Both The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chauncey DeVega at Salon.com have made the point that simplistic appeals for nonviolence in response to rioting in Baltimore undervalue the role of systemic racial discrimination in creating the crisis. DeVega also notes that MLK’s impressive insights about the problem and its remedies are being overlooked by those who cherry-pick his quotes on the topic. Ed Kilgore has some salient thoughts on the traps awaiting Democrats, as well as Republicans, as they address the crisis in Baltimore and other cities.
At The Boston Globe James Pindell reports that “American millennials are split on whether the US justice system is fair to people of different races and ethnicities, a new poll from Harvard’s Institute of Politics found.”
Dems take note and prepare: Kevin D. Williamson of The National Review has the GOP’s message du jour about the Baltimore violence being parroted across Republican-friendly media outlets.
Regarding police-community violence in Baltimore, Ferguson and other cities, Democratic candidates may want to explore a two-part strategy, which recognizes that police in many cities need better training in race-relations and nonviolent conflict-resolution. But to prevent rioting and community violence, we also need more jobs and educational opportunities for Americans of all races. The best way to accomplish this is a major national investment in putting millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans to work on infrastructure upgrades, and funding the President’s proposal to offer two years of free community college tuition for students.”
At The London School of Economics Daily Blog John B. Holbein & D. Sunshine Hillygus explain “How preregistration can help increase youth voter turnout,” based on their paper ‘Making Young Voters: The Impact of Preregistration on Youth Turnout’, in the American Journal of Political Science.
A Bloomberg View editorial has a couple of good insights about the benefits of Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential candidacy: “Sanders can also force Clinton to make and articulate choices on precisely the type of issues that she will be most eager to evade, including a host of knotty questions related to inequality…”The American people want Secretary Clinton, all candidates, to talk about why the middle class continues to decline, why the rich get richer, why Wall Street continues to have unbelievable power over the American economy,” Sanders has said. “The American people not only want a serious debate on this campaign, they want candidates who will deal with the most important issue, and that is are we prepared to take on the billionaire class which has so much power over our economic and political life.”
At National Journal Scott Bland, Andrea Drusch, Josh Kraushaar and Alex Roarty present “Hotline’s Senate Race Rankings: Majority Up for Grabs: Republicans have to defend many more seats than Democrats in 2016, putting their majority at risk. But they have opportunities in Nevada and Colorado.”
Roll Call’s Stuart Rothenberg is skeptical that campaign finance reform can become a pivotal issue: “Most voters are motivated by partisanship and mood (that is, whether they are reasonably content with the status quo), but issues like the economy, taxes, spending, abortion, the environment and national security also can energize them…Campaign finance reform, on the other hand, has rarely been a decisive issue to voters, though it certainly has been a frequent topic for editorial writers, reformers and especially under-funded, underdog candidates. Without a particular scandal that captures the public’s attention, that’s more likely than not to be the case again in 2016.”
In “Taking Back the States…Again,” Andrew Mayershon of Boston Review probes the weakness of Democratic fund-raising, particularly the dearth of sugar daddies willing to bankroll Democratic candidates in non-presidential year elections.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has identified a source of ballooning discontent in America, which progressives must address. From his blog post:

As I travel around America, I’m struck by how utterly powerless most people feel.
The companies we work for, the businesses we buy from, and the political system we participate in all seem to have grown less accountable. I hear it over and over: They don’t care; our voices don’t count.
A large part of the reason is we have fewer choices than we used to have. In almost every area of our lives, it’s now take it or leave it.
Companies are treating workers as disposable cogs because most working people have no choice. They need work and must take what they can get.
Although jobs are coming back from the depths of the Great Recession, the portion of the labor force actually working remains lower than it’s been in over thirty years – before vast numbers of middle-class wives and mothers entered paid work.
Which is why corporations can get away with firing workers without warning, replacing full-time jobs with part-time and contract work, and cutting wages. Most working people have no alternative.
Consumers, meanwhile, are feeling mistreated and taken for granted because they, too, have less choice.
U.S. airlines, for example, have consolidated into a handful of giant carriers that divide up routes and collude on fares. In 2005 the U.S. had nine major airlines. Now we have just four.
It’s much the same across the economy. Eighty percent of Americans are served by just one Internet Service Provider – usually Comcast, AT&T, or Time-Warner.
The biggest banks have become far bigger. In 1990, the five biggest held just 10 percent of all banking assets. Now they hold almost 45 percent.
Giant health insurers are larger; the giant hospital chains, far bigger; the most powerful digital platforms (Amazon, Facebook, Google), gigantic.
All this means less consumer choice, which translates into less power.

