“Democrats view this year’s crop of [U. S. Senate] candidates as strong, and they say they will be bolstered by the presidential election, which often helps coax minority and younger voters to the ballot box. Many Democrats are feeling confident they will win the net five seats needed to take back the chamber. A pickup of just four seats would be enough if the Democrats also retain the presidency, because the vice president breaks ties.” – from Kristina Peterson’s “In Senate Races, Democrats See Prizes, Pitfalls: The party believes it can take control, but primary battles, recruitment pose challenges in some states” in the Wall St. Journal. Peterson quotes Sen. Chuck Schumer: “The fact that middle-class incomes are stagnating and Democrats have much better answers than Republicans, the fact that the GOP presidential race is in shambles, and the fact that we have a very good map and we have candidates to take advantage of that map all bodes very well for us taking back the Senate…”
At CNN Politics Manu Raju takes an in-depth look at developing Democratic strategy to win Rand Paul’s U.S. Senate seat and the obstacles threatening Paul as a result of his limp presidential candidacy.
Senate Democrats have unveiled the ‘Reducing Educational Debt (RED) Act,’ as an impressive pitch for the votes of millennials and their families. Key elements: 1. Opportunities to refinance federal and private student loans at a lower interest rate; 2. Indexing Pell Grant awards to inflation to insure adequate assistance; 3. Funding to “waive community college tuition and fees for eligible students before other financial aid is applied.” Senator Schumer’s soundbite pitch: Democrats will create a “path toward debt-free college.”
This Morning Consult poll shows a Michael Bloomberg independent presidential candidacy hurting Dems more than the GOP. Should Sanders win the Democratic nomination, Krugman sees a Bloomberg run as a likely path to a Trump presidency.
At NYT ‘First Draft,’ Michael Barbaro reports on presidential candidate reactions to a possible Bloomberg candidacy, including the reaction of the two leading Democrats: “The way I read what he said is, if I didn’t get the nomination we might consider it,” she [Clinton] said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”…She added: “Well, I’m going to relieve him of that and get the nomination so he doesn’t have to” run….Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose campaign bemoans the influence of the super rich, quickly incorporated Mr. Bloomberg’s flirtation into his message….”My reaction is, if Donald Trump wins and Mr. Bloomberg gets in, you’re going to have two multibillionaires running for president of the United States against me,” Mr. Sanders said on “Meet the Press.” “And I think the American people do not want to see our nation move toward an oligarchy, where billionaires control the political process.”
An interesting analytical nugget from the conservative GOP establishment via Mario Loyola at the National Review: “The working-class Republican voter feels he’s getting screwed from every direction: corporations, lazy people on welfare, criminals who have learned to play the victim, illegal immigrants, foreign governments, and of course the politicians who sell out to all of them. He looks at the political firmament and sees nobody who addresses his grievances, nobody who speaks like him, nobody who speaks for him. Victimized and voiceless, the Republican working-class voter had already lost faith in the party. Now he may be losing faith in democracy itself.”
Bloomberg View’s Albert R. Hunt takes a look at the potential influence of the Latino vote, and observes: “…Hispanics account for more than 5 percent of eligible voters in only three of the 10 national swing states: Colorado, Nevada and Florida. Whatever losses the party sustains among Hispanics — and Asian-Americans also turned off by anti-immigration rhetoric — will be more than offset, they believe, by the energizing of alienated white voters…” On the other hand, Hunt quotes Sen. Lindsey Graham, who warns “”Donald Trump today has an 81 percent disapproval rating with Hispanics…The Democrats will destroy this guy.”
This will be a very tough sell.
Trump video mash-ups were becoming a new art form (see here, for example) even before last week’s Palin endorsement fiasco and Trump’s “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” tirade. The challenge for Democrats in producing a devastating viral video on Trump, should he win the nomination, will be what to leave out.

From Sean McElwee’s HuffPost Politics article, “Republican Presidents Flunk the Economy: 11 Reasons Why America Does Worse Under the GOP“:

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s “Who lost the white working class?” argues that Democrats can win by “putting together a coalition of the working class and poor, of whites, blacks, and Latinos…This would give them the political clout to restructure the economy – rather than merely enact palliative programs papering over the increasing concentration of wealth and power in America…But to do this they’d have to stop obsessing over upper-income suburban swing voters, and end their financial dependence on big corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy.”
So what happens to a top journalist who writes the most comprehensive, in-depth expose of the Koch brother’s financial and political operations? To find out, you can read Amy Goodman’s interview with the author, “How the Kochs Tried (and Failed) to Discredit Reporter Jane Mayer After She Exposed Their Empire” at Alternet.
Trump poised to “run the table,” says Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin.
Oodles of interesting reporting on the Great Republican Freakout about Trump and/or Cruz, including Ed Kilgore’s TDS post “A Panicking GOP Establishment Starts To Nourish Fantasies” at TDS yesterday. Neil King’s “Republican Party Grapples With Prospect of a Trump Victory” provides the latest Wall St. Journal take.
Granted, selecting “who do we hate less” to lead is not a very inspiring strategic option for a political party. Some GOP stalwarts are talking about going rogue, reports Steve Benen at msnbc.com. But other establishment Republicans may be ready to board Trump’s crazy train. At Daily Kos Joan McCarter explains why the “Republican establishment’s hatred of Ted Cruz is warming them up to Donald Trump.”
On the other hand, Palin’s whiner rant implying President Obama is somehow to blame for her son reportedly punching and kicking his girlfriend and threatening gun violence has to backfire on her endorsee, Trump…Um, doesn’t it?
NYT’s First Draft reports, “Senator Marco Rubio, who is placing only as high as third in most state and national polls, has been the target of more attack ads than any other candidate — more than $20 million worth since the first week in December, a huge sum that may help explain why the Florida senator is struggling to gain ground on his rivals for the Republican nomination.” Could this be an indication that internal polling of the Bush and other campaigns indicates hidden strength for Rubio?
The Maryland House of Delegates has voted to override Republican Governor Larry Hogan’s veto of legislation that would restore voting rights to felons who have served their time, reports Pamela Wood of the Baltimore Sun. “Some pointed out that former felons have jobs and pay taxes, and shouldn’t be taxed if they can’t vote for their representatives in government…Del. Dan Morhaim, a Baltimore County Democrat, made a statistical argument in favor of overriding the veto. He said after Florida restored voting rights to felons, recidivism — instances of offenders committing more crimes and returning to prison — fell from 33 percent to 11 percent…”This is actually an anti-crime bill,” he said.” The state senate, which has a Democratic majority, is expected to vote on the measure today.

