Plum Liner Greg Sargent comments on the strategy of making political donations reform a leading issue for Democrats: “This week’s New York Times/CBS News poll found that this issue should be a fertile one for Democrats. It showed huge majorities across party lines think money exerts too much influence over the process, and that this disparity benefits the rich…And yet, the poll also found that fewer than one percent name money in politics as their top issue…But as Ed Kilgore notes, there’s no need to give up and forever consign campaign finance to the realm of boring process issues that only matter to “snooty wine-track good government” voters. Dem consultant Stan Greenberg has long believed it can be used to appeal to blue collar whites who might be open to the Democratic agenda, but need to hear Dems speak to their belief that government is no longer capable of solving their problems…” Sargent also quotes Greenberg and Rep. John Sarbanes, who says Dems should always cite political donations as obstacles to needed reforms, such as environmental protection, jobs and infrastructure upgrades.
Peter Beinart observes at The Atlantic: “When historians look back at this era in American history, they’ll find the lack of political debate about China astounding. Then again, given the tenor of the GOP debate about “radical Islam,” maybe American foreign policy will be better off if the Republicans running for president leave well enough alone.” I would just add that nearly every president since Harry Truman has talked tough about China as a candidate, then caved like a sinkhole as president. In an NPR interview with Kai Ryssdal yesterday, President Obama talked about the TPP as an initiative to get the U.S. a bigger bite of trade with Asia’s booming economies, which he believes will be overwhelmingly dominated by China if we don’t get more involved.
I knew he was heartless and meanspirited, but I’m a little surprised at his raw stupidity. Voters are supposed to believe this guy can lead America forward, out of partisan gridlock?
I wish Republican gaffes had more shelf-life. But it appears Americans are all too willing to forget even bigger disasters, and this CNN/ORC poll provides a depressing example.
Chris Matthews gets the GOP’s motivation in pushing voter i.d. bills exactly right on MSNBC’s Hardball: “The sheer brazen-ness of this move is one thing we can agree on. Seeing the demographic changes on the way (the rise of minorities in the American population, the rising number of single people, the changing attitudes among younger people on matters such as same-sex marriage) the thinkers in the Republican Party have decided their best bet is to make it harder for certain groups to vote. Let’s look at whom the GOP brain-trusters might like to see staying home on election day: Older people who live in big cities, especially minorities, are people who don’t have drivers licenses…Young people away from home at college…People who tend to vote for Democratic candidates…”
Lincoln Chaffee’s record.
Republican Hawk “long knives” may be out for Rand Paul. But Democrat Lincoln Chaffee, as “the lone Republican senator to vote against authorizing the war in Iraq,” may have the more impressive credentials for isolationist centrists.
Alan I. Abramowitz and Steven Webster write at The Crystal Ball: “The rise of negative partisanship has drastically altered the nature of electoral competition in the United States. Intense dislike of the opposing party and its candidates by supporters of both parties means that party loyalty and straight-ticket voting are much more prevalent than in the past. As a result, the outcomes of elections for offices from the presidency down to the state and local level are overwhelmingly determined by the balance of party support in the electorate while local factors such as the records and personalities of the candidates are much less important than in the past…Negative partisanship is likely to remain an important feature of American politics for the foreseeable future.”
Speaking of gaffes, as expected, Huck steps in it….again.