The political consequences are also quite disturbing, as Reich explains:

…As voters we feel no one is listening because politicians, too, face less and less competition. Over 85 percent of congressional districts are considered “safe” for their incumbents in the upcoming 2016 election; only 3 percent are toss-ups.
In presidential elections, only a handful of states are now considered “battlegrounds” that could go either Democratic or Republican.
So, naturally, that’s where the candidates campaign. Voters in most states won’t see much of them. These voters’ votes are literally taken for granted.
Even in toss-up districts and battle-ground states, so much big money is flowing in that average voters feel disenfranchised.

Reich is on to something here. The decline in personal power felt by millions has happened so slowly that most of us take it for granted, as if it’s just ‘the way things are’ and there isn’t much we can do about it. The rioting in Ferguson and Baltimore may also be more an expression of the growing sense of powerlessness than anything else.
Reich goes on to identify a common denominator that feeds the spreading feelings of powerlessness — the lack of choice. He stops short of suggesting remedies. But it is clear that Democratic political leaders face both a crisis and opportunity here: If Democratic leaders fail to address the growing sense of powerlessness in a direct way, we shouldn’t be surprised if voters keep it home or cast their ballots for other parties.
But there are things that can be done about it, such as intensified voter registration and turnout drives, reinvigorating America’s labor movement, energizing the co-op and credit union movements and launching boycotts and stockholder’s campaigns to compel corporations to conduct business with a greater sense of social responsibility, to name just a few possibilities. If Democratic leaders will directly address the underlying causes of powerlessness in a way that average Americans will find credible, we just may be able to win something that now seems far out of reach — a Democratic landslide and a real working majority in congress.

Despite gushing reports about Marco Rubio’s presidential candidate debut, like this one, somehow, his epic water-break, depicted here in slo mo, still resonates:

At The American Prospect Heather Hurlburt spotlights what may be a transformative election for American women, especially Democratic women: “The number of visible women in the pipeline behind Clinton and Warren is also unprecedented. Women hold one-third of Democratic Senate seats up for election in 2016. At least seven GOP incumbents also have potential Democratic women challengers, from party stars like Tammy Duckworth in Illinois to Michelle Nunn in Georgia or Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky. Women are stacked deep in the party leadership, from established figures such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senator Patty Murray, and current Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to potential future presidential candidates such as Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar.”
Those who worry about the potential “age gap” between Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are probably wasting their time, according to the historical record, reports Geoffrey Skelley at Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
Nate Cohn explains “How to Read the Ups and Downs of Polling in the G.O.P. Race” and notes “…it’s better to focus on the fundamentals — whether the candidates appear to hold the support from party elites necessary to win the nomination, whether they are broadly appealing throughout the party, and whether they seem capable of building support in the early states…These factors, not their post-rollout bounces, will decide whether they can take the lead — and keep it.”
A former Republican Speaker of the Iowa State House, Christopher Rants, offers some unsolicited advice to Democrats: “Primaries, or internal family feuds, are never fun. But they are useful. They ensure the victor has been fully vetted, that if someone stumbles, someone else is ready to pick up the mantle, and the victor comes out with a full head of steam behind them. Democrats need a primary, not a coronation. But that is what they are set up for at the moment.” A fair point, but it should be measured against the advantages of not having a bruising primary season.
Political heir of Joe McCarthy sets new standard for arrogant hypocrisy.
At The Week Paul Waldman posts on “The absurd spectacle of the GOP’s working-class nostalgia.” Waldman notes the working-class pretensions of WI Gov. Scott Walker and other GOP presidential wannabes and explains, “There may be some small differences, but they’re all Republicans, which means they’ll advocate the same things: tax cuts (particularly on the taxes that hit the wealthiest hardest, like those on capital gains and inheritances), loosening of restrictions on Wall Street, and scaling back regulations that affect corporations.”
At the National Journal “How the Democratic and Republican Parties Have Changed, in 8 Charts” by Ronald Brownstein and Libby Isenstein indicates that Democrats’ attitudes have become more liberal and substantially more favorable toward immigrants.
Twerkage, GOP style.

