In their Politico post, ‘Republicans’ Uncivil War,” fellow Republicans Scott Faulkner and Jonathan Riehl lament the transformation of the GOP from a once-competent political party into an circus of bickering ideologues. While the authors view of the glorious GOP past is somewhat overstated to put it charitably, their take on the current predicament of their party includes some insights worth sharing:

The Republican Party is at war with itself and it is losing. For every successful Republican governor, there are Republican state legislators who embrace personally oppressive and interventionist initiatives. For every reasonable Republican member of Congress, there are more who embarrass. Every compelling soundbite from Republican candidates and pundits is overwhelmed by others that repel.
…Bush 43 added his own straw to the political camel’s back by his willingness to allow cronyism to trump competence. By promoting amateurs to bungle the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and allowing the once noble Federal Emergency Management Agency to make an epic mess of Hurricane Katrina relief, Bush eviscerated the longstanding Republican reputation for competent management. The Republican echo chamber remained silent to this dismal record, violating another of the GOP’s core principles — holding power accountable. A Republican world view that was devoid of facts and critical thinking was taking hold. Like Thelma and Louise, Republican politicians and pundits grasped hands and floored the gas peddle into the abyss.
Except for some stellar governors, the Republican movement has been in free fall since late 2005. Like a cancer patient on remission, the tea party-fueled 2010 election blowout offered a fleeting and aberrant reversal of fortune. It remains to be seen if Republicans can heal themselves or whether the Democrats will overreach clearing the way for a GOP comeback by default. Either way, America’s political landscape is denuded when rational thought and competence are edged out of the picture.

And when the Republicans are not likening President Obama to the anti-Christ himself, it seems their preferred fallback similes are Hitler and Stalin, as Lincoln Mitchell notes in his post “Mike Huckabee’s Reductio ad Hitlerum” at HuffPo:

…The Tea Party and right wing penchant for comparing President Obama to Hitler and Stalin is evidence not of any totalitarian tendencies on the part of Obama. Instead it is evidence that right wing contempt for science is now rivaled by contempt for learning anything about history.
Stalin and Hitler are among the most brutal murderers and dictators of the 20th, or any other, century. Most of the world knows this. To the right wing of the Republican Party, apparently, Stalinism is a system of governance where the marginal tax rate exceeds 35 percent, while the Nazi regime, according to Huckabee’s newest insight, was one characterized by gun control.
…Using Communists and Nazis as a way to bludgeon one’s political opponents with powerful, if poorly constructed, political arguments is nothing new, but it is seems much more frequent now, with Obama a much bigger target than any previous president. Most of the more aggressive of these attacks come not from powerful Republican politicians but from media personalities like Huckabee, Tea Party activists or people on the fringes of political life. The failure of Republicans in more senior positions to speak out against this has now become so ordinary that it is rarely remarked upon, but it is still significant.

Yes, that Mike Huckabee, the one who reportedly told a gathering at an Ohio pancake breakfast

“Make a list,” said Huckabee, referring to supporters’ family and friends. “Call them and ask them, ‘Are you going to vote on Issue 2 and are you going to vote for it?’ If they say no, well, you just make sure that they don’t go vote. Let the air out of their tires on election day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date. That’s up to you how you creatively get the job done.”

In case you thought he was just joking, it wasn’t the only time. As the Huck told a crowd in Virginia, according to HuffPo:

While campaigning for Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee jokingly made reference to voter suppression. He told supporters that it’s “their job” to keep McDonnell opponents from the polls: “Let the air our of their tires … keep ’em home. Do the Lord’s work.”

In a way, Huckabee was just giving voice to the GOP’s extensive voter suppression project. Whatever criticisms can be fairly leveled at President Obama, he has never displayed anything like the utter contempt for the integrity of American Democracy that distinguishes the modern Republican Party.