Kim Chandler of the Associated Press reports that U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller, a George W. Bush appointee, will resign Aug. 1, “after months of review by a judicial panel and calls from politicians in both political parties for Fuller to voluntarily step down.” For more detail on the incident that appears to have lead to his resignation read Brad Friedman’s Salon.com post, “America’s most heinous judge: Why wife-beater Mark Fuller deserves more than resignation: After physically abusing his wives and children, here’s what U.S. District Court Judge Mark Fuller really deserves.” It was Judge Fuller, who sentenced Alabama’s former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman to federal prison — on charges that 113 Republican, as well as Democratic former state Attorneys General contend “had never been a crime before the popular Democratic Governor was charged.” Friedman reports that Judge Fuller “didn’t allow Siegelman to go free pending appeal, as is the usual custom in such cases.” Many believe that GOP political operative Karl Rove instigated the railroading of Governor Siegelman. Those who want to urge the President to pardon Governor Siegelman, can do so here.
At The Atlantic Matt Ford has a moving tribute to Beau Biden, son of the Vice President, former Attorney General of Delaware and devoted public servant, much like his father.
Lydia Saad reports at Gallup that “Half of Americans consider themselves “pro-choice” on abortion, surpassing the 44% who identify as “pro-life.” This is the first time since 2008 that the pro-choice position has had a statistically significant lead in Americans’ abortion views.”
“Violence casts cloud over Mexico’s elections of governors, mayors, lawmakers,” reports Dallas Morning News Mexico bureau chief Alfredo Corchado. Yet Mexico’s mid-term election is expected to draw half of all eligible voters. Corchado quotes Jaime Rivera, a University of Michoacon political scientist: “Voters believe less and less in political parties, but they still want to believe in their institutions,” said Rivera, who is also a state electoral adviser. “That’s why this election is so important, not just because of what’s at stake, but because of the very essence of hope that institutions can still work for the common voter.”
Olivia Marshall reports at Media Matters on media helping Santorum’s rebrand of himself as “champion of the working-class.”
At The Upshot Brendan Nyhan takes a look at opinion polling on ‘free trade’ and finds a substantial gap based on income: “Data from a 2013 CBS/New York Times poll show that 58 percent of Americans making less than $30,000 per year preferred to limit imports to protect United States industries and jobs, while only 36 percent preferred the wider selection and lower prices of imported goods available under free trade. But the balance of opinion reversed for those making over $100,000. Among that higher-income group, 53 percent favored free trade versus 44 percent who wanted to limit imports…Similarly, a Pew Research Center survey released on Wednesday found that a plurality of Americans making under $30,000 per year say that their family’s finances have been hurt by free trade agreements (44 percent) rather than helped (38 percent). By contrast, those making more than $100,000 per year overwhelmingly believe free trade has been beneficial — 52 percent said trade agreements have helped their family’s finances versus only 29 percent who said they have hurt.”
Also at The Upshot, Derek Willis reports on the areas of disagreement between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders: “They voted the same way 93 percent of the time in the two years they shared in the Senate…The 31 times that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders disagreed happened to be on some the biggest issues of the day, including measures on continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an immigration reform bill and bank bailouts during the depths of the Great Recession. Mr. Sanders, who formally kicked off his campaign Tuesday evening in Burlington, Vt., was opposed to all these actions.”
Jim Newell of Salon.com takes stab at explaining short and long-range strategic options for Martin O’Malley’s presidential campaign.
But Dems in general are lagging in megadonors. Eric Lichtblau and Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times write, “In each of the last two election cycles, 14 of the top 20 donors gave their money to conservative organizations and Republican campaigns, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.”

