According to a new CNN/ORC poll, “61% want Congress to leave the Affordable Care Act alone (12%) or make some changes to the law in an attempt to make it work better (49%),” reports Paul Steinhauser of CNN Politics.
E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s “The Democrats’ strategic ambiguity” discusses the importance and difficulty of finding a positive tone in Democratic messaging, even while holding Republicans accountable for the political paralysis that prevents economic recovery and progress.
From Chris Cillizza’s “In midterm elections, Democrats can have some hope of retaining control of Senate” at The Fix : “Senate races — featuring better-known candidates and lots more money — can buck national trends (although they don’t always). Senate races have become, in effect, mini presidential races and, like presidentials, can create their own gravitational pull . . .”The recent generic ballot numbers showing the GOP ahead add very little to the debate over whether Republicans will take over the Senate,” said Neil Newhouse, a prominent Republican pollster and partner at Public Opinion Strategies. “No one, repeat, no one on our side is measuring the drapes for GOP control of the Senate. Campaigns matter, and this one has only just begun.”
One take from Kyle Kondik’s post “The Surprisingly Unrepresentative 2014 Senate Map” at the Crystal Ball would be “a very small number of voters in some fairly conservative states could flip control of the Senate this year,” as the editors put it. Sounds like a downer — until you insert the word “progressive” in front of “voters,” which opens up a range of upset possibilities with some precision GOTV targeting.
Steve Singiser inaugurates a new feature, “The Daily Kos Elections gubernatorial power rankings.” Florida is the biggest deal on Singiser’s list, with the following states considered done deals: AL; NV; ID; OK; SD; TN; VT; and WY.
At HuffPollster Mark Blumenthal and Ariel Edwards-Levy address “Will Turnout Or Swing Voters Sway The 2014 Election?” and conclude “…As a campaign decides how to allocate its resources, other factors also need to be considered, including the costs and conversion rates of persuasion vs. mobilization in their locale and in their race. In sum, it’s not all about swing voters and it’s not all about base mobilization — it’s about both.” The thing about genuine swing voters is that they are few and hard to identify and target — which is why base turnout is most often a more cost-ecctive investment.
Re Mike Lux’s “Going Out of Our Way to Uniquely Screw People With Student Debt” at HuffPo, there has to be a way to awaken some righteous rage on the campuses of America and among young people saddled with these loans and turn it into a force that votes in the midterms.
Dems are cranking up their ‘Red to Blue’ House campaign with strong participation of women, as Donna Cassatta reports at Talking Points Memo: “Sixty-three of the 199 Democrats in the House are women, compared with just 19 of the 233 Republicans. Democrats have recruited 102 women to run for open seats and challenge incumbents this election, compared with 66 Republicans, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.”
Josh Harkinson’s Mother Jones post “Why the FCC Is Ditching Net Neutrality” provides a primer on the motivation behind a dangerous idea that apparently has a chance.