Peter Wehner’s NYT op-ed “Why I Will Never Vote for Donald Trump” reveals a widening wedge dividing the GOP into two basic groups: those who still harbor hopes that the Republican Party can reclaim the mantle of what they believe to be sober conservatism vs. the knee jerk rage-a-holics who just want someone, even a blustering ignoramus, to bellow at liberals.
Wehner, a ‘lifelong Republican’ who worked as a speechwriter/advisor in the white house under Reagan and both Bushes, says he could never vote for a Democrat. Further, he would consider voting for a third party, or not voting for president, if Trump is nominated. Among his reasons:

Mr. Trump has no desire to acquaint himself with most issues, let alone master them. He has admitted that he doesn’t prepare for debates or study briefing books; he believes such things get in the way of a good performance. No major presidential candidate has ever been quite as disdainful of knowledge, as indifferent to facts, as untroubled by his benightedness.
It is little surprise, then, that many of Mr. Trump’s most celebrated pronouncements and promises — to quickly and “humanely” expel 11 million illegal immigrants, to force Mexico to pay for the wall he will build on our southern border, to defeat the Islamic State “very quickly” while as a bonus taking its oil, to bar Muslims from immigrating to the United States — are nativistic pipe dreams and public relations stunts.
…Mr. Trump’s virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness would do more than result in a failed presidency; it could very well lead to national catastrophe. The prospect of Donald Trump as commander in chief should send a chill down the spine of every American.

Democrats should take notice of Wehner’s well-stated critique, which might come in handy in the event that Trump wins the Republican nomination. Other prominent Republicans have voiced similar concerns, though none have yet voiced their intention to vote third party or abstain. It seems reasonable to expect that more will be coming forward, should Trump get his party’s nod.
Any third party candidate who could get the votes of mainstream Republicans like Wehner would likely insure a Democratic victory, even if he/she only peels off a few points. Wehner feels, probably with good reason, that Trump’s election would be disastrous for the GOP brand. “If Mr. Trump heads the Republican Party,” says Wehner, “it will no longer be a conservative party; it will be an angry, bigoted, populist one.” He adds,

I will go further: Mr. Trump is precisely the kind of man our system of government was designed to avoid, the type of leader our founders feared — a demagogic figure who does not view himself as part of our constitutional system but rather as an alternative to it.

Wehner says that he used to be the kind of Republican who always got behind his party’s nominee, regardless of his candidate preferences. But a Trump nomination, he argues, would make that impossible for self-respecting Republicans: “..Many Republicans will find themselves in a situation they once thought unimaginable: refusing to support the nominee of their party because it is the best thing that they can do for their party and their country.”
“Let’s lose one for the Gipper” may not be the most inspiring meme for the GOP in 2016. But if Wehner is right, it may be the best option for preserving the dignity and future of his party. In that event, GOP strategists would surely tweak the presidential nomination rules and procedures to help prevent further such disasters.
Many Democrats would welcome Trump’s nomination to run against their presidential candidate as their best hope for a landslide victory in November. Gone, at least for 2016, they calculate, is the possibility that the Republicans will nominate a presidential candidate who genuinely believes in bipartisanship and negotiating in good faith with Democrats.
Trump may flame out, acknowledges Wehner. If that happens, it’s unclear whether mainstream Republicans like Wehner would support Ted Cruz, another Republican bomb-thrower, who is even more reactionary than Trump on some issues, as are several other GOP presidential candidates. Another GOP insider, Michael Gerson writes in his Washington Post column “For Republicans, the only good outcome of Trump vs. Cruz is for both to lose. The future of the party as the carrier of a humane, inclusive conservatism now depends on some viable choice beyond them.” Top conservative columnist George Will wrote, “If Trump is the Republican nominee in 2016, there might not be a conservative party in 2020 either.”
Republicans are not going to pay much attention to Democratic advice for them in the months ahead. But Republicans have gotten pretty good results with disciplined meme propagation. So, if Trump gets the GOP nomination, Dems can certainly help circulate Wehner’s argument, as well as those of other Republicans who share his beliefs.