William Galston’s latest Wall St. Journal column “A Better Campaign Theme Than Inequality: Income disparity doesn’t much worry America. Advocating for growth holds more promise” encapsulates a viewpoint gaining support among centrist Democrats.
Galston notes polling data which indicate that, despite all of the media buzz about economic inequality as a growing concern, it really doesn’t rank all that high as a public priority:

Hillary Clinton was reportedly struck that no one had asked her about inequality. She shouldn’t have been surprised… Recent opinion surveys show inequality well down the list of public concerns. In a February CBS News poll, for example, only 4% of Americans named income disparities as the most important problem facing the country. In March only 2% told Gallup that the income gap was at the top of their list.

To some extent such responses depend on how the question is framed. Regardless, if a candidate’s tone is too class warfare-like, some upwardly-mobile small business people, for example, may think rightly or wrongly, that they are being targeted by “soak the rich” rhetoric. Even if they represent only 1 or 2 percent of voters (and it could well be more), their decision to vote Republican could have disastrous consequences for Democrats. Why alienate them unnecessarily, the centrist Democratic argument goes. Better to advocate for growth that screws no one who is working hard to get ahead. As Galston explains:

What matters most is growth that includes everyone. To get that kind of growth, we will have to act on a broad front to expand opportunity for those who now lack it — and ensure that workers earn enough to provide opportunity for their children. These measures will reduce inequality, all the more so if they are financed by linking real wages to productivity gains and terminating tax preferences that don’t promote growth while benefiting mainly the wealthiest Americans.

That last sentence could broaden debate, even among centrist Democrats, about tax policies that facilitate exporting better-paying jobs and the wide range of trade concerns in the Trans Pacific Partnership. Where Democrats should come down on the free trade vs protectionist continuum will be an ongoing debate into the foreseeable future. But if Democrats can make growth their ‘brand,’ rather than ‘end inequality,’ it’s hard to see how that could fail to broaden support. When a majority of likely voters perceive the Democratic Party as the party of growth, we will at long last be on the path to securing a real working majority, the argument goes.
It’s an appealing vision, and with a measure of message discipline, it could be a doable image make-over. It doesn’t preclude tax reform that makes the wealthy more likely to pay their fair share — Galston supports “terminating tax preferences that don’t promote growth while benefiting mainly the wealthiest Americans.” But perhaps its chief virtue is that it checks drift into “bash the rich” rhetoric that upwardly-mobile middle class voters could perceive as an assault on their aspirations. Given our highly polarized electorate and fragile, see-sawing majorities, such a message/policy strategy merits consideration.

