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.

The Massachusetts House of Reps has passed what looks like a model early voting bill, and the state senate and Governor are expected to approve it. OK, it’s Massachusetts, but could it be that early voting is one of those issues that could sway some fed-up seniors to vote Democratic? There must be a lot of seniors out there who are disgusted by Republican attempts to crush early voting because it is such a blatant attempt to thwart democracy and because early voting is a valued convenience, especially for seniors. Dems should test a few ads exploring this angle on senior focus groups.
Zach Carter’s HuffPo article “Austerity Fetishists Are Finally Giving Up” reports that “American deficit hawks gathered in the nation’s capital on Wednesday to commiserate over the collapse of the U.S. austerity movement, solemnly hobnobbing with political royalty to reminisce about the days when slashing Social Security seemed all but inevitable” and cites “a growing recognition that, just as in Mellon’s day, out-of-control finance may actually be a greater threat to America’s bottom line than greedy geezers.”
Illinois Rep Jan Schakowsky notes an encouraging development: “The NAACP and the Leadership Council on Civil Rights are going to be conducting a ‘Freedom Summer and Fall’ and start doing recruiting and training and dispatching and organizing and publicity around this idea of getting people out to vote,” Schakowsky said. “Anywhere there are these barriers to voting, to physically help people get over them.”
Leave it to the Big Dog to nail Rove with a well-crafted zinger in response to the GOP strategist’s sleazy pitch to raise questions about Hillary Clinton’s health: “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds . . . First they say she faked her concussion; now they say she’s auditioning for a part on ‘The Walking Dead’!”
And at The Daily Beast Michael Tomasky weighs in with his post, “Karl Rove May Be Evil, but He’s No Genius,” noting the “mind-boggling overestimation of Karl Rove’s brilliance,” and adding that “…In 2000…I mean, his candidate didn’t even really win. Then came 2004….all he did then was (barely) reelect an incumbent. Just two incumbents going back to FDR lost their reelection bids while eight won them, so that’s a pretty low bar for genius…Then came the truly dark period, the one that should have pulverized his reputation forever, when Rove told his president to go out and promote Social Security privatization, which sank like a stone. This while Rove was talking up a “permanent conservative majority” and world-historic realignment, even though all he and his president’s failures managed to do was turn the Senate and the House Democratic in 2006 and then pave the way for the country’s rejection of John McCain and embrace of Barack Obama. Rove is a so-so political strategist, a corrupt trickster going back to college, and a venal and wholly unprincipled man who once orchestrated a whisper campaign that an Alabama judge who did admirable work with youngsters was a pedophile. And on top of all that, he’s just not that smart, as proved on Election Night 2012, when he made a world-class asshole out of himself over Ohio.”
In her NYT Upshot post “Democrats Are Unified; G.O.P. Is Unified Only in Opposing Obama,” Allison Kopicki marshals a credible argument and makes her case with revealing examples. She may be overstating GOP divisions a bit, however, because many of the so-called ‘establishment’ Republicans have simply absorbed and now parrot tea party values.
Democratic candidates and campaign workers should mine Nicholas Kristoff’s NYT op-ed “It’s Now the Canadian Dream” for nuggets such as: “A Danish child is twice as likely to rise as an American child…The top 1 percent in America now own assets worth more than those held by the entire bottom 90 percent… The six Walmart heirs are worth as much as the bottom 41 percent of American households put together…the American worker toils, on average, 4.6 percent more hours than a Canadian worker, 21 percent more hours than a French worker and an astonishing 28 percent more hours than a German worker, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.”
Good to see that the British Labour party is now tapping into the strategic insights of David Axelrod and Stan Greenberg.
John Oliver’s not-for-the-squeamish, side-splitting goof on Kentucky political ads in the Grimes-McConnell U.S. Senate race is at the moment only available to HBO subscribers at this link. (The whole show was a gem, but the political hilarity kicks in big time about 20 minutes into the link.) Will some ingenious teenager please figure out to get the segment on Youtube, so all can enjoy it for free?

Nate Cohn has an interesting post at NYT’s Upshot, “No, Obama Didn’t Win One-Third of White Voters in Deep South.” Cohn responds to Larry Bartels Washington Post (Monkey Cage) post on the topic, arguing that in 2012:

Reputable surveys such as the American National Election Study and the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project suggest that Barack Obama won 30 to 35 percent of Southern white votes in 2012.

That estimate overstates the reality. As Cohn explains,

But the exit polls, conducted on Election Day of actual voters rather than post-election, show that Mr. Obama received only 28 percent of the Southern white vote. And the definition of the South in those polls is much larger than the region about which I was writing. The polls include states like Maryland, Florida, Delaware and Virginia — states that were separate from my argument. Without those more Democratic states, Mr. Obama’s share of the white vote in the remainder of the South drops significantly.

But Cohn uses a different calculation:

How did we calculate Mr. Obama’s support among white Southerners? First, we estimated the composition of the electorate in every county by race, using data from the American Community Survey and Current Population Survey. Then we estimated the number of nonwhite voters won by Mr. Obama using exit poll data, combining national exit-poll data with local demographic data. We then subtracted the number of nonwhite Obama voters from his overall support, leaving us with his support among white voters.
Is this method perfect? No. It would not work well when a racial group’s voting patterns vary greatly by region. But that’s not the case here. Most nonwhite voters in the South are black, and they all but uniformly supported the president (based on a variety of evidence, including returns in overwhelmingly black precincts). If there’s a county that’s 50 percent black where Mr. Obama won 50 percent of the vote, it’s not hard to figure out that Mr. Obama won very few white votes.
In the aggregate, we estimate that Mr. Obama won 16 percent of white voters in a broadly defined Deep South, including Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas. In the countryside, Mr. Obama tended to run behind these figures — often winning less than 10 percent of the white vote.
The estimates closely resemble the exit polls, where available. Our method also suggests that Mr. Obama won about 28 percent of the white vote in the broader South.

But I have to wonder if generalizations about “the south” and “the deep south” have much meaning anymore, particularly when talking about presidential elections. It’s really more about the individual states.
In Georgia, for example, President Obama won 45.48 percent of the vote in 2012. About 31 percent of Georgia voters were African Americans, who went about 9-1 for Democrats. Latinos were about 2 percent of GA voters, and they break about 2-1 Democratic. Asian-Americans are also increasing rapidly in GA. So a guestimate would be that about 15 of Obama’s 2012 GA percentage were white voters. So, approximately 24 percent of Georgia’s white voters cast their ballots for Obama in 2012. When that figure reaches 30+ percent, GA will be a blue state. It could happen sooner, as the percentage of white voters decreases.
Using a race-focused analysis, it seems likely that Dems are going to have a tough time in 2016 matching the African American turnout Obama received in GA in 2012. Conversely, a white Democratic Presidential candidate might do a little better with GA white voters. The “race factor” looks like a washout. Looking ahead, however, the effect of voter suppression measures could be pivotal in close races.
Virginia and Florida are already purple states in terms of statewide and presidential candidates, North Carolina is closing in on earning that designation and Georgia is headed that way at a good clip. There’s not much point in lumping these states together with the likes of smaller southern states like MS, AL, SC, AR or TN just to make some grand generalization about the region.
Democratic presidential candidates are going to have to work the hell out of VA, FL and NC and going forward, they probably should spend some time in GA. These states are as purple as WI, NH, MO and OH. Generalizations about the attitudes of white southerners are losing relevance for presidential and state-wide elections every day.

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

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

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

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