A good many MSM journalists and headline-writers are uncorking predictable military and sports lingo in exaggerating the tone of the Democratic debate last night (transcript here). Compared to recent GOP presidential debates, however, the Democratic candidates provided sober, civil and, gasp, informative discussion of actual issues Americans care about. As for who “won,” Isaac Chotiner of Slate says Clinton, while other pundits say Sanders. It was that close.
Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders tore into Michigan Governor Rick Snyder at the end of the debate, with Sanders calling on him to resign because of his appalling negligence contributing to the lead poisoning of Flint’s drinking water. As Paul Egan describes it in the Detroit Free Press: “…As Snyder prepares to deliver his sixth State of the State address on Tuesday, his political capital has plummeted, the state is grappling with what could be a billion-dollar mistake with incalculable consequences for human lives, and his river analogy is particularly unfortunate in light of a state-appointed emergency manager’s 2014 decision to save money by temporarily drawing Flint’s drinking water from the polluted and corrosive Flint River. That move, followed by other state errors, has led to a public health crisis, allegations of a state government cover-up, and Saturday’s declaration of a federal emergency in Flint by President Barack Obama…Amid calls for his resignation, stunning vitriol directed at him through social media and protests planned outside his Ann Arbor home today and in front of the Capitol on Tuesday, Snyder will deliver one of the most closely watched State of the State addresses in Michigan history.”
In Jack Lessenberry’s “Is there a Democratic strategy for Michigan in 2016?” at Michiganradio.org, he notes that the new state Democratic Party chairman Brandon Dillon has further reason for optimism about Democratic prospects in 2016. “Dillon’s focus is on the state house of representatives, where all 110 seats are up for election…Democrats need to gain nine seats to win control, but this year, Dillon thinks his party has a real chance. Twenty-seven Republicans have to leave office because of term limits, as opposed to only eleven Democrats. Many of the open Republican seats may be vulnerable, since the departing incumbents were all first elected in the GOP landslide year of 2010…If a Democratic presidential nominee wins a landslide in Michigan this fall, Dillon hopes this will carry in a legislative majority. That’s what happened eight years ago, when President Obama badly beat John McCain.”
In “Republicans’ White, Working Class Trap: A Growing Reliance,” NPR’s Asma Khalid notes, “while white, working-class voters are now only about a third of the overall electorate, they’re about half of the Republican electorate.”
From Politico’s “The One Weird Trait That Predicts Whether You’re a Trump Supporter” by Matthew MacWilliams: “…49 percent of likely Republican primary voters I surveyed score in the top quarter of the authoritarian scale–more than twice as many as Democratic voters…In a statistical analysis of the polling results, I found that Trump has already captured 43 percent of Republican primary voters who are strong authoritarians, and 37 percent of Republican authoritarians overall. A majority of Republican authoritarians in my poll also strongly supported Trump’s proposals to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, prohibit Muslims from entering the United States, shutter mosques and establish a nationwide database that track Muslims.”
Trump will be the MLK Day speaker at Liberty University. It will be interesting to see how he navigates his big pitch to the conservative evangelical community, while paying respects to Dr. King, whose economic policies have more in common with the views Sen. Sanders than any other presidential candidate.
Dale Ho, Director, Voting Rights Project, ACLU has an update on the legal challenges to voter suppression laws.
At Smithsonian.com Heather Hansman asks “Could Pop-up Social Spaces at Polls Increase Voter Turnout?” The idea is to make polling places more of a fun spot, where people can “hang out.” What could go wrong?
George Washington University professsor Henry Farrell’s “Bill O’Reilly will flee to Ireland if Sanders is elected. He’s in for a shock” at the Washington Post provides the chuckle for the day, especially for all who have ventured to Ireland and actually paid attention. As Farrell writes, “from the perspective of American conservatism, Ireland looks like a hellhole of socialism” with “a tax system which is not all that different from the U.S. tax system for top earners, and arguably a little less favorable. The effective top Irish income tax rate is a little over half of income….Police only carry arms under special circumstances. Most Irish police officers don’t even have firearms training…Gun ownership is highly restricted in Ireland. People have to apply for a license to own a gun, and are likely to be refused under many circumstances. Furthermore, there are heavy restrictions on kinds of guns that they are allowed to own…Handguns of the kind that O’Reilly could use for “self-defense” are not [allowed], let alone automatic weapons. Gun rights are not a topic of political debate in Ireland — Ireland’s most conservative party, which is now the majority party in the government, has just introduced new restrictions, without any significant public opposition.” Further, adds Farrell, Ireland has “socialized medicine on a scale which would be politically unthinkable in America. Ireland also has welfare benefits for the unemployed which are not notably generous by European standards, but are wildly permissive in comparison to their U.S. equivalents.”

