Jeff Spross’s “You know who likes lackluster economic growth? The rich” at The Week explains why “many economic elites actually have a vested interest in anemic job growth and a slack labor market.” This is the kind of unflinching analysis that drives Republican meme-mongers crazy, for they depend to a great extent on the public embracing wholesale one of their most treasured economic myths — that the super-wealthy want shared prosperity for everyone.
After all, the argument goes, the mega-rich have to live in the same world as the rest of us, right? More to the point, broadly-shared prosperity is good for the wealthy too, isn’t it, since they will benefit when consumers have more money to buy their products, correct?.
“Not so fast,” writes Spross. “A dark and unpleasant truth is that many economic elites actually have a vested interest in anemic job growth and a slack labor market.” Spross adds:

To many observers, this probably sounds crazy. Tight labor markets — when the demand for workers has caught up with the supply — are part and parcel of a booming economy. And a bigger pie benefits everyone!…Tight labor markets — when the demand for workers has caught up with the supply — are part and parcel of a booming economy. And a bigger pie benefits everyone!
But this leaves out the crucial issue of worker bargaining power. When labor markets are as tight as they can get — a.k.a. full employment — workers can quit jobs they don’t like and find ones they do like with ease, while owners of business and capital become ever more desperate for adequate labor. This gives workers much more leverage to demand wage increases, so they claim a bigger share of all the income generated in the economy. Which means, by definition, the elite’s share must shrink.

Spross observes, further that “after 1970, full employment disappeared, and inequality took off. The one exception was the boom in the late 1990s — for that brief period, the incomes of the top 5 percent of households, the bottom 20 percent of households, and everyone in between, rose in lockstep.
However, explains Spross, “The main channel is the flow of money through individual companies. Higher wages mean the costs of labor go up, so profit margins shrink and businesses have to operate on much tighter finances. Conversely, after full employment went away, corporate profits boomed. Companies obviously prefer the second scenario. It also means the CEOs, management, shareholders, and investors who own stakes in companies get much bigger payouts from those capital gains.” And,

Full employment also takes power over the business away from owners and management and gives more of it to workers instead. Unions grow and labor movements ferment. Workers suddenly can demand all sorts of stuff, from paid leave to ergonomic work stations to different schedules to better treatment and conditions and on and on. The people at the top lose a fair amount of creative control over the nature and direction of the enterprises they view as theirs. Pride is a thing with human beings, and there’s a reason unions are so hated in certain quarters of our society.
Finally, there’s a lifestyle issue at play. If the incomes of everyday workers go up, then elites’ real incomes must go down. The labor they’re buying is more costly. This completely changes where and how the elite can spend their money, and what they can and can’t consume. The rising “servant economy” rests on a wide relative gap between high and low incomes. Again, we’re talking about sinful, fallen, prideful humans here, who like being able to buy bigger, hipper, posher stuff than everyone else, and who like being able to go to high-end cultural events and work creative jobs and eat nice food while other people do the shopping and cleaning and cooking and driving and child care. Full employment and its impact on inequality has a profound effect on the fabric of our shared lives as they’re actually experienced.

Spross cites key “data signals for gauging the tightness of the labor market. Wage growth is still flatlined at around 2 percent annually, when it should be at least 3.5 percent. Labor force participation is way down, and underemployment is still quite high.” Even more significantly, says Spross,

But maybe the best metric is the percentage of the prime-age work force — too old to be students and too young to retire — that’s employed. That number still hasn’t recovered to where it was before 2008, and that peak was still below where it was before the 2001 recession. The late 1990s boom, while better, was also less impressive that what went on mid-century.

This decline, he argues “is the primary tool by which the American elite gobbles up ever more wealth and power from everyone else. Recessions in the last few decades have been the inflection points for ratcheting up that effect…The supply of work is a collective accomplishment, driven by the feedback loop between consumers and businesses. It’s a question of ecological stewardship and managing aggregate demand, and it implicates macroeconomic policies from monetary policy to taxes to the welfare state to unions.”
Republican economic policies, therefore, are designed to serve their elite contributors who really want “to slow the supply of jobs to a trickle” and keep workers “desperate and forever on the ropes.”
Of course, elaborates Spross, “Elites obviously don’t want to completely tank the economy. But it certainly works for them if it stays modestly stagnant, maximizing the growth of the pie while minimizing worker bargaining power.”
“It’s the Goldilocks principle, concludes Spross. “Don’t run the economy too hot or too cold. Run it just right.”
For the Republicans, cultural wars provide a convenient distraction from this cynical economic strategy. Confuse the public about who the elites really are with peripheral “issues,” so they won’t focus on the GOP’s grand economic strategy, which is to enrich the already wealthy even further by screwing working people of all races. It has served them well and they can not be expected to give it up.
Every election is important to the GOP for consolidating the gains of their strategy. But 2016 looms as a particularly critical watershed year for them, and for America. If they carry the day, they will be able to lock up the Supreme Court for decades, disempower unions and workers even further and elevate the privileges of the wealthy to ever-increasing heights, while expanding the misery index for everyone else. This is why Democrats must unify and bring their ‘A’ game in 2016 — or there won’t be much of a middle class to talk about in 2020.

