Despite the headline, “Uninsured Skeptical of Health Care Law in Poll,” New York Times article by Abby Goodnough and Allison Kopicki notes that “In addition, 64 percent of the uninsured and 54 percent of the general public said they thought providing access to affordable health care coverage for all Americans was the responsibility of the federal government…At the same time, only 37 percent of the general public and 33 percent of the uninsured said the law was so flawed that it should be repealed. That marks a slight shift since the CBS News poll in November, when the federal insurance marketplace was still plagued with technical problems and 43 percent of Americans said the law should be repealed.”
Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan report at The Fix that, despite skepticism about the implementation of the health care law revealed in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, “…When you ask people whether they would rather see Obama or the GOP in charge of that implementation, 42 percent pick Obama, while 37 percent pick Republicans. That’s actually the biggest advantage Obama has had on that question since 2010 — marginally bigger than the narrow three-point difference for Obama in September, before the botched rollout.”
Dems have an excellent chance to pick up an important governorship, with PA Republican incumbent Tom Corbett trailing two of his potential Democratic opponents by 12 points each in a new Quinnipiac poll.
At Time Swampland, Jay Newton-Small explains the minimalist “House Republican Strategy for 2014 Victory: Think Small, Do Little.”
From Robert McCartney’s WaPo wrap-up of the Virginia election: “First, in statewide elections, it’s now beyond doubt that Democrats start with a significant advantage. It turns out the 2009 GOP landslide, led by Gov. Bob McDonnell, was an exception fueled by the initial, tea party-led backlash against President Obama…Since then, Democrats have won five straight statewide elections: for president and U.S. Senate in 2012, and for governor, lieutenant governor and now attorney general in November. Democrats hold every statewide elective office for the first time since 1969.”
Also at The Fix, Chris Cillizza spotlights “the Ad Every Democrat Should Be Afraid of.” Clever ad that it might be for this political moment, if Obamacare’s cost savings and success stories are more widely understood by the public by next November, the ad could look like yesterday’s sour grapes.
At Hotline on Call, Alex Roarty reports that “The White House’s out-of-the-blue decision to name Sen. Max Baucus the next ambassador to China means the state’s Democratic governor must appoint a replacement long before next year’s Senate election. And that will fundamentally change one of 2014’s biggest battleground races: Instead of a free-for-all, open-seat battle, Democrats will get to rally behind a better-entrenched incumbent seeking a full term.”
If you are looking for a bellwether House district special election, try FL-13 coming up in March. As Crystal Ballers Kyle Kondik and Larry J. Sabato explain, “If ever there was an apparent bellwether special election, the one coming up in FL-13 this March would seem to be it. The district went 50%-49% for President Obama in 2012, quite similar to his 51%-47% national edge over Mitt Romney. Not only that, but the district is located entirely in Pinellas County, which can fairly be described as one of the key presidential swing counties in the entire country (Obama won this Tampa-area county with 52% of the vote in 2012). The seat, held for decades by the late Rep. Bill Young (R), is probably a necessary part of any future Democratic House majority.” All of the usual caveats about unique local issues and over-generalizing about one election apply, as Sabato and Kondik point out.
Apparently not.