The Nikki Haley response to President Obama’s SOTU continues to reverberate as a rebuttal to Trumpism, not the President.
“For one moment, at least,” writes WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. about Haley’s SOTU response, “Obama had realized his dream: A part of red America came together with his blue America to share responsibility for the nation’s frustrations.”
TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore notes at New York News & Politics that Haley “certainly did no harm to her veep prospects unless Trump is the nominee or Trump has a veto over the second spot on the ticket (not an implausible thought). And indeed, conservative opinion-leader Erick Erickson said she had become “the only logical choice for vice presidential nominee of the GOP” (it should be noted Erickson was an early supporter of Haley’s 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidacy, back when she was mainly known as a hard-core, movement conservative disciple of Mark Sanford).”
“There has been a debate within the party — and the political class — about whether Republicans need to diversify to win or whether it just needs to attract more of its core constituencies. So far in 2016, led by Cruz and Donald Trump, the election has moved decisively toward the latter. The exceptions, such as Jeb Bush and Lindsey O. Graham, are either out of the race or on the edges of it.” — From “Republican hopefuls agree: The key to the White House is working-class whites” by Phillip Rucker and Robert Costa. The authors note, further, “the urgent imperative of Republicans — historically the party of business, money and power — to broaden their coalition with many more white working-class voters. As the nation diversifies and the GOP struggles to adapt, the presidential hopefuls see this demographic bloc as the key to taking back the White House.”
GOP hatin’ on Wall St.? If you buy that, you probably believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
Too bad about Al Jazeera America folding. Hey wealthy Democratic sugar daddies and mommas, how about a “Working America” progressive TV Network?
In her article, “Snyder legacy will be Flint water crisis,” The Freep’s Rochelle Riley goes medieval on Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder, and with good reason.
The ‘low-information voter’ thing may be more of a BFD than we thought. According to “Poll Reveals Voters are Uninformed About Major Issues” by James Agresti at Just Facts, “The poll consisted of 23 questions about education, healthcare, taxes, government spending, global warming, Social Security, energy, hunger, pollution, and the national debt…Overall, the majority of voters gave the correct answer to only six of the 23 questions. This indicates that many voters may be casting ballots based on false views of reality.”
So here come the Republicans with filibuster finagling.
Just when you thought the GOP presidential candidates demolition derby couldn’t get much tackier, here’s Jeb Bush with a “Short People” diss of Rubio.

We have become accustomed to superb speeches by President Obama, and his final State of the Union Speech not only documented his remarkable accomplishments as our national leader, but also charted an inspiring path to the future for the nation and for Democrats. Video and text of his speech follow:

OBAMA: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, my fellow Americans: tonight marks the eighth year that I’ve come here to report on the state of the Union. And for this final one, I’m going to try to make it a little shorter. (APPLAUSE)
I know some of you are antsy to get back to Iowa.
(LAUGHTER)
I’ve been there. I’ll be shaking hands afterwards if you want some tips.
Now, I understand that because it’s an election season, expectations for what we will achieve this year are low. But, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the constructive approach that you and other leaders took at the end of last year to pass a budget and make tax cuts permanent for working families.
So I hope we can work together this year on some bipartisan priorities like criminal justice reform, and helping…
(APPLAUSE)
… and helping people who are battling prescription drug abuse and heroin abuse.
(APPLAUSE)
So who knows. We might surprise the cynics again.
But tonight, I want to go easy on the traditional list of proposals for the year ahead. Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty, from helping students learn to write computer code to personalizing medical treatments for patients.
And I will keep pushing for progress on the work that I believe still needs to be done: fixing a broken immigration system…
(APPLAUSE)
… protecting our kids from gun violence, equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage.
(APPLAUSE)
All these things — all these things still matter to hardworking families. They’re still the right thing to do, and I won’t let up until they get done. But for my final address to this chamber, I don’t want to just talk about next year. I want to focus on the next five years, the next ten years and beyond. I want to focus on our future.
We live in a time of extraordinary change — change that’s reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our planet, our place in the world. It’s change that promises amazing medical breakthroughs, but also economic disruptions that strain working families.
It promises education for girls in the most remote villages, but also connects terrorists, plotting an ocean away. It’s change that can broaden opportunity, or widen inequality. And whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.
America has been through big changes before — wars and depression, the influx of new immigrants, workers fighting for a fair deal, movements to expand civil rights.
Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future, who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, who promised to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears.We did not, in the words of Lincoln, adhere to the dogmas of the quiet past. Instead we thought anew and acted anew.
We made change work for us, always extending America’s promise outward, to the next frontier, to more people. And because we did, because we saw opportunity where others saw peril, we emerged stronger and better than before.
What was true then can be true now. Our unique strengths as a nation — our optimism and work ethic, our spirit of discovery, our diversity, our commitment to rule of law — these things give us everything we need to ensure prosperity and security for generations to come.
In fact, it’s in that spirit that we have made the progress these past seven years. That’s how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations.
(APPLAUSE)
That’s how we reformed our health care system and reinvented our energy sector.
(APPLAUSE)
That’s how — that’s how we — that’s how we delivered more care and benefits to our troops coming home and our veterans.
(APPLAUSE)
That’s how we — that’s — that’s how we secured the freedom in every state to marry the person we love.
(APPLAUSE)
But such progress is not inevitable. It’s the result of choices we make together. And we face such choices right now. Will we respond to the changes of our time with fear, turning inward as a nation, turning against each other as a people? Or will we face the future with confidence in who we are, in what we stand for, and the incredible things we can do together? So let’s talk about the future, and four big questions that I believe we as a country have to answer, regardless of who the next president is or who controls the next Congress.
First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy?
(APPLAUSE)
Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us, especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change?
(APPLAUSE)
Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?
(APPLAUSE)
And finally, how can we make our politics reflect what’s best in us, and not what’s worst?
(APPLAUSE)
Let me start with the economy and a basic fact. The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.
(APPLAUSE)
We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history.More than 14 million new jobs, the strongest two years of job growth since the 1990s, an unemployment rate cut in half. Our auto industry just had its best year ever.
(APPLAUSE)
That’s just part of a manufacturing surge that’s created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years. And we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.
(APPLAUSE)
Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction. Now…
(APPLAUSE)
What is true — and the reason that a lot of Americans feel anxious — is that the economy has been changing in profound ways, changes that started long before the Great Recession hit, changes that have not let up. Today, technology doesn’t just replace jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated. Companies in a global economy can locate anywhere, and they face tougher competition.
As a result, workers have less leverage for a raise. Companies have less loyalty to their communities. And more and more wealth and income is concentrated at the very top.
All these trends have squeezed workers, even when they have jobs, even when the economy is growing. It’s made it harder for a hardworking family to pull itself out of poverty, harder for young people to start their careers, tougher for workers to retire when they want to. And although none of these trends are unique to America, they do offend our uniquely American belief that everybody who works hard should get a fair shot.
For the past seven years, our goal has been a growing economy that also works better for everybody. We’ve made progress, but we need to make more. And despite all the political arguments that we’ve had these past few years, there are actually some areas where Americans broadly agree.
We agree that real opportunity requires every American to get the education and training they need to land a good-paying job. The bipartisan reform of No Child Left Behind was an important start, and together, we’ve increased early childhood education, lifted high school graduation rates to new highs, boosted graduates in fields like engineering.
In the coming years, we should build on that progress, by providing Pre-K for all and offering every student…
(APPLAUSE)
… offering every student the hands-on computer science and math classes that make them job-ready on day one. We should recruit and support more great teachers for our kids.
(APPLAUSE)
And — and we have to make college affordable for every American.
(APPLAUSE)
No hardworking student should be stuck in the red. We’ve already reduced student loan payments by — to 10 percent of a borrower’s income. And that’s good. But now we’ve actually got to cut the cost of college.
(APPLAUSE)
Providing two years of community college at no cost for every responsible student is one of the best ways to do that, and I’m going to keep fighting to get that started this year. It’s the right thing to do.
(APPLAUSE)
But a great education isn’t all we need in this new economy. We also need benefits, and protections that provide a basic measure of security. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that some of the only people in America who are going to work the same job, in the same place with a health, and a retirement package for 30 years are sitting in this chamber. For everyone else, especially folks in their 40’s and 50’s, saving for retirement, or bouncing back from job loss has gotten a lot tougher. Americans understand that at some point in their careers, in this new economy, they may have to retool, they may have to retrain, but they shouldn’t loose what they’ve already worked so hard to build in the process.
That’s why Social Security and Medicare are more important than ever, we shouldn’t weaken them, we should strengthen them.
(APPLAUSE)
And for American short of retirement, basic benefits should be just as mobile as everything else is today.
That, by the way, is what the Affordable Care Act is all about. It’s about filling the gaps in employer based care so that when you lose a job, or you go back to school, or you strike out and launch that new business you’ll still have coverage. Nearly 18 million people have gained coverage so far, and in the process…
(APPLAUSE)
In the process health care inflation has slowed, our businesses have created jobs every single month since it became law.
Now, I’m guessing we won’t agree on health care anytime soon.
(APPLAUSE)
A little applause right there.
(LAUGHTER)
Just a guess.
But there should be other ways parties can work together improve economic security. Say a hardworking American loses his job, we shouldn’t just make sure he can get unemployment insurance; we should make sure that program encourages him to retrain for a business that’s ready to hire him. If that new job doesn’t pay as much, there should be a system of wage insurance in place so that he can still pay his bills. And even if he’s going from job to job, he should still be able to save for retirement and take his savings with him. That’s the way we make the new economy work better for everybody.
I also know Speaker Ryan has talked about his interest in tackling poverty. America is about giving everybody willing to work a chance, a hand up, and I’d welcome a serious discussion about strategies we can all support, like expanding tax cuts for low-income workers who don’t have children.
(APPLAUSE)
But there are some areas where we just have to be honest. It has been more difficult to find agreement over the last seven years, and a lot of them fall under the category of what role the government should play in making sure the system’s not rigged in favor of the wealthiest and biggest corporations.
(APPLAUSE)
And it’s an honest disagreement. And, the American people have a choice to make.
I believe a thriving private sector is the lifeblood of our economy. I think there are outdated regulations that need to be changed, there is red tape that needs to be cut.
(APPLAUSE)
There you go. Yes.
(APPLAUSE)
See?
But after years of record corporate profits, working families won’t get more opportunity or bigger paychecks just by letting big banks or big oil or hedge funds make their own rules at everybody else’s expense.(APPLAUSE)
Middle-class families are not going to feel more secure because we allowed attacks on collective bargaining to go unanswered. Food Stamp recipients did not cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did.
(APPLAUSE)
Immigrants aren’t the principal reason wages haven’t gone up. Those decisions are made in the boardrooms that all too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns. It’s sure not the average family watching tonight that avoids paying taxes through offshore accounts.
(APPLAUSE)
The point is, I believe, that in this new economy, workers and start-ups and small businesses need more of a voice, not less. The rules should work for them. And…
(APPLAUSE)
… I’m not alone in this. This year, I plan to lift up the many businesses who’ve figured out that doing right by their workers or their customers or their communities ends up being good for their shareholders…
(APPLAUSE)
… and I want to spread those best practices across America. That’s part of a brighter future. In fact, it turns out many of our best corporate citizens are also our most creative.
And this brings me to the second big question we as a country have to answer: how do we reignite that spirit of innovation to meet our biggest challenges?
Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn’t deny Sputnik was up there.
We didn’t argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight, and twelve years later, we were walking on the moon.
(APPLAUSE)
Now, that spirit of discovery is in our DNA. America is Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers and George Washington Carver. America is Grace Hopper and Katherine Johnson and Sally Ride. America is every immigrant and entrepreneur from Boston to Austin to Silicon Valley racing to shape a better future.
(APPLAUSE)
That’s who we are, and over the past seven years, we’ve nurtured that spirit. We’ve protected an open Internet, and taken bold new steps to get more students and low-income Americans online.
(APPLAUSE)
We’ve launched next-generation manufacturing hubs and online tools that give an entrepreneur everything he or she needs to start a business in a single day. But we can do so much more.
You know, last year, Vice President Biden said that, with a new moon-shot, America can cure cancer. Last month, he worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources that they’ve had in over a decade.
(APPLAUSE)
Well, so — so tonight, I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done. And because he’s gone to the mat for all of us on so many issues over the past 40 years, I’m putting Joe in charge of mission control.
(APPLAUSE)
For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the families that we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all. What do you think? Let’s make it happen.
(APPLAUSE)
And medical research is critical. We need the same level of commitment when it comes to developing clean energy sources.
(APPLAUSE)
Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. You will be pretty lonely because you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it.
(APPLAUSE)
But even if — even if the planet wasn’t at stake, even if 2014 wasn’t the warmest year on record until 2015 turned out even hotter — why would we want to pass up the chance for American businesses to produce and sell the energy of the future?
(APPLAUSE)
Listen, seven years ago, we made the single biggest investment in clean energy in our history. Here are the results. In fields from Iowa to Texas, wind power is now cheaper than dirtier, conventional power. On rooftops from Arizona to New York, solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills and employs more Americans than coal — in jobs that pay better than average.
We’re taking steps to give homeowners the freedom to generate and store their own energy — something, by the way, that environmentalists and Tea Partiers have teamed up to support. And meanwhile, we’ve cut our imports of foreign oil by nearly 60 percent and cut carbon pollution more than any other country on Earth.
(APPLAUSE)
Gas under $2 a gallon ain’t bad either.
(LAUGHTER)

