The super PAC announced Tuesday that it had begun preparing a $70 million advertising blitz slated to begin after the July conventions in battleground states like Florida and Ohio.
..The group has been scripting and testing ads since last year. But what do they think is going to work against Trump when every Republican attack has failed? “While we don’t forecast our strategy specifically,” says Priorities spokesman Justin Barasky, “it’s likely that we will explore Donald Trump’s temperament, character, and selfish legacy of enriching himself at the expense of others.”

“We’ll have a focused strategy,” says Guy Cecil, chief strategist at Priorities, “not just waiting until three weeks before the election and simply throwing everything we have at Trump, which is what the Republicans did.” In adition to the cornucopia of videos casting Trump in an extremely unfavorable light, Reston adds,

Whether or not Priorities comes up with the magic bullet against Trump, it will have advantages the Republican groups never had: the time and resources to adjust its strategies, toss out what doesn’t stick, and try new tacks. That was what the Republican establishment lacked in this primary cycle: By the time groups like Our Principles realized their attacks weren’t hitting home with Republican primary voters, Trump had already racked up a nearly insurmountable delegate lead…Trump could, of course, still prove to be uniquely, almost magically, immune to attacks in the general election. But he’ll have to fend off the kind of sustained barrage that he hasn’t faced in the Republican primaries–and one that will be aimed, this time, at voters who are already skeptical of him.

There may be a “too much of a good thing” dynamic at play here. Making fun of Trump is awfully easy, and you have to wonder if Trump-bashing could get as old as Trump himself by the time November rolls around.
Then there is the concern that Trump will look so bad by election time, that many will feel his defeat is in the bag and not bother to vote. Dems have to be more positive than negative going into the final weeks of the election; they have to give voters something to vote for, not just against, and that should be well-reflected in the pro-Democratic ad campaign. Attack ads work better, when the candidate of the attacking campaign is presented in a positive light.
As the Democratic front-runner, and despite her impressive delegate tally thus far, Hillary Clinton still has high negatives that Democratic ads must help reverse. If Sanders is nominated there will be a relentless tsunami of red-baiting ads. Countering GOP attack ads will be a challenge for Democratic ad-makers, regardless of all of the damaging video clips showing Trump as a dangerous, mean-spirited blowhard.

Bernie Sanders experienced a ressurrection of sorts over Easter weekend, winning three Democratic presidential contests, in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington — all by impressively large margins, 82, 71 and 73 percent, respectively and equally impressive turnouts, reports Amy Chozick in The New York Times.
But Harry Enten explains at FiveThirtyEight that “Bernie Sanders Continues To Dominate Caucuses, But He’s About To Run Out Of Them.”
At The Nation D. D. Guttenplan’s “Keep On Running, Bernie!: An active Sanders campaign through June is good for the party and for democracy” observes “Turnout remains the Democrats’ Achilles’ heel: In Ohio, where Trump came in second, he still pulled more votes than either Democrat. Clinton herself seems to get this, declining to endorse the calls for Sanders to drop out. Any other course would leave Trump in sole possession of the media for the next four months…Winning the nomination would be nice, but it’s neither necessary nor sufficient to bring about that goal. Building a durable nationwide network of mobilized, active supporters prepared to keep fighting for universal healthcare, a living wage, and an end to Wall Street welfare and America’s endless wars–including the War on Drugs–and to occupy the Democratic Party in numbers great enough to take it back from its corporate funders is absolutely crucial.”
Julian Zelizer’s “Is Sanders doing Clinton a favor?” at CNN Politics adds, “..In the long run, Sanders may turn out to have been one of the best things to have happened to Clinton’s campaign…Assuming that she does win the nomination, Clinton will emerge as a much stronger candidate and her campaign operation will be in a better position for the fall, thanks to Sanders’ insurgency. Unlike divisive primaries that hurt a political party — such as Sen. Ted Kennedy’s challenge to President Jimmy Carter in 1980 or, most likely, the internecine battle that is ravaging the GOP this year — the Democrats will benefit as a result of the past few months.”
But Joan Walsh argues, also at The Nation, that Sanders can’t win without broadening his base of support beyond white working-class voters.
In “How the G.O.P. Elite Lost Its Voters to Donald Trump,” Nicholas Confessore breaks it down nicely: “While Republicans debated rhetorical approaches, Mr. Trump took a radically different tack. Announcing his campaign a few months later, he spun a tale of unfair trade deals hashed out by lobbyists, backscratchers and incompetent presidents who were stealing jobs from Americans. He would stop the flow of jobs over the border with Mexico, Mr. Trump promised, and build a wall to stop the flow of people…That message has resonated with lower-income voters, and helped drive Mr. Trump’s string of successes. In Mississippi and Michigan, both of which Mr. Trump won, six in 10 Republican primary voters said that free trade cost the country more jobs that it produced, exit polls showed.”
Again at The Times, Amy Chozick and Trip Gabriel see Trump’s wife-bashing as a big plus for Democrats, and note “Mr. Trump has shown a particular weakness among female voters, who favored Mrs. Clinton 55 percent to 35 percent in a New York Times/CBS News poll released this week, twice the gender gap of the 2012 presidential election, when President Obama defeated Mitt Romney. And 31 percent of Republican women said they would be upset if Mr. Trump were the party’s nominee, according to the most recent CNN/ORC poll.”
At HuffPo Pollster Janie Valencia and Ariel Edwards-Levy have some data on the lack of women’s support of Trump: “TRUMP HAS A SERIOUS PROBLEM WITH WOMEN – Carrie Dann: “This month, about half (47 percent) of Republican female primary voters said they could not imagine themselves voting for Trump. (About 40 percent of male GOP primary voters said the same.) Compare that to their relative willingness to accept Trump’s rivals. Only about three in ten female Republican voters say they can’t imagine backing Ted Cruz (32 percent) and John Kasich (27 percent)….When it comes to the general electorate, Trump has an even more pronounced problem with female voters.Trump’s favorability with women overall is a dismal 21 percent positive/ 70 (!) percent negative. With men, it’s 28 percent positive/ 59 percent negative. And while women traditionally vote for Democratic candidates in larger numbers than men, data shows that a Trump nomination would exacerbate the issue for Republicans.”
WaPo’s Amber Phillips addresses a question that is popping up with increasing frequency: “Do House Democrats have a shot at the majority this year?” Phillips says “Democrats would need to sweep most or all of the 27 Republican-held seats that are currently regarded as competitive and then win even more districts to get the magic number 30 needed for a majority. (The current breakdown is 246 to 188, meaning Democrats need to turn 30 GOP seats blue.)…Republicans are defending some 26 districts that voted for President Obama in the last presidential election. Democrats have just five incumbents trying to win reelection in districts that voted for Mitt Romney.”