At the New York Times Jack Healy’s “A Drive for Swing State Votes Has Colorado’s Latinos Listening” previews the coming deluge of political appeals to Hispanics in the Rockies. “Interviews with Latino voters here and across Colorado also underscored the difficulty of scrubbing away an anti-immigrant image that has alienated potential Latino voters after two years of skirmishes in Congress in which the Republican-led House killed a bipartisan Senate bill that included a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants illegally in the country.” However, notes Healy, “Latino turnout in 2014 was five to 20 points lower than average turnout, according to Latino Decisions, which studies Latino political participation” and only ten of twenty million Latinos who are eligible to vote are registered.
A chap by the name of Graeme Goodsir (not kidding) has an interesting letter at the PA Patriot-News, touting election law in Australia, where “voting is compulsory for everyone over age 18, with a fine (it used to be $25) for failure to do so, without reason…The Australian system has a “built-in freedom NOT to vote” – it allows dissenters to record “informal votes” – which simply don’t get counted – but those people still must participate by showing up and having their names marked off the electoral roll.” A tweak that might work better for the U.S. is a $50 elections surcharge on every citizen who is eligible and able to vote, refundable to those who vote.
At Seven Days, a Vermont-based alternative Weekly, Paul Heintz has a juicy follow-up to Atlanta NBC affiliate WXIA-TV’s expose (video here) of ALEC’s secretive confab in Savannah. Heintz’s post outs the “state representative from New England” featured in the video clip as Vermont state Rep. Bob Helm, who is also VT’s ALEC Chair. Heintz notes: “Former [VT] Governor Howard Dean, who forwarded the WXIA story to Seven Days and others, says he was outraged when he saw it. He says ALEC attempts to “bribe” legislators to support its positions….”That was one of the most shocking videos I’ve seen in 35 years in public life,” Dean says. “They’re basically giving legislators money and paying them to come to these meetings. In exchange, they get full participation in the legislative process, without any public view at all.”
Gallup affirms trend of increasing social liberalism among Americans. But how about an in-depth probe of attitudes towards economic reforms?
Republican Peter Wehner cites the GOP edge in elected officials and cherry-picks opinion data to make a case that Democrats have “pulled too far left,” but overstates his case in saying that Democrats “are placing a very risky bet that there are virtually no limits to how far left they can go.” Ed Kilgore provides a proper shredding of Wehner’s screed at the Washington Monthly.
Bryce Covert writes at Think Progress that Sen. Bernie Sanders may have hit on an idea that is likely to resonate: “guaranteed vacation time for every worker in this country,” a benefit which employers currently deny to about a quarter of American workers.
Adam Liptak reports at The Times that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case which will have potentially far-reaching consequences on partisan politics, specifically “whether voting districts should have the same number of people, or the same number of eligible voters.” If the court decides in favor of the eligible voters yardstick, it could “political power from cities to rural areas, a move that would benefit Republicans.”
Is there really absolutely nothing positive we can do to help our neighbor Mexico strengthen and protect their democracy from recurring horrors like this? Mexico’s people and culture have enriched the U.S. beyond measure, and we just shrug off their deepening troubles. Democrats ought to be able to come up with a few non-paternalistic ideas, or at least ask Mexico’s leading champions of democracy how we can help.
Just a follow-up thought to Vega’s blistering take-down of MSM reporting on Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy and indifference to the GOP’s growing extremism: It appears that too many editors have a high tolerance for lazy, false equivalence reportage. But maybe America’s J-schools could also do a little more soul-searching about the kind of reporters their graduates are becoming, and adjust curricula accordingly. At Knightblog, Eric Newton has an interesting post on “The Best Journalism School in America is…,” showing a concern for innovation in programs. But it would be good to see more in the way of teaching critical thinking among such criteria.

