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.

Some observation’s from Wesley Lowell’s Washington Post article, “Democrats settle on fairness issues hoping to avoid a repeat of 2010 midterm disaster“: “”There are pretty stark contrasts here, and we know that when we bring out our base vote, we’re in a pretty powerful position,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). “In 2010, we fell on our face and we paid for it. We’re not going to make that mistake again.” Se. Charles Schumer echoed, “This week, the talk is pay equity, not ACA. We won’t have every week like that, but we’ll have more and more weeks like that because we’re talking about things that people really care about…”We’re at a turning point. . . . These last few weeks have been sort of a game-changer. I think that the day when Obamacare will be the only dominant message is over.”
And it’s not just about economic fairness. As Zachary Roth writes in his MSNBC post “Democrats finally make voting rights a top priority“: “…voting rights are likely to be a front-burner issue when Americans go to the polls this fall–at least if Democrats have their way….To voting rights advocates, the new level of engagement from top Democrats, especially Obama himself, is welcome indeed…”Nothing is more important than the American people hearing the president of the United States bringing the full passion and power of his voice and his position to the issue of promoting voting rights and an open democracy for every citizen,” said Barbara Arnwine, the president of the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.”
At The American Prospect Abby Rapoport writes about a powerful new tool for evaluating election administration, Pew’s 2012 Elections Performance Index. Among her observations: “…A quick perusal shows 40 of the 50 states have improved since 2008–wait times are down an average of three minutes and online registration is spreading quickly, with 13 states offering online voter registration during the 2012 election, up from just two in 2008. (Since the election, another five states have started offering it.) Many of the top-performing states in 2008, like North Dakota, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Colorado, stayed on top in 2012 while low performers, like Mississippi, Alabama, California, and New York remained at the bottom.”
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire is featuring a conversation with Anna Greenberg, who was recently honored as “Democratic Pollster of the Year” by the American Association of Political Consultants. Greenberg shares her thoughts on “three key voting groups — unmarried women, young voters, and minorities — who will decide the 2014 midterm elections” right here.
Paul Blumenthal of Moyers & Company outs the lie that wealthy Democrats are spending as much “dark money” as the Koch Brothers on elections. “…Already, Koch-linked dark money groups have spent more than $30 million on ads targeting vulnerable Democratic congressional candidates running in the 2014 midterms…There exists no outside network or organization supporting Democratic Party candidates in elections, while not disclosing its donors, that spends money in comparable amounts.”
The title of Michael Tomasky’s Daily Beast post says it straight: “You’re in Denial if You Think Steve Israel Is Wrong About GOP Racism.” For me the most disgusting part of it is the failure of the so-called “respectable” conservative writers to address the issue in any way whatsoever.
For more on this topic, read Christopher Ingraham’s Wonkblog article “Data suggest Republicans have a race problem.”
From Nathan L. Gonzalez’s Rothenblog post “Democratic Senate Prospects and the New Black Voter“: “Of the top 14 Senate races, Arkansas is one of seven states where the black population cracks double digits. The other states include Louisiana (32 percent), North Carolina (21 percent), Michigan (14 percent), Virginia (19 percent) and Georgia (30 percent)….In Georgia, Democrats are excited about the long-term demographic trends in the state, but strategists believe there is a short-term opportunity to increase black turnout this year. There are an estimated 375,000 African-American voters who voted in 2012 but not 2010, and 572,000 African-Americans still unregistered. And in Louisiana, where Landrieu is running for re-election, Democrats estimate 185,000 African-Americans voted in 2012 but not 2010, and another 228,000 African-Americans are unregistered.”
Democratic candidates and campaign staffers should give Brian Beutler’s New Republic article, “Democrats Need to Start Blaming the GOP for the Death of Charlene Dill: How liberals should talk about the Medicaid expansion” a thoughtful read.