Having caught the tail end this morning of some inside-the-beltway pundit snarkage about President Obama doing some (gasp) campaign fund-raising for his own party, I was delighted to stumble upon Alec MacGillis’s post, “The Amusing Alarm Over Obama’s 2014 Fixation” in The New Republic. MacGillis bares the silly hypocrisy of it all in this excerpt:

…Underlying the tut-tutting about Obama’s fundraising is a broader, longstanding confusion in the Washington establishment over what is to be expected of Obama. We scorn him for seeking to hold himself above the fray and then lash him with high dudgeon as soon he deigns to descend into the muck. Never mind that he is following in the footsteps of his two-term predecessors–as the Post noted, “Ronald Reagan participated in 20 fundraisers for Republicans in 1985, and George W. Bush did 14 in 2005…. Bill Clinton, committed to helping the Democratic Party eliminate debt after the 1996 campaign, appeared at a whopping 77 fundraisers in 1997.”

Citing “feinting spells on the right” in response to the “news” that the president is now going to raise some dough for 2014 Democratic candidates, MacGillis continues:

…Can you imagine? A president who passed a lot of stuff when his party held both houses of Congress and has been all but totally stymied since losing the House has decided that it would be in his interest to…win back the House. Next thing you know, he’s going to try to help a Democrat get elected president in 2016 to make sure achievements like the Affordable Care Act are preserved.

MacGillis faults the naivete of those purist souls who believe that A President can use the bully pulpit alone to stop well-funded opponents and quotes David Jones, a former fundraiser for Clinton and Al Gore: “The opponents of his agenda are spending tens of millions of dollars to derail his agenda and he can’t unilaterally disarm. In today’s world it takes resources to get your message out to the public and in order to raise resources you have to have fundraisers and send out emails and make phone calls.”
I would just add the obvious fact that the president is the leader of his party and, as such, is supposed to be its top fund-raiser. I would be joining the outraged reaction if he didn’t help raise funds for the 2014 campaign. In fact, he should be doing more fund-raising if he wants to accomplish anything in 2015-16.
The purist whiners need to get real. No president in U.S. history has had to deal with a more obstructionist or more lavishly-funded opposition, nor one more wholly dedicated to reversing the hard-won gains of the Democratic party over generations. We would all like more bipartisan kumbaya. But the only thing this Republican party understands is defeat and it is President Obama’s duty to do all that he can to open another big can of ass-whupping for them in 2014.

These shameless voter suppression efforts –even for Republicans — in North Carolina may actually reflect an encouraging trend — that the state President Obama lost by the smallest of margins in 2012 is turning blue so fast Republicans are running scared and getting desperate.
Robert Borosage, president of the Institute for America’s Future, has a warning for Democrats at HuffPo: ” The rising American electorate is looking for help: a forward strategy that will rebuild the country, educate the young, put people to work, capture a lead in the green industrial revolution that is sweeping the world, while insuring that the rewards of growth are widely shared. This requires fierce battles with those standing in the way — not simply the Tea Party zealots, but Big Oil and Big Pharma, Wall Street and the global corporate lobby that will spend lavishly to protect their privileges and subsidies. Without that vision and courage, the rising American electorate will continue to sink together. And Democrats will discover that a status quo party has little attraction to voters looking for change.”
I do hope the Organizing for America ‘List’ is as powerful as this conservative e-rag says it is.
At the New York Times Opinionator, Thomas B. Edsall’s assessment of “The GOP’s Digital Makeover” shows why the Republicans’ top-down culture may be a barrier to their achieving digital parity with Dems: “…The biggest obstacle facing the Republican Party may be how to get its leaders, including those in charge of the R.N.C., to accommodate and accept the freewheeling approach to innovation — the invention of invention — that made the digital revolution now transforming American politics possible in the first place.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr. rallies progressives to save background checks from Republican obstruction. “…Gun-control advocates need even more discipline, and they cannot stop organizing after this fight is over. It will take years to build the kind of muscle the gun lobby has. Doing so will create the political space for other measures, including an assault weapons ban.”
If Elizabeth Colbert-Busch can make the word ‘integrity’ the issue, this U.S. House contest should result in a Democratic pick-up. It’s not just Mark Sanford’s philandering and lying about it; it’s his abuse of taxpayer money. As Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand put it in a fund-raising e-blast for the Democrat: “This is the same Mark Sanford who, as governor, disappeared from office and used taxpayer money to visit his mistress.”
Bob Shrum’s Daily Beast post, “Be Afraid, GOP: Hillary Clinton Is Back and She Will Beat You in 2016” has me thinking maybe we should put all this Hillary euphoria to work sooner, rather than later — and send her out to help rally women to elect Dems to congress, like Elizabeth Colbert-Busch.
At The Plum Line, Greg Sargent reports on a new pro-Democratic messaging initiative: “The American Bridge 21st Century Foundation Web site, “C-Quest,” which is “designed to focus attention on how the sequester is impacting actual communities around the country, as a corrective to the Beltway’s emphasis on the sequester as a political story, one that the White House has supposedly botched by over-hyping the sequester’s impact…The Web site is also accompanied by a Web video that collects local news segments from around the country on the sequestration’s cuts, and makes the point that Paul Ryan’s budget cuts would dwarf those of the sequester:”
David Callahan’s “The Right Way to Create Jobs” at Demos ‘Policy Shop’ has an argument every Democratic congressional candidate should be able to articulate, particularly in the 7 states that have an unemployment rate above 9 percent: “…Huge numbers of construction workers lost their jobs when the housing bubble imploded, and many of these people are still unemployed. In fact, construction workers have the highest jobless rate of any group of workers — 15.7 percent, over twice the national rate and three times higher than most white-collar professions. So infrastructure spending would help those workers who are still suffering most from long-term unemployment…We tried a surge in Iraq and another in Afghanistan. How about one at home?”
You go, guys.