In “Watching Republicans Flail is Not a Strategy,” Ruth Conniff, editor of The Progressive, reminds Democrats not to get distracted by the GOP presidential candidates’ demolition derby. To thrive in 2016 Dems are going to need stronger messaging of their own. Conniff urges a major change in messaging tone and substance:

“The Republican destruction machine is opening up an opportunity. Democrats and progressives should start talking about what we are for. Here is what we are for: great public institutions that serve the common good.
For decades, a right-wing propaganda campaign has been claiming, falsely, that our public institutions are no good, inefficient and wasteful, and that they should be handed over to private business. Part of the reason that message resonates with the public is that everyone has had a bad experience with bureaucracy; waiting in line at the DMV.
But here is something else Americans know from experience: In the deregulated private market, con artistry abounds. That’s why Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have struck a chord with their criticism of hucksterism on Wall Street. Credit card companies routinely take advantage of their customers. And millions of Americans know what it’s like to be ripped off by big banks and jerked around by health insurance companies. Fly-by-night voucher schools and shady charter-school operators are cashing in on public education funds by shortchanging students.
If the privatizers have their way, soon millions of Americans will be sending our kids to school at private academies in the same strip malls where we use the privatized postal services, bank at the check-cashing joint and shop at the deregulated rent-to-own shop.
Progressives need to stand up to this dystopian vision with better values: great public schools for each and every child, a well-maintained infrastructure and communities that are a great place to live for everybody — not just those rich enough to send their kids to private schools, buy up the prettiest land and build big walls to keep the rest of us out.
A more positive, generous message leads to more progressive politics.

Conniff notes that the success of the Bernie Sanders campaign shows “progressive politics can still get serious traction in our country.” Instead of allowing Republicans the widest possible latitude in their government-bashing messages, Democrats should boldly challenge them directly with a positive take on the role of government.
Her challenge to Dems to focus their messaging more sharply on “great public institutions that serve the common good” provides an excellent soundbite/slogan for Democratic candidates and campaigns. Much depends on how well they work it over the next 13 months.

It’s only one poll, but it has a high accuracy track record and it has Trump in second place among GOP presidential contenders, amid increasing buzz that Trump’s support may have peaked.
Michael Tomasky warns at The Daily Beast: “John Boehner has been far and away the worst speaker of the House of Representatives in many decades, presiding over the two least productive Congresses in modern American history, overseeing those endless and ridiculous Obamacare repeal votes, and most of all not having the stones to bring the immigration bill to the floor. It would have passed any day he chose to let that happen, which at least would have given the newspapers one positive item to include in the lead paragraph of his obituary when the time comes…But from the looks of things, Boehner isn’t going to be holding the worst speaker title for very long.”
At the Times Patrick Healy probes evidence that anger at the political establishment “is also coursing through the Democratic electorate.”
The 2nd amendment to the constitution reads in full: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” But the NRA has only the second half of the 2nd amendment to the constitution emblazoned on the wall in its HQ lobby. (scroll far down to see photo) Hey NRA and it’s GOP minions, is it really OK to sell guns to anyone?
RFK warned about the tragic consequences of firearms anarchy join the U.S. in 1968 — in Roseburg.
Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley gets out front of the the white house aspirants in both parties on gun control in the wake of the Roseburg tragedy. John Wagner reports at Post Politics that O’Malley is calling for “four reforms on the national level: a ban on “combat assault weapons”; a requirement that those who purchase guns get licenses and be fingerprinted; a law making gun trafficking a federal crime; and a commitment from the federal government to purchase firearms only from companies that use “the latest and best safety technology.”
Hillary Clinton is also unveiling a strong gun control plan, while Bernie Sanders is catching some heat from progressives for voting to protect legal immunity for gun manufacturers.
End Cit­izens United PAC targets six battleground house races, reports Kimberly Railey at national Journal.
As Koch brothers get ready to spend $1 billion on 2016, Dems meet to prevent them from dominating the election, Alexander Bolton reports at The Hill