In her Care2.com post “Politicians are Beginning to Realize Voter Suppression is a Bad Idea,” Crystal Shepeard notes that more than 1,000 voter suppression bills have been introduced in state legislatures around the country since the year 2000. Nearly all of these bills designed to make it harder to vote have been introduced by Republicans. While most have failed, too many have passed, and “after the Supreme Court gutted the Voter Rights Act of 1965, voter suppression bills surged, leading to some of the most restrictive voter suppression bills to date.” However, adds Shepeard,

A new analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law says the trend may be reversing.
In January, Congress introduced a bill to address the issues of the VRA the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional. This is just one of the many efforts the Brennan Center says that the focus is now on increasing voter access. While the SCOTUS ruling led to (largely) southern states ramping up their voter suppression efforts in 2013, 46 states had introduced legislation to make voting easier that same year. The momentum continues this year with 190 bills expanding voter access introduced in 31 states since the beginning of the year. By comparison, 19 states have introduced 46 voter suppression bills.
While there is often a long path between the introduction of legislation to actual passage, 13 bills making it easier to vote have passed thus far.

We also know that anger over unnecessary long lines at polls in Florida and Ohio caused by Republican sponsored restrictions on early voting, and shrinking poll hours and cutting the number of polling locations in recent elections have angered many voters, including some voters from constituencies which have favored Republicans.
Most voters who are at least moderately well-informed know that the politicized Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has rendered the Voting Rights Act almost unenforceable and has issued decisions facilitating billionaire manipulation of U.S. elections. (interestingly, one CBS News/NYT poll taken in back 2012 found that 60 percent of the public felt that lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices was “a bad thing.”) Public opinion polls on the Holder decision have been somewhat contradictory.
Overall, however, voters have to be more than a little inattentive to be unaware that GOP lawmakers are doing everything they can to manipulate U.S. election law in service Republican candidates.
Democrats, of course, are outraged, and there is some evidence that anger over voter suppression increased African American turnout in 2012. It also seems reasonable to hope that most well-informed political moderates who have a sense of fairness and a patriotic appreciation of the right to vote might also be concerned that the Republicans have gone too far. Here and there, even some Republicans have decided that they can’t stomach their party’s penchant for abusing election law. Shepeard quotes one Republican Wisconsin state Senator;

…Senator Dale Schultz condemned his party for trying to suppress the vote. “I’m a guy who understands and appreciates what we should be doing in order to make sure every vote counts, every vote is legitimate. But that fact is, it ought to be abundantly clear to everybody in this state that there is no massive voter fraud. The only thing that we do have in this state is we have long lines of people who want to vote. And it seems to me that we should be doing everything we can to make it easier, to help these people get their votes counted.”

There have been a few other Republican state officials who have voiced similar concerns, and a couple of them have even quit their party. But they are newsworthy because they are so few. It’s increasingly possible, however, that Democrats can gain some ground with swing voters by challenging them to stand up for fairness and integrity in elections, as an inviolate principle of democracy.
In yesterday’s Strategy Notes, I flagged several articles about Democratic leaders, including President Obama, beginning to speak out more forcefully about voter suppression. It’s not too much of a stretch to guess that Dems’ internal polling indicates GOP voter suppression is an issue that can get some traction. So far there have been more than 150 protest demonstrations against the McCutcheon v. FEC decision in 38 states, which is impressive considering the short time that has passed.
In any case, Democrat have little choice but to raise hell about voter suppression, which is becoming the emblematic identifier of the GOP brand. In so doing, Dems just may pick up enough conscientious swing voters to hold the line until 2016.

In his bid to win the governorship of Ohio, Democratic Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald may be creating a potent template for Dems in statewide races. Fitzgerald is getting out front and generating buzz in attacking voter suppression. “He is asking the federal government to investigate efforts by state lawmakers to limit voting this election cycle,” reports Samnatha Lachman at HuffPo. (“Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) announced in February that voters won’t be able to vote on Sundays before November’s general election, while Kasich signed a measure eliminating the so-called “Golden Week” during which voters can both register to vote and cast an early ballot.”)