Jonathan Bernstein explains “Why Clinton is pushing campaign-money reform” in his Bloomberg syndicated column: “Campaign-finance reform is a safe subject. It’s hard to see how events will make current talking points on it look silly or embarrassing in the future. Restricting money in politics is broadly popular (especially with a lot reporters and their editors), even if it isn’t something that will sway a lot of votes in the general election next year.”
Amy B. Dean, a fellow of the Century Foundation, rolls out a compelling argument that “Democrats must have a concrete plan to empower workers.”
At The NYT Noam Scheiber reports that “Democrats Are Rallying Around $12 Wage Floor.” Scheiber elaborates: “A January 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center showed that 73 percent of Americans, including 53 percent of Republicans, supported raising the minimum wage to $10.10…”In a deeply polarized country, the minimum wage is one of a small handful of issues that gets broad bipartisan support,” wrote Daniel H. Pfeiffer, who until recently was a senior adviser to President Obama, in an email in response to questions. “The Republican problem of opposing the minimum wage grows much worse when paired with their support of tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations. The 30-second ad writes itself.”
Nate Silver addresses an interesting, if way-too-early question “Is Bush Doomed In The General? (Or: A Lesson In Conditional Probability).”
At Vox Ezra Klein argues that “Raising Social Security’s retirement age is a disaster for the poor.” Klein says “A 2012 Pew poll found that 56 percent of Americans opposed even gradually raising the Social Security retirement age — more than opposed cutting military spending, or increasing taxes, or reducing Medicare benefits for richer seniors. In 2014, the National Academy of Social Insurance performed an even more detailed survey and found that 75 percent of Americans opposed raising the retirement age to 70. Hell, even self-identified Tea Partiers would prefer to raise taxes than raise the Social Security retirement age.”
At Sabato’s Crystal Ball Alan I. Abramowitz and Steven Webster explore “the Republican lock on the House.”
Despite mounting incidents of police abuse of African American citizens, Nick Wing reports that “Most Americans Still Have Faith In The Police.” Says Wing: “White Americans were more likely to support the police, with 67 percent indicating some level of trust in their local police and 63 percent saying the same for police nationwide. Black Americans expressed considerably less support, with 36 percent indicating some level of trust in their local police and only 27 percent saying the same for police nationwide.”
National Journal’s Karen Bruggerman’s probes whether “Is Virginia Becoming a Liberal State? Some Democrats Are Betting on It.”
Yes, that’s the spirit! Let the GOP’s demolition derby begin. But I have a feeling that this is not going to end well for Paul the younger.

From “Democrats’ hunt for the white working-class male voter,” Doyle McManus’s L.A. Times column: “…[Stan] Greenberg has proposed adding another piece to the Democrats’ message: a more serious commitment to both campaign reform and a leaner, more efficient federal government…White working-class voters “are skeptical of government and skeptical of Democrats,” he told me last week. “They’re surprised to hear Democrats say they want to change politics and change government.”..That message, he said, “is a precondition to reaching them on other issues.””
For the definitive in-depth take on Democratic prospects for winning more votes from this pivotal demographic, you won’t find more astute, data-driven analyses by a host of top experts than the essays in TDS’s The White Working-Class Roundtable Newsletter.
Susan Page reports at USA Today that “In a nationwide USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, those surveyed say by 51%-35% that it’s no longer practical for the Supreme Court to ban same-sex marriages because so many states have legalized them. One reason for a transformation in public views on the issue: Close to half say they have a gay or lesbian family member or close friend who is married to someone of the same sex.”
At cbsnews.com Rebecca Kaplan profiles former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley’s strengths and weaknesses as a voice for Democratic progressives in the presidential primaries ahead.
In “Will you miss the biggest story of the 2016 presidential election?,” Taegan Goddard notes at The Week: “…Obama’s political skills were only a small part of why he ultimately won. It was his strategy of competing in and winning early caucus states — places like Colorado, Idaho, Kansas and Minnesota — that allowed him to rack up delegates…In the general election, “the Obama campaign could reach nearly all of the young people in America through Facebook. Democratic strategists also realized that Romney had a minimal presence on Facebook, so they could run a mostly positive campaign about Obama with very little competition from their opponent.” So Goddard cautions: “Don’t immediately dismiss all process stories you see over the next 18 months. Just question whether you’re getting the right ones.”
Here’s one reason why the Libertarians are not going to be a unified force for Republicans in 2016.
The GOP’s top union-basher, Scott Walker tries out ‘regular guy’ optics, reports Robert Costa at The Washington Post: “Calling voters “folks” and boasting about his cut-rate suits from Jos. A. Bank…Pointing to his rolled-up blue sleeves, Walker said he has been buying “shirts like this” for decades and that he is a devoted fan of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, which he plans to ride through New Hampshire’s 10 counties.” Can the NASCAR hat be far behind?
Those who would dismiss the argument that demographic trends strongly favor Democrats in the 2016 election should ponder the concluding sentences from E.J. Dionne, Jr.’s latest column: “In 2012, Mitt Romney carried 59 percent of the white vote and he carried independents. In 2004, this would have elected him president. In 2000, it would have given him an Electoral College landslide. In 2012, it gave him second place.”
It’s not that most voters want to “soak the rich” or favor “income redistribution.” Ditch the jargon and try asking them if they favor more fairness in taxation and better wages for the poor.