At ThinkProgress Alex Zielinski’s “Republicans Advance Strategy To Get Around Senate Democrats To Dismantle Obamacare” reveals that GOP leaders are planning to leverage the budget reconciliation process “to get around a potential Democratic filibuster in the Senate.”
Democratic presidential candidate Gov. Martin O’Malley unveils bold plan for campaign finance reform.
Politico’s Theodoric Meyer and Kenneth P. Vogel note that “Some of the country’s biggest liberal donors are quietly huddling this week with Democratic state lawmakers in Washington, preparing a nationwide fight to take back state legislatures from Republicans. The closed-door meetings represent a milestone for the young group orchestrating the fight, the State Innovation Exchange — or SiX for short. The group appears on track to outraise previous efforts to push liberal polices in the states and is looking to generate more cash and momentum.”
In “Will the Supreme Court Decide That Democrats Have Too Much Power?,” The Atlantic’s Garrett Epps explores the possible fallout of three upcoming High Court cases.
Paul Krugman clarifies the differences on tax policy and deficit spending between the GOP presidential candidates: “So Donald Trump has unveiled his tax plan. It would, it turns out, lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit…This is in contrast to Jeb Bush’s plan, which would lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit, and Marco Rubio’s plan, which would lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit.” Yet, adds Krugman, “According to Gallup, only 13 percent of Americans believe that upper-income individuals pay too much in taxes, while 61 percent believe that they pay too little. Even among self-identified Republicans, those who say that the rich should pay more outnumber those who say they should pay less by two to one.”
At Talking Points Memo Tierney Sneed reports “Alabama Demands Voter ID–Then Closes Driver’s License Offices In Black Counties.”
It appears that the aura of failure is taking a toll on Scott Walker’s hopes for a third term as Wisconsin’s governor. “A new Marquette Law School poll released yesterday gives the Republican [Gov. Scott] Walker 37-percent approval, two points lower than his all-time low of 39-percent in August. T,” reports WSAU.com.
NYT columnist David Brooks spotlights Carly Fiorina’s messaging strategy: “In such a giant field of candidates what matters most is the ability to grab the spotlight. The era of YouTube and FaceTime video links has further magnified the power of a candidate who can create significant moments. Fiorina is great at it, perfectly suited to this environment…She can go on MSNBC or some other outlet and bludgeon a host with a barrage of forcefully delivered bullet points, which then goes viral. When challenged on the accuracy or fairness of her assertions, she blasts straight through…And yet for all her feisty outsider bravado, if you actually look at her views on substance and her behavior in the past, she is a completely conventional Republican…stylistically she is a renegade outsider, but substantively she’s completely establishmentarian.”
From “The Decider” to “The Disrupter.”

Rarely these days do we see Republicans writing thoughtful analyses of their party’s present and future. There’s a notable exception in today’s New York Times, “Anarchy in the House,” an op-ed by Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party.” An excerpt:

Years ago, I wrote a history of the Republican civil war between the moderates and radicals of the Goldwater era. I’m sufficiently alarmed, watching history repeat itself, that I now work as a research consultant for the Main Street Partnership, an organization of over 70 members of Congress who represent the moderate-conservative wing of the Republican Party. Their rivals are members of the Freedom Caucus, who would rather close the government than compromise.
Once again, the battle is between Republicans who want to govern and those who don’t. The radicals have no realistic alternative solutions of their own. Even to contemplate the negotiations and compromises such policies entail would sully their ideological purity.
Senator Goldwater, despite his brave talk of repeal, was an isolated, powerless legislator. The extremists who opposed John A. Boehner as speaker are likewise a small faction without the ability to accomplish any positive program. InsideGov, a government watchdog site, recently came up with a list of the least effective members of Congress, as determined by the percentage of bills they sponsored that went on to pass committee. Ideological extremism correlates closely with legislative impotence.
That’s unsurprising, since many members of the Freedom Caucus put a higher priority on scoring purity points than on carrying out the nation’s business. Its chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, is, by this accounting, the second-least effective member of Congress. The only one who’s even less effective is another longtime critic of Mr. Boehner, Representative Steve King of Iowa, not one of whose 94 sponsored bills has passed the committee stage. Most of Mr. Boehner’s harshest critics lurk at the bottom of the Lugar Center’s Bipartisanship Index. Representative Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, who triumphantly tweeted “Today the establishment lost” after Mr. Boehner’s resignation, is ranked last.
The Republican Party’s unhappy ideological adventure in the early ’60s ended in disaster. Goldwater not only lost the election in a landslide, but he dragged down the entire Republican ticket. The main result of conservative overreach was to hand President Lyndon B. Johnson the liberal supermajority he needed to pass Medicare and Medicaid.
The present resurgence of anti-governing conservatism is also likely to end badly for Republicans. The extremists have the ability to disrupt the Congress, but not to lead it. Their belief that shutdowns will secure real concessions is magical thinking, not legislative realism. And the more power they gain, the less likely it becomes that a Republican-controlled Congress can pass conservative legislation, or indeed any legislation at all.

