The Upshot’s Nate Cohn presents compelling evidence from precinct and county data that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was not defeated by a wave of crossover Democrats.
GOP message guru Frank Luntz has a NYT op-ed, “Why Polling Fails: Republicans Couldn’t Predict Eric Cantor’s Loss” noting “Even if every scientific approach is applied perfectly, 5 percent of all polls will end up outside the margin of error…a poll is a useful tool for gaining insight and information, but it is only one arrow in the quiver. Without qualitative insight — talking with voters face to face to judge their mood, emotion, intensity and opinion — polls can be inconsequential, and occasionally wrong.”
In their introduction launching a series on the U.S. elections at The Guardian Paul Lewis and Dan Roberts argue “US midterm elections: Republicans could triumph – but it’s not a sure thing,” and note that top forecasters Nate Silver, Larry J. Sabato and teams from WaPo and the NYT “essentially agree on the big question about control of the Senate: it is too close to call.”
In the first installment of the Guardian series, “Political certainties beginning to fade in black-and-white Georgia As the US gears up for crucial midterm elections,” Paul Lewis reports from Georgia, where Republicans are swimming against a changing demographic tide,” the author notes: “If Perdue, 64, a gaffe-prone former CEO of Dollar General, secures his party’s nomination, Democrats will paint him as a Mitt Romney-style plutocrat with a shady corporate history. It is a characterisation they hope will contrast with Nunn’s commitment to public service…If Kingston, 59, who has represented a congressional district incorporating the city of Savannah since 1993, wins the runoff, Nunn’s team will seek to characterise him as a Washington insider. Nunn, on the other hand, will claim to be an outsider, untarnished by the political fray.”
U.S. District Judge Peter C. Economus has reinstated early voting (three days in advance of elections) for all eligible voters in Ohio.
Crystal Shepeard’s Care2 post “Single Women Will Make the Difference in the Midterm Elections” explains “…nearly a third of unmarried women are not registered to vote…unmarried women have had the largest increase in new eligible voters since the 2012 election with more than ten million new voters. Many of them are young and tend to not participate in large numbers in midterm elections. In 2012, if unmarried women voted in the same numbers as married women, the difference would have been an additional 6.5 million more votes cast.
NPR’s Maria Liasson has explained “Unmarried women are the single most important demographic this year. But unlike other “it” demographics (remember soccer moms?), single women are not a constituency that’s in play: They’re extremely reliable Democratic supporters…Single women make up about 25 percent of the electorate, and they’re growing fast as marriage rates decline. But while they are reliable supporters for the Democrats — that is, when they vote — they are not reliable voters: Between 2008 and 2010, the participation of unmarried women fell by about 20 points. And between 2012 and 2014, single women’s participation is expected to drop off by about the same rate…So single women present Democrats with a turnout problem, not a persuasion problem.” Liasson goes on to point out that the election of Terry McAuliffe as Governor of Virginia shows that it can be done, and NC is the best proving ground for the strategy ion 2014.
In another NPR post, “Easy On The Ears: GOP Ads Adapt To Reach Women Voters,” Liasson shows that Republicans are running scared of single women and softening GOP ad messaging in hopes of neutralizing their strong Democratic tilt.
Oh, Hell yes.

All those pundits and GOP establishmentarians who pronounced the tea party dead have some ‘splainin’ to do in the scorched aftermath of the Republican primary that dumped House Majority Leader Eric Cantor from his seat in Virginia’s 7th congressional district.
Tea party candidate Dave Brat trounced Cantor, 55.5 percent to 44.5 percent, in a “shockingly lopsided” vote. As the Richmond Times Dispatch reported Cantor’s defeat:

“This is one of the most stunning upsets in modern American political history,” said Larry Sabato, head of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “This is the base rebelling against the GOP leadership in Washington as represented by Eric Cantor.”
“I’m as stunned as anybody,” Sabato said. “I’ve yet to find one person nationally or in the state outside the Brat circle who thought Cantor would be beaten.”