Lydia Saad reports at Gallup Politics on the leading criticism of Republicans: “…Rank-and-file Republicans, independents, and Democrats voice the same primary criticism of the GOP: it is “too inflexible” or “unwilling to compromise.” When asked to say what they most dislike about the Republican Party, 26% of Republicans, 17% of independents, and 22% of Democrats offer this critique — leading all other mentions.” Only 8 percent said the same about Democrats. The second-ranking concern of respondents (12 percent) was that the GOP is “for the rich/protecting the wealthy, not the middle class.”
The Center for American Progress has a revealing forum on “What the Public Really Thinks About Guns,” featuring contributions by Margie Omero, Michael Bocian, Bob Carpenter, Linda DiVall, Diane T. Feldman, Celinda Lake, Douglas E. Schoen, Al Quinlan, Joshua Ulibarri, and Arkadi Gerney.
The National Journal’s Michael Catalini’s “To Hold Senate Majority, Democrats Target the Most Conservative States in the Country” reveals an innovative strategy: “…the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s plans to compete in the most inhospitable territory for Democrats — for open seats in Georgia, South Dakota, West Virginia, and possibly, even in Kentucky against the powerful and well-funded Senate minority leader. Facing a challenging political landscape in 2014, the party is close to landing credible candidates in all of those states….Already the committee is boasting that Georgia is their best pickup opportunity; the field of Republican candidates there for the seat of retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss currently looks underwhelming.”
Jamelle Bouie posts at The Plum Line on “The next big target for liberals: State legislatures,” observing “It’s hard to overstate how smart a way this is for liberal groups to invest their time and money…Winning control of governorships and state legislatures is key if Democrats want to build political strength, advance key goals and priorities, and secure their policy gains over the long term. Howard Dean’s new plan is a small — but important — step in the right direction.”
At The Nation, Ari Berman explains why “New Voter Suppression Efforts Prove the Voting Rights Act Is Still Needed.” Notes Berman: “According to a report by Project Vote, fifty-five new voting restrictions have been introduced in thirty states so far this year….By my count, 235 new voting restrictions have been introduced in forty-four states over the past three years.”
Meanwhile President Obama has issued an executive order setting up “the Presidential Commission of Election Administration.,” charged with “…making recommendations that will “promote the efficient administration of elections in order to ensure that all eligible voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots without undue delay…and to improve the experience of voters facing other obstacles in casting their ballots, such as members of the military, overseas voters, voters with disabilities, and voters with limited English proficiency.”
GOP efforts to raise the cap on high-skilled worker visas is shaping up as an important issue for Democrats, as Jennifer Martinez reports at The Hill. Labor is calling on Dems to provide leadership to oppose “off-shoring jobs abroad or businesses that seek to bypass hiring American workers.”
Socialism in North Dakota? So says Alternet’s Les Leopold in “Why Is Socialism Doing So Well in Deep-Red North Dakota?,” in which he reports (via TruthDig)on “one of America’s best-kept secrets,” the “state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND), a socialist relic that exists nowhere else in America.” Leopold observes “Since the crash, the financial community has largely managed to wriggle off the hook…After all, the big banks seem to own Washington, as too-big-to-fail banks are permitted to grow even larger and more invulnerable to prosecution and control…But this new public banking movement could have legs, especially if it teams up with those fighting for a financial transaction tax…The state-owned and operated Bank of North Dakota proves that it doesn’t have to be that way. This is the time to fight for public state banking in a big way.”
One still hears the occasional “mistakes were made” lame apology, but there are better ways. Politico explores the art of the political apology in this video.
At The Daily Beast ‘Politics Beast,’ Lloyd Green writes that “the once-Republican Solid South is starting to look like a blue-and-red checkerboard, with Democrats now owning some of the biggest squares.”