E. J. Dionne, Jr. ruminates on the “GOP’s Flip-Flopping.” Dionne notes that WI Gov. Scott Walker excuses is own flip-floppage because it’s just changing his positions, not his votes. Says Dionne, “Sheer brilliance! Other than former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Walker’s major rivals at the moment are Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Senator, R-Ky. They have all cast lots of votes. So Walker can accuse them of flip-flopping while claiming blanket immunity for himself…Unfortunately for the Republican Party and the country, Walker’s careful parsing of shape-shifting counts as one of the cerebral high points of the debate among the party’s 2016 presidential candidates.”
If Democrats didn’t have enough to worry about, Josh Kraushaar has a disturbing post at the National Journal, which notes, “One of the most underappreciated stories in recent years is the deterioration of the Democratic bench under President Obama’s tenure in office. The party has become much more ideologically homogenous, losing most of its moderate wing as a result of the last two disastrous midterm elections. By one new catch-all measure, a party-strength index introduced by RealClearPolitics analysts Sean Trende and David Byler, Democrats are in their worst position since 1928. That dynamic has manifested itself in the Democratic presidential contest, where the bench is so barren that a flawed Hillary Clinton is barreling to an uncontested nomination.”
But don’t fret too much about it because Campaign for America’s Future’s Isaiah Poole’s “Gallup Poll Finds Liberalism Ascendent, Conservatism In Decline” provides a hopeful antidote.
“…The question is not whether rioting ever yields a productive response, but whether it does so in general. Omar Wasow, an assistant professor at the department of politics at Princeton, has published a timely new paper studying this very question. And his answer is clear: Riots on the whole provoke a hostile right-wing response. They generate attention, all right, but the wrong kind,” warns Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine. “Wasow finds that nonviolent civil-rights protests did not trigger a national backlash, but that violent protests and looting did. The physical damage inflicted upon poor urban neighborhoods by rioting does not have the compensating virtue of easing the way for more progressive policies; instead, it compounds the damage by promoting a regressive backlash.”
From Kitty Holland’s Irish Times article about the national referendum approving same sex marriage, “Working class areas embracing change faster, campaigners claim“: “Gráinne Healy of Marriage Equality, said she was not surprised at the strong ‘Yes’ votes from “working class and deprived communities” after months of canvassing in communities across the social spectrum…”When we were out canvassing in areas like Finglas, there was an overwhelming Yes on the doorsteps. Once we moved into Glasnevin, there would be more resistance. It seemed the houses with two cars and plenty of money were just less open to Yes,” said Healy…”That was confirmed when the ballot boxes were opened on Saturday…Ruth Coppinger, TD, of the Anti-Austerity Alliance, said the results showed the “myth” that social change would be “led by the middle class” was “untrue…She said there was a “more complete” break away from Church-teaching in working class areas.”
Across the Irish Sea, Labour MP John Healey explains “Why Labour must win back working class voters from Ukip,” noting: “In two-thirds of the target seats we failed to take, the Ukip vote was greater than the Tory majority. And in constituencies where Ukip got a high share of the vote, the Tory to Labour swing was markedly weaker.”
At The Hill Juan Williams reports on “GOP dishonesty on ISIS and Iraq,” and reminds readers that “The GOP debating position is in tatters. And, in any event, it does not fit with the American public’s opinion of the war in Iraq. An October NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found 66 percent of Americans say the Iraq war was “not worth it.” Last week, a Rasmussen poll found 61 percent agreeing that the legacy of the war is “failure.”
Facing South’s Sue Sturgis has an encouraging edition of her Institute Index column, “Embracing the benefits of online voter registration,” which notes “According to the Pew report, which was based on a 2013 survey of 13 states that at the time had online registration, number of security breaches that have been reported as a result of online voter registration: 0…Number of states that currently or will soon offer online voter registration: at least 28”
Headline for the week, and one which would be lovely to see in a Republican newspaper in the U.S., comes from Martin Henry’s article in Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner: “Beware Working Class Raising Pitchforks In Rage. Either that or Tim Murphy’s Mother Jones post, “Does Mike Huckabee Know Where the Ark of the Covenant Is Buried?”

Imagine for a minute that you don’t really have a strong opinion one way or the other about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). You are concerned about trade agreements in general, and you get it that the TPP is an especially big deal. But you are keeping your mind open, recognizing that in economic theory, at least, there is a chance that expanded trade can actually add to the stock of stable jobs in your country.
It’s likely that many Americans feel this way, and are waiting for a good briefing which touches on all of the key points from both sides of the argument. For the time-challenged, Sen. Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, has a HuffPo op-ed, “The TPP Must Be Defeated,” which makes a strong case against the deal in four major points. Sanders writes:

First, the TPP follows in the footsteps of failed trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA, Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China, and the South Korea Free Trade agreement. Over and over again, supporters of these agreements told us that they would create jobs. Over and over again, they have been proven dead wrong.
Since 2001, nearly 60,000 manufacturing plants in this country have been shut down and we have lost over 4.7 million decent paying manufacturing jobs. NAFTA has led to the loss of nearly 700,000 jobs. PNTR with China has led to the loss of 2.7 million jobs. Our trade agreement with South Korea has led to the loss of about 75,000 jobs. While bad trade agreements are not the only reason why manufacturing jobs in the U.S. have declined, they are an important factor.
The TPP continues an approach towards trade which forces Americans to compete against workers in Vietnam where the minimum wage is 56 cents an hour, independent labor unions are banned, and people are thrown in jail for expressing their political beliefs. This is not “free trade.” This is the race to the bottom. While we must help poor people around the world improve their standard of living, we can do that without destroying the American middle class.
Secondly, when we are talking about the TPP it’s important to know who is for it and who is against it.
Large, multi-national corporations that have outsourced millions of good paying American jobs to China, Mexico, Vietnam, India and other low-wage countries think the TPP is a great idea. They understand that this legislation will allow them to accelerate efforts to hire cheap labor abroad. The TPP is also strongly supported by Wall Street and large pharmaceutical companies who believe their global profits will increase if this agreement is passed.
On the other hand, every union in this country, representing millions of American workers, is in opposition to this agreement because they understand that the TPP will lead to the loss of decent-paying jobs and will depress wages. Virtually every major environmental organization, including the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and 350.org[350.org], among many others, also oppose this legislation. They understand that the TPP will make it easier for multi-national corporations to pollute and degrade the global environment. Major religious groups such as the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and the United Methodist Church, also oppose this legislation because of what it could do to the poorest people on earth.