Democratic Senator Kay Hagan has a few strong cards to play in her campaign to keep her seat from GOP challenger Thom Tillis, as Jason Husser points out at the Monkey Cage: “The GOP quickly moved to pass many controversial measures — including restrictions on abortion facilities, requirements of voter photo identification, elimination of teacher tenure and implementation of a less progressive tax code. Tillis presided over the NC House of Representative when these measures passed.” Then there is the recent coal ash spill into the Dan River from a Duke Energy facility. “Knowing about the coal ash spill doubles the chance that voters will feel unfavorably toward Tillis and significantly reduces their chance of feeling favorably toward him,” notes Husser, citing an Elon University poll of rv’s.
And among the comments following Reid Wilson’s WaPo post on Tillis: WJdad2 says “Tillis and McCrory are going to saddle ratepayers with the Duke cleanup costs,” notes Tillis’s other “accomplishments” include: Voter suppression legislation; 500,000 poor without insurance to spite Obama; 46th in teacher pay. . . Lower than Mississippi; Teacher pay plan proposal to pit new-hires against veteran teachers to bust morale; ALEC Board member; Bought and paid for with Koch and Rove support; Tax plan that yields lower taxes for the rich and net higher for the rest of us; The shortest unemployment compensation duration in the country “. . . Another commenter, bobnpvine1 adds “he pushed thru the dumbest legislation in the country that allows college kids to carry concealed guns and allows the same for bar patrons…”
As for the voter suppression legislation that Tillis engineered as NC’s speaker, Al Hunt writes in his column “Voter Suppression Is the Real Racist Rage” that “In addition to the photo ID requirement, North Carolina also curbed registration drives for young voters and cut back early voting, disproportionately exercised by minorities, by one week…The Americans Civil Liberties Union, which opposes these laws, asked two professors to gauge the impact; they concluded that 900,000 North Carolinians voted in that now-eliminated early week and estimated that the compressed voting schedule could drive at least 18,000 potential voters to give up in frustration. In 2008, Barack Obama carried North Carolina by 14,000 votes…Some Democrats think these restrictions could cause a backlash, energizing black voters in North Carolina and other states.”
And at Daily Kos Jed Lewison chronicles’ Tillis’s opposition to the minimium wage increase, followed by his evasive walkbacks on the topic. Lewison suggests “Instead of giving him a chance to dodge the issue by asking about raising the minimum wage, reporters should ask Tillis whether he supports it in the first place. If he doesn’t support it, that’s information voters deserve to have, and if he does support it, then the logic of his arguments against raising it fall apart.”
Maya Rhodan reports at Time that “About 25 percent fewer Latino voters will turn out to vote in the 2014 midterm elections than did in the 2012 presidential race, according to new projections released by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO)…But the total Latino vote is still projected to be higher than it was in the last midterm election in 2010, not because a greater share of Latino voters will be voting, but rather because the total Latino population has grown in the last four years…That would be 18.8% higher than the turnout during the 2010 midterm election…”
From President Obama’s speech at a L.A. fund-raiser for Democratic candidates: “We believe in pay equity; they say, no. We believe in a higher minimum wage; they say, no. We believe in making sure that we’re investing in our infrastructure and putting people back to work, and investing in innovation and basic research that can unlock cures for things like Alzheimer’s; their budget takes us in the opposite direction. We believe in early childhood education to make sure that opportunity for all actually means something, that it’s not just a slogan; they say, no. We think climate change is real. Some of them say it’s a hoax, that we’re fabricating it. And the biggest challenge we have is not just that there’s a fundamental difference in vision and where we want to take the country, not just the fact that they continue to subscribe to a top-down approach to economic growth and opportunity and we believe that the economy works better when it works for everybody and that real growth happens from the bottom up and the middle out.”
Michael Tomasky makes a tight case that Dems should boycott the Benghazi circus.
At CQ Politics Kyle Trygstad’s “How a Democrat Could Win a Senate Seat in Georgia” frames the challenge Dems face in Georgia this year: “Behind the scenes, a coordinated effort between Nunn and gubernatorial candidate Jason Carter, the grandson of President Jimmy Carter, is based in a growing number of offices in the state, where senior field operatives are building the groundwork for a voter registration and contact operation…As Senate Democrats work to make the midterm electorate in battleground states more closely resemble a presidential cycle, they have to do better than that in Georgia, where President Barack Obama lost by 7 points without putting up much of a fight.”
Here’s a fun question for Republicans who support making voting harder in the U.S., and express their admiration for Putin.

Conflicting polls: A USA Today/Pew poll conducted April 23-7 indicates that Republicans have a 4-point edge (47-43 percent) over Dems, when asked “If the election were held today, would you vote/lean toward the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate for congress in your district?” But a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted April 24-7, has Dems with a 1-point edge (45-44 percent) when asked “If the election for the U.S. House of Representatives were being held today, would you vote for (the Democratic candidate) or (the Republican candidate) in your congressional district?” Both polls were conducted a few days before the Bureau of Labor statistics announced that the unemployment rate dropped .4 percent in one month.
The key to making 2014 a good year for Democratic candidates, according to former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, quoted in the NYT’s “Democrats Struggle to Turn Economic Gains Into Political Ones” by Robert D. Shear: “One number, good or bad, won’t change everything… A sustained pattern of good numbers, from unemployment to wages to consumer confidence, could make a real difference come November. But for that to happen, it has to feel real to them.”
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, quoted in the Fix by Chris Cillizza, sees it this way: “It won’t be an improving economy, it will be the perception of an improving economy…That would change the president’s job performance, help incumbents, and most important, make it easier for Democrats to increase turnout of young people and unmarried women who feel hardest hit and often forgotten.”
But, regardless of the President’s performance, Salon’s Simon Maloy explains why Republicans are courting trouble when they talk about the economy.
At The Upshot Nate Cohn warns: “Even Democratic operatives know the limits of the ground game. In a New Republic cover article that otherwise suggested that a strong turnout operation could solve Democratic problems, Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, conceded that field operations would “only solve our problem if the election is a close one…To hold the Senate, Democrats will need to overcome their turnout problem the old-fashioned way: win older, white voters at far greater rates than Mr. Obama did.”
Paul Steinhauser discuses “6 factors that will influence the midterms” at CNN Politics.
Political analyst Fernando Espuelas explains how “Latinos Hold the Key to Democrats’ Victory (or Defeat) in 2014” at HuffPo: “While there is little risk to the Democrats that Latinos will wake up November 4 and vote en masse for the party of “self-deportation,” the very real risk is that they will stay home. Disgusted, disenchanted and predisposed not to vote any way, Latino voters may hand Democrats a bleak November indeed…It was in 2010 when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was singled out as one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the nation — he would undoubtedly be torched in the Tea Party forest fire…Of course, Reid went on to buck the cycle’s trend and defeat his Republican opponent. Post-election analysis showed that Reid was not just able to win a huge majority of Latinos — his campaign actually increased Hispanic turnout by focusing on Republican candidate Sharron Angle’s anti-immigrant virulence…The 2010 Reid formula shows a clear path for Democrats…Should the Democratic Party decide to actively campaign for Latino votes, as Reid did in 2010, a November “Latino Surprise” will save the Democrats.”
At The Plum Line Greg Sargent reveals “Why Dems are running against plutocracy.” Says Sargent: “The strategy is premised on the idea that swing voters view the economy as rigged against them, and in favor of the very wealthy, whose interests will be zealously protected by a GOP-controlled Senate…A new polling memo from Stan Greenberg’s Democracy Corps sheds some more light on this approach. Conducted with the Public Campaign Action Fund, it finds that in the 86 most competitive House districts, there is strong opposition across party lines to the McCutcheon decision — and strong support for efforts to reduce the influence over money in politics…The poll found that even in contested Republican districts, 70 percent oppose the McCutcheon ruling when it’s described to them, 56 percent strongly, and in Dem battleground districts, 74 percent oppose it, 62 percent strongly. An overwhelming 71 percent of independents in the 86 battleground districts oppose the decision.”
Aaron Blake notes at The Fix that “…The unemployment picture in the states holding key Senate races is actually quite a bit better for Democrats than the national picture…According to the most recent state figures available, from March, the unemployment rate in 11 of the top 13 states Democrats are defending was below the national average, and the rate was actually at or below 5 percent in six of those 11 states.” However, adds Blake, “Meanwhile, in the two states Republicans are defending — Georgia and Kentucky — the unemployment rate was above the national average.”

In “Democrats double down on their strategy of running against Koch brothers,” Alexander Bolton reports that Dems will soon offer a constitutional amendment “to overturn the Supreme Court’s decisions in Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC, which have empowered wealthy donors such as Charles and David Koch.” Bolton explains, “It provides a focal point to the case Democrats are making about the undue influence of billionaires like the Koch brothers have on the process,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster…Garin pointed to polling in the wake of Citizens United showing that 77 percent of voters showed support for a constitutional amendment to limit what corporations may spend to influence elections. The survey showed that 74 percent said they are more likely to support a candidate who backs it.”
Democratic candidate for Florida Governor Charlie Crist is up 10 points over Republican Governor Scott in latest Quinnipiac polling. He has an 18 point lead with women and 14 point edge with independents, reports Jim Saunders for the News Service of Florida.
Greg Sargent’s “The Democrats’ election year blueprint takes shape” at The Plum Line outs conservative media spin designed to give the GOP an easy time of it for their obstruction of the minimum wage increase: “…The New York Times headline puts it this way: “Republican-Led Filibuster Blocks Minimum Wage Bill in Senate.” Yes, that’s what happened. But McClatchy puts it this way: “Senate stalls minimum wage increase.” Nah, not really. See, what happened is that Republicans filibustered it.”
The American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson explores the possibility that American Mayors and city legislators may chart a progressive future for the nation.
At MSNBC.com Zachary Roth reports that “ACLU to file suit against Ohio’s early voting cuts.” Roth explains, “The suit, to be filed Thursday in federal court by the American Civil Liberties Union, offers a chance that the controversial cuts, enacted in the nation’s most pivotal swing state, could be blocked before the November election. And it will provide the latest test of the recently weakened Voting Rights Act’s ability to stop the wave of Republican-backed voting restrictions enacted in recent years.”
“In one scenario, majority control of the Senate could be decided as late as December, Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign pollster Neil Newhouse said, because it may take time in some close races to sort out the winner. Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu is struggling to fend off Republican Bill Cassidy in Louisiana, where state law requires a runoff to determine the winner if no candidate gets 50% of the vote,” according to “Strategists Predict Close Races in Midterm Elections” by Rebecca Ballhaus at the Wall St. Journal.
At The Crystal Ball Alan I. Abramowitz says “growing income inequality cannot, as some have argued, explain growing partisan polarization in the American electorate. Americans today are more deeply divided along party lines than at any time in recent history, but those divisions have little to do with social class.”
Obamacare enrollment has been impressive to date, but the public still doesn’t perceive it. Joan McCarter reports on the disconnect at Daily Kos.
From the Political Bulletin’s daily round-up of political humor: “David Letterman: “Well, ladies and gentlemen, the Republicans in Congress voted no on the minimum wage. Wow – that’s not the Republicans I know. I think they’re confused. We’re supposed to apply the economic sanctions to the Russians, ladies and gentlemen.”…Conan O’Brien: “Yesterday, Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer mistakenly called 50 Cent a singing group. Meanwhile, Republicans called 50 cent a fair hourly wage.”

Make Sasha Issenberg’s TNR article “How the Democrats Can Avoid Going Down This November: The new science of Democratic survival” your political strategy must-read of the day. Here’s a couple of reasons why: “For a party populated with Unreliable voters, the midterm imperative is clear: Raise the dollars and secure the volunteer commitments. Then go and turn out those who are already on your side but won’t show up without a friendly nudge…Democrats should not be too worried about the inbound negative ads: There will be millions of Unreliables in Senate battlegrounds this fall who would never vote for a Republican. And once mobilized, a reluctant voter’s ballot counts the same as any other’s. But the enthusiasm and interest of the activists and donors upon whom that mobilization depends can certainly waver.”
See also TNR’s companion post to Issenberg’s article “The Democrats’ Best Senate Hopes: An Unorthodox Ranking,” which pegs the “Democratic Vote DeficIts” for WV, AK, MT, NH, IA, LA, AR, KY, MI, CO, NC AND GA to specific numbers provided by TargetSmart and Clarity Campaign Labs, in rank order “from easiest to most difficult.”
Quin La Capra reports at The Hill that “Eleven states/jurisdictions have enacted the National Popular Vote (NPV) bill, giving the proposal 165 electoral votes — 61 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to trigger the new voting system.”
Sam Stein’s HuffPo post “Obamacare’s Poll Numbers Improve In Republican Districts” notes “Attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act continue to shift in the law’s favor, even in Republican-held congressional districts, a new poll set to be released Monday by a Democratic firm will show…The poll, which was conducted by Democracy Corps in battleground congressional districts and shared in advance with The Huffington Post, shows 52 percent of respondents want to “implement and fix” the 2010 health care reform law versus 42 percent who want to “repeal and replace” it. Those numbers were 49 percent to 45 percent, respectively, in the firm’s December poll…The favorable trend toward Obamacare has been witnessed not just in Democratic districts but also in Republican districts.”
…And the Florida Republicans couldn’t tank Obamacare, despite pulling out all stops:

But Ronald Brownstein warns at The National Journal that the President’s approval ratings are still too low, according to a new Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll. Yet, “The one solace for Democrats in the new poll is that Congress is even more unpopular than the president. Just 11 percent of those surveyed said they approved of Congress’s performance, while 80 percent disapproved. In the five times the Heartland Monitor has tested Congress’ rating since November 2012, only last November did it score more poorly, with just 9 percent approving and 84 percent disapproving.”
AP’s Alan Fram reports that the upcoming vote on the minimum wage could be a turning point for Dems, with women and young voters in particular, but also with the electorate as a whole: “It’s a powerful values issue for middle-class voters,” Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin said of the minimum wage push. “And it’s a powerful motivator for voters in the Democratic base who are a focal point of Democratic efforts to turn out voters in the midterm elections.”
He’s singing a diffetrent tune nowadays, but right here you can watch Rand Paul trashing Ronald Reagan.
At least some conservatives are more than a little nervous about adopting Cliven Bundy as their new poster-boy. As Alyssa Rosenberg notes, “On Fox News, my colleague Charles Krauthammer goes further, making the point that romanticizing a rejection of federal authority often ends in embarrassment. “This is a man who said that he doesn’t recognize the authority of the United States of America. That makes him a patriot?” Krauthammer asked. Anti-government language has been a powerful rhetorical tool, but it is difficult to sever those sentiments from the neo-Confederate sentiments that trail stubbornly behind it. Maybe it is time to try to elevate a different path to conservative stardom.” Ya think?

The buzz keeps building for Thomas Picketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century,” which “is being discussed with equal fervor by the world’s top economic policy makers and middle class Americans who wonder why they haven’t gotten a raise in years,” as Rana Faroohar reports at Time in her post “Here’s Why This Best-Selling Book Is Freaking Out the Super-Wealthy.” Picketty’s book is now number 1 at Amazon, and Paul Krugman terms it a “magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality” in The New York Review of Books. Krugman and Brooks have opposing op-eds about the book at the Times.
If you’re looking for a lighter read, try Democratic candidate for Governor of Florida Charlie Crist’s memoir, “The Party’s Over: How the Extreme Right Hijacked the GOP and I Became a Democrat.” See also Molly Ball’s profile of Crist in The Atlantic, which offers some insights about political strategy in the Sunshine State, as well as Crist’s politics.
NYT’s “Southerners Don’t Like Obamacare. They Also Don’t Want to Repeal It” by Sabrina Tavernise and Allison Kopicki notes that “The findings in the four states — all with political races that could tip the balance of power in the Senate — underscore the complex and often contradictory views of Mr. Obama’s principal domestic legislation four years after it became law.”
At Bloomberg Businessweek Joshua Green’s “Here’s Why Obamacare Will Help Democrats and Hurt Republicans” offers this observation: “I think the health-care law will still prove to be a net plus for Democrats in many races–a few this fall, and many more in future elections…Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Steve Beshear, on Tuesday declared the law an “indisputable success” and said 413,000 Kentuckians had gained private or Medicaid coverage through Kynect. As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent notes, Beshear has a 56-29 approval rating. But Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican running for reelection, remains wedded to the notion of repeal. Now, Democrats in the state are going after him for wanting to abolish not Obamacare, but Kynect.”
At Politico Emily Schultheis reports that “Democrats race to embrace Obamacare in Pennsylvania primary.” Here’s an ad for PA Democratic gubernatorial candidate Allyson Schwartz:

At The American Prospect Harold Meyerson notes, riffing on a recent NYT/Kaiser Family Foundation poll of four southern states, “The word on Americans–one bit of conventional wisdom that is nonetheless true–is that they are ideologically conservative and operationally liberal. They are opposed to big government but support actual universal government programs like Social Security and Medicare…Confronted with Obamacare, conservative Americans have taken this paradox to new heights. They intensely dislike the program, but they like what it actually does.”
At the NYT Upshot Nate Cohn explains why Dems shouldn’t get too euphoric about recent polls showing a rebound breaking their way in the southern states.
The Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik meditates on the power of gaffes to transform elections, and concludes that most of the time they don’t matter all that much — at least in this cycle (with three notable exceptions)…so far.
Also at The Crystal Ball, Geoffrey Skelley explains why veterans don’t vote all that differently from non-veterans. Disproportionately white, male and southern, as a group they tend to tilt more toward Republicans, despite being repeatedly screwed by GOP members of congress over the years.

If you had to pick the Democratic Party’s most harmful blind spot, a good choice would be its general indifference to retirement policy. We’re so busy chasing after young voters and other constituencies that we have apparently ceded the senior vote to the conservatives, who gleefully accept it as a freebie, offering seniors nothing but fear-mongering about government spending and tax cuts for the wealthy in return.
Yes, I know senior voters tend to cast their ballots for the GOP, at least the ones who show up. And show up they do in the midterm elections in more impressive numbers than any other constituency, providing a major reason why Dems usually get creamed in non-presidential election years.
Into the 2014 midterm fray writes Jane White, author of America, Welcome to the Poor House. in her HuffPo post, “Why Are Many Members of Congress Among the Few Americans That Can Retire?,” White observes:

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) deserves praise for attempting to tackle our retirement crisis — one of the few politicians to do so. However, rather than mandate that all employers offer a retirement plan and contribute the equivalent of at least 3 percent of pay, as is the case with the U.K. starting in 2018, Harkin’s legislation would simply allow employees who aren’t covered by a plan to contribute 6 percent of their own paycheck to a retirement account. Except that individuals can already do this if they invest in a mutual fund on their own!
The lack of mandates for an adequate retirement plan is ironic given that most long-serving members of Congress look forward to more generous pensions than the vast majority of their constituents. A member of Congress retiring with 20 years of service under Federal Employees’ Retirement System and a high three-year average salary of $174,000 will get an initial annual FERS pension of more than $59,000 — on top of Social Security.
Compare that pension paycheck to the typical American worker. According to the Federal Reserve Board, the median amount saved in 401(k) accounts and other savings for those age 55 to 64 was $100,000 in 2010. Observing the 4 percent withdrawal rule, a nest egg of $100,000 turns into a measly annual income of $4,000, or about $77 a week. Even those Americans covered by a regular pension are likely facing pension poverty, as the New York Times recently reported as a result of the stock market crash and benefit cutbacks. The U.S. has one of the least generous pension systems in the advanced world; only six member countries of the OECD have lower pension wealth.

It’s not hard to understand why there is a hell of a lot of anger among senior voters, especially when you take into account all of the pension rip-offs that have occurred over the last two decades. What is harder to understand is why Democrats are not raising more hell about it. Can it be that seniors expect the GOP to be indifferent to their retirement living standards, while reserving most of their anger for Democrats, who they feel have betrayed them with inaction? I have to wonder.
White cites a media blackout as part of the problem, and she is correct that there are not many thoughtful articles that explore the politics of retirement in America, other than the usual screeds about Social Security privatization. She adds:

Unfortunately, outside of the SEIU, the brains behind the advocacy group Retirement USA, there has been no hue and cry on Capitol Hill regarding the retirement crisis. Here’s a link to their report on our $6.6 trillion retirement deficit. As I’ve said before, we’re looking at a perfect storm of economic catastrophe. If the vast majority of baby boomers can’t afford to retire, that bodes ill for the next generations’ ability to find work. If you agree, please contact your Congressperson to ask Sen. Harkin to hold hearings on this topic. If we can’t reform our system, we at least need to communicate to boomers that they need to stay at their decently-paying jobs at least another decade, rather than “retiring” and ending up taking part-time, benefit-less minimum-wage jobs to try to make ends meet.

Credit Harkin with having the mettle to at least address the problem head-on, even if you agree that his reform proposals don’t go far enough. But, is it too much of a stretch to envision some sharp Democratic candidates with large senior constituencies pulling off a few 2014 upsets with a bold, visionary palette of retirement reforms? Really?

“House Democrats, battered by Koch brothers ads and facing a grim outlook for the midterms, are providing the clearest indication yet of how they plan to respond: By shoring up imperiled incumbents and only the most promising challengers, but most likely leaving some of the party’s upstart hopefuls to fend for themselves…House Majority PAC, a leading Democratic super PAC and one of the biggest players in congressional races, will begin placing its first round of TV ad reservations, according to an outline first shared with POLITICO. Of the 24 districts the group is reserving commercial time in, 18 of them are occupied by party incumbents. The ads will begin running around Labor Day, when the midterm sprint begins in earnest,” writes Alex Isenstadt in “Dems’ midterm strategy: Triage” at Politico.
The Fix’s Sean Sullivan offers some one-graph summaries of “The top 11 Senate races of 2014.”
Christopher Ingraham’s Wonkblog article about a new Pew Research report, “How Democratic and Republican morals compare to the rest of the world” contains few surprises. But the observation of one of the article commenters is instructive: “What I don’t understand is why this poll ONLY focused on the “morality” of so-called “social issues.” I find it morally unacceptable that there are people in the US who are still without adequate health care. I find it morally unacceptable that the District of Columbia in the alleged “greatest democracy in the world” is still without representation in our Congress. What about the consistently growing chasm between the very rich and the working class in this country? What about capital punishment? What about war? THESE are the real moral questions we shold be asking.”
Also at Politico, Andrew Rustuccia illuminates the difficulties facing Dem candidates who haven’t yet taken a position on the Keystone pipeline.
At The Pittsburgh Courier Zenitha Prince explains voter suppression, Ohio-style: “This year, alone, the Ohio General Assembly has passed and Gov. John Kasich (R) has signed bills that shave days off the early voting period and completely eliminates “Golden Week,” a brief window when voters could register and vote early on the same day; prohibits anyone but Secretary of State Jon Husted from mailing unsolicited absentee ballots to voters and makes it more difficult to count provisional ballots…Husted has also set statewide, uniform early voting hours that contain no evening or Sunday hours, making it more difficult for working Ohioans to vote early and negating “Souls to the Polls,” an initiative of the faith community to mobilize their congregations to the polls on Sundays…One study showed that African-Americans in Cuyahoga County voted early at 26 times the rate of White voters, accounting for ¼ of overall voter turnout but ¾ of early in person voter turnout.”
But the Charlotte Observer’s Jim Morrill notes how Democrats are fighting early voting restrictions in N.C.: “Early voting starts across North Carolina on Thursday, and nowhere will voters have more opportunities to take advantage of it than in Mecklenburg County [which includes Charlotte]…County election officials have expanded the number of early voting sites beyond what is required by the state’s new voting law. No county in the state will have as many hours in which to cast an early ballot…Mecklenburg will offer more than six times as many early voting hours as it did in the 2010 primary. But under the new law, those hours will come over fewer days…At the same time, 38 mostly rural counties have asked for and received permission to reduce the number of early voting hours.
At The Boston Globe, however, Derrick Z. Jackson writes, “In Wisconsin, won twice by Obama, conservative Governor Scott Walker signed one law ending weekend early voting and another that allows election observers to come as close as three feet to registration and check-in tables…Such proximity could easily intimidate voters and encourage poll workers to slow down the processing of voters.”
Tom Skubick shows how midterm turnout politics plays out in the race for Governor of Michigan: “Gov. Rick Snyder holds a 50%-37% edge with those over 65. Factor in those between the ages of 45 and 65, his advantage is 45%-38%…Democratic challenger Mark Schauer wins the 18-44 vote, but if most of them don’t vote, so what…The same ominous situation exists with minority voting. Mr. Schauer wins the African-American vote 57%-12%. But again, Mr. Schauer must motivate those voters to show up on November 4th.”
Simon Maloy’s Salon.com post “GOP’s purple-state problem: How a Virginia Medicaid battle augurs huge risks for the party” encapsulates the challenge facing Republians — and the edge smart Democrats are tapping: “Right now it’s hard to see how the GOP comes out on top here. Either they stick to their guns and explain over and over why they’re denying coverage to the uninsured poor, or they cave and risk the ire of deep-pocketed small government zealots.”