If you thought outright partisan political hackery was beneath the dignity of the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, you would be wrong.
Geoffrey Skelley, Political Analyst at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball crunches the numbers and concludes. “…Unlike the proposal to award electoral votes by congressional district — a plan that the Crystal Ball’s Alan Abramowitz found would have elected Mitt Romney in 2012 even though President Obama won the national popular vote by about 5 million votes — a proportional allocation system, used nationally, might track more closely to the national vote than the current system.” Scant comfort, that. Why not direct popular election?
Also at Crystal Ball, Kyle Kondik argues that the South Dakota and West Virginia Senate races are the ones to watch in assessing whether or not Dems can hold the senate in 2014. If these races are polling close a month or two before election day, then Dems have a good chance of holding their Senate majority.
Matthew Dowd’s argument here that Dem 2016 front-runners are a little long-in-the-tooth compared to the GOP presidential field lacks demographic analysis of the 2016 electorate.
Good to see that a coalition has turned the heat on VA Gov. McDonnell to restore voting rights of at least some ex-felons who have served their time. Felon disenfranchisement is one of the more effective methods of politically-motivated voter suppression. But making Republicans defend it on camera for those who have served their time is a good way to expose the petty partisanship and moral equivocation of GOP office-holders.
Anyone still harboring doubts that the Bush-Cheney administration was the worst ever, should watch this CSPAN video featuring Linda J. Bilmes, author of “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.” Bilmes now projects the actual cost to hit $5 trill when all the bills are finally paid.
This story has another disturbing statistic, “less than five minutes” — the length of time it took to massacre 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which should haunt the hearts those who opposed the ban on assault weapons and hopefully encourage them to do the right thing next time.
Karthick Ramakrishnan, author of four books on immigration, race and politics, has a L.A. Times op-ed explaining why the U.S. Supreme Court could create a major mess if they decide in Lepak vs. City of Irving that it’s ok not to count non-citizens in drawing political districts.
I nominate “angry at Washington” (and it’s equally-mindless kin, “blame Washington” and “disappointed/unhappy with Washington”) to be the lamest, most vapid false equivalency meme parroted by journalists and pollsters since the dawn of The Republic. IMHO, those who promote it merit placement in one or more of three categories — stupid, lazy or corrupt.
If there is a better ‘toon than this one about the High Court’s DOMA deliberations, I’d like to see it.