Read more…

The meme that Hillary Clinton is too centrist/moderate for progressives gets a thrashing from Daily Beast columnist Michael Tomasky, who writes: “If you are a 40-something Democrat who has voted over the years for Bill Clinton and Al Gore and John Kerry and Barack Obama, it’s looking like you are about to cast a vote next year for the most liberal Democratic nominee of your voting lifetime.” Tomasky then reports that Hillary Clinton’s positions on the minimum wage, immigration, family and medical leave, criminal justice reform, child care, and hedge fund taxation loopholes are substantially more progressive than recent Democratic presidents.
AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka calls currency manipulation — when a government buys or sells foreign currency to push the exchange rate of its own currency away from equilibrium value or to prevent the exchange rate from moving toward its equilibrium value — “the No. 1 job killer in the United States.” A few concrete examples might make this a potent campaign issue.
Alan Talaga makes a persuasive argument at Isthmus.com that Democrat Russ Feingold is going to win his race for U.S. Senate against incumbent Ron Johnson. “First of all, he has the calendar on his side. Wisconsin has never been a purple state. Since the 1980s, barring wave years or disruptive third-party candidates, Wisconsin reliably votes for Democrats in presidential elections while putting Republicans in office during the midterm elections. That’s how the same state sends both Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin to Washington in the span of two years…Johnson still hasn’t made much of an impression in Wisconsin. In the most recent Marquette poll, in April, 39% of respondents didn’t feel comfortable saying they had a positive or negative opinion about Johnson. After more than four years in office, he’s all but nonexistent to almost four out of 10 Wisconsinites.”
Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik observes, “The respected Marquette Law School Poll shows Feingold leading Johnson by a staggering 16 points as the race begins. That strikes us as high, but we do believe Feingold begins ahead.” However, adds Kondik, “Democrats have a decent chance to win the Senate next year, but the Republicans retain better odds to hold it because of the cushion they built for themselves in last year’s election. If the GOP had only won a total of 51 or 52 seats in 2014, then Democrats might well be hurtling toward a Senate takeover in ’16.” Same goes for a strong Democratic showing in the presidential race.
At Politico Kyle Cheney explains why Jack Conway is in excellent position to hold the Kentucky governorship for Democrats.
Jim Kenney won the Democratic nomination for mayor of Philadelphia with more than 55 percent of the vote in a crowded field, despite entering the race late and being outspent 2:1. With no major opposition in the fall, Kenney is all but assured election in November. Kenney joins New York Mayor Bill De Blasio and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel as Greenberg Quinlan Rosner clients who have been elected mayors of 3 of America’s 5 largest cities. This project was led by Anna Greenberg, Ethan Smith and Kelly Higgins.
McClatchy’s Greg Gordon reports that Osama bin Laden had a copy of Bev Harris’s book, Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century. In a 2003 op-ed NYT columnist Paul Krugman wrote: “Early this year Bev Harris, who is writing a book on voting machines, found Diebold software – which the company refuses to make available for public inspection, on the grounds that it’s proprietary – on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled “rob-Georgia.zip.”) The server was used by employees of Diebold Election Systems to update software on its machines. This in itself was an incredible breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines both the information and the opportunity to do so.”
…which makes Rand Paul’s filibuster grandstanding about overzealous national security monitoring look a little ill-timed.
Re Josh Barro’s Upshot post, “Can Republicans Avoid the Romney Tax Trap?,” the most credible response would be, “only if Democrats allow it.”