I’m not sure if Dana Milbank got caught up in the frenzy of a spirited rally or if he got it right in his WaPo column “The Populist Capture of the Democratic Party.” Headline writers often overstate the content of the copy that follows. Yet, Milbank’s report on the pending “Trans-Pacific Partnership” trade agreement almost matches the dramatic announcement in the title:

A quartet of senators and a dozen members of the House took the stage in a park across from the Capitol midday Wednesday to join hundreds of steelworkers, union faithful and environmentalists in denouncing President Obama’s bid for fast-track approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
“I’ve never seen a trade agreement that is more secretive than this one,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) told the crowd. “What are they hiding? What they’re hiding is a huge shift from democratically elected governments to corporations all over the world, and that’s why we’re fighting.”

A parade of speakers echoed Brown’s denunciation, and Milbank reports that “The upcoming battle over fast-tracking and the Trans-Pacific Partnership shows how dramatically the center of gravity in the Democratic Party has shifted.” He adds that “a best-case scenario has them winning only 10 of the 46 Democrats — and an even smaller percentage of House Democrats, despite aggressive lobbying by the usually passive White House.”
Milbank cites the bad taste residue left by NAFTA and the shrinking number of political moderates remaining the the Democratic Party, along with the rallying of populist ideas in concert with the ascendancy of Elizabeth Warren. He believes Hillary Clinton will have to accommodate some populist concerns to unite the party, if she wins the presidential nomination for 2016. Many observers believe the agreement will pass, nonetheless, owing mostly to Republican support.
Politico hyped up the “Democrats’ civil war over free trade” in a post by Adam Behsudi, noting:

The open warring among Democrats over fast-track trade legislation, and the party’s broader existential crisis on free trade, grew more pronounced Thursday as senior lawmakers announced a breakthrough on the trade bill. Many Democrats still feel the burn, 20 years later, of lost manufacturing jobs from the North American Free Trade Agreement — pushed through by former President Bill Clinton — and they fear another Democratic president is on the verge of turning his back on working-class Americans by negotiating a trade deal that would send jobs overseas.

Let’s not forget that the followers of both former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and the populist Democrats of the 90s voted for Bill Clinton on election day decades ago. Further, what gets overlooked amid all of the “let’s you and him fight” reportage about the trade deal is that, if we had a Republican majorities in the House and Senate that would actually negotiate in good faith, it would be possible to forge a trade deal that everyone could live with. But it would have to accommodate the concerns of Democratic leaders, such as Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), who is quoted in Behsudi’s article:

“The single biggest economic issue facing American families is that jobs do not pay enough to live on,” she said following the Trade Promotion Authority bill’s introduction on Thursday. “Fast tracking the TPP would make it easier for corporations to offshore Americans jobs and force our workers to compete with those in Vietnam making less than 60 cents an hour.”

It’s clear that Clinton, or any other potential Democratic presidential candidate will have to take a stronger stand against trade agreements that sacrifice American jobs. That’s a message point that will likely resonate with swing voters.

Thomas B. Edsall reports in his column at The New York Times that public attitudes about the redistribution of wealth have taken a conservative turn in a number of recent surveys. While some may argue that this indicates Dems should moderate their policies in a conservative direction, it could also be taken as a challenge to better educate the public about proposals to spur a more equitable distribution of wealth.
Political consultant Matt L. Barron explains at The Hill why Democrats should pay more attention to rural voters.
The good news for Hillary Clinton at this juncture, according to Kyle Kondik and Larry J. Sabato of The Crystal Ball is that she is the undisputed Democratic front-runner for President in 2016, with no “second-tier” opposition in sight. The bad news is that she is the biggest, earliest target her adversaries could hope for. If her front-runnership holds up, Dems could benefit significantly by not having a divisive primary season. But the GOP will have the advantage of highly-focused, Hillary-bashing message repetition over a long period of time, and their nominee could benefit from battle-testing and party unity based on weakness-eliminating competition.
UK politics appears as divided as our own, but Labour seems to have some serious mo — even in Thatcher’s old stronghold, reports Dave Hill at The Guardian.
Aamer Madhani makes a strong case that voter turnout the recent election in Ferguson is more cause for concern for progressives than celebration.
At The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Greg Bluestein reports on the emerging Democratic majority — in Georgia: “I sometimes feel like Georgia flies under the radar,” said Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress. “But things are changing there so quickly.”…The analysis was done by the Center for American Progress, the American Enterprise Institute and William H. Frey from the Brookings Institute…shows that Georgia could become a majority-minority state in 2025 and that minorities could outnumber whites among eligible voters by 2036…A narrow majority of students in Georgia’s public schools are now non-white and the data show that the proportion of white children could diminish to about 30 percent by 2060…”Blacks have more proclivity to vote in one direction than Hispanics or Asians,” said Teixeira. “It’s definitely changing the character. And one thing that will really make a huge difference in Georgia is if white voters vote more liberally. You don’t need much of a shift in the white vote for there to be a tipping point.” Bluestein’s article has nifty charts also.
The moral case for a gas tax hike is clear in terms of the environment and the need to fund transportation upgrades. But the political case is more problematic — especially for Dems. Janel Forte of Medill News Service explains why.
My hunch is that the headline for Nate Cohn’s upshot post is half-right that “Big Money From Super PACs Is Eroding the Power of Parties” — in the sense that the GOP has benefitted far more from super PACs. Cohn’s point is more about insider party “elites” losing their kingmaker power to the uber-PACs.
Will some wealthy Democrat please give this young man a lot of money?

Hillary Clinton has been getting rave reviews for her campaign launch video. Among the more interesting takes on Clinton’s launch, Greg Sargent offers this perceptive analysis:

Hillary Clinton’s video announcement of her presidential run features Americans who are entering transitional periods in their lives — an expecting mother, a pair of immigrant brothers starting a business, a man changing to a new skilled blue-collar job, a woman running for president (Clinton herself). They discuss the future with a mix of trepidation and self-conscious hopefulness. This includes Clinton; by discussing her own story in similarly personal terms, she seeks to humanize her ambitions and tie them to the ordinary hopes for the future expressed by the “everyday Americans” that precede her in the video.

Clinton’s message is strengthened by her tone in the video, argues Sargent. She doesn’t fall for the oft-parroted strategy of distancing herself from President Obama, which wouldn’t work, especially in her case. Instead, with a focus on the future, she steps forward “to praise the economic progress he has made, and promise a “new chapter” designed to build on it, one focused on giving those “everyday Americans” a better shot at getting ahead.”
It’s a bet, says Sargent, that “swing voters and independents don’t see the Obama years as quite the smoking apocalyptic hellscape Republicans continue to describe.” Further, “swing voters don’t want to hear this argument anymore; that they agree Obama’s policies have not turned the economy around fast enough, but think this was understandable given the circumstances and don’t see those policies as an utter, abject failure.” Sargent adds,

My guess is the Clinton team believes Republicans, flush from their epic 2014 victory, will again over-read public disapproval of Obama and will mistakenly premise their strategy too heavily on the notion that the public agrees the Obama presidency was a disaster. And as Jonathan Chait notes, there is a decent chance the economy will continue to expand; that the desire for change will not prove as potent as Republicans expect; and that national demographics will continue to favor Democrats.

The Republicans will undoubtedly respond with a tsunami of propaganda designed to paint the Obama years as a one-sided disaster for America. But the Clinton campaign understands that there is a reason President Obama was re-elected in the wake of a similar GOP effort in 2012.
Clinton’s video display of an array of Americans in credible, real-life transitions is a brilliant stroke, because many, if not most most Americans see themselves as on some kind of a cusp. Pessimistic though they may be about the economy, there is always the hope that we can do better with hard work and a break or two.
“Everyday Americans need a champion. And I want to be that champion,” says Clinton in the video. She wants to be the champion who provides that pivotal break. Her launch video plays that card exceptionally-well. Hard to see how such a message won’t resonate positively, even when posited against cynical Republican counter-messaging.
While the video is very general in terms of specific policies, Sargent believes Clinton’s policy agenda, as revealed in the months ahead, will help drive home the message of hope:

…Clinton’s agenda will look a lot like the “inclusive prosperity” blueprint from the Center for American Progress: Paid sick leave, child care, universal pre-K, and other family-friendly policies to remove barriers to work for women; investments to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure and stimulate demand; more spending on education and job training to keep pace with the challenges wrought by globalization and technological change; a minimum wage hike and policies designed to increase workers’ bargaining power and profit-sharing to boost stagnating wages…

Granted, it’s an optimistic scenario. But the Republicans have an even tougher sell — more tax breaks for the rich as the lynchpin of their economic strategy, pitched by a host of sour messengers, not one of whom can point to an impressive track record on behalf of middle-class families.

As Hillary Clinton launches her campaign, Alex Seitz-Wald’s MSNBC.com post “Clinton team courts progressive economists” should encourage the Democratic Party’s left flank. “Clinton’s team has been making a concerted effort to reach out to progressives economists and activists, and last week joined a meeting on inequality organized by economist Joseph Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank, msnbc has learned…Stiglitz is influential among progressives, who view him as one of the Democratic Party’s counterweights to the influence of former Bill Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.”
Jonathan Chait explains why “Why Hillary Clinton Is Probably Going to Win the 2016 Election” at New York Magazine. Chait explores a half-dozen major reasons for Clinton’s edge, but his best line may be “The argument for Clinton in 2016 is that she is the candidate of the only major American political party not run by lunatics.”
At Politico Annie Karnie offers a clue about Clinton’s central message: The memo also reminded staffers of one of the campaign’s animating themes: that the election “is not about Hillary Clinton and not about us — it’s about the everyday Americans who are trying to build a better life for themselves and their families.” If they can keep that theme front and center all the way to November 2016, Clinton will wage a formidable campaign.
Maddowblog’s Steve Benen provides a sound prospective on the fairness of analyzing Rand Paul’s issue positions in light of his father’s influence: “it’s generally unfair to hold candidates responsible for the views of their family members…But with Rand and Ron it’s not quite so simple. Much of Rand Paul’s political life was spent urging people to put his father in the White House, making public appearances to espouse his father’s bizarre ideas, and often speaking on his father’s behalf as a surrogate…In this sense, Ron Paul isn’t just Rand Paul’s father; he’s his son’s political mentor. Their familial relationship isn’t even what’s important in this dynamic – any political figure who worked with a fringe presidential candidate who espoused ridiculous views should expect some scrutiny.” Nothing wrong with asking Paul if he agrees with his father’s controversial policy positions, but it could backfire if done too much.
Peter Beinart warns at The Atlantic that liberal Democrats must find their anti-war bearings to get in line with voters who want arms negotiations with Iran. “Democrats, the polls show, back the agreement by margins of three or five to one. Yet key Senate Democrats are skeptical of the deal, and few have endorsed it enthusiastically.”
As the presidential jockeying picks up steam NYT columnist Paul Krugman urges his readers not to get too distracted by personality politics, because it’s more about the difference between the two major political parties than anything else. Krugman illuminates the profound differences in major policies between the parties and concludes “…The differences between the parties are so clear and dramatic that it’s hard to see how anyone who has been paying attention could be undecided even now, or be induced to change his or her mind between now and the election.”
Stephen Collinson and Alexandra Jaffe of CNN highlight a glaring weakness in the GOP presidential field: “Republicans are reaching for a trusted trump card in their quest to take back the White House — blasting Democrats as feckless on foreign policy…But the GOP’s strategy carries significant risks, not least because its candidates, though bristling with hawkish rhetoric, are notably short of hands-on foreign policy experience.”
At The L.A. Times Mark Z. Barabak explains why Dems can’t take “the interior west” for granted, and better shore up their strategy in the region.
And Scott Keyes warns at Think Progress that “Republican Lawmakers Hope To Turn Nevada Into A Playground For Voter Suppression.”