In terms of raw political advantage, all of this gives Dems realistic optimism about 2016, perhaps even the possibility of a landslide. But the tragedy in the GOP’s descent into scorched-earth partisanship is the lost opportunity – progress for all Americans, had the Republicans negotiated for compromises to benefit millions. Instead, a landslide drubbing now looks like the best hope for restoring reason to the GOP.

At The Upshot Nate Cohn assesses the political leverage of red and blue state Republicans in the wake of Boehner’s resignation on the road to 2016. Cohn notes some interesting statistics, including: “In 2012, there were more Mitt Romney voters in California than in Texas, and in Chicago’s Cook County than in West Virginia. Over all, the states that voted for President Obama in 2012 hold 50 percent of the delegates to the Republican National Convention, even though they contain just 19 percent of Republican senators…In the last two cycles, relatively moderate Republican candidates won the party’s nomination by sweeping the blue states.”
Trump calls one of his best possible running mates a “clown and a “baby.”
Has Trump peaked? But even if he falls short of the delegates needed for the GOP nomination, there are two ways he could be the kingmaker: He could urge his delegates to support another GOP candidate or he could break his pledge and run as an Independent.
I’m tempted to say that Steven Rattner has nuked Carly Fiorina’s presidential aspirations by detailing the string of embarrassing failures that define her career as a “business leader.” But then I remembered no voters seemed to care that Bush II screwed up every business he touched.
Marcela Valdes has a NYT Magazine profile of Univision’s Jorge Ramos, arguably “the most influential news anchor in the Americas,” who has the unrivaled attention of Latino voters in the U.S. and throughout the hemisphere.
Jeb “free stuff” Bush may have driven a big spike in his own political coffin. Not that he was going to get many African American votes, even before this latest blunder. But the incident does indicate a proclivity for gaffes which even a modestly-astute candidate should be able to avoid. NYT columnist Charles M. Blow explains: “There it is! If you let people talk long enough, the true self will always be revealed. Not only is there a supreme irony in this racial condescension that casts black people, whose free labor helped establish the prosperity of this country and who were systematically excluded from the full benefits of that prosperity for generations, as leeches only desirous of “free stuff,” this line of reasoning also infantilizes black thought and consciousness and presents an I-know-best-what-ails-you paternalism about black progress.”
At Newsweek “Should Voting Be Compulsory?” by William A. Galston and E. J. Dionne, Jr. makes the case for universal voting based on the Australian model, which mandates that all eligible citizens show up to vote or pay a modest fine, which increases with repeated failures to vote. The authors argue “Universal voting would help fill the vacuum in participation by evening out disparities stemming from income, education and age. It would enhance our system’s ability to represent all our citizens and give states and localities incentives to lower, not raise, procedural barriers to the full and equal participation of each citizen in the electoral process…Candidates would know that they had to do more than appeal to their respective bases with harshly divisive rhetoric and an emphasis on hot-button issues…The balance of electoral activities would shift from the mobilization of highly committed voters toward the persuasion of the less committed. Candidates unwilling or unable to engage in persuasion would be more likely to lose. If political rhetoric cooled a bit, the intensity of polarization would diminish, improving the prospects for post-election compromise.”
At Media Matters Hannah Groch-Begley’s “50 Headlines That Reveal Wash. Post Reporter Chris Cillizza’s Obsession With The Clinton Email Story” provides a disturbing indication that Cillizza may be functioning more like a GOP echo chamber parrot than a nonpartisan reporter.
NYT columnist Paul Krugman puts the Boehner melt-down in clear perspective: “John Boehner was a terrible, very bad, no good speaker of the House. Under his leadership, Republicans pursued an unprecedented strategy of scorched-earth obstructionism, which did immense damage to the economy and undermined America’s credibility around the world…Still, things could have been worse. And under his successor they almost surely will be worse. Bad as Mr. Boehner was, he was just a symptom of the underlying malady, the madness that has consumed his party.”