Greg Sargent notes at The Plum Line that “Brian Beutler has a good piece documenting the GOP’s “grand swindle,” in which Republicans claim to support Obamacare’s goals but still refuse to own up to the actual implications of repeal, which shows they don’t actually support those goals. As Beutler notes, it’s partly on Dems to make sure this swindle fails: ‘The good news is that it will fail if Democrats are prepared to remind the public that Obamacare created these benefits; Republicans voted against Obamacare, to a person; they are still trying to repeal it; and they have a long record of opposing its means and its ends in equal measure. But the awful truth is that if Democrats are determined to avoid thoroughgoing debates about Obamacare, and at times they appear to be, then it might just work.'”
From Noam Levy’s L.A.Times report on a new Gallup Survey showing Obamacare doing much better than expected: “President Obama’s health law has led to an even greater increase in health coverage than previously estimated, according to new Gallup survey data, which suggests that about 12 million previously uninsured Americans have gained coverage since last fall…That is millions more than Gallup found in March and suggests that as many as 4 million people have signed up for some kind of insurance in the last several weeks as the first enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act drew to a close.”
In “Defend ‘Obamacare’ Unabashedly, Some Democrats Say,”AP writers Charles Babington and Richard Alonzo-Zaldiva note, “Republicans already were pushing their luck by vowing to “repeal and replace” the health care law without having a viable replacement in mind, said Thomas Mills, a Democratic consultant and blogger in North Carolina. Now, he said, Democrats have even more reasons to rise from their defensive crouch on this topic…”Democrats need to start making the case for Obamacare,” Mills said. “They all voted for it, they all own it, so they can’t get away from it. So they’d better start defending it.”…Even some professionals who have criticized the health care law say the political climate has changed…”I think Democrats have the ability to steal the health care issue back from Republicans,” health care industry consultant said Bob Laszewski said. “The Democratic Party can become the party of fixing Obamacare.”
The wingnut threat of a “range war” in Nevada is apparently making GOP presidential contenders a little squirmy. Timothy Cama has the skinny at The Hill.
A nod to Julian Zelizer for his CNN Opinion post “Democrats, show some spine on taxes,” which includes this spicy little morsel: “Irving Berlin wrote “I Paid My Income Tax Today,” which reminded Americans: “You see those bombers in the sky? Rockefeller helped to build them — so did I!” The campaign worked and the tax system put into place remained a permanent part of the political landscape with upper level taxes reaching over 90% in the 1950s.” Do read the rest of it and share.
At The Nation Bryce Covert probes the complexities of “Why We Can’t Strip Race Out of the Gender Wage Gap Conversation.”
The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates calls President Obama’s address on voter suppression “one of the most significant and morally grounded speeches of his presidency. I think we will eventually regard this current effort to suppress the vote through voter-ID laws, ending early voting, restricting voting hours, etc., in the same way we regard literacy tests and poll taxes. (It’s worth recalling this piece for the magazine by Mariah Blake which helps historicize voter suppression.)”
“If November’s election for Congress were held today, the Democrats would have an edge over the Republicans as far as the total national vote is concerned. Nearly half of registered voters nationally — 48% — would support the Democrat on the ballot in their district while 42% would back the Republican candidate. Four percent would vote for neither, and 6% are undecided…When McClatchy – Marist last reported this question in February, voters divided. 46% favored the Democrat while 44% were for the Republican.” (from the McClatchy-Marist Poll conducted 4/7 through 4/10.)
Would you believe it, a nod to a Daily Kos tribute to “lefty bloggers” — in a conservative e-rag?

Not all Republicans are racist, there are people of color who are Republicans and there was a time when Republican leaders were in the forefront of the struggle for racial equality.
All of that said, and acknowledging that there are also racists who identify themselves as Democrats, the Republican Party has a significant — and growing — problem with racism in its ranks. GOP leaders and conservative pundits who refuse to address it are complicit, no matter how unbiased their personal views may be.
Read Sean Sullivan’s post, “Democrats are talking about race and the Republican Party an awful lot lately. Is it a smart midterm strategy?” at The Fix. Sullivan gives both Republicans and Democrats fair vent on the issue. He doesn’t support one side more than the other, nor offer much evaluation of their argument. Fair enough. Not all articles on the topic have to do that. Sullivan is mostly interested here in the midterm political ramifications of the GOP’s race problem.
Sure, there is political benefit for the Democrats in highlighting racist comments, policies and behavior among Republicans. It could help stoke turnout of voters of color, who tend to favor Democratic candidates. But Sullivan doesn’t discuss the possibility that Democrats have to speak out against racism because it has gotten so blatant that not calling it out would make Democrats part of the problem, created though it was by Republicans.
In his Daily Beast post, “You’re in Denial if You Think Steve Israel is Wrong About GOP Racism,” Michael Tomasky rolls out some of the more rancid recent examples in comment threads responding to articles about current events, and then he adds:

Beyond these, we have numerous instances of low-level (and sometimes not so low-level) Republican Party officials–Republican Party officials–making racist jokes about Obama. Here’s a little chrestomathy of some of them. If you follow the news closely, you know that hardly a…not quite a week, but let’s say hardly a fortnight goes by that some local GOPer doesn’t show up in the news explaining that he “didn’t mean any harm” in sending that email to friends showing watermelons piled up on the White House, and he’s sincerely sorry “if it offended anyone.” Often, of course, it’s something more malevolent than that.

No one will have any trouble digging up more examples, and yes, there is also some data which merits consideration. As Christopher Ingraham writes in a recent Wonkblog post,

An Associated Press poll conducted in 2012 attempted to measure implicit racism among Democrats and Republicans by asking respondents to compare black, white, Asian and Hispanic faces. It found that 55 percent of Democrats expressed implicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 64 percent of Republicans — a difference that the lead researchers called “highly significant…In 2012, 18 percent of Republicans disapproved of blacks and whites dating each other, compared with 5 percent of Democrats.”

The all-out assault on voting rights, for example, has reached a level of shamelessness not seen since before the Civil Rights Movement. The GOP is doing everything it can to obstruct the voting rights of African Americans and Latinos, even to the point of risking alienation of other voters with restrictions on early voting opportunities. That the Republicans on the Supreme Court have been eager partners in voter suppression shows that the moral rot in their party has burrowed deeply.
It’s not just voting rights Republicans oppose. Sen Rand Paul, by some estimates the Republican front-runner for the 2016 presidential nomination, still gets away with mealey-mouthed waffling about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Other Republican Governors and state legislative majorities have done all they can to harass and intimidate Latino immigrants.
You would think that some of the more prudent conservative pundits would pick up the slack left by political leaders on the right and challenge their party to embrace racial justice and a higher level of interracial goodwill. But apparently they buy into the strategy that suppressing minority votes is an acceptable price to pay for holding power. It’s a sad commentary on the shrinking reservoir of conservative patriotism.