The media, traditional and otherwise, are all abuzz with discussion of Hillary Clinton’s huge lead in the polls in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. What seems to be lurking in the shadows of the chatter is a concern that Clinton may peak too early or become boring from overexposure. Indeed, her campaign seems to be aware of the problem, carefully limiting her appearances and statements.
It’s probably a wise strategy. American voters can be pretty fickle. Plus the more public participation, the more opportunities for a momentum-destroying gaffe or blunder. There’s also a natural sentiment to support underdogs. One danger is that talk of “the coronation” will provoke knee-jerk opposition from those who view themselves as anti-establishment, or independent-for-the-hell-of-it voters. Some tough competition might do Clinton some good, if and when she reaches the endgame.
At Time Magazine Sam Frizell notes in “Hillary Clinton Faces the Limits of the Controlled Campaign“:

…Holding a sizable lead over her Democratic primary competitors, the former Secretary of State has kept reporters at arms’ length, using controlled events to discuss the issues with voters and trying to avoid some contentious topics like the possible trade deal.
The hiccups at Clinton’s event Tuesday morning [an appearance at a bike shop] showed some of the problems Clinton faces with the grassroots, activist-driven campaign she’s chosen to run so far: she is a candidate, but she is waiting to clarify many of her policy positions until likely next month. She aims to do the handshaking and cheek-smooching that Iowans expect, but her campaign’s sheer size can get in the way. She has a larger entourage of press, security, and staff than any other announced candidate, and spontaneity doesn’t always come easy…
…Clinton’s sparring with the press on Tuesday revealed some of the difficulties of her small-bore campaign. Before Tuesday, she had not taken questions from reporters for four weeks, avoiding eager journalists with waves and smiles. When she answered questions in Keene, New Hampshire, about allegations surrounding the Clinton Foundation, she brushed off criticism and left before she could face a long line of questioning.

At Newsweek Peter Suderman observes in his article “Is Hillary Clinton’s Rope-a-Dope Strategy Working?“:

…To the extent that the DNC’s debates are supposed to inform the party’s presidential candidate selection, they will be almost entirely for show…These pseudo-debates will, of course, give Clinton some exposure and serve as practice rounds, giving her a chance to sharpen her off-the-cuff speaking skills in advance of next year’s presidential face-offs. And yet even with her virtual lock on the nomination, I think the debates do carry some risk for her.
Given that she is essentially a lock for the party’s nomination, she has more to lose than anyone she’ll share the stage with. She can minimize this risk by being extremely cautious and careful, of course, but that may not be exactly the image she wants to project.
This, however, is all fairly manageable. I do wonder, however, if there’s a bigger risk–which is that the exposure will do her more harm than good…

Good points, all. But what could also happen is that she begins to lose steam and her favorables drop precipitously. Then all of a sudden, she is the underdog — and may benefit from whatever sympathy comes with that. It could help energize her base activists, if they don’t get too burned out by then.
So, this is a unique situation in American politics, and it’s very hard to predict what will happen. Still, measuring her exposure at this stage seems like a prudent strategy in our media-saturated environment. It also helps that the legions of GOP candidates are preparing for a demolition derby of historic proportions. It makes sense for Clinton — and all Democratic candidates — to lay a little low and let the public watch the Republican mess, with all the flip-flops, equivocation, gaffes and blunders to come.
It’s the old stratagem, “When your adversary is destroying him/herself, get out of the way.”
Better to use that time to prep — marshall the best arguments, narrative, soundbites, ads, messages, turnout mechanics, optics and other software of a winning campaign. Oh, and raise enough dough to build an ocean liner. A formidable early lead, especially when the adversary’s party is muddled in chaos, can give a campaign room to enhance such advantages.
The battered and bruised GOP nominee will likely be a little tougher than usual, as a result of the primary wars, but will also have some deep, exposed wounds to exploit. Obama did very well hammering Romney’s elitism in 2012, and that is a tactic that will likely resonate well again in 2016. It is the glaring weakness of every Republican candidate, and it isn’t going away, unless Democrats allow it.
The closing argument of the Democratic nominee — Clinton or otherwise — must demonstrate mastery of two memes, 1. That the Republican party is wholly devoted to elitist privilege to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the middle class; and 2. The Democratic party and it’s leaders are genuine champions of average Americans who work and struggle for a better life.