From Tina Nguyen’s article, “Pope Francis’s Visit Spells Trouble for Republican Presidential Candidates” at Vanity Fair: “Steven Krueger from the nonprofit group Catholic Democrats sees the Pope’s visit as an opportunity for Democrats to win back the consideration of white, moderate Catholics. The Democrats have been steadily losing this demographic since the 1970s. After the days when John F. Kennedy won upwards of 70 percent of the Catholic vote…shifting economic interests (Catholic families assimilated into the American mainstream, becoming wealthier) collided with the rise of cultural liberalism, driving more conservative Catholics towards the G.O.P. Karl Rove further locked up the white Catholic vote in the late 90s, when he began a robust Catholic outreach program that helped George W. Bush reach the White House, carrying 52 percent of the Catholic vote in 2004. (In 2000, he narrowly lost the Catholic vote to Al Gore.)…”But I only think that will happen if the Democratic Party undertakes a robust state-based outreach effort and does not allow the [Republicans] to declare the Republican Party as the party of faith,” Krueger added…Through 2012, the Catholic vote was evenly split between parties–until it is separated into the white and Hispanic vote. On that front, Krueger says the G.O.P. should be alarmed. In his estimation, Republicans need to lock up 40 percent of the Catholic Hispanic vote in order to win the election, and an effort that certainly won’t be aided by Francis’s decision to deliver all but 4 of his 18 U.S. speeches in Spanish.”
For more on the political ramifications of the Pope’s visit, see Patricia Miller’s “The GOP’s absurd anti-Pope crusade: The bizarre spectacle of Republicans turning on a religious leader” at Salon.com and Brian Porter-Szucs’s “Why Pope Francis Makes Republicans Squirm” at Newsweek.
In his New York Times op-ed “Hurricane Trump,” Thomas B. Edsall provides a revealing analysis of the GOP candidate’s unexpected success. Dems should read the whole thing, but here’s one of the juicier paragraphs: “It’s a collective middle finger to the establishment,” a Trump supporter told the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf. “Trump has never lied to me whereas all of the other Republican politicians (like McConnell & Boehner) have,” wrote another reader, who added, “Nobody fights for my side. Trump fights. Trump wins. I want an Alpha Male who is going to take it to the enemy.” A third Trump loyalist wrote: “This is a guy who isn’t afraid to abuse the abuser. He has and will continue to humiliate the establishment politicians who try to stand up to him by exposing them for who they are.”
“Since 1947, there have been 11 official recessions, totaling 49 recessionary quarters. Of those 49 quarters, just eight occurred under Democratic presidents, compared to 41 under Republicans. So, over the past 65 years, quarters in recession were about five times more common under a Republican president than under a Democratic president…Looking at how many recessions started under Republicans, the difference is even more stark…Of the 11 recessions since 1947, nine under Republicans, compared to just two under Democrats.” according to Politifact.
At Brookings Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais lay bare the utter cluelessness of the GOP presidential wannabes regarding the aspirations of ‘Millennials,’ as revealed in last week’s CNN debate. Among the authors’ observations: “Seventy percent of Millennials favor same sex marriage; Mike Huckabee has based his entire candidacy in opposition to the idea and no other candidate was brave enough Wednesday night to say they agreed that same sex couples should be permitted to marry legally. Sixty-eight percent of Millennials are in favor of legalizing marijuana; no candidate was willing to come close to saying the idea might have merit;…Instead, Jeb Bush in the best Boomer presidential candidate tradition apologized for using the stuff when he was young, chalking it up to youthful indiscretion, and Governor Chris Christie asserted that maintaining pot’s illegality was so important as President he would go against traditional Republican deference to state’s rights and assert federal law supremacy over state law to prosecute offenders. Like old people out of touch with what is happening in the world around them, the candidates kept on talking about repealing ObamaCare; meanwhile, fifty-two percent of Millennials approve of the program…The Millennial generation favors “win-win” solutions that avoid direct and, especially military, confrontations with America’s global opponents, something which all those in the debate outside of Rand Paul either didn’t care about or didn’t know…No one thought to ask the generation most likely to be sent into future combat what it thought. When Pew did so in July they found a plurality of Millennials (43%/39%) supported the agreement.”
Winograd and Hais also note that Millennials are undaunted by the GOP’s favorite neo-McCarthyite boogeyman word, “socialism,” most recently parroted disparagingly by Ben Carson. Win or lose, Sen. Bernie Sanders deserves great credit for his uncowed example as a deeply patriotic American who openly advocates the principles of democratic socialism. Says Sanders: “So what democratic socialism means to me,” he said, “is having a government which represents all people, rather than just the wealthiest people, which is most often the case right now in this country. And it is making sure that all of our people have health care as a right, education as a right, decent housing as a right, child care as a right. That’s what I believe…Is it a society where the government owns every mom-and-pop store?” he asked. “Of course not. You have all kinds of capitalist entrepreneurship going on, a lot of wealth being created. But what else do you have? … An effort to make sure that all people benefit from the wealth that’s being created. So you have a much more equitable distribution of wealth and income.”
At The Fix Chris Cillizza does a GOP lapdog imitation, beating up on Hillary Clinton about her – gasp – emails. He links it to a dip in her approval ratings in the polls, without presenting a particle of cause-effect evidence. If a sophomore in any decent Journalism school wrote such a screed, a “D” grade would be generous.
Don’t expect email scandal-mongers to say much about this CNN/ORC poll showing a substantial uptick in public support for Clinton’s candidacy.
While the spectacular tanking of Scott Walker can be interpreted as a defeat for the Koch brothers, here’s a reminder that their political tentacles extend far beyond presidential politics. At HuffPo Seth Shulman, editorial director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, exposes a Koch brothers-funded study at the University of Kansas which “raises questions about the political strings attached to the many millions of dollars the Koch brothers are known to have spent in the past decade at colleges and universities around the country.” Shulman spotlights testimony by the executive director of the Center for Applied Economics at the University’s School of Business, urging the Kansas state senate to repeal the state’s renewable energy standard, and the good work of Students for a Sustainable Future in using an open records request to reveal the Koch Funding of the “research” behind the testimony. The student group is part of “a national student movement at dozens of campuses around the country to “UnKoch My Campus.”