Further evidence that Ohio Dems are getting their act together from MSNBC’s Zachary Roth: “The effort to push back against Ohio’s new voting restrictions hasn’t been limited to Cuyahoga. The state Democratic party is mulling a legal challenge to the early voting cuts. African-American leaders are working to get a “Voters Bill of Rights” on the ballot this fall. And national Democrats are lending key backing to state Sen. Nina Turner, a voting rights champion, as she runs for secretary of state against Husted this fall.
The Big Dog gives Chief Justice Roberts and his fellow vote suppressers on the High Court a proper lashing for their partisan hackery: “Is this what Martin Luther King gave his life for? Is this what Lyndon Johnson employed his legendary skills for? Is this what America has become a great thriving democracy for? To restrict the franchise?..Clinton called the Supreme Court’s decision “one of the most radical departures from established legal decision-making in my lifetime,” said restrictions on voting rights were “risking the future of this great experiment” and could “put us back in the dustbin of old history,” reports Adam Serwer in his post “Clinton slams voting restrictions in civil rights speech” at MSNBC.com.
Sue Sturgis has a by-the-numbers rundown in her “INSTITUTE INDEX: A Supreme Court win for the plutocrats sparks protests” at Facing South, which includes this nugget: “Number of protests against the McCutcheon decision held across the U.S. the same day the Supreme Court handed down its ruling: more than 150”
“Un-American” is the word that best describes GOP voter suppression. As President Obama put it in his speech in Texas: “”The idea that you’d purposely try to prevent people from voting? Un-American. How is it that we’re putting up with that? We don’t have to.” Elsewhere, reports Edward-Isaac Dovere at Politco, “Campaigning in minority communities in Florida, Charlie Crist often reminds people of his decision to extend voting hours in 2008, and contrasts his decision while governor to restore the vote to nonviolent felons to Gov. Rick Scott’s reversal to do so. In Wisconsin, Mary Burke is calling a state Legislature plan to cut back early voting “voter suppression.”
Democrats have a painful must-read in the AP article titled “How The Republican Party Constructed An Ironclad Advantage In The Midterm Election” at Fox News Latino. The article is not brimming with new revelations, and politically-engaged Democrats will be familiar with most of the content. It’s just a well put-together article that nicely encapsulates history and analysis of the Dem’s current predicament — a good one to share with those who are wondering how we got into this mess. It doesn’t offer any solutions. But understanding how the knot got tied is helpful for figuring out how to fix it.
At The Atlantic Molly Ball pooh poohs Democratic bragging about an edge in targeting/turnout technology: “In short, claims that one party or the other has built up a tactical advantage based on the latest in campaign science are always to be taken with a grain of salt…Party committees’ boasts about their tactical arsenals are probably largely for the benefit of their donors, who must be reassured their money is going somewhere useful. (Why else would they reveal techniques that surely would be all the more effective if they caught opponents unawares?). On the other hand, if a technology edge gives a candidate just 1 percent more, that’s often enough to win an election. Worth the effort, if not the brag.
Former DNC Communications Director Bob Neuman’s “Advice for Democrats on Winning the Midterm Elections” explains how Dems recovered from Reagan’s 1980 landslide: “Despite some misgivings by the more noble of our colleagues, we set out a two-pronged attack, despite our woeful financial situation, and focused on those two issues under the mantel of fairness. We held a “mini issues convention” in Philadelphia that emphasized fairness…It worked. We did very well in the [1982] midterm election. Thanks to a weak economy and a spot-on message, the Democrats picked up 27 House seats, and one in the Senate. By midterm standards, it was an impressive comeback.” The political dynamics are not parallel to 2014, but the success of the message theme “fairness” may be instructive.
Alex Roarty’s Hotline on Call post “Inside the War to Win over Women” includes this interesting quote from GOP strategist Wes Anderson: “If you’re a single woman, the message that Republicans will abandon you has had some effect in the past…There’s some resonance there with single parents, especially single moms. They paint that with a thick coat of class warfare to it, and they’ve had success with that in some places.”