In her article “Can Donald Trump Rewrite The Electoral Map For The GOP?,” NPR’s Mara Liasson quotes Democratic strategist Stan Greenberg “The Reagan Democrats are alive with the angry white male who’ve made themselves felt in the Trump primaries…The question is: Are there enough of them, and what’s the price of trying to reach them?” Liason adds, “There’s no question the white working-class vote is shrinking. Non-college-educated voters were about half of the electorate in 1992. Now they make up a third. But in Rust Belt states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, they still make up half of eligible voters…Those voters are exactly Trump’s base, but turning them out won’t be easy. In the last election, white non-college-educated voters had a turnout rate of about 57 percent, while 80 percent of white college-educated voters showed up…Ultimately, Trump would need an unprecedented turnout among these voters. Some analysts calculate that Trump would need at least 65 percent of the white vote to win; 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney got 59 percent.”
Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker’s syndicted column delineates the stark choice facing ‘Republicans of conscience’: “The conundrum for Republicans is that though Trump may be the devil, he’s their devil. How can they condemn the guy that a near-majority of their own party prefers?..That is the question of the moment, isn’t it? This is what we ask ourselves about the industrialists and “good Germans” who supported Hitler. This is what we ask our Southern grandparents about the time when blacks were being lynched. What we ask the World War II generation about rounding up Japanese-Americans. And while we’re at it, what was your vote on Vietnam, Iraq? There’s a price to pay for silence.”
It looks increasingly like the 2016 presidential campaign may indeed be “the YouTube election.” Luciana Lopez reports at Reuters that the Democratic Party has more than 70 people at their Washington HQ “glued to screens playing back videos of Donald Trump and other Republicans, digitally documenting their policy positions on everything from torture to climate change.”
In her post “How to Stop Trump,” Trish Kahle of Jacobin defends the protests at Trump rallies, despite concerns of some progressives: “In addition to complaining about abridgements of free speech, liberal writers have argued that protesting Trump only plays into his hands and further polarizes politics…the strategy protesters are employing seems quite sensible: impair the circulation of Trump’s hate-filled message, inject turmoil into his events, and further isolate him from the American mainstream…If anything, the protesters who nonviolently shut down Donald Trump should be heralded as guardians of democracy. They did not call for the state to prevent Trump from speaking, and rightly so. Instead, they demonstrated the power of collective action and asserted that ordinary people, rather than a billionaire demagogue, would be heard.”
Dalia Sussman reports at NYT First Draft that a new NYT/CBS News poll conducted 3/17-20 found that “Fifty-three percent say the Senate should hold a vote on President Obama’s nominee, while 42 percent say the Senate should wait until next year for the new president to nominate someone. The poll finds views sharply divided by party, with three-quarters of Democrats wanting a vote on Judge Garland and two-thirds of Republicans opposed. Independents are closely divided.”
At The Washington Post Charles Camosy, author of “Beyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for A New Generation,” argues that “Democrats could destroy the GOP — if only they would welcome antiabortion liberals: A bigger tent would make Democrats unstoppable at the polls.”
A new voter participation project, “The TurboVote Challenge” takes an interesting approach. The project “brings leading companies and organizations together in a nonpartisan, long-term commitment to increase voter registration and participation across America. Our goal – 80% voter turnout by 2020 – is ambitious and can only be achieved through a broad, cross-sector effort to help make voting accessible and modernized. The TurboVote Challenge embraces collaboration across America, from schools to businesses to non-profits, around local, state, and national elections, with an end goal of greater participation in our democracy.”
At Roll Call, Alex Roarty’s “Money Can’t Buy Love — or in Some Cases, Even Elections” notes that ecoomic advantage hasn’t helped candidates like Jeb Bush, who tanked despite his $100 million war chest. But the 2016 presidential primary/caucus season has been somewhat anomalous in that one candidate, Trump, has leveraged his media experience to get free media coverage and exposure worth tens of millions of dollars — a resource unavailable to other candidates. The Democratic presidential nominee is going to need plenty of cash just to stay in the game. And down-ballott Dems will be even more challenged by the onslaught of Koch brothers billions supporting Republicans.
And speaking of money worries, do read “Democrats have momentum but lack money in battle for Senate: There’s growing anxiety within the party that they’ll blow a chance to retake the chamber because of the GOP’s cash edge” by Politico’s Burgess Everett, Seung Min Kim and Kevin Robillard. As the authors note, “Republicans are outspending Democrats in key races so far. There’s little indication that Democrats will close the gap as Election Day approaches, and signs the chasm will grow thanks to the longer roster of deep-pocketed outside groups on the right. That’s triggered growing anxiety within the minority party about relinquishing an opening to net the four or five seats they need to recapture the Senate.” Those who want to contribute to Democrats retaking a Senate majority should check out ActBlue’s 2016 Senate campaign webpage.