Many political observers were surprised by Scott Walker’s rapid decline and sudden departure from the field of GOP presidential candidates. As for the why of Walker’s flunk, here are some of the more interesting insights:
At The Washington Monthly TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore writes:

…What made Walker exciting to a lot of conservatives earlier this year was that unlike Bush and Rubio he offered a plausible electability argument that depended on the party moving hard right and confronting its enemies with the full power of its base’s hatred rather than compromising or “reaching out” to this or that constituency of looters and loafers. This is something conservatives badly want to believe in. But as the Invisible Primary proceeded, other candidates emerged who offered competing and more viscerally appealing models for winning a general election without compromise…
…Walker became exposed as a career politician (he has indeed been in public office since he was 24) whose heroic story of standing up to the unions grew smaller and smaller as other candidates made the contest about an apocalyptic challenge to all the godless liberals and all of those people, and also to the hated GOP Establishment that kept compromising with the former and sucking up to the latter.

Other writers have cited reports of Walker’s bloated campaign staff and limited cash resources to pay them. GOP strategist Ed Rogers says he is “mystified” by Scott Walker’s sudden withdrawal. NYT columnist Frank Bruni cites Walkers one big cause, union-bashing, as inadequate for building popular support. Rachel Maddow called Walker “the black hole of charisma.” And WaPo editorial writer Stephen Stromberg observes,

…It would be a mistake to just blame Trump for Walker’s political demise. Even the relatively mild scrutiny applied to Walker’s run revealed him for what he really is: a man who has not thought much outside of his narrow experience and who fumbled when reporters asked him to do so. The result was a candidate who was intellectually and strategically adrift. He didn’t seem to know how he felt on a range of issues, and, in the absence of sincere positions, he didn’t seem to know how far right he wanted to run. All of this made his bluster about being a “fighter” who is “unintimidated” seem embarrassingly inappropriate…Walker didn’t need Trump to fail. He didn’t just have bad luck. He couldn’t be any more than he is: walking proof that a combative style, a hard ideological edge and identity-based pandering can’t always make up for cluelessness.