At CBSNews.com Jacqueline Alemany considers “How should Democrats deal with Obamacare in 2014?” Alemany illuminates the ‘Fix it, Don’t nix it’ message strategy, quoting Democratic pollster Celinda Lake: “…People should talk about the fact that there are parts of Obamacare that work and parts that need to be fixed, and that Democrats will be aggressive about fixing it,” Lake told CBS News. “Because we shouldn’t start all over again, and we shouldn’t cancel the policies of 7 million people.” She also quotes Democratic strategist Tad Levine: “Saying, ‘Listen, it’s not perfect, but there’s a lot of good there,’ is the right approach.”
In his L.A. Times article, “Democrats target Republican ties to Koch brothers” Michael A. Memoli provides a Paul Begala quote which illuminates the Democratic strategy of casting the Koch brothers as poster boys for billionaires trying to buy U.S. elections: “My GOP friends say no one knows who the Koch brothers are,” said Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic strategist. “True, but fewer people knew what Bain Capital was until we told them. This is classic asymmetrical warfare. When you can’t match them bullet-for-bullet, diminish the effectiveness of the other side’s weaponry.”
The Nation’s John Nichols explains (here via Reader Supported News) why Dems believe shining a fresh light on the Koch brothers’ economic bullying and election meddling could be a big problem for Republicans in November: “In every part of the country, in every sort of political jurisdiction, citizens are casting ballots for referendum proposals supporting a Constitutional amendment to overturn US Supreme Court rulings that have tipped the balance toward big money….Since the Supreme Court began dismantling the last barriers to elite dominance of American politics, with its 2010 Citizens United decision, sixteen states and more than 500 communities have formally requested that federal officials begin the process of amending the constitution so that the court’s wrongheaded rulings can be reversed.”
At Real Clear Politics, Adam O’Neal explains why FL Dems believe Alex Sink can win a rematch in November: “…Democrats believe Sink has a significantly better chance in November than she did in the low-turnout special election. He said strategists have “run an analysis and they think this: With Charlie Crist as the Democratic nominee for governor — he used to be a Republican, but he’s a Democrat now — [and] in that particular area, Crist is very popular. They’ve run a new voter model that says even though she lost the special election by two points, they think she would win in November by about a point and a half.”
Ed Kilgore has some fun with Georgia Republican squabbles in the campaign for the GOP senate nomination, which includes a Richie Rich type (David Perdue) dissing a woman opponent (Karen Handel) for not having a college degree — not the kind of thing that will win the hearts of single working women, should he get the nomination to run against Democrat Michelle Nunn.
Talal Al-Khatib reports on “Voter Suppression: Old Strategy, Modern Tactics” at Discovery.com, with updates on some of the dirtier tricks being leveraged by Republicans: voter i.d. laws; limiting poll hours; voter ‘caging”; voting date misinformation; trashing registration forms (yes, it actually happened in VA and CA); “citizen” challenges; and poll “watchers” (intimidaters).
Democratic leaders are committed to making voter suppression a major issue in the mid term elections. Zachary Roth discusses the effort at MSNBC.com: “The notion that GOP voting restrictions could backfire by making their targets more determined to vote than ever may be well-founded. There’s evidence it happened in 2012, when blacks voted at a higher rate than whites for the first time ever, after several key states made voting harder.”
This idea is not going to work. Jack Kemp was a rare Republican who welcomed African Americans into the GOP tent with open arms. But they did not take the bait, likable as Kemp may have been on a personal level and even though he played a significant role in enacting the MLK holiday. African Americans vote their social and economic interests more reliably than other constituencies, while Today’s Republican Party is even more focused on supporting policies that benefit the super-rich to the exclusion of just about everyone else.
If, heaven forbid, you know any millennials taking Rand Paul seriously, it is your duty to direct them to this enlightening post, “10 Reasons Millennials Should Be Wary of Rand Paul’s Libertarianism” by Richard Eskow at Campaign for America’s Future.