At The New York Times Opinion Pages ‘Room for Debate’ forum, the topic is “Do College Students’ Votes Really Matter in an Election?” Some observations from the forum participants:
GOP message guru Frank Luntz opines,

…Young voters respond, above all else, to authenticity. They know a fraud when they see it, and they flock in droves to those politicians who say what they mean, and mean what they say.
And while the rallies in 2016 are not quite as large as 2008, even more young people are participating in the political discourse via social media. Snapchat and Twitter have replaced the convention of a coffee shop and the “water cooler” conservation as the place where youth gather to talk politics. Even old journalists and pundits (like me) have learned we need to go there if we want to be heard. We have learned from people less than half our age. They set the trends now.
True, youth engagement and support (alone) still cannot win an election, but it can deliver the credibility needed to drive the public discussion.

Quentin Kidd, director of the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va., observes:

…a large portion of students don’t get to the voting booth or take the time to fill out an absentee ballot…The problem is that political parties mobilize voters around their physical residential address: We vote in-person based on our place of residence. While big data has allowed parties to know increasingly more about us, without a consistent residential address the ability to use that data to ultimately get a person to become a voter is very difficult.
College students are the poster children of this problem. Many live in dorms that are increasingly secured, inaccessible to the party’s volunteer doorknockers or leaflet droppers.
Additionally, many students don’t or can’t vote where they go to school anyway. Students live on campus for eight or nine months of the year, and whether they can vote where they go to school depends on the registration laws of the state…As students, they are a largely unreliable voting block.

It may be that the best response to the student residence and voter eligibility issues cited by Kidd is automatic registration and court challenges to Republican-driven measures to suppress the student vote, such as North Carolina’s voter i.d. measure.
Columbia University sophomore and NPR contributor Bianca Brooks, cites a dearth of open political discourse, leaving students who are not already firmly comitted to a particular candidate feeling ostracized and uninvolved. “Students who can’t “pick a side” are left feeling isolated and politically apathetic,” says Brooks. “If the university does not reclaim and reform political discourse, students will be unable to find the middle ground necessary not just to be sensible voters, but effective political leaders of the future.”
But Wesleyan University sophomore and military veteran Bryan Stascavage sees impressive student activism and social media participation, which he believes can have an impact, despite low youth voter turnout. In addition to a growing presence on Reddit, “Young voters …start trends on Twitter, create content for Facebook, and push stories to go viral. They are the new grassroots, using new media to spread information about their candidates to the general public….The youth vote is a valuable constituency. They have the time, energy, will and ability to impact politics in America, even though they may not show up on Election Day.”
Young voters played a critical, perhaps pivotal role in the 2008 presidential election, and student support of Obama’s campaign may have helped win votes from non-student youth via peer influence. Young people with at least some college experience vote at approximately twice the rate as non-college youth.
But most of student energy in 2016 seems to be concentrated in support of the Sanders campaign. So there is growing concern about attrition of student activism and voter participation if Sanders does not win the Democratic nomination.
Perhaps even more important in the longer range, students and young voters in general have a poor turnout rate in midterm elections, which helps Republicans severely restrict the President’s ability to secure progressive legislation. In 2010 for example, the first midterm following all of the excitement of the 2008 Obama victory, voters age 18-29 had a turnout rate of just 24 percent, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, compared with 54.5 percent of 18 to 29 year-old voters in 2008.
Democrats must find a way to maximize youth turnout in 2016, but a more creative and muscular effort to mobilize young voters in the midterms is long-overdue. This could include more funding for Democratic partty activities on campus, voter registration rallies, on-line teach-ins, concerts and other cultural events to educate and motivate young voters and build their interest. In terms of issues, Democratic candidates must dramatize their commitment to making higher education more affordable and providing entry-level jobs in stark contrast to the Republicans’ lack of credible reforms.
If Democrats can raise student turnout and increase their share of the vote by just a few percentage points, it could prove to be a cost-effective investment in a more stable Democratic majority.

The New Yorker’s John Cassidy explains “What Bernie Sanders Has Achieved“:

…To gauge his influence, you need only listen to one of Clinton’s campaign speeches. On issues like inequality, trade, the environment, corporate offshoring, and bringing Wall Street miscreants to justice, the former Secretary of State has adopted Sanders’s language–and, in some cases, his policies. Clinton had undoubtedly always intended to run as a center-left progressive in 2016, just as she did in 2008, but Sanders has forced her onto ground she hadn’t originally intended to occupy.
It isn’t just Clinton, either. Even Republicans have been taking up some of Sanders’s themes. “The top one per cent under President Obama, the millionaires and billionaires that he constantly demagogued, earned a higher share for our national income than any year since 1928,” Ted Cruz said earlier this year. Donald Trump has talked about the need to raise taxes on hedge-fund managers and leveraged-buyout tycoons. John Kasich has rebranded himself as a champion for the poor and excluded. Of course, the regressive tax policies that Cruz, Trump, and Kasich are advocating would exacerbate inequality, rather than reduce it, but the fact that Republicans have felt obliged to address these issues at all surely owes something to Sanders and the populist wave that he represents.

Cassidy credits Sanders with doing more than any other candidate to raise the issue of money in politics, a growing concern with all demographic groups. It may be a while before the needed reforms to prevent further abuse are achieved. But when it finally occurs, Sanders will deserve some of the credit. Cassidy adds,

It’s too early to say what Sanders’s legacy will be, or whether some of the ideas that he is pushing–such as breaking up the big banks, introducing a single-payer health-care system, and returning tax rates on the rich closer to the levels that F.D.R. introduced–will eventually be adopted. Given the Republicans Party’s grip on Congress and the centrist mindset of Clinton’s advisers, it is hard to see much movement in this direction any time soon.
But it is also evident that, in the past ten months, Sanders has defied the pundits, alarmed the comfortable, and inspired the young. He has turned what looked to be a political coronation into a lively and hard-fought contest, forcing his opponent to modify her positions and raise her game. He has demonstrated that Presidential campaigns don’t have to be beholden to big donors…

Sanders’ path to victory has narrowed, considerably. But in a fragile political environment, there are several scenarios that could shift the political winds in his favor and lots of delegates are still available.
Many Democrats would like to see Sanders fold, so Clinton could save her money for the general election. But that benefit should be measured against the added credibility Clinton would have as a result of winning a hard-fought nomination — Sanders has killed the “coronation” rap the GOP hoped to pin on her. If Sanders quit now, the youth vote he has mobilized could evaporate into apathy.
More of consequence, Clinton’s policies have improved from being honed in the forge of competition with an adversary who has some popular positions. As an added benefit, she has also sharpened her debating skills. And if she picks Sanders for her running mate, she will likely get the benefit of a more unified party than would be available to her via the ‘coronation’ route.
Perhaps most importantly, concludes Cassidy, Sanders “has shown that, surprisingly enough, there is still a place in American politics for an independent-minded speaker of uncomfortable truths. What’s more, he isn’t done yet.” And that is likely a good thing for the Democratic Party.