Kyle Kondik explains at Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

Walker did not have any out-and-out terrible moments: There isn’t a Rick Perry “oops” on his presidential scorecard or, for our older readers, an equivalent of George Romney’s “brainwashing” on Vietnam in the 1968 Republican contest. Rather, it’s been death by a thousand cuts for Walker…Earlier in the cycle, we thought the best-case scenario for Walker would be that he could unite both the conservative grassroots and the establishment, becoming an outsider-insider candidate, or “a consensus choice whose nomination would avert a GOP identity crisis,” as we described it in August 2013. Unfortunately for Walker, there does seem to now be a consensus among both GOP insiders and outsiders: Walker didn’t suit either camp.
…Still, running as an outsider might have been a decent approach for Walker, particularly if he could have won Iowa, where he was leading the polls into the summer. But then: Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina happened. Walker could claim to be an outsider against the likes of a Jeb Bush, but that trio of candidates with zero elected experience made him seem like an insider by comparison, given that he’s spent almost his entire adult life in elective politics at the local and state levels.

It was probably sound media strategy for Walker to quit this early, since the Pope’s visit will diminish coverage of Walker’s failure, enabling him to fade away more quietly instead of being repeatedly branded as poster-boy for ineffectual campaigning. Progressives can hope that he is finished in national politics, but his early quit may allow him to survive and emerge in some form at a later time.
Walker is not alone in being caught unprepared for the Trump phenomenon. Walker may have been well-positioned on the issues spectrum to serve as a ‘consensus’ candidate uniting GOP factions. But Walker and his fellow candidates could not predict that a media-savvy carnival barker would steal the show. I’m wondering if the Walker campaign’s internal poll analysis indicated that his support among Republican blue collar voters was zilch, and Trump had a lock on that pivotal constituency.
As for which Republican candidate will benefit the most from Walker’s withdrawal, it’s just guesswork. But the problems revealed by Walker’s departure give Democrats another reason for optimism about 2016.

Nate Silver has some insights about the “poll-deflating feedback loop” phenomenon, which afflicts many presidential candidates, most recently Hillary Clinton and possibly Scott Walker. It has to do with “self-reinforcing cycles of negative media attention and declining poll numbers.” Clinton is experiencing her share of it, with “a total of 29 days of negative coverage in just over seven weeks” and a slew of downward-trending polls. It’s a serious problem for her campaign, though not a fatal contagion, as Silver explains. “In the assessment of betting markets, she’s still a reasonably heavy favorite for the Democratic nomination. That’s my assessment too,” notes Silver, who then provides a half-dozen ways she could rebound.
Further, Michael Tomasky’s Daily Beast post, “Hillary Was the CNN Debate’s Real Winner–Seriously” offers one of the more perceptive takes on last week’s big GOP presidential debate. Among Tomasky’s observations: “She is still the overwhelming favorite to be the Democratic nominee. She still leads the Republicans in a strong majority of the general election head-to-head matchups. And that’s after two horrible media months in which, by Silver’s count, she has endured 29 negative news stories while enjoying just one positive one. All that, and she’s still mostly ahead…And being the Democrat, she has the Electoral College advantage that any plausible Democrat has these days because the GOP has just positioned itself too far right to win states that it regularly won back in the Nixon-to-Bush Sr. era…” Tomasky also has well-crafted zingers about the lack of serious policy proposals among the GOP field.
For one-liners that sum up the GOP debate, it’s hard to top NYT columnist Paul Krugman’s “the only candidate who seemed remotely sensible on national security issues was Rand Paul, which is almost as disturbing as the spectacle of Mr. Trump being the only voice of economic reason.”
No telling how long the Fiorina bump will last in the polls. But Dems will have no problem shredding her policies or disparaging her “accomplishments,” as have NYT columnists Timothy Egan and Charles M. Blow.
I didn’t think this was possible. Has any heavily-promoted presidential candidate ever tanked so badly?
Jim Rutenberg reports on “The De-Reaganization of the Republican Party” at The New York Times Magazine — “The dissonance between the Republican Party’s pious exaltation of Reagan the man and its break with much of his policy record.” But it’s hard to imagine any of the Republican nominees making a big break with Reagan’s core policies, such as union-bashing, tax cuts for the rich and a bullying foreign policy, regardless of what they say.
In “GOP wants to broaden appeal; will candidates get in the way?,” AP’s Kevin Freking and Julie Pace pinpoint the GOP’s dilemma, with an apt quote from Republican strategist Steve Schmidt: “Of course it’s worrisome if you have a party that’s perceived as anti-Latino, anti-Asian, anti-gay, intolerant of Muslims.” Schmidt, like all other GOP strategists, candidates and pundits, dodged referencing the Republicans’ relentless efforts to disenfranchise as many African Americans as possible.
For an excellent update on Hispanic electoral activism and a moving tribute to influential voter empowerment advocate Willie Velasquez, read “Latinos are fighting Republican racism by registering voters” by Denise Oliver Velez at Daily Kos.
New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait explains why Jeb’s “He kept us safe” comment is an exceedingly generous gift to his adversaries in both political parties.