Re the U.S. Supreme Court decision ending “the total amount any individual can contribute to federal candidates in a two-year election cycle,” Adam Liptak reports at TheNew York Times that “The ruling, issued near the start of a campaign season, will very likely increase the role money plays in American politics.” Dems should highlight the decision as a wake-up call to voters that a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate will obstruct any hope of restoring balance to the Supreme Court — and make America’s legal system even worse for everyone but the wealthy.
A majority of the current Supreme Court may be in the pocket of the GOP. But at least American voters are consistently opposed to unlimited campaign spending. As Megan Thee-Brenan reports, also at The New York Times, “A Gallup poll conducted in June found that 8 in ten Americans, if given the opportunity, would vote to limit the amount of money candidates for the Senate and the House of Representatives could raise and spend on their election campaigns…Unlike the Supreme Court’s decision, which was split along ideological lines, the public’s views are cohesive. The poll found that broad majorities of all Americans, regardless of their political philosophy, party identification, age, education, sex or income level, preferred limits on campaign donations.”
A The Pew Research Center Jens Manuel Krogstad discusses why “Hispanics punch below their weight in midterm elections.” Says Krogstad: “A record 24.8 million Hispanics are eligible to vote in 2014, according to February Census figures, up from 21.3 million in 2010…Hispanics made up a larger share of the electorate in 2010 than in any previous midterm election, representing 6.9% of all voters, up from 5.8% in 2006. In 2010 House races, Hispanics favored Democrats over Republicans by 60% to 38%…Nearly half (49.3%) of Cuban-origin Hispanics voted, compared with just 28.7% of Mexican-origin Hispanics…Among registered voters who didn’t vote in 2010, one-in-four Hispanics chose “too busy, conflicting work or school schedule” as the reason they did not cast a ballot. About the same percentage of non-voters overall chose the same reason. Nearly twice as many Hispanics as non-voters overall said they forgot to vote, 13.3% to 7.5%.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr. has some good questions his colleagues in the MSM ought to be addressing at this political moment: “From now on, will there be more healthy skepticism about conservative claims against the ACA? Given how many times the law’s enemies have said the sky was falling when it wasn’t, will there be tougher interrogation of their next round of apocalyptic predictions? Will their so-called alternatives be analyzed closely to see how many now-insured people would actually lose coverage under the “replacement” plans?”
At Rothenblog Nathan L. Gonzales explains why “Why Republicans Have Trouble Electing Women to Congress.” At present, “only 73 Republican women, including 17 incumbents, have filed or are expected to file to run for a House seat in 2014 — a 33 percent decrease from 2012.”
Greg Sargent reports that Democrats are renaming Republican Paul Ryan’s budget “The Koch Budget,” and it is “bought and paid for by Charles and David Koch,” and “forces seniors to pay more while providing tax breaks for billionaires like the Kochs.” Further, says Sargent, “if Dems have their way, they will be able to use it in statewide races, where the electorate may be somewhat more diverse, to galvanize core supporters and draw a sharp economic contrast in the eyes of swing constituencies.”
Democrats big push for a minimum wage hike may help Rep. Gary Peters hold on to the Senate seat. As Patrick O’Connor writes at Wall St. Journals’ Washington Wire: “In Michigan, where Mr. Peters is locked in a tight race with likely Republican nominee Terri Lynn Land, the Democrat needs to rally the party’s core constituencies. Mr. Obama won the state by 10 percentage points in 2012. The fall ballot measure raising the minimum wage from $7.40 an hour to $10.10 should give Democrats in union-heavy Michigan another reason to vote in November.”
Skeptical though they are about Dems’ chances in the Senate and House elections this year, Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik say “we suspect a modest net Democratic gain of one to three governors’ mansions.”
Oodles of boo hoo out there from the poor one-percenters, with Chas Koch the latest case in point. You can’t do much better, though, than Joan Wash’s take-down at Salon.com, “Billionaires’ crybaby club: Someone get these whiners a bottle!”

David Nather observes in his post on “The Obamacare Enthusiasm Gap” at Politico that “…the task for Democrats is to figure out how to close the enthusiasm gap — and convince their voters that Obamacare should be a voting issue for them, too…The reality is, it’s probably going to be a negative message rather than a positive one. Most Democrats believe they can motivate voters by shifting the conversation to the GOP repeal efforts — warning voters about all the things they’d lose if the law went away…The formula that party strategists had recommended until now — telling candidates to stress that they’ll fix what’s wrong with the law — is not going to work. Instead, they’re saying vulnerable Democrats need to declare that millions of people have coverage now, remind everyone how bad the old system was, and accuse Republicans of wanting to return to it…Liberal Democrats say the “no apologies” strategy is one lesson of the Florida special election this month, in which a weak Republican candidate, David Jolly, won with appeals to anti-Obamacare voters while Democrat Alex Sink lost with the standard “fix what’s bad, keep the good” formula.
At HuffPo Robert Kuttner offers “some thoughts about how to turn Obamacare from lead weight into a political lifeboat for this November.” Kuttner advocates “nationalizing” the mid rem elections: “If Republicans want to make a promise to repeal or de-fund the ACA the centerpiece of this November’s campaign, let’s have that fight and educate Americans on just what repeal would mean. The ACA might even turn into a political winner — or at least not the big loser that it now looks to be…Economists have a nice concept known as “endowment effects.” In plain English, that means people hate to give up what they have. The Republicans have turned that psychology against President Obama, because the ACA requires some really lousy insurance policies to be swapped for better ones that are occasionally more costly…But by November, Obama could turn the psychology of endowment effects back against the Republicans. Do Americans really want to give up their right to get insurance despite being sick?”
And at the L.A. Times Noam M. Levey reports that “At least 9.5 million previously uninsured people have gotten health insurance since Obamacare started” and “Fewer than a million people who had health plans in 2013 are now uninsured because their plans were canceled for not meeting new standards set by the law, the Rand survey indicates.”
If this is in the ballpark, Democratic cheeseheads need some GOTV encouragement, pronto.
From Andrew Kohut’s Wall St. Journal article “The Demographics Behind the Democrats’ 2014 Troubles,” here’s one reason why Democrats should consider campaigning hard against the Republican Party as a whole, instead of just individual candidates, this year: “In Pew’s December survey, 59% rated the GOP unfavorably, while just 35% held a favorable opinion of the party. The Democratic Party’s ratings were not great either, but markedly better–47% favorable versus 48% unfavorable…Democrats have maintained a wide image advantage over Republicans since 2011 when the GOP first threatened to shut down the government over the debt ceiling. The public seems to see Republicans as more likely to take extreme positions and less willing to compromise. Moreover, unfavorable opinions of the tea party have nearly doubled to 49% in 2013 from 25% in 2010, according to Pew’s polling.”
At CNN Politics John King discusses “Inside Politics: Seeds of an Obama political recovery?” King notes that “..Democrats hope to improve their midterm political standing with a push on economic issues with appeal to Democratic base constituency groups — from raising the minimum wage to immigration reform…Broadly, the Democratic push is designed to show, in their view, the Republican obsession with Obamacare has blocked action on a meaningful economic agenda. More narrowly, each of the Democratic priority items is aimed at appealing to a critical midterm constituency, with special emphasis on women, African-Americans and Latinos.”
This should be turned into a nation-wide ad campaign.
Cokie and Steve Roberts also argue “Don’t count out Dems this November,” noting “The Democrats’ best hope for recovery is this: Two large voting blocs, young people and women, actually agree with them on many key issues. The question is whether the party can get past the “bad taste” of Obamacare, and the president’s pallid popularity, and focus attention on those issues…polling numbers on Obamacare are slowly turning around…Democrats retain a huge edge in the technology of politics and the ability to contact — and galvanize — potential supporters…Democrats also retain a large advantage among Hispanic and Asian voters, and Republicans are allowing hard-core conservatives in the House to block immigration reform — a self-defeating position that undercuts GOP attempts to court those groups.”
Ballot measures yes. Usage on election day…maybe not.

Jeremy W. Peters and Michael D. Shear report at The New York Times that “Democrats, as Part of Midterm Strategy, to Schedule Votes on Pocketbook Issues.” The authors explain “The White House and congressional Democrats are preparing to step up attacks on Republicans over pocketbook issues like the minimum wage in the most aggressive and coordinated move yet to try to reverse the Republican momentum that threatens their control of the Senate in the final two years of the Obama presidency…The plan calls for bringing at least 10 different bills to a vote. In addition to the Minimum Wage Fairness Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act, others that are likely to be voted on include a Bring Jobs Home Act that would create tax credits for costs associated with bringing production back to the United States, an act to fund the nation’s infrastructure repair needs and one to make it more difficult to pass laws that raise the Medicare eligibility age.”
At Time magazine Jay Newton-Small explains why, in light of the George Washington University poll noted below: “Democrats are betting on a message of income inequality, which the poll shows is popular with voters. In the survey, Democrats lead Republicans when it comes to voters’ confidence that they’ll stand up for the middle class, 54% to 36%, and on representing middle class values, 52% to 39%.”
Also at the NYT, Jonathan Weisman’s “In Mississippi, It’s G.O.P. vs. Tea Party” probes the “last major battlefield in the clash between the Tea Party and the G.O.P. establishment.”
Bloomberg’s Julie Bykowicz explains how “Kochs, Rove, Chamber Fine-Tune Strategy to Beat Democrats.” Bykowicz rolls out the formula for their victory in FL-13: “The Republican collaboration included a synchronized television- and web-ad plan, a battery of anti-Sink mailers and a last-minute recorded voter appeal by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky to suffocate support for a third-party candidate who threatened to draw votes from Jolly.”
Here’s the major ingredient missing from the recipe for turning the Lone Star state purple, then blue: “In Texas, which is home to nearly one in five of all U.S. Hispanics, just 39 percent of Hispanics who were eligible to vote in the 2012 presidential election cast a ballot. That’s compared with 48 percent of eligible U.S. Hispanics, 61 percent of eligible white Texans and 64 percent of eligible white Americans…Twenty-five percent of Texas Hispanic voters said they were contacted by campaigns or organizations encouraging them to vote in 2012, the report said. The national average was 31 percent…In Texas, where 38 percent of residents are Hispanic, both major political parties are actively pursuing Hispanic voters, 56 percent of whom identified as Democrats in 2012. Hispanics are expected to be a plurality of the state population by 2020.”
Labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan makes a pitch that the time is right for a little voter turnout experiment: “Can’t one blue state, just one of them, try compulsory voting by initiative and see if it sets off a constitutional chain reaction? After all, the states are supposed to be “laboratories for experiment.” That’s why we have 50.”
So, “What If Republicans Capture the Senate?” At The Atlantic Norm Ornstein explains what is at sake, and it’s a horrible scenario: “A winning midterm would encourage the GOP’s worst impulses toward obstruction, hearten the 2016 presidential field, and bottle up Obama nominees…First, the real downside. Start by imagining what the GOP zeitgeist will be if the party picks off six, seven, or eight seats. My guess, the same as after the 2010 midterms: “Man, did that politics of obstruction work like a charm! Let’s double down on it and take the whole enchilada in 2016!”
Geoffrey Skelley argues at Sabato’s Crystal Ball that “Democrats’ increased reliance on young voters may lead them to struggle in midterm elections in the near future…Since the first national exit poll was taken for a midterm election in 1978, only once (in that first survey) has the 18-to-29 age group made up a larger portion of a midterm electorate than voters who were 60 or older…While Obama’s reelection in 2012 proved that Democrats can make up ground with strong support from the youngest voting cohort, the party could not turn those supporters out in 2010 and probably won’t be able to in 2014 either, given the historical pattern.”