Read more…

Karl de Vries reports at CNN Politics that former NY Mayor “Bloomberg commissioned poll to test 2016 waters, source says” — as a third party candidate.
In “The Democratic Party in the South Has Changed for Good: The party has been decimated in the South in the Obama era. But it is rebuilding itself in his image” in The New Republic, Michael A. Cooper, Jr. quotes Dr. Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at North Carolina’s Catawba College: “Southern Sun Belt states may ultimately become more important for Democratic campaigns than the aging Rust Belt. North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida already have a higher percentage of liberals than Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, New Hampshire, or Ohio. And “if Democrats win Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina, they deny Republicans the White House,” says Bitzer, all else staying equal.”
At Ring of Fire, Farron Cousins warns that “Low Voter Turnout Will Hand 2016 Election To The GOP.”
And Kira Lerner flags “Voter Suppression Battles To Watch In 2016” at ThinkProgress.
In similar vein, Salon.com’s Paul Rosenberg has “This is how they’ll gut American democracy: Scott Walker and the Kochs want to f**k America as bad as they did Wisconsin — Dark money, gerrymandering, super-majorities, undemocratic actions that leave the plutocrats in charge. It’s coming.”
And if all of that wasn’t enough to worry about, Herbert Gans details “The Republican Establishment’s Overthrow Project” at HuffPo.
“YouGov’s latest research shows that Americans tend to describe themselves as working class (46%) rather than middle class (41%). Among Americans who live in households with incomes under $50,000 a year, 62% call themselves working class and only 25% think of themselves as part of the middle class. Among households who earn $50,000 to $100,000 a year 34% still call themselves working class and 60% middle class. People earning over $100,000 a year are the most likely to call themselves middle class, with 75% saying that they are middle class and only 11% describing themselves as upper class,” notes Peter Moore at yougov.com.
At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall reports that “a White Nationalist Super PAC (yes, that’s now a thing) is now blanketing Iowa with Robocalls on behalf of Donald Trump.”
“Has Trump Made Political Ads Obsolete?,” asks Leslie Savan at The Nation. An interesting question, well-underscored in the observation in the subtitle: “His first TV spot was standard racist fear-mongering, as cheesy as a Trump hotel lobby. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush has spent over $100 million on ads, only to reach a humiliating 3.3-percent in the polls.” But it may be a long time before either party produces another candidate, who manipulates the media as consistently as does Trump. Savan asks and answers another interesting question in the article “So, again, why is Trump bothering to spend $2 million a week on TV spots? Howard Fineman has speculated that Trump is “spreading” around money to keep the local TV stations happy–it’s walking-around money for small-state media owners.”