From another perspective in the Times Dispatch report: “I can’t believe that the voters in the 7th District would trade Number 2 and possibly Number 1 in Congress for Number 435 and that shocks me,” said Mike Woods, a longtime Cantor supporter.” Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones, chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, said “If ever there was any doubt, tonight’s results prove that extremists have taken over the Virginia Republican Party. Eric Cantor tried to cater to hard-core conservatives, but he failed.”
It looks like Brat’s campaign had excellent GOTV. As Nate Cohn put it at the Upshot, “Turnout was not unusually low: More than 63,000 votes have been counted so far, up from around 47,037 in 2012.” According to this map, it appears Brat’s superior GOTV in the exurbs north of Richmond did the trick.
Pollsters didn’t do too well on this one, as Cohn reports: “…One survey conducted for the Daily Caller by Vox Populi, a new Republican firm, showed Mr. Cantor just over 50 percent and ahead by 12 points. News media accounts suggested that Mr. Cantor’s campaign was confident, and one internal poll showed he had a 34-point advantage.”
Cantor’s huge financial advantage counted for little. If there was a pivotal issue it would likely be immigration, as the Times Dispatch reports:

Brat, dwarfed by Cantor in spending, drummed home the immigration issue, accusing the incumbent of favoring “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Cantor denied the charge, saying only that children of illegal immigrants should not suffer because their parents brought them into the country…”Everybody agrees that if immigration reform was on life support before, they’re pulling out the plugs,” because no other Republican wants to lose as Cantor did, Sabato said.

If Republicans had dismal prospects for winning Latino votes in 2014, Dems will likely trumpet Brat’s victory as a clear indication that the GOP is moving toward an even more reactionary position with respect to immigration.
The district, which stretches from western Richmond northward to the outskirts of Warrenton (about 50 miles west of Washington, D.C.), northeastward to outer Fredricksburg and northwestward to the ‘burbs of Charlottesville, has been Republican since 1981. VA-7 is redolent with early American and Civil War history, and includes some of George Washington’s childhood stomping grounds.
As currently configured, the district is 74.3% White, 17.1% Black, 4.9% Latino, 3.9% Asian, 0.3% Native American/Alaskan, and 2.1% “other,” according to 2010 Census data. Romney won it with 57 percent to Obama’s 42 percent of votes cast in 2012. Cantor himself won with 58 percent of the votes in the same year.
It will be a tough race for Democrat John “Jack” Trammell, a Randolph-Macon College professor like Brat, and author and father of seven. Charlie Cook gives the district a R+10 “partisan voting index” rating. Yet anything north of Richmond is increasingly fair game for Dems, as D.C. cosmopolites and workers in the state’s exploding high tech corridor along I-95 search for affordable housing.