A new World Health Organization report, flagged by Hunter at Kos, indicates that 1 out of every 8 deaths is caused by pollution. Since Republicans have no anti-pollution policies and embrace knee-jerk deregulation, Democrats might be able get some traction by making them explain how they would address this crisis.

At NPR.org, Maria Liasson reports in “Democrats Count On The Fine Art Of Field Operations” that “The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is planning a massive investment to address that problem. It plans to spend $60 million to hire 4,000 staffers in the most competitive Senate race states. The goal is ambitious: to make the midterm electorate — which tends to skew older, whiter and more Republican — look more like a presidential year electorate: younger, browner, and with more single women. In short: more Democratic.” Liasson quotes Sasha Issenberg, the author of The Victory Lab: “Everything we know from basically 15 years of field experiments shows that high-quality, face-to-face contacts for a volunteer living in the same community as the voter is the best way to turn somebody out…So there is a road map to doing this. But it is expensive and it takes a lot of staff, and a lot offices and infrastructures to recruit and train those volunteers.”
Mark Sappenfield’s ‘DC Decoder’ post, “Nate Silver’s new Senate forecast could terrify Democrats into action (+video)” at The Monitor says that Silver’s statement that the odds favor a Republican takeover of the Senate in November may actually help Dems hold the Senate because “Democratic operatives have found that the most effective way to get a potential donor to open an e-mail is to put Silver’s name in the subject line, according to a report by National Journal’s Scott Bland…”
Drew Westen’s “A Southern Strategy for Democrats” in the Washington Post offers an interesting observation about addressing racial politics: “Too often, Democrats have dealt with racial issues by avoiding them. Research shows that’s the wrong strategy, particularly in the South. Speaking directly about race allows our conscious values — which tend to be intolerant of racial intolerance, even in the heart of Dixie — to override our unconscious prejudices, which control our behavior when we’re not looking, or when other people aren’t, as in the voting booth. The best way to handle this kind of dog-whistle politics is to expose it for what it is…A successful political message that addresses race or any other divisive issue tends to have three components. The first is a value-laden statement that connects with most voters, making clear that the candidate cares about people like them and understands their ambivalence. The second is a statement raising a concern that makes the average person anxious or angry enough to want to do something about the issue. The third is a statement of hope, wedded to a solution, which suggests that the problem is solvable in a way that reflects the values and interests of ordinary voters.”
Kimberly Beller’s Liberty Voice post “Red State Women: Propaganda for the 3rd Millennium,” illuminates the GOP’s women’s group — and the Repubican men behind it — tasked with defeating Wendy Davis’s bid for Governor of Texas.
Ashley Parker reports in the New York Times that ” Senate Majority PAC, a group that supports Democratic Senate candidates, is preparing a $3 million advertising campaign against Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch…The group’s effort will last for roughly two weeks and span five states — Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan and North Carolina.”
MSNBC’s Steve Benen reports on how a Canadian hospital president, Dr. Danielle Martin made Republican Sen. Richard Burr eat his smirk…Maybe you should see it for yourself:

At the Hill Brent Budowsky explains how “Dems can win O-Care war“: “Will Democratic athletes, movie stars, television stars, rock stars and best-selling novelists fight for the future of their country as hard as the Koch brothers and the Chamber of Commerce? They will — if they are asked. Can they move the market, increase sign-ups and inform voters of the benefits of ObamaCare? They can — if they try…Democrats today have their backs against the wall. They need to think big, take names and kick butt. If the president extends the enrollment deadline and the all-out war against ObamaCare is answered by the full force and power of the Democratic world, the battle of ideas will be won, the Democratic base will be roused and the elections of 2014 will be saved for Democrats.”
The Libertarian fantasy of charity as the best way for a modern society to address social problems is consigned to its rightful place on the dungheap of history by Mike Konczal at Democracy, flagged by E. J. Dionne, Jr.
Re CREATIONISTS DEMAND AIRTIME ON ‘COSMOS’ FOR THE SAKE OF SCIENTIFIC BALANCE: AUDIO, no, it is not a parody from The Onion.