One of the mysteries of modern politics is the public’s high tolerance for the crappy treatment veterans have been getting when they get back home. Ask just about any American how he or she feels about veterans having to wait 600 days to get their claims addressed, as they do in a number of states, and she or he will tell you it’s an outrage. But somehow it’s never much of a factor on election day. But if something isn’t done to address this issue very soon, that could change on election day 2014 and 2016.
One reason it could change is that Vets now have an eloquent, energetic and committed advocate in Paul Rieckhoff of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, who is now making the rounds to just about every talk show on television (see here for example). American Vets now have an advocate who knows how to work the media.
Republicans, of course, will be quick to blame the Democrats, since it has gotten worse in recent years, owing mostly to the backlog build-up and inadequate budgeting for veterans’ programs when they come home. VA head General Shinseki is talking about reducing the backlog by 2015, which does not sound acceptable, even though it may be a prudent answer, given his short-staffed resources. To paraphrase the Democratic strategist Bob Strauss, “that dog won’t hunt,” as the VA backlog becomes more of an issue, as now seems likely.
It’s pretty bad when today’s veterans describe their benefits system as “Delay, Deny, Wait till I die,” as was reported recently on the Rachel Maddow show. Joe Klein’s Time magazine article about the wait times was entitled “Shinseki Stonewall.” Klein argues that, at the very least, claims should be processed according to severity. “Why should an Army Ranger who suffered a 100% debilitating traumatic brain injury in Konar Province three years ago still be waiting for his disability check? Why should that Ranger have to wait behind a Vietnam veteran, who is filing a 3rd time claim to get his disability for post-traumatic stress raised from 50% to 60%?”
As a kid, I can remember getting medical care at local military hospitals, which everyone seemed to agree were the best. Our family shopped at the military commissary for groceries and saved about 20 percent over a comparable tab at the supermarket. There was veterans support for home loans, college education and other life expenses. We even used the swimming pool at one military installation. I never heard any complaints about wait times for anything. All of this because my father was a WWII vet, even though it was 12 or so years after the war ended. Today, most of these benefits have been shredded or reduced.
Of course, back then the income tax rates for the wealthy were significantly higher. There is no question in my mind that the tax cuts and austerity policies that accelerated during the Reagan era and after have hurt veterans badly. The political questions that remain include: Will President Obama be getting increasingly bad press for the wait times, or will he be able to speed things up very soon? Will he take the opportunity to explain to the public how Republican obstruction of the budget process has hurt veterans benefits and wait times?
These are tough questions. But better to address them now, than let them become a big issue that could hurt Dems in the next elections.

At The Nation Rick Perlstein gives the old “demography is destiny” cliche a proper shredding, arguing that, while demographics favor Democrats at the moment, any talk about inevitability is foolish chatter, especially since “a more immigrant-friendly Republican Party” by 2016 is a possibility, which could cut just enough into the edge Dems currently have with Latinos.
Perlstein has another good post at The Nation, “Right and Left in Democratic Politics: The Long View,” in which he urges his fellow progressives to get real and acknowledge the conservative/moderate flank of the party as a continuing reality: “…Study them–take them seriously. Don’t let them play the underdog; that just advantages them, too. We’re in a fight here–always have been. They think they are the party–just as confidently as we believe we’re the party. The only way to make our vision of this party a reality is to work for it–and not to act surprised when their side works for it, too.”
For those who would like to see some solid data that verifies what you have suspected for months, Andrew Kohut, former president of both the Pew Research Center and the Gallup Organization has an opinion piece up at the Washington Post, “The numbers prove it: The GOP is estranged from America.”
Do read Rebecca Dana’s story at The New Republic, “Slyer Than Fox The wild inside story of how MSNBC became the voice of the left”
Democrats have a chance, at least, to pick up a senate seat in GA, where Saxby Chambliss is retiring and the Republicans are looking at a divisive primary, which is well-described in Russell Berman’s post “Tight-knit Georgia Republican delegation starts to fray over Senate race” at The Hill. President Obama got 46.9 percent of the vote in Georgia in November. Unfortunately, however, Dems don’t have much in the way of charismatic alternatives, with Rep. John Barrow mentioned most often as a possibility.
Good to see the DNC getting involved in fighting back against the Republican scheme to award electoral votes “based on their percentage of the popular vote, instead of the current winner-take-all system. Two electoral votes would be awarded to the statewide winner.”
At Salon.com Michael Lind has a few thoughts on “Defeating useless rich people: Taming wealthy, unproductive “moochers” will require a populist campaign to stop them. Here’s how we can do it.” Says Lind: “…we need an Anti-Rentier campaign that would unite unlikely groups: owners of productive businesses as well as workers, populist conservatives and liberal reformers. An Anti-Rentier movement would distinguish businesses that make profits by providing worthwhile goods or services in innovative ways from rentier interests that passively extract exorbitant tolls and fees from the economy without adding any value…The Anti-Rentier tax agenda would seek to raise capital gains taxes on rentiