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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.