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains why “The gun lobby’s con game will come to an end..” As Dionne writes, “… Something important happened in the East Room when Obama offered a series of constrained but useful steps toward limiting the carnage on our streets, in our schools and houses of worship and movie theaters. He made clear that the era of cowering before the gun lobby and apologizing, trimming, hedging and equivocating is over…Bullies are intimidating until someone calls their bluff. By ruling out any reasonable steps toward containing the killing in our nation and by offering ever more preposterous arguments, the gun worshipers are setting themselves up for wholesale defeat. It will take time. But it will happen.”
From Pew Research Center, via Greg Sargent

At ABC News Gary Langer has “Views on Gun Control: A Polling Summary.”
Trump points the birther finger at Cruz.
WaPo’s Amber Phillips sees a Democratic leadership void emerging in the House after Speaker Pelosi, while departing Rep. Steve Israel sees a “pretty robust bench.”
At centralmaine.com Douglas Rooks explains why “Maine Democrats a poor party of opposition.” Subtitled “With a few exceptions, they talk about what Paul LePage wants to talk about, and accommodate what he wants to do.,” Rooks adds that “Democrats should stop talking about “welfare reform” and tax cuts and set their own course. Here’s a clue: The widest voter consensus on any current issues supports raising the minimum wage, and levying higher taxes on the wealthy…To again become relevant, Democrats must determine what they want to do, then tell people how they’ll restore enough of the state tax system to fund it. Bromides about “good jobs at good wages” and “investment” in a laundry list of unquantified good causes won’t do it…With a few exceptions, they talk about what Paul LePage wants to talk about, and accommodate what he wants to do.”
Bu there is also some very good news from a key swing state: Virginia Daffron reports at Mountain Express, “On Wednesday, Jan. 6, Rev. Dr. William Barber outlined a joint campaign launched by the North Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Democracy NC to empower voters through supporting access to voting and providing education on key issues…Barber, Moral Monday leader and head of the state NAACP, said a coalition of over 3,000 faith- and membership-based communities will implement the issues-based campaign to empower, educate and protect voters.”
At Huffpo, however, Samantha Lachman’s “Voting Laws Are Still Up In The Air In These States: And fights over voting restrictions could continue until Election Day” discusses “the major court fights that could affect voters’ access to the ballot in this year’s election.”
Joel K. Goldstein post, “Five Factors That Will Define the Running Mates: Lessons from history on how the nominees will balance their tickets” probes veep selection strategy at Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

From Cole Stangler’s report on a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey/Esquire Online Poll conducted 11/20-24: “Americans are mad as hell. Results of a survey sponsored by Esquire and NBC News and published Sunday indicated half of the U.S. is angrier than it was last year. And the rage appears to transcend class, gender, race and sexual orientation…Sixty-eight percent of those polled said they hear or read something in the news that makes them angry either “once a day” or “a few times a day.” That encompasses 73 percent of whites, 66 percent of Hispanics and 56 percent of blacks.”
At National Journal Karen Bruggeman notes in her post, “Hotline’s 2016 Governors Race Rankings” that “Com­ing off an up­set win in Louisi­ana in Novem­ber, Demo­crats will mostly be on de­fense, hop­ing to hold open seats in Mis­souri, New Hamp­shire, Ver­mont, and West Vir­gin­ia in 2016 and Vir­gin­ia in 2017. The only ob­vi­ous pickup over the next two years is in New Jer­sey in 2017 thanks to term-lim­ited Chris Christie’s tank­ing pop­ular­ity post-Bridgeg­ate. Oth­er­wise, the top tar­get for Demo­crats is North Car­o­lina, where they hope to pick off vul­ner­able Gov. Pat Mc­Crory.”
No surprise that Trump, or any Republican, would think that former President Bill Clinton’s personal mistakes in the 1990s are relevant to the 2016 presidential campaign — yet another example of the GOP’s desperate politics of distraction. But it’s amazing that Trump thinks he has the credibility to criticize anyone about disrespecting women. Rabid narcissism often comes with an astounding lack of self-awareness.
Although Trump symbolizes what is dysfunctional in American politics, Mark Schmitt has a New York Times op-ed reminding readers that “Trump Did Not Break Politics.” Schmitt explains, “…in recent years, Republican politicians especially have not only defied the rules, they have also protected themselves from the consequences. Restrictions on voting, along with aggressive redistricting, reduce the influence of the median voter. Campaign war chests (including “super PACs”) scare off opponents, from within their own party as well as the other. By crippling civil-society institutions such as unions and community groups, which organize middle- and lower-income voters, they sometimes avoid being held accountable. They can use ideological media to reach mostly like-minded voters…Long before Mr. Trump came along, the supposedly immutable laws of politics had begun to fall.”
Supporters of reducing income inequality take note: As Paul Krugman observes, as a direct consequence of the presidential 2012 election, the wealthy are now paying more taxes. Says Krugman, “…while the 2013 tax hike wasn’t gigantic, it was significant. Those higher rates on the 1 percent correspond to about $70 billion a year in revenue…If Mitt Romney had won, we can be sure that Republicans would have found a way to prevent these tax hikes. And we can now see what happened because he didn’t. According to the new tables, the average income tax rate for 99 percent of Americans barely changed from 2012 to 2013, but the tax rate for the top 1 percent rose by more than four percentage points. The tax rise was even bigger for very high incomes: 6.5 percentage points for the top 0.01 percent…for top incomes, Mr. Obama has effectively rolled back not just the Bush tax cuts but Ronald Reagan’s as well…The bottom line is that presidential elections matter, a lot, even if the people on the ballot aren’t as fiery as you might like.”
Perhaps the most striking thing about the chart in this National Journal article on minimum wage hikes now going into effect in 13 states is the small size of the increases — from 25 cents to a buck. Raising the wage floor to a level more commensurate with a decent living standards should be a potent message for Dems who want to increase turnout of low-income voters.
President Obama’s decision to hold town meetings on gun violence and take some executive actions to prevent more of it will drive wingnuts even battier than usual. But it will also make some Democrats down ballot more than a little nervous. However, a recent Quinnipiac University poll conducted 12/16-20 showed that 87 percent of respondents favored “requiring background checks on people buying guns at gun shows or online” and 58 percent supported “a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons,” while 83 percent favored “banning those on the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list from purchasing guns.” There is ample political room for meaningful reforms to curb gun violence, and Dems should not be intimidated from supporting such clear, common sense reforms to reduce gun violence.
At the Washington Post, “Here’s the secret to making people care about climate change: Make them think about their legacy.” by Ezra Markowitz and Lisa Zaval provides an instructive read for those who want to promote, not just awareness, but also action to heal and protect the environment. As the authors note, “Here’s a depressing statistic if you’re worried about climate change: 63 percent of Americans say they’re concerned about the issue, but only 47 percent think the government should do anything about it…That divide, known as the “attitude-behavior” gap, isn’t all that uncommon. And activists and politicians have tried all kinds of strategies to address it…In a series of psychological studies we conducted over the past two years with Americans from across the country, we found that simply asking people to reflect upon how they want to be remembered by future generations can lead them to engage in more “helping behavior” in the present, particularly when it comes to protecting the environment.”
I’ll conclude this first Strategy Notes posting of 2016 with an observation that facebook may be the most powerful forum for mass political education America has ever known. Nowhere else in American life are political ideas and information so thoroughly discussed or broadly-shared. Even newspapers at their peak power never matched the level of inter-active citizen participation we see on facebook. Television still reaches more people, but it’s all pretty much one-way communication. Twitter has its uses in terms of planting soundbites and memes, but the 140 character limitation makes it a poor instrument for education. Granted, there is a lot of misinformation being bandied about on facebook, and also a lot of preaching to the choir. But now at an astounding 1.5 billion average monthly users, facebook has become the most-visited town hall for tens of millions of Americans, the place to go for convenient, up-to-date, free-of-charge discussion about the political issues of our times. There is even some data indicating Facebook has boosted voter turnout. Political campaigns that fail to leverage it are doomed. Those which master it are going to do better.