At The PlumLine Greg Sargent reports that “Dems hatch new strategy to pressure GOP on unemployment insurance,” explaining: “Dems who are pushing for an extension have hatched a new…: Once Congress returns, they will refuse to support the reauthorization of the farm bill — which will almost certainly need Dem support to pass the House — unless Republicans agree to restart unemployment benefits with the farm bill’s savings. “Under no circumstances should we support the farm bill unless Republicans agree to use the savings from it to extend unemployment insurance,” Dem Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a top party strategist, told me today. “This is a potential pressure point. We’re going to have to resolve differences in the farm bill because otherwise milk prices will spike. If past is prologue, they are going to need a good chunk of Democrats to pass the farm bill.”…Van Hollen said that a “minimum of $15 billion in savings” was expected from the farm bill, much of it “from the elimination of direct subsidies,” and said it would be unconscionable not to use this money for some form of an extension of unemployment benefits (rather than deficit reduction), which would not only help 1.3 million people, but the economy, too.”
Dan Merica of CNN Politics has a good update, “Democrats’ dream of a blue South: Moon pie in the sky?,” with a focus on Mississippi: “Ask a Southern Democrat if he or she can win statewide, and you will get a wide array of anecdotes and theories. Some point to the last Democratic governor in each state, while others to President Barack Obama winning 43.5% of the vote in Mississippi without spending any money there in 2012…But the most often-cited anecdote — by far — is the success that Southern Democrats had in 2013 municipal elections in Mississippi…For the first time in nearly 30 years, a Democrat was elected mayor of Tupelo, while Meridian elected its first-ever black mayor — a Democrat. After the win, Southern Democrats heralded the day as “Blue Tuesday” and celebrated the victories as a sign of things to come.”
In his post “Are Young Workers the Future of Labor?,” James Cersonsky of In These Times has unearthed a hopeful, though unsourced, statistic: “…Nearly two-thirds of 18-29-year olds have a favorable impression of unions, more than any other age bracket. The time is ripe for labor leaders to bring the next generation into the fold.” If this stat is solid, it is encouraging, given the decline of union membership and the MSM news blackout on union accomplishments.
The Pew Research Center reports a significant decline in the ‘enthusiasm gap’ favoring the GOP between Democratic (and Dem-leaning) vs. Republican (and GOP-leaning) registered voters — about 6 percent today, vs. 14 percent four years ago.
At National Journal’s Hotline on Call, check out Alex Roarty’s “Democrats Divided on How to Recover from Obamacare: Former Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg argues Obamacare could be a political winner. Other Democratic strategists are more nervous.” Roaty writes, quoting Greenberg, “On Thursday, senior Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg told reporters that the Republican focus on hitting Democrats over Obamacare was a political “trap.” Citing a new Democracy Corps poll he helped conduct, Greenberg said if Republican dwell on repealing the law while Democrats focus on fixing the economy, Democrats will come out on top….”I know there is an initial opportunity in going after the rollout … I would argue this is a trap,” he said. “The more they’re on this, the more voters say they’re just part of this extreme partisan gridlock [in Congress], and they’re not addressing the economy and jobs.”
Here’s an interesting quote, from a Forbes Magazine article, no less: “During four years of the hapless George W. Bush administration Republicans actually did control all three branches, but the size of government hardly decreased. It grew…You see, the Republicans talk a big game about small government, but they do so with a forked tongue. A major driver of the busted spending caps was Republican aversion to reductions in defense outlays. This is puzzling. Supposedly it’s in our national security interest to force a weaker economy on Americans so that some of the richest countries in the world can be defended by our military for free.”
In the wake of Kshama Sawant’s election to the Seattle City Council, Bhaskar Sunkara and Micah Uetricht address the question “Can Socialists Win Elections in the U.S.?“, also at ITT.
Required reading for every Democratic candidate preparing to deliver a speech or be interviewed on the topic of education: Blake Fleetwood’s HuffPo post “If You Want the American Dream, Go to Finland,” which includes this nugget: “Not so long ago America had the best school system in the world and the best access to education. Land grant colleges created the largest, most educated middle class in history, which, in turn, led to world supremacy in education, civil liberties, social mobility, science, medicine and a host of other areas…Our education system is static and falling behind other advanced countries — an economic time bomb — whereas Finland is an educational superpower, the best in the west, according to the PISA studies of 470,000 15-year-old students from 65 countries…Our educational progress is merely mediocre compared to the rapid advances being made in other industrialized countries and Asian cities such as Singapore and Shanghai. American students rank 37, behind such countries — in math, the basic sciences and even languages.”
At Wonkblog Dylan Matthews has a discussion with Gawker’s Tom Scocca about the virtues of negativity in politics and the harm done by political ‘smarm,’ which serves to enable conflict-avoidance.

Ezra Klein’s “Inequality isn’t ‘the defining challenge of our time‘” adds some useful perspective to the latest political buzzword. Klein argues that reducing unemployment is a more urgent policy priority than addressing “inequality”:

…Joblessness is still endemic. Growth simply isn’t producing enough jobs. This is a more severe and more urgent problem than inequality. Moreover, fixing it is necessary, though not sufficient, to making real headway against inequality.
It is, however, a harder problem to mobilize a political coalition around. It doesn’t offend our moral intuitions so much as confuse them. Someone making $85,000 annually can look at the incomes of the top one percent and be angry and scared. They can hear that Germany has more social mobility than the does the United States and be offended. The plight of the long-term unemployed and the economy’s stubborn refusal to generate catch-up growth are more abstract concerns to someone with a good job. It’s harder to build a political movement around the intense pain of the few than the more generalized anger of the many.
It’s fair to wonder whether any of this matters. The Obama administration would like to boost demand. But Congress isn’t going to let them. Asking whether inequality or joblessness or growth is the defining economic challenge of our time is like asking how many John Boehners can dance on the head of a pin.
But the same logic applies to inequality: The policies Obama mentioned in his speech — like raising taxes on the rich — also don’t have a shadow of a prayer of passing the House.
The game being played here is a longer one. Of late, inequality become a much more popular research topic — and much more money has been devoted to researching it. Obama consigliere John Podesta founded the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a think tank dedicated to funding research into inequality. The political system’s focus on the issue is leading to more thinking, more concern, more ideas and more pressure for action.
None of that will matter much now. But it will matter eventually. When the left next gets a chance to make economic policy, what will they choose to do? A world in which inequality is the top concern is a world in which raising taxes on the rich is perhaps the most important policy choice the government can make. A world in which growth and unemployment are top concerns are worlds in which very different policies — from stimulus spending to permitting more inflation — might be the top priorities.

Difficult as the challenge is, reducing unemployment is a more politically-coherent policy priority than addressing “inequality.” Yet tax hikes for the rich and pubic service employment or infrastructure investment, for example, may be popular with the public, but neither one is possible with the Republican blockade in the House.
Economic inequality and unemployment are intertwined to a great extent — it’s hard to envision substantial progress in either without some benefit to the other, provided you define employment in terms of “a job at a living wage.” Too many of the jobs created in recent years, however, provide inadequate pay, which enables festering economic inequality. An increase in decent jobs would likely reduce prevailing pay gaps.
What is certain is that neither malady will be addressed until Democrats secure working majorities in both houses of congress. Klein is right that putting jobs first makes more sense than arguing about how to divide a shrinking pie.

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.”