Big problems remain and booby traps lie ahead, but “Obama Promised to Do 4 Big Things As President. Now He’s Done Them All,” writes Jonathan Chait. And it’s all the more remarkable, considering the Republicans’ unprecedented obstructionism. Good talking points here for responding knee-jerk Obama critics.
Re Julian Zelizer’s “Will Democrats pay a price for Bergdahl deal?” at CNN Politics. The short answer is “only if voters can be hoodwinked en masse by GOP demagoguery.” The better question is “Will Republicans pay a price for arguing that it’s OK to let an American soldier languish in prison?”
Charles Pierce has a few choice comments on the topic in his “The Bergdahl Chronicles: The Bitchening.” See also John Cory’s “The Empty Soul of GOP Politics” at Reader Supported News, which notes “The air is rife with the flatulence of rancid sanctimonious political opportunism and self-serving patriotic indignation. Truth, fact, and morality be damned…Sgt. Bergdahl was a prisoner of war and America does not leave POW’s behind. Ever. We don’t do it. It doesn’t matter if the POW walked off and got captured or if the POW collaborated with the enemy under duress and torture – doesn’t matter. We, America, bring them back.”
From AP’s “Political parties fight to manipulate voting times“: “At least 33 states now have laws that let people vote in-person before elections without needing an excuse to obtain an absentee ballot. Early voting laws became increasingly common after the disputed 2000 presidential election as a means of diminishing long Election Day lines that had frustrated voters…Republican-controlled legislatures in Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina and Wisconsin all have taken recent steps to curtail early voting by limiting the days on which it’s available…Early voting generally increases voter turnout by 2-4 percent, which is statistically significant, said Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Oregon…Some of the assumptions about early voting have been challenged by recent research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professors there found that early voting that diminishes the publicity surrounding the actual election day can hurt turnout, and ultimately aid Republicans. But they found that when early voting is coupled with same-day registration, the advantage shifts to Democrats.”
The repeal Obamacare movement is now on track to end, “not with a bang, but a whimper,” explains Sam Baker at The Atlantic.
Not that the Republican sniping will end anytime soon, as Greg Sargent points out in his post “GOP’s guerrilla resistance to Obamacare alive and well.”
At Lost Remote, Adam Flomenbaum has an interesting interview with Bill Maher’s executive producer about Maher’s ‘Flip a District’ campaign. Flomenbaum notes that “Maher plans to flip a congressional district in the upcoming mid-term elections by periodically going to specific congressional districts, talking about that congressman, and seeing if “we can’t get some change effected in America.”
At The Upshot, Nate Cohn and Josh Katz argue against the beliefs of many poll analysts that “It’s Not Too Soon to Pay Attention to Senate Polling.”
Democratic candidates and campaign strategists, please study “Map: Where the average student loan burden is largest” and the accompanying notes by Niraj Chokshi. If there is any hope of energizing young voters this year, Dems need to be talking about bold initiatives to address this crisis.

Nia Malika-Henderson presents compelling evidence in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that “Democrats’ ‘war on women’ strategy still works. For now.” Her most encouraging sentence: “In August of 2012, on the eve of a presidential election, 69 percent of women said that they were absolutely certain to vote. Now, that figure stands at 77 percent.”
At CNBC.com John Harwood encapsulates the challenge facing Democrats: “Democrats have begun efforts to mitigate the damage, with their House and Senate campaign committees tripling investments in voter mobilization since the last election. With its sophisticated voter identification and mobilization programs, the 2012 Obama presidential campaign produced a more Democratic-leaning electorate than many Republicans had thought possible. In 2014 battlegrounds such North Carolina and Colorado, vulnerable Senate Democratic incumbents hope to capitalize on the results of those efforts the way Terry McAuliffe did in winning the Virginia governorship last year…Obama’s party can try to motivate Latinos by blaming Republicans for blocking immigration legislation, and women by blaming Republicans for blocking equal-pay and early childhood education legislation. Although Republicans attack the new health-care law to motivate their base, Democrats can warn young voters that repealing it would kick young adults under 26 off their parents’ insurance plans.”
Conservative columnist Byron York laments the GOP’s lack of a coherent/appealing message strategy for 2014.
At The Monkey Cage John Sides’s “Can turnout save the Democrats in 2014?” crunches stats and observes “Turnout is not going to explain a 63-seat gain for Republicans in 2010…The question is how much turnout matters. My sense is that commentators still put too much emphasis on it. That is, there is not enough grappling with what changes in the electorate do not explain — such as, perhaps, the majority of Republican seat gains in 2010. There is not enough grappling with how Democrats did so well in 2006 despite a midterm electorate, as political scientist Michael McDonald has noted. For more, see Mark Mellman’s four excellent columns on this, and especially political scientist Seth Hill’s research.”
Public opinion on the Bergdahl swap is a near-washout. Obama did the right thing and brought an American P.O.W. home. It appears that the GOP wingnut gallery will get no real traction on this one.
The VA dust-up was more damaging, at least in the short run, according to the latest CNN/ORC poll. But the same poll indicates Obama has some offsetting gains with respect to his policies re terrorism and the environment — continuing concerns which may have more shelf life.
David Firestone’s NYT blog post “Joni Ernst Fights for Dirty Water in Iowa” — provides a solid meme for Dems to work. As Firestone elaborates, “That a Senate nominee could take this position, even more than the others, shows how far Republican candidates have drifted from the party’s old moorings. In 1972, the Clean Water Act passed with full bipartisan support, and is widely regarded as one of the most successful environmental acts ever passed. It doubled the number of rivers, streams and lakes suitable for fishing and swimming. It drastically reduced the amount of chemicals in drinking water, and substantially increased the size of protected wetlands. Rivers no longer catch fire…The law’s value is so obvious that it shouldn’t even be necessary to defend it. But in Iowa, it remains a divisive issue, and Ms. Ernst’s offhand remark was a clear signal to the state’s big agricultural interests of which side she is on.” Dems should smell blood on this one, and make Ernst explain it at every opportunity.
At The Upshot Nate Cohn makes a so-so case that Thad Cochran’s senate seat may be out of reach for Dems. But McDaniel isn’t all that, and whether Cohn is right or wrong, making the GOP spend some dough there might be a worthwhile project.
The Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley are less skeptical than Cohn: “Former Rep. Travis Childers, the Democratic nominee in Mississippi, decided to run because of the possibility of a McDaniel win. His gamble looks likelier and likelier to pay off, and this could actually be a race in the fall, particularly if McDaniel stumbles and the runoff is bloody.”

Hotline on Call’s Adam Wollner flags “The 8 Primary Races to Watch Tuesday.” For Dems CA-33 looks like the marquee contest, followed by CA-31.
The American Prospect’s Paul Waldman mulls over “How Conservatives Will React to Obama’s New Climate Regulations.” Hint: expect to hear terms like “lawless job-killing socialism,” which Waldman shows will not be too hard to rebut.
Democrats should seek out more candidates of color, as well as women. But take this as a challenge to also elect more members of congress who actually come from blue collar America.
NYT columnist Russ Douthat discusses prospects for “the small world of reform conservatism” in light of Jonathan Chait’s critique. Douthat’s mild optimism seems a little premature. It will take a proper drubbing of the Republicans by a blue wave before ‘reform conservatism’ can establish a beachhead in the GOP.
Addressing the same topic at Democracy: A Journal of Ideas via The Atlantic, E. J. Dionne, Jr. concludes in a long article, “…Reform conservatism must still prove itself to be more than a slogan, more than a marketing campaign, more than that new pizza box. The Reformicons can be part of the historic correction the conservative movement badly needs–or they can settle for being sophisticated enablers of more of the same.”
At Roll Call Emily Cahn notes “The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has reserved $43.5 million in television airtime in dozens of targeted House districts this fall — a signal the party is attempting to play defense and offense in a challenging midterm cycle…The money is split across 36 districts, including 17 pickup opportunities, according to a DCCC aide. More districts and more money could be added to the reservations as the cycle progresses, the aide said…The DCCC had $43.3 million in the bank at the end of April and has raised more than its Republican counterpart by large margins this cycle.”
Taegan Goddard shows “Which State has the Most Gerrymandered Districts?”
Paul Krugman ruminates “On Inequality Denial”: “…This latest attempt to debunk the notion that we’ve become a vastly more unequal society has itself been debunked. And you should have expected that. There are so many independent indicators pointing to sharply rising inequality, from the soaring prices of high-end real estate to the booming markets for luxury goods, that any claim that inequality isn’t rising almost has to be based on faulty data analysis.”
I like this a lot. Regardless of Hillary’s decision and prospects re 2016, she has enormous cred right now and it’s good that she is leveraging it in service to Dems’ 2014 campaign.