You will not be surprised that Donald Trump hogged the most talk time on last night’s CNN debate, with 18.43 minutes, reports Teddy Amenabar at The Washington Post. Trump was followed by Jeb Bush (17:01), Ben Carson (13:53), then Carly Fiorina (13:29) and the also-rans. The lackluster Scott Walker, looking increasingly like the next drop-out, was dead last, managing only 8:24 minutes of talk. Size matters, but length of time is not the only issue. The Washington Post’s impressive stable of commentators all agree that Fiorina dominated the debate with incisive answers. Bush badly whiffed past the giant softball and dissed American women, when asked which woman should be on the ten dollar bill. None of them were well-served by the Air Force One replica backdrop, and I was half-expecting Newt to emerge from the back door.
E. J. Dionne, Jr. summarized the way most Democrats likely saw the GOP presidential debate: “…On the whole, this debate won’t alarm Democratic strategists and the Republican infighting will make them happy. Whether out of political need or genuine conviction, Republicans take very hard-line foreign policy positions that are, I think, well to the right of where a majority of the country is.”
All that’s missing from Republican commentator Ann Coulter’s rancid remark about the GOP debates are the swelling strains of “Deutschland Uber Alles.”
From Jesse Rapport’s post “Alert: New Report Finds Most Voting Machines Are Old, Outdated, And Inaccurate” at Occupy Democrats: “In June, Wichita State University statistician Beth Clarkson published a study arguing that voting statistics suggest voter fraud favoring Republican candidates in a number of elections in which electronic voting machines were used. “My statistical analysis shows patterns indicative of vote manipulation in machines… These results form a pattern that goes across the nation and back a number of election cycles… My assessment is that the data reveals multiple (at least two) agents working independently to successfully alter voting results.”
At The Atlantic Sean McElwee’s “Why Non-Voters Matter: A new study suggests that increasing turnout could have significant ramifications for policy” notes “Jan Leighley and Jonathan Nagler, a pair of political scientists, argue that gaps between voters and nonvoters are real and have widened, and that the divergence in their views is particularly acute on issues related to social class and the size of government…Nonvoters tend to support increasing government services and spending, guaranteeing jobs, and reducing inequality–all policies that voters, on the whole, oppose. Both groups support spending on the poor, but the margin among nonvoters is far larger. Across all four questions, nonvoters are more supportive of interventionist government policies by an average margin of 17 points.”
Democracy: A Journal of Ideas has “Against Short-Termism: The rise of quarterly capitalism has been good for Wall Street–but bad for everyone else” by William A. Galston & Elaine C. Kamarck, who provide this quote from Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign speech: “Large public companies now return eight or nine out of every $10 they earn directly back to shareholders, either in the form of dividends or stock buybacks, which can temporarily boost share prices. Last year the total reached a record $900 billion. That doesn’t leave much money to build a new factory or a research lab or to train workers or to give them a raise.” That’s a pretty good indication that candidate Clinton will not be carrying water for Wall St., as some of her critics have suggested.
Jonathan Allen argues at Vox, on the other hand, that Clinton is now steering towards the center, terming herself “a moderate.”
Meanwhile Salon.com’s Sean Illing explains why “Hillary is no lock, Bernie is no fluke: The Democratic race is wide open.” Illiing writes, “The latest CBS/YouGov poll is particularly alarming if you’re a Clinton supporter. Clinton is trailing Sanders by 10 points in Iowa and 22 points in New Hampshire, although Clinton maintains a sizable (if diminished) lead in South Carolina.”
In his New York Times op-ed “Can Anything Be Done About All the Money in Politics?“, Thomas B. Edsall discusses five possible approaches to solving the problem.