For those who were wondering why presidential candidates have so much evasive hoo-ha associated with the announcement of their candidacies, CNN chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash has a clear explanation:

The dirty little secret of the 2016 campaign is that would-be candidates like Bush and Walker in particular can use super PACs, campaign accounts that allow unlimited contributions, to raise millions of dollars as long as they aren’t official candidates. Until someone like Bush, Walker or New Jersey Gov. Christie formally declares for president, they are legally permitted to personally ask for money for a super PAC that will ultimately benefit their campaign. But once they formally acknowledge their candidacy, a legal wall goes up between the candidate and the super PAC that supports them.
This is the confusing new world of campaign finance in the era after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 removed most political spending limits on corporations and unions. Now, until they’re an official candidate, politicians can accept millions from a single donor, though Bush has set a self-imposed limit of $1 million for his super PAC.
The quiet goal for Bush, Walker and, to a lesser extent, Christie is to raise as much money as possible for as long as possible without the fundraising limits that come with being a declared presidential candidate.

And you thought they were just being silly politicians overestimating how much anyone cares about their formal announcements. But it gets even more complicated, as Bash explains:

It is a fundraising advantage that sitting senators do not have, which is why Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio announced their candidacies in April. Sen. Lindsey Graham will announce his intentions June 1.
Legally, a federal office holder — such as a senator — is always a candidate for federal office, and therefore already bound by federal fundraising limits in a presidential run: $5,400 per maximum per donor, for the primary and general election combined. Super PACs that support them can raise money to use on their behalf, but they cannot coordinate in the same way Bush, Christie and Walker are.
So in the ever important money race, Cruz, Paul and Rubio are going to be judged by how much they raise inside a traditional Federal Election Commission filing quarter. This current quarter lasts from April 1 to June 30th. That is a major reason most GOP senators running for the White House declared at the beginning of April — in order to squeeze as much fundraising time in as possible.

Further,

“It sure doesn’t hurt being a non-candidate candidate who leads his own super PAC until which time he hands it over to be run by his most intimate political supporters upon officially announcing a presidential run,” said Dave Levinthal of the Center for Public Integrity. “The unspoken message will still be crystal clear: Support me with money and support me with lots of it.”
“It’s basically the difference between a baseball manager sending in hand signals to his players and directly whispering the message into their ears,” Levinthal said. “The message more or less gets through all the same.”

Makes one envy the UK, with their ban on television advertising. Bash has more to say about the campaign announcement follies, but none of it will make you feel good about the way our election campaigns are financed or the evolution of U.S. democracy. Meanwhile, let’s not just dream about comprehensive campaign finance reform; let’s make it a top priority.

Daniel J. McGraw’s Politico post “The GOP Is Dying Off. Literally.” paints an optimistic scenario for Democrats, at least those who are patient advocates of taking the long view. McGraw crunches some numbers on a napkin, and reasons:

By combining presidential election exit polls with mortality rates per age group from the U.S. Census Bureau, I calculated that, of the 61 million who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, about 2.75 million will be dead by the 2016 election. President Barack Obama’s voters, of course, will have died too–about 2.3 million of the 66 million who voted for the president won’t make it to 2016 either. That leaves a big gap in between, a difference of roughly 453,000 in favor of the Democrats.
Here is the methodology, using one age group as an example: According to exit polls, 5,488,091 voters aged 60 to 64 years old supported Romney in 2012. The mortality rate for that age group is 1,047.3 deaths per 100,000, which means that 57,475 of those voters died by the end of 2013. Multiply that number by four, and you get 229,900 Romney voters aged 60-to-64 who will be deceased by Election Day 2016. Doing the same calculation across the range of demographic slices pulled from exit polls and census numbers allows one to calculate the total voter deaths. It’s a rough calculation, to be sure, and there are perhaps ways to move the numbers a few thousand this way or that, but by and large, this methodology at least establishes the rough scale of the problem for the Republicans–a problem measured in the mid-hundreds of thousands of lost voters by November 2016. To the best of my knowledge, no one has calculated or published better voter death data before.
…But what if Republicans aren’t able to win over a larger share of the youth vote? In 2012, there were about 13 million in the 15-to-17 year-old demo who will be eligible to vote in 2016. The previous few presidential election cycles indicate that about 45 percent of these youngsters will actually vote, meaning that there will about 6 million new voters total. Exit polling indicates that age bracket has split about 65-35 in favor of the Dems in the past two elections. If that split holds true in 2016, Democrats will have picked up a two million vote advantage among first-time voters. These numbers combined with the voter death data puts Republicans at an almost 2.5 million voter disadvantage going into 2016.

It’s an appealing political scenario, not that we would celebrate the demise of our adversaries — we would prefer to beat them. So don’t break out the bubbly just yet, since much depends on pro-Democratic young voters staying that way as they age There are studies that indicate most will, but there are always political wild cards that can foil the most rational analyses. Then there is the offsetting higher mortality rate for African American voters. In any case, it would be folly for Democrats to plan electoral strategy based on long-range mortality statistics.
What does make sense is for Democrats to take out an insurance policy in the form of a serious pitch to win over some senior voters. Given the retirement crisis millions of seniors are facing in the immediate future, it ought to be possible for Democrats to get a more significant share of this high-turnout demographic, especially considering the GOP’s proclivity to screw around with Social Security and 401K assets. If Democrats can peel off just 5 percent of senior voters, it could make a huge difference.

Al Hunt probes the political ramifications of the increasing percentage of “nonreligious” Americans, who are now about 23 percent of the electorate.
In yet another post-mortem/where-do-we-go-from-here take on the UK elections, Will Straw, a losing Labour candidate for Parliament in Rossendale and Darwen, suggests “Four ways for Labour to win back working-class voters.” Writing in The Guardian, Straw observes: “If we want a majority again, we will need to think hard about how to win back the working-class voters, many of whom are highly aspirational, that we have lost in post-industrial areas…It was complacent to assume that the Ukip [right-wing Independence Party] surge would be to Labour’s benefit…Labour’s national message that Ukip were “more Tory than the Tories” failed to resonate with many working-class voters who had decided a decade ago that Labour was no different to the Tories.”
At Politico TDS founding editor Stan Greenberg writes on the UK elections: “The Conservative Party upended the pollsters with the success of their late-breaking nationalist campaign, and they are still celebrating. Had the Labour Party addressed earlier voter doubts on public finances and immigration and made a broader economic offer, it would have been less vulnerable to these tactics, but that came late.”
National Journal’s Sarah Mimms explores “How much of a factor will Hillary Clinton’s gender be in the 2016 presidential race?”
Paul Krugman hails the opening of a much-needed and long-postponed debate about the Iraq disaster, made inevitable by Bush 3.0.
E. J. Dionne, Jr. notes in his latest Washington Post column that “other hawks would rather see the was-the-Iraq-War-right question magically disappear because they know it’s a no-win for them. Most Americans now think the war was ill-advised. Why remind them that most of the same people who are super hawks now brought them an adventure they deeply regret? Thus did the Wall Street Journal editorial page on Friday come out firmly and unequivocally in favor of — evasion. “The right answer to the question is that it’s not a useful or instructive one to answer, because statesmanship, like life, is not conducted in hindsight.” On the GOP side it may be that Jeb’s blundering is very bad news for Lindsey Graham and other Iraq war supporterts and equivocators, but good news for Rand Paul.
And from Michael Tomasky’s Daily Beast column, “How Dubya is Winning 2016 for Hillary“: “…In a general-election context, the GOP nominee will probably have to tack back pretty quickly toward the anti-war position. This will give Hillary Clinton a great opportunity. For one thing, it’ll weaken the salience of the whole “she can’t defend the country cuz she’s a girl” line of attack, which will come, however subtly. It will allow Clinton to define the terms of what constitutes a sensible foreign policy, and the Republican man will likely have to agree with her…Poor Republicans! Crime is down; they can’t scream law and order. And now war is unpopular, so they can’t say the Democrats are soft on whomever. Their economic theories are increasingly discredited. I guess that leaves the old standby: race-baiting. But we may have reached a point where that doesn’t work anymore either…”
At MSNBC.com Suzanne Gamboa has a warning for Democrats: “If the turnout rate of the projected 40 million Latinos matches those of whites and blacks in 2008, 66 percent and 65 percent respectively, the number of Latinos who voted in 2012 – 24 percent – could double, Pew calculated…There are some very promising organizations doing incredible work in the community and are trusted: Mi Familia Vota, Voto Latino, NCLR (National Council of La Raza). But those are the same groups that have to fight over scraps because major investors don’t appreciate (the value) of investing in the community,” said Cristobal Alex, who leads the Latino Victory Project.”
The Nation’s Leslie Savan addresses a concern I’ve been wondering about: What are the political consequences of ALEC-supporting Verizon acquiring HuffPo?