AP’s survey “Where House Democrats Are Spending Campaign Cash” is more about ad media choices than geographic location — but interesting nonetheless.
A scary stat from the Lone Star state: “In the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, the 145,000 voters who nominated David Alameel of Dallas represented just 1 percent of the people who can vote in Texas.”
Some of the wisdom of this article by Rick Perlstein in The Nation can be found in the subtitle: “The mainstream and liberal press’s quixotic search for a ‘good’ conservative merely reinforces the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Digby has an interesting Salon.com post on WI Gov. Scott Walker’s dimming hopes for exoneration from the “little corruption problem he just can’t shake.”
At ThinkProgress, Matt Browne’s “Why Europe’s Progressives Shouldn’t Mourn The EU’s Latest Election” explains why we shouldn’t get all chicken little about the hard right turn in the European Parliament elections.
PA union sets new standard for political myopia.
Joan McCarter reports at Daily Kos that “Arkansas’ version of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, its “private option,” has been a rousing success, having signed up 75 percent of the state’s eligible population so far, and still going strong.”
“Over 60 percent of Americans in Deep South states, including Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, support expanding Medicaid, according to a recent poll by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies…Nonetheless, these states’ GOP-controlled legislatures and Republican governors — Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant — each oppose the expansion,” reports Shadee Ashtari at HuffPo.
Mark Blumenthal and Ariel Edwards-Levy discuss “How Accurate are Most Robopolls?” at HuffPollster.com.

For a more thoughtful take on the problems at the Veterans Administration, try John Nichols’s post, “Instead of Austerity and Slogans, the VA Needs Full Funding and Accountability” at The Nation.
Sam Stein reports that NC Republican Senator Richard Burr has stepped in it just in time for Memorial Day. “In their own letter, Veterans of Foreign Wars responded to Burr by calling his letter a “monumental cheap-shot” and labeling it “one of the most dishonorable and grossly inappropriate acts that we’ve witnessed in more than forty years of involvement with the veteran community.” If the tone wasn’t clear, the group added that Burr’s conduct and allegations were “ugly and mean-spirited in every sense of the words and profoundly wrong, both logically and morally,” in addition to breaching “the standards of the United States Senate.”
At Mother Jones David Corn explains “This Is How the Right Milks Benghazi for Cash: And more proof it’s all about Hillary Clinton.”
At the NYT Upshot Lynn Vavreck illuminates the ticket-spliiters, those who vote for candidates from different parties on the same ballot. She notes, “In 2012, nationwide, only 7 percent of voters who cast ballots for both the presidency and the Senate split their votes across the two major parties, according to the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project run by YouGov. Vavreck tested a large, representative sample and concludes “While you’re more likely to be a ticket-splitter if you are a moderate or independent, the single best predictor of cross-party voting is still how much you know about politics: the less you know, the more you vote for two parties.”
In his column “GOP’s right turn opens door for Democrats,” Eugene Robinson offers some well-stated observations: “Anyone who hopes the party has finally come to its senses will be disappointed. Republicans have pragmatically decided not to concede Senate elections by nominating eccentrics and crackpots. But in convincing the party’s activist base to come along, establishment leaders have pledged fealty to eccentric, crackpot ideas…As for the “government’s too big” part, this traditional GOP mantra has become — thanks to the Tea Party — a weapon of spite, not a statement of policy…The victories by establishment-backed Republicans in Senate primaries hold no promise that the party is ready to stop throwing tantrums and begin governing. They do ensure, however, that Democrats will have few, if any, “gimme” races this fall…Republican candidates simply cannot risk being called “moderate”…Democrats can, though. The Republican Party’s move to the right opens political space for Democratic incumbents and challengers trying to win in red states.”
Ashley Parker’s “Political Ad Man Finds the Personal in Democratic Hopefuls” profiles Democratic “image guru” Mark Putnam, who has worked on campaigns for President Obama, Alison Lundergan Grimes, Mary Landrieu, Mark Begich, Ben Cardin and Heidi Heitkamp. Putnam advises “I do try to find an emotional hook to every ad — sometimes it’s humor, sometimes it’s a poignant story, sometimes it’s just passion.” Parker notes further, “During the 2012 cycle, campaigns, parties and outside groups poured record amounts into television ads — roughly $3.8 billion, according to Kantar Media/CMAG, which monitors political advertising. Kantar has projected that as much as $2.8 billion will be spent on local broadcast ads by the end the 2014 cycle; local cable representatives anticipating as much as $800 million more than that.”
Just because NC’s Moral Monday movement hasn’t got much MSM coverage lately, don’t assume it is winding down. The demonstrations resume big time on Tuesday, with a strong focus on fighting NC’s outrageous voter suppression laws. As Facing South’s Sue Sturgis describes the voter suppression laws that will be addressed: “Besides requiring photo ID to vote by the 2016 election, the law also has provisions that are set to take effect this year. They include ending same-day registration, repealing out-of-precinct provisional voting, shortening the early voting period, ending pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds, and expanding the power of poll observers and ballot challengers.”
Paul Rosenberg’s Salon.com post “GOP’s trifecta of doom: How candidates, issues and culture are building a 2016 calamity” makes an interesting case that cultural side-shows, like the Sterling mess do matter in shaping party preference on election day.
At Slate.com Jamelle Bouie probes an MTV poll of young people and addresses a provocative question, “Why Do Millennials Not Understand Racism?.” Bouie also wonders about “the irony of this survey: A generation that hates racism but chooses colorblindness is a generation that, through its neglect, comes to perpetuate it.”

Harry Enten’s FiveThirtyEight.com post “Midterm Election Turnout Isn’t So Different From Presidential Year Turnout” crunches the numbers and favors the case for investing more in persuasion. “…if the two voting pools somehow magically switched places, 2012′s demographics wouldn’t have swung control of the House in the 2010 election. I transposed the 2012 demographics onto the 2010 vote tallies and Republicans still won the national vote by about 3.3 percentage points in the midterms.”
But Tom Bonier notes at The New Republic, “The bottom line is, Enten’s theory doesn’t hold up under the scrutiny of individual vote history. For example, Enten looks at the variation in turnout among younger voters between 2010 and 2012, and then considers the partisan vote share of that demographic in order to assign some sense of partisan impact of these turnout changes. But what he’s missing is an understanding of which younger voters cast a ballot in each year. By using vote history and partisan models, we can gain a better sense of this dynamic. For example, in Ohio in 2012, the average modeled partisanship of registered voters under the age of 30 who cast a ballot was 57.3%. The same statistic for that group for 2010 voters was 50.5%. So while the overall share of the electorate that younger voters comprised in each election could be largely unchanged, that would mask the sub-demographic dynamic that is truly impactful, from a partisan vote perspective.”
Patrick Ruffini’s “to Persuade, Or Not to Persuade”, on the other hand, provides an invaluable discussion of the relative importance of persuasion vs. turnout, with particular reference to midterm elections. Among his interesting observations: Calling for “balance and for sophisticated execution on all fronts,” Ruffini adds, “Right now, the budgetary balance in elections is tilted in one direction – towards paid persuasion. An approach that diversifies risk by investing more evenly in all both persuasion and turnout must be tested against more one-dimensional approaches.”
Meanwhile, Carl Hulse’s New York Times article “Democrats Seek Issues to Lure Midterm Votes After Races Buoy G.O.P.” reports at that “…House Democrats are reassessing their electoral strategy based on a major internal research project that shows their candidates stand a better chance when they portray Republicans as uncaring toward working-class Americans while they continue to back policies favoring the wealthy and corporate America…Democrats could build on this distrust, the research showed, by emphasizing support for policies such as equal pay for men and women, ensuring that corporations pay a fair share of taxes, and increased job opportunities in the United States…The research also found that an effort to increase the minimum wage — a recent top priority of congressional Democrats and the White House — is not by itself enough to motivate swing voters to go to the polls and back Democrats in the fall…”It concerns voters but doesn’t necessarily motivate them to vote in the midterms,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.”
Greg Sargent’s Plum Line post “The next big freakout over red state Democrats” probes the political ramifications of environmental protection regulations re carbon emissions, energy development and power plants.
Jean Bonner of Georgia PBS addresses “Which way will young voters go in Georgia?” Dems hope that their younger marquee candidates Jason Carter (Governor) and Michelle Nunn (U.S. Senate) will attract a larger than usual turnout of younger voters, helped by ad optics showing their young families.
Alan I. Abramowitz’s warns at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball that “Nationalization of Senate Elections Poses Challenge to Democrats in 2014.” Abramowitz explains: “Between 2000 and 2012, almost 90% of seat switches in Senate elections were in a consistent partisan direction. Moreover, in the four federal elections between 2006 and 2012, this trend has become even stronger. Nearly all of the seat switches in this quartet of elections — 23 of 24, or 96% — have been in a consistent partisan direction. In 2006 and 2008, there were a total of 14 party-seat switches, and all of them involved Republican seats switching to Democratic control. In contrast, all six switches in 2010 involved Democratic seats switching to Republican control. Finally, in 2012, three of the four switches involved Republican seats switching to Democratic control.”
Elections are never a done deal until the last ballot has been counted, but Democratic nominee for Governor of Pennsylvania Tom Wolf’s huge lead (52-33 in the latex Quinippiac poll) over Republican Governor Corbett in the polls is great news for Dems.
Please, former Democratic politicians holding on to “leftover” campaign funds, do the right thing and donate to local democratic campaign committees.

Start your day with Corey Robin’s “The Republican War on Workers’ Rights” at the New York Time Opinionator, which offers this measure of the importance of midterm elections: “Over the last four decades, for example, low-wage workers have been hit hard by the declining value of the federal minimum wage. In the absence of federal action, states, cities and counties have increased the minimum wage or indexed it to inflation (or both) to ensure that it keep pace with rising costs…Republican politicians in state capitals have tried to check them at every point. Florida, Indiana and Mississippi have banned local governments from increasing the minimum wage. In Nevada, Missouri and Arizona, state legislators tried to overturn constitutional amendments and ballot initiatives. In 2011, New Hampshire’s Republican legislature simply abolished the state’s minimum wage.” Robin’s op-ed has much more on the GOP rip-off of workers’ rights.
At Sabato’s Crystal Ball Sean Trende probes “Are Republicans Really Doomed Demographically?” and comes to a lightly skeptical conclusion.
From Thom Hartmann’s “Republicans’ deadly political strategy: Ruining our country hurts the Democratic Party” at Salon.com: “For six years now, Republicans have been hard at work damaging America and the American people. When the Democrats briefly controlled Congress, Nancy Pelosi got passed legislation that removed tax incentives for big companies to move jobs overseas and reversed those incentives to encourage companies to move factories back to the United States…The Republican Chaos Strategy dictates that you cannot allow these things to happen when there is a Democrat in the White House. Under their theory, if anything positive is done for the American people by Congress, the American people – who don’t know which party controls Congress – will assume that the president and his Democrats must’ve had something to do with it. And therefore, the Democrats will get the credit…if Republican House Speaker John Boehner simply allowed a vote in the House of Representatives to extend the unemployment benefits they cut off last Christmas it would instantly pass. Probably over 80 percent of Americans do not realize that this one single Republican, playing out the Republican Chaos Strategy, has screwed millions of Americans…The only way to stop the Republican Chaos Strategy is to educate the American people as to how the Republicans, for the majority of the Obama presidency, have been able to systematically and intentionally damage our economy and our nation for purely political purposes…This should be the single-minded focus of the Democratic Party between now and November.”
At CNN Politics Leigh Ann Caldwell’s “Meet the woman who could turn Texas purple” discusses the possibility that a popular Latino woman candidate for Lieutenant Governor, State sen. Letitia Van de Putte, may have some coattails in getting Hispanic and women voters to the polls in Texas.
More on the Democrats Texas campaign from NYT’s Amy Chozick: “…After Mr. Obama’s re-election, Jeremy Bird, the campaign’s national field director, started Battleground Texas, a grass-roots political organization whose goal was to make Texas competitive, a long-term effort intended to take root perhaps by the 2020 presidential election…The work Battleground Texas is doing in 2014 is helping in “building an infrastructure that will exist in 2016, 2018, 2020,” said Jenn Brown, the group’s executive director. “You’re not going to win every election”…Central to that goal will be persuading the more than two million Hispanics who are eligible to vote but did not in 2012. In 2010, about one million voting-age Hispanics cast ballots for a turnout rate of about 23 percent, compared with about 44 percent among white voters.”
So WWLBJD?

From E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s column, “No more liberal apologies as Elizabeth Warren takes the offensive“: “But doesn’t being pro-government mean you’re anti-business? Well, no, Warren says, quite the opposite. “There’s nothing pro-business about crumbling roads and bridges or a power grid that can’t keep up,” she writes. “There’s nothing pro-business about cutting back on scientific research at a time when our businesses need innovation more than ever. There’s nothing pro-business about chopping education opportunities when workers need better training.”
The American Prospect’s executive editor Bob Moser has an update on rising Democratic hopes in the south, which notes “Pass the smelling salts to your fellow liberal Dixiephobes…The Southern Democrats aren’t all winning just because they’re mimicking the old Republican Lite schtick. Some of them are winning because they’re acting kind of like actual Democrats.”
Ouch.

Stephanie Czekalinski’s National Journal post (via NJ Daily) “Democrats Have a Millennials Problem” distills one of the more frustrating challenges facing Democrats in the 2014 elections — how to get what may be the most liberal generation of young voters ever to the polls in November. Czekalinski explains:

As the midterms approach, Democrats are underperforming among a voting bloc that supported Barack Obama over Mitt Romney almost 2-to-1 in 2012…That’s the takeaway from a new online poll of millennial adults conducted by Harstad Strategic Research. The survey found that although more than seven in 10 millennials lean progressive on a host of topics and policies and support a more involved government, only 28 percent said they will “definitely vote” in the 2014 midterm elections.

You can almost hear the “past is prologue” pundits writing off the millennials as a lost cause for Dems in the 2014 midterms. That would be the safe bet. There is as yet no reason to think they are going to break the historical pattern. Of course the Republicans have done all they can to keep the pattern in place by making it harder for college students to vote in some states.
Yet, the progressive tilt of the millennials is so strong that it’s hard to justify not investing some resources into breaking the pattern at least a small amount, if only in states where there are key races. In Georgia, for example, a better than average turnout could help elect both a Democratic U.S. Senator and Governor, a rare double pick-up for the party holding the White House in the 2nd midterm election. Here’s what the millennials are thinking about the proper role of government:

A majority of millennials were also likely to say they favor a more involved government. Nearly 60 percent said they preferred the government be “on their side” rather than “off their back,” although political ideology influenced respondents’ views. More than 70 percent of millennials who identified as Democrats said they preferred government on their side, compared with only 50 percent of Republicans. Independents fell in between. Race and gender played a role, too, with nonwhites (66 percent) and women (65 percent) more likely than whites (54 percent) and men (54 percent) to say they preferred a more involved government.

Those race and gender caveats are useful for targeting specific millennial sub-groups. And on some key issues favoring Democrats:

Millennials are most persuaded by policies that promote economic opportunity, according to the survey. Nearly 60 percent of millennials said they found messaging regarding making college and student loans more affordable persuasive; 57 percent said that investing in good jobs and improving K-12 education was a persuasive position; 56 percent said that investing more in community colleges was. Background checks for gun sales and gun shows also had the support of 56 percent of respondents.

These are good numbers, and it would be a shame if Dems just shrug them off. And let’s not overlook the huge cuts in higher education in states controlled by Republicans. Dems should do some thinking about the possibility of securing a better than expected turnout of millennials in key states — even a little bit could help in close races.
One friend suggests a voter registration information bank alerting youth via apps that registration deadlines are approaching in particular states (registration status is still the most accurate predictor of who actually votes). Not a bad idea since all millennials seem to live on their cell phones. Another acquaintance half-jokingly suggested a “million robe march” in the Fall — nightime bonfire rallies on college campuses across the nation attended by students and rock bands in their bathrobes etc. focused on registering voters where possible. How about a series of viral YouTube skits challenging young people not to sit out midterms?
No doubt many better ideas could come from the millennials themselves. As the summer vacation begins, now seems like a good time for young activists to organize some creative GOTV projects — and have them up and running when Fall begins.