From E.J. Dionne, Jr.’s column on the Murray-Ryan budget deal: “The bad news is not only that the proposal unconscionably lets unemployment insurance lapse for millions, which will cost the economy some 300,000 jobs next year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It also comes very close to enforcing a spending freeze after this year….This is not a good deal. It is, at best, a necessary deal, given the alternatives available in a political system whose priorities have been twisted away from the needs of the struggling majority. It’s this majority that has to make the noise

Dem oppo researchers should check out the Winter 2014 issue of Democracy Journal, which includes insightful articles about the current clout of the tea party. As editor Michael Tomasky explains in his introduction to the issue: “Theda Skocpol tells us why the movement has some staying power. Alan Abramowitz shows why the GOP leadership won’t cut it loose any time soon. Christopher Parker weighs in on whether, and how, the movement might outlast President Obama. Sean Wilentz enters the debate over its historical roots. Leslie Gelb and Michael Kramer consider the Tea Partiers’ impact on Republican internationalism and U.S. foreign policy. And Dave Weigel weighs the chances of a Tea Party candidate winning the 2016 GOP nomination.”

According to a new AP/GfK poll conducted 12/5-9, “Democrats have a slim edge as the party Americans would prefer to control Congress, 39 percent to 33 percent. But a sizable 27 percent say it doesn’t matter who’s in charge.”

A Gallup Poll conducted 12/5-8 found that “The Republican Party’s favorability has improved slightly to 32% from an all-time low of 28% in October during the government shutdown, while 61% now view the GOP unfavorably. The Democratic Party — on the defensive recently for the flawed rollout of the healthcare website — maintains a favorable rating of 42%. But a majority of Americans, 53%, now see the party unfavorably, up from 49% in October.”
David Freedlander’s Daily Beast post “It’s DINO Hunting Season as the Democrats Gird for Their Own Civil War” spotlights and probably overstates the divisive potential of the rift between Dem progressives and conservatives.

But Richard Eskow of the Campaign for America’s Future argues at HuffPo that “It’s a fight to determine whether that party will represent the public’s interests unsparingly in the years to come, or will continue to be swayed by corporate interests.”

This Third Way study doesn’t indicate that Dems have a lot to worry about in terms of attrition in voter registration, with a 1 percent overall decline. But it does spotlight some key states where Dems have slipped and must do better, including PA, NH, NC and FL.

The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent provides a couple of perceptive observations: “Here’s a point that keeps getting lost…Inequality is already a disproportionally huge issue among Democratic base voters, and they believe overwhelmingly that government can — and should — do something about it…A new poll captures this nicely. The Bloomberg survey found that huge majorities of Americans say the U.S. no longer offers everyone an equal shot, and that the gap between the rich and the rest is getting bigger….if Dems can keep the focus on actual policies in response to GOP screams of “class warfare” (a war cry that seems to make centrist Dems quake in fear), inequality could prove more favorable political turf for them.”

Chri Cillizza’s post “The best campaign of 2013” offers this interesting observation about mobilizing women voters in the McAuliffe campaign for VA Governor: “…the McAuliffe campaign invested heavily (and early) in efforts to turn out drop-off female voters as well as those in the black community and those aged 18-29.”Our drop-off universe was disproportionately young, disproportionately minority, very heavily disproportionately female. But particularly young people, and particularly younger women, the way you get them is over the Internet,” McAuliffe campaign manager Robby Mook told Reid.”

Just to set the record straight, not all of those Republicans now saying nice things about Mandela supported his cause when it counted, as Jordan Michael Smith reports in his New Republic post, “All the Terrible Things Republicans Used to Say About Nelson Mandela: Reaganites called him a terrorist and a phony.” Smith points out that Reagan put Mandela on the “terrorist” list and Cheney also called Mandela a terrorist, while Norquist supported the apartheid government.
Now that the Obamacare website is functioning well, Republicans are shifting their attack meme to highlight cases in which individual policy-holders are paying more to get less under the ACA, report Bloomberg’s Mike Dorning, Derek Wallbank and Alex Wayne.
But Bloomberg’s John McCormick explains why “Angry Self-Insured Voters Dim Democratic House Takeover Strategy.” McCormick notes “… House Democrats represent more than a third of the districts with above-average proportions of residents who get health insurance through individual policies, Census Bureau data compiled by Bloomberg shows.” The article goes on to note cases in which some of these policy-holder end up paying more and getting less, but it’s unclear what percentage of self-insured are having this experience.
From Ari Berman’s The Nation post (via Moyers & Company) “Ohio GOP Resurrects Voter Suppression Efforts“: “…Ohio Republicans are once again resurrecting efforts to make it harder to vote. Last month, the GOP-controlled Ohio Senate, on a party-line vote, voted to cut early voting by a week, eliminating the “Golden Week” when Ohioans can register and vote on the same day during the early voting period (Senate Bill 238). The legislation was introduced and passed in one week, with almost no time for substantive debate. The Senate also passed a bill preventing the secretary of state or individual counties from mailing absentee ballots to all eligible voters unless the legislature provides the money, which they are unlikely to do (Senate Bill 205)…These restrictions — and additional measures being considered by the legislature — have the potential to impact millions of voters in the Buckeye State: 600,000 Ohioans voted early in 2012, more than 10 percent of the state’s electorate and 1.25 million voted by mail, 22 percent of the electorate.”
The first fruits of filibuster reform will soon ripen, as Timothy M. Phelps reports in his L.A. Times article “Filibuster rule’s end should help Obama reshape a key court.” As Phelps explains “On Monday, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to cast a historic vote to confirm Patricia Millett, an experienced Supreme Court advocate and taekwondo black belt, as a judge on the second-most powerful court in the land, tipping that court’s balance of power to Democrats for the first time in nearly three decades.”
Beth Reinhard asks a good question at the National Journal: “Can Democrats Make 2014 About the Minimum Wage?” She notes “…Democrats see the opening that Garcia and other low-income, typically Republican voters appear to be offering on the issue. A Gallup poll last month pegged support for raising the minimum wage at 76 percent and found majority support across the board, including Republicans (58 percent), whites (72 percent) and southerners (80 percent)…”It’s almost like political malpractice not to push the minimum wage at this time,” said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank that hosted Obama’s speech on income inequality.”
DCCC head Rep. Steve Israel marshals a shrewd argument in favor of the Undetectable Firearms Act, which is being opposed by the NRA and Republicans: “I can’t understand why anybody would want to make it easier and more convenient for bad guys and criminals to smuggle plastic guns onto airplanes…To me, this is the consummate example of common sense.”
Here’s a disturbing Reuters report that “Democrats wouldn’t reject U.S. budget deal over jobless aid: senator” by Caren Bohan and Aruna Viswanatha.
At The Nation Reed Richardson has a brutal critique of Third Way centrism in the wake of their latest round of liberal-bashing: “So if Third Way really doesn’t offer much besides run-of-the-mill Republican-lite boilerplate,why does it merit any media oxygen in the first place? The question, essentially, answers itself–Third Way’s corporate-heavy, economic austerity agenda dovetails with the likes of the Beltway media’s “pain caucus.” That an ineffectual advocacy outfit like Third Way can still command a healthy pick of establishment op-ed perches is no coincidence. In its 2012 tracking study of think-tank citations, media watchdog FAIR found centrist and conservative groups overwhelmingly dominated. Only two center-left–and no progressive groups–cracked the top 10. (And true to its word, the academically lightweight Third Way didn’t even make the list.)”

It appears that some of the chaps at The Third Way have overestimated their cred as critics of liberalism, along with their assessment of thoughtful voters’ appetite for ad hominem attacks.
In her Daily Kos post, “Social Security expansion now very real. Thanks, Third Way!,” Joan McCarter explains:

Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-PA.), honorary co-chair of Third Way and gubenatorial candidate, is now a cosponsor of a bill to expand Social Security. That’s after Third Way president Jon Cowan, Jim Kessler, the group’s senior vice president for policy called the legislation “exhibit A of this populist political and economic fantasy.” The “fantasy” that is going to doom, DOOM, Democrats. Of course, Schwartz isn’t leaving Third Way. And she’s also coming pretty late to the “expand Social Security” party.
…Schwartz isn’t running on that, on her pro-austerity, cut Social Security record, but is instead essentially repudiating it. Not just that, she’s now embracing that “populist political and economic fantasy” that Third Way swears is political ruin for any Democrat. Go figure.
When Sen. Sherrod Brown signed on to the bill to expand Social Security, it made news. It gave the movement real momentum. When Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined the team it catapulted the issue into what could be a centerpiece in the 2014 and 2016.
And that’s what put Third Way and the whole world of Wall Street “Democrats” into panic mode, coordinating a full-frontal assault against her and this issue. That assault has fallen completely flat. Nothing proves that more than Allyson Schwartz’s name on the Strengthening Social Security Act.
So thanks, Third Way! Now we’ve got ourselves a real rallying point for real Democrats.

The Third Way’s populist-bashing seems tethered to a long-dead template, which mistakenly assumes that most voters are ideologues who actually care where candidates fit on political spectra. As Paul Waldman puts it in his Politico post, “Left Turn = Dead End?Why class warfare won’t defeat Hillary in 2016“:

The real question isn’t so much whether there’s ideological room to stake out on Clinton’s left flank–there certainly is–but whether another candidate could capture the liberal imagination the way Obama did in 2008. Part of the problem is that when your party is in power, the hunger for victory doesn’t gnaw nearly so intensely at your gut as when you’re on the outside. Liberals felt a powerful combination of anger and hope in 2008, but today their sentiments are a much quieter mix of defensiveness and disappointment. The president they elected then has done some admirable things, but his second term is likely to be defined largely by defending those gains and fending off an increasingly reckless GOP. It’s necessary work, but it’s not the kind of thing you write songs about.
Obama might have been the liberals’ choice in the 2008 primaries, but it wasn’t because he was the most liberal. It was because he embodied almost everything liberals wanted in a candidate, most of which had little to do with ideology. He was new and fresh, multiracial and cosmopolitan, and untainted by the compromises and cowardice Democrats saw their party gripped by in the previous decade.
Most of all, Obama made voters understand what a vote for him said about them. If you were an Obama supporter, you were supposed to be forward-thinking, creative, optimistic, courageous and youthful. (That was the genius, for instance, of hip-hop artist will.i.am’s viral campaign video.) It wasn’t too different from the marketing message that has worked so well for Apple, and after feeling beaten down for eight years, it was just what liberals wanted.
It’s possible that another Democratic politician could make people feel something like that again, even with the idealism of the 2008 Obama campaign ground down in the messy reality of governing. Some believed Elizabeth Warren could be that candidate, and no one has spoken more often or more eloquently about inequality in recent years than the Massachusetts senator. But Warren now says she isn’t going to run (though, of course, she could change her mind). There might well be a governor or senator out there who could emerge as a liberal champion, but if so, whoever it is is lying low at the moment.

As for the Third Way’s cred in the wake of their Warren-bashing, Paul Krugman says it well in his “Pathetic Centrists” post:

I mean, going after Warren and de Blasio for not being willing to cut Social Security and their “staunch refusal to address the coming Medicare crisis” ??? Even aside from the question of exactly what the mayor of New York has to do with Medicare, this sounds as if they have been living in a cave for years, maybe reading an occasional screed from the Pete Peterson complex.
On Social Security, they’re still in the camp insisting that because the system might possibly have to pay lower benefits in the future, we must move now to cut future benefits. Oh, kay.
But anyway, they declare that Medicare is the bigger issue. So what’s this about “staunch refusal” to address Medicare? The Affordable Care Act contains lots of measures to limit Medicare costs and health care more generally — it’s Republicans, not progressive Democrats, who have been screaming against cost-saving measures (death panels!). And health cost growth has slowed dramatically, feeding into much better Medicare projections…
…So what does Third Way think it would mean to “address the Medicare crisis”? They don’t say. But my strong guess is that they mean raising the Medicare age; living in their cave, they probably haven’t gotten the memo (literally) from CBO concluding that raising that age would hardly save any money.
It’s just so tired and tiring. If being a “centrist” means fact-free denunciations of progressives for not being willing to cut entitlements, who needs these guys?

None of this is to disparage the legitimate role of political centrists in the Democratic party’s internal debates. But next time they pop off, Third Way polemicists might try bringing their ‘A game,’ and give the juvenile liberal-bashing a rest.

Writers all over the world are today mining their stock of superlatives to honor Nelson Mandela. And there have been many musical tributes to Mandela. Senegalese super-star Youssou N’dour did an entire album in tribute to him, and numerous artists have recorded songs honoring Mandela, including Nickleback, Johnie Clegg, Raffi, Elvis Costello, Dolores Keane, Christy Moore, Hugh Masekela, Zahara and many other African musicians. Probably the biggest global hit was “Free Nelson Mandela” by The Special AKA from Coventry U.K., which goes like this:

GOP strategist Ed Rogers worries at WaPo that Democrats could well benefit from stock market and oil booms, and be sitting pretty come next November.
Elizabeth Warren says she is not running for president, and The Fix’s Sean Sullivan explains some of the reasons why.
…And Esquire’s Charles Pierce channels a little Gore Vidal to explain (via Reader Supported News) why that’s a good thing.
At Real Clear Politics, Sean Trende analyzes “Democrats’ 2013 Drop-Off Problem” and what it might mean for 2014. “What does this mean for 2014? Possibly nothing. There is a lot of football left to be played, the president’s job approval rating could rally significantly, the Democrats could become enthused, and drop-off could become a non-issue…But if that doesn’t happen, Democrats have a real headache coming on. Let’s assume they can expect a drop-off of four to five points from Obama’s 2012 performance, all other things being equal. Twenty-eight House Democrats occupy seats where Obama won less than 55 percent of the vote…”
Kyle Kondik notes at Sabato’s CrystalBall that “Late filing deadlines give Republicans a chance to find better candidates in places where they’re lacking.” Same is true for Dems, however.
A new poll of 2,089 18- to 29-year-olds, which was conducted online by GfK between Oct. 30 and Nov. 11 by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics suggests Dems need a better Obamacare pitch to young voters. As Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports at the News York Times, “A solid majority, 56 percent, disapproved of the law when it was called the Affordable Care Act. Just 17 percent said the measure would improve the quality of health care; 78 percent said quality would either stay the same or get worse. Half said the law would increase costs, while 46 percent said costs would decrease or stay the same.”
Be that as it may, Tracy Seiple reports at the San Jose Mercury-News that “The startling finding by the Public Policy Institute of California says that young and healthy people are overwhelmingly more likely to seek health insurance than older and sicker people…The PPIC numbers on young people who plan on signing up for insurance appear to mimic an early analysis by Covered California, the state’s online health exchange, that trumpeted its first-month enrollment figure of 30,830 people, including 6,900 who are between 18 and 34.”
Mark Blumenthal and Ariel Edwards-Levy point out at HuffPollster: “In a CNN poll released in November, opinion on the health care bill was split among those aged 18 to 34, with 48 percent supporting the law, 33 percent opposing it because it was too liberal, and 12 percent because it was not liberal enough. Younger Americans were also more optimistic on the law’s prospects. Just 25 percent in that age group called the law a failure, compared with 40 percent or more in older age groups. Seventy-one percent said the law’s problems would be solved, while 50 percent or fewer of older Americans predicted they would.”
One of the most potentially-powerful, but most underutilized message points Dems could use more aggressively to mobilize young voters against the GOP is conservatives’ unflagging assault on the environment, nicely documented in “ALEC calls for penalties on ‘freerider’ homeowners in assault on clean energy” by The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg and Ed Pilkington.

The National Journal’s Shane Goldmacher asks an important question about the 2014 elections, “Can Democrats Still Win With a Women-Centered Strategy?” Subtitled “Democrats want 2014 to be a Year of the Woman (and women’s issues), betting that the GOP’s 2012 gender gap holds for another cycle,” Goldmacher’s post adds some clarity to the discussion about Democratic grand strategy for the 2014 campaign.
Democrats are appropriately nervous about the relatively low non-presidential year turnout of their key constituencies and the correspondingly high voting percentages of the more pro-GOP demographic groups. Historical patterns are hard to deny, and it’s an uphill argument to counter that 2014 will somehow be different. Yet some unusual trends emerged during the last year, including rock-bottom approval ratings for the GOP, which includes a sharp downturn among senior voters, who tend to lead off-year turnout percentages.
Then there is the GOP shutdown wild card, which many believe will be largely forgotten a year from now. But Democrats might pick up a small number of seats with some well-targeted reminders, and the explosive growth of Latino voters should also help contain the Republicans’ expected gains. Dems hope, further, that gridlock fatigue and an economic uptick in the coming months will also give them enough of an edge to hold the senate and cut deep into the GOP majority in the House.
Many believe, however, that the Republicans’ rapidly declining support among women could be the pivotal factor next November. As Goldmacher notes,

The Democratic Party is hoping 2014 will be a Year of the Woman–again…As party operatives prepare for the 2014 midterm elections, Democratic women are being cast in starring roles, on the ballot and at the ballot box, as the party tries to take back politically important governor’s mansions and keep its fragile majority in the Senate.
“The importance of women to the Democratic Party in 2014 cannot be overstated,” said Jess McIntosh, a spokeswoman for EMILY’s List, which recruits and supports Democratic women candidates. “They are running in our biggest, most important races in the country.”

Goldmacher notes that Democrats are fielding some strong women candidates in high-profile state-wide races in 2014, including Wendy Davis (TX Gov.) Alison Lundergan Grimes (KY Senate), Mary Burke (WI Gov.), Allyson Schwartz (PA Gov), Michelle Nunn (GA Senate) and Natalie Tennant (WV Senate). Democratic strategists “believe the slate of prominent women on the 2014 ballot will make the contrast with Republicans all the clearer ,” says Goldmacher.
He warns, however, that Democratic U.S. Senators Landrieu and Hagan hold two of the most endangered seats being heavily-targeted by Republicans, and GA, WV and KY remain tough states for Democratic candidates. The GOP is fielding some women candidates as well, but most of them seem lackluster in comparison to Democratic women candidates, like Wendy Davis. Further, ads Goldmacher,

The recent victory of Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor’s race showed that issues of abortion and contraception remain salient. McAuliffe bombarded the airwaves on those topics en route to running up his margin of victory among unmarried women voters to 42 percentage points, according to exit polling.
“It’s a deep problem for the Republicans,” said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
The Supreme Court’s announcement last week that it will take up a case about whether employers may refuse to provide contraceptive coverage means that the volatile issue of birth control again will be injected in the midst of the 2014 campaign. The case will be decided in the middle of next year.
Democrats have made plain that the “war on women” playbook will be key to their efforts to unseat McConnell. Last week, Grimes rolled out the endorsement of Lilly Ledbetter, the namesake of the pay-equity law signed by Obama, and her campaign issued a memo on women’s issues, noting that Grimes is an “advocate for women” and would be “Kentucky’s first female United States senator.”

While reproductive rights are key concerns of women in general and unmarried women in particular, women candidates are addressing the full range of socio-economic concerns that influence swing voters, including men. “There are lots of reasons women make great candidates,” [Democratic pollster Anna] Greenberg said. “It’s not because they can just talk about abortion.”
Goldmacher notes that “men also can appeal to women voters on traditionally women’s issues,” and adds:

…McAuliffe is the latest example. Anna Greenberg…noted that television ads about abortion, birth-control access or defunding Planned Parenthood aired in nearly every competitive congressional race last cycle, whether the contest featured a Democratic women against a Republican man, or vice versa.

While some pundits have noted that the gender gap is racial in that most white women voters have voted for Republicans in recent elections, the percentage is still significantly less than for white men. And McAuliffe’s stunning margin of victory among unmarried women in a bellwether state also underscores the wisdom of Democrats recruiting more women candidates and male candidates who can address issues of concern to women voters in a positive way.
At present 10 percent of Republican House and Senate members are women, compared to 25 percent of all Democratic members of both houses, according to the congressional record. In 2012, “Of the more than 1700 women serving in state legislatures, roughly 60 percent are members of the Democratic Party,” reports the Center for American Women and Politics.
In the last non-presidential election year, 2010, the gender gap favoring Democratic candidates was “more widespread in this election than in any other,” said Susan J. Carroll, a senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics. “Typically, we see gender gaps in about two-thirds of all statewide races. This year we saw gender gaps in all but a couple of contests,” despite significant Republican gains nationwide. With respect to House races, 49% of women compared with 42% of men voted for Democratic candidates in their districts.

According to “Obamacare Impact on Virginia Vote Steers Strategy in 2014” by Bloomberg’s Julie Hirschfeld Davis & John McCormick, quoting McAuliffe pollster Geoff Garin: “Cuccinelli’s focus on the health-care measure had “actually been counterproductive,” even with voters who disapproved of the law. It solidified their view that he was an ideological candidate with a national agenda that had nothing to do with Virginia, said Garin.”
Craig Harrington and Albert Kleine explore how “How Print And Broadcast Media Are Hiding Obamacare’s Success In Controlling Costs.”
At The Atlantic Richard Florida explains why “The Suburbs Are the New Swing States.As Florida puts it, “…The key political footballs – the new “swing states,” so to speak – are the swelling ranks of economically distressed suburbs, where poverty has been growing and where the economic crisis hit especially hard. There are now more poor people living in America’s suburbs than its center cities, and as a recent Brookings Institution report found, both Republican and Democratic districts have been affected by this reality.”
Salon.com’s Micheal Lind discusses “How to beat libertarians on the economy: While the right is united economically behind one main agenda, the left lacks such a consensus. Here’s the solution.”
Zachary A. Goldfarb reports at Washington Post Politics on why “More liberal, populist movement emerging in Democratic Party ahead of 2016 elections.” Says Goldfarb, “The arena where the populist push is likely to play out most clearly is in the nascent 2016 presidential campaign. [Sen. Elizabeth} Warren is the object of admiration among liberals, drawing huge audiences for her speeches. She has said she doesn’t plan to run for president, but she hasn’t made a firm commitment to stay out of the race…”
Kelly S. Kennedy writes at the Tucson Citizen that “States’ numbers will likely tell HealthCare.gov’s story” better than the federal exchange website. “There are a lot more resources available in the states that are doing their own exchange,” [Urban Institute Fellow Stan] Dorn said. Those states received federal funds to market their exchanges…And, he said, it’s easier for one state to handle marketing, technology and enrollment for just one exchange than it is for the federal government to manage all of those issues for the 35 states that chose not to create state-based exchanges.”
At The New York Times, Jeremy W. Peters reports that “Abortion Cases in Court Helped Tilt Democrats Against the Filibuster.” As Peters explains, “Very quickly and unexpectedly, abortion and contraceptive rights became the decisive factor in the filibuster fight. First there were the two coincidentally timed decisions out of Texas and Washington. Then momentum to change the rules reached a critical mass when Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California and a defender of abortion rights, decided to put aside her misgivings, in large part because the recent court action was so alarming to her, Democrats said.”
At The Plumline, Ryan Cooper explains why “Dems should not hesitate to further streamline the Senate rulebook,” and punctuates his argument with a simple point: “if Republicans continue to use procedural tricks to block the nomination process. Republicans will not be so generous when the tables are turned.”
Obama’s field director Jeremy Bird has a TNR post discussing how Dems can improve turnout, noting that “We Can’t Just Play Defense on Voting Access. It’s Time to Make Voting Easier.”

At Daily Kos, David Nir spotlights a tough strategic challenge facing Democrats: GOP/NRA successes in recalling Democratic state legislators. Here’s Nir on the most recent incident in Colorado:

… In the face of a likely recall election, Democratic state Sen. Evie Hudak has opted to resign, a move that short-circuits the recall effort. A Hudak loss would have handed control of the Senate to Republicans, who are now just one seat shy of the majority following two successful recalls of other Democratic lawmakers earlier this year. Now, however, the recall won’t take place, and Democrats will be able to appoint a replacement (though that person will have to seek re-election in 2014, whereas Hudak would have served until 2016).
Hudak’s decision, while highly unusual, isn’t actually that surprising, and we discussed this very possibility when news of a new recall drive first emerged. Hudak’s seat is only light blue, and she won both of her prior races by very narrow margins, plus she was also term-limited. Given the ugly dropoff in Democratic turnout in the prior recalls, she’d have been looking at steep odds. Instead, she decided to truly take one for the team…But while Democrats will retain their majority, the gun activists who have forced and threatened all of these recalls can claim another victim….

Nir adds that there are many more vulnerable seats held by Dems in state legislatures, though it remains an open question, whether the Colorado recall template will work in less NRA-friendly purple districts. Nir concludes with a challenging question for Dems regarding 2014:

…This falloff in Democratic performance in non-presidential races is a deeply disturbing phenomenon, given that it’s now gone so far as to turn lawmakers out of office without even conducting an election! Who out there is working on fixing this?

There are lots of strategic possibilities worth discussing in answering the question, including more assertive opposition to the NRA, which functions a tool of the GOP and putting more resources into off-year turnout mobilization. Dems must also focus on getting a bigger share of the pivotal senior vote in non-presidential years, especially since polls indicate that they are turning off to the GOP.
Nir notes elsewhere that at least one Republican has voiced concern that the recall strategy could backfire, as it did on Dems in Wisconsin. That may be a concern. But so far the GOP has succeeded in dumping three Dem legislators in CO.
Control of the state legislatures has been key to GOP gerrymandering in recent years. It’s hard enough to get Democrats elected in swing districts. But now Dems must formulate a workable strategy to defeat GOP/NRA recall campaigns.

At Talking Points Memo, TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore’s “It’s The Fundamentals, Stupid: Elections Aren’t Determined By Short-Term ‘Game Changes’” puts some needed perspective on all of the jockeying for ’14 and ’16: “…a lot of the breathless and widely gyrating prognosticating we’ve been hearing lately really revolves around whether a lame-duck president is dealing with a Republican Senate or with a Democratic Senate in which Republicans hold an effective veto power via the filibuster (barring a full “nuking” of minority obstruction by Democrats, which remains highly unlikely). And as for the 2016 presidential contest, you’d be better advised to watch those boring “fundamentals” for clues to the outcome than any short-term changes in a game that has barely even begun. You know: fundamentals like the economy, and what the Affordable Care Act looks like this time two years from now.”
Matthew O’Brien’s post, “The Singular Waste of America’s Healthcare System in 1 Remarkable Chart” at The Atlantic has a good graphic to show people who are undecided about the need for health care reform how inefficient the current U.S. system is, compared to other health care systems in developed nations.
You go to YouTube and type “Obamacare ads” in the search window, and you get about 98K hits. My quickie scan suggests that 90 percent of them are negative, thanks most likely to the Koch brothers and other hidden funding sources. Obamacare supporters need more and better ads, which ought to be doable, considering all of the people who have benefitted by the ACA.
In similar vein, Media Matters for America’s “How The GOP Uses Network News To Discredit Obama” by Tyler Hansen, Olivia Marshall and Samantha Wyatt provides an instructive read for Democratic media strategists.
Esquire’s political ace Charles Pierce has another great post, this one on “The Nuclear Fallout” (via Reader Supported News), which notes “There are no moderate Republicans any more. There is no bipartisan solution because one party is not interested in governing the country if the people are silly enough to vote for a president that party doesn’t like. (This, it should be said, is something that the newly feisty Harry Reid should explain to “moderate” Democrats like Joe Manchin and Mark Pryor, of whom it already is being said will hold the “balance of power” in the new Senate order. You will do what the leadership tells you on the big-ticket items — which include judges — or you will find out what life is like on the Post Office Commitee.) In almost every poll, the American public is crying out for solutions, and most of them are solutions supported by this president and by the Democratic majority in the Senate. This is what the Republicans determined to block. Now, it’s harder for them to do it. If they don’t act to wring the crazy out of their party, then the president and his party should use every legal means available to do it for them. It’s time for constituent services in the districts that elect the crazy people to suddenly feel the pinch of reduced resources. It’s time to get very tough on voting rights.”
In his excellent msnbc.com round-up, “With eye on 2014, GOP ramps up war on voting,” Zachary Roth observes that “In the 10 months since President Obama created a bipartisan panel to address voting difficulties, 90 restrictive voting bills have been introduced in 33 states. So far, nine have become law, according to a recent comprehensive roundup by the Brennan Center for Justice – but others are moving quickly through statehouses.”
Conservative columnist Diana West argues that Republicans should ignore distractions like the gender gap and focus on turning out their strongest demographic, married, middle income voters. West crunches numbers in the recent Virginia elections and 2012 and concludes, “In other words, middle-income and married Americans are Republican strongholds. Eureka! Here is where Republicans can find winning margins by turning out more of these traditional voters — as many as humanly possible.” If Dems can keep up their current fund-raising edge, perhaps their best tactic to bust this GOP strategy is to buy up ad time/space on media popular with this demographic.
Nonetheless, Hotline on Call’s Alex Roarty’s “Why Democrats Are Accusing Mitch McConnell of Sexism” has Dems anchoring their Kentucky strategy for taking Mitch McConnel’s seat to his opposition to the Violence Against Women Act.
The Michigan Republican Party will launch its new African American Engagement Office in Detroit on December 6 to improve on the two percent of the vote their presidential nominee received in the city in 2012. Sen. Rand Paul, critic of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the 50th anniversary of which which will be feted extensively over the next year) and son of a U.S. congressmen who has allowed overt racism in his newsletter, will reportedly headline the grand opening. What could go wrong?

The assassination of President Kennedy had a transformational effect on the nation and world, even more so for those of us who lived in Washington, D.C. at the time. In 1963 the nation’s capitol was always abuzz about all things Kennedy. JFK brought charm, sparkle and unbridled optimism to what was otherwise a sleepy southern city, more accustomed to the yawner days of the Eisenhower Administration, along with some dark, lingering vestiges of McCarthyism.
On top of all that, my Dad, who was born the same year as President Kennedy, was a fierce JFK defender from the get-go. Anyone who uttered the slightest criticism of our president (or FDR) was quickly lambasted as an idiot. He, along with most of our neighbors seemed shattered by the assassination, and even as a 16-year old, I could feel the city’s palpable anxiety about what would happen now. What was going to happen to that youthful spirit, the call to service and the sense of great possibilities that JFK embodied? No one seemed to know.
You didn’t sense any fear that the country was going to collapse – LBJ’s take-charge persona seemed to preclude any immanent disaster. But there was a feeling that the hopeful and optimistic spirit we had come to take for granted was suddenly gone, and it completely evaporated rather quickly. For my generation, the downer was somewhat softened by mid-sixties cultural excitement the Beatles generated, but the political atmosphere was nonetheless darkened.

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