“Experts are skeptical,” writes Alex Seitz-Wald at nbcnews,com, addressing the power of ‘Independent’ voters to determine the outcome of New Hampshire’s Democratic primary. Seitz-Wald provides a couple of quotes on point: “Past results show that registered Democrats are likely to make up a majority of the primary electorate. Sanders either has to convince more of these voters to support him or he has to turn out an unprecedented number of independents and brand new voters,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute…Andy Smith, the director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, said that every year some candidate attempts to capitalize on the ‘myth of the independent voter.’ “It’s just never been the case that independents have really swung an election for a candidate here,” he noted.”
At Rolling Stone Krysten Gwynne predicts “The 5 Next States to See Legal Marijuana” in 2016. All are blue-bluish states, and their Democratic candidates are surely hoping it will boost turnout of younger voters.
From the United States Election Project charts on “Voter Turnout Demographics”:

National Journal’s Ronald Brownstein sees a growing distinction between ‘bridge-builder’ and ‘wall-builder’ populists coming into conflict in the U.S. and Europe: “On both sides of the At­lantic, the lead­ers de­fend­ing an open in­ter­na­tion­al or­der and in­clus­ive do­mest­ic so­ci­et­ies face grow­ing pres­sure to show their ap­proach can im­prove life for the frus­trated, of­ten fear­ful voters flock­ing to the de­fens­ive na­tion­al­ists. The in­su­lar pop­u­lists who would build walls are now banging on the gates.”
In shameless hypocrite news, NJ’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie blasts rival Sen. Rubio for missing senate votes — even though Christie has vetoed bills passed by the NJ state legislature to broaden early voting access and establish automatic voter registration.
At The Upshot Nate Cohn presents an interesting map showing Donald Trump’s strongholds across the nation by congressional district. Cohn comments: “Donald Trump holds a dominant position in national polls in no small part because he is extremely strong among people on the periphery of the Republican coalition…He is strongest among Republicans who are less affluent, less educated and less likely to turn out to vote. His very best voters are self-identified Republicans who nonetheless are registered as Democrats. It’s a coalition that’s concentrated in the South, Appalachia and the industrial North, according to data provided to The Upshot by Civis Analytics, a Democratic data firm…Mr. Trump’s huge advantage among these groups poses a challenge for his campaign, because it may not have the turnout operation necessary to mobilize irregular voters.”
AP’s Geoff Mulvihill has an update on “New Laws in 2016 Show States Are Diverging on Guns, Voting.”
While early polls are useless for predicting electoral outcomes, they may have some value to campaigns, argues Elizabeth Williamson in her New York Times ‘Editorial Observer’ post, “The More We Poll, the Less We Know.” As Williamson explains, “Early polls do, however, provide a window into voter concerns, policy preferences and priorities that shift, collide, then eventually coalesce around a single candidate…One recent example is the uptick in support for candidates whom some voters see as best qualified on national security after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, like (inexplicably) Gov. Chris Christie, and the fall of others, like Ben Carson, who haven’t demonstrated fluency on foreign policy.”
I’ll close the year’s Strategy Notes with a question: How can this not spell big trouble for one of the GOP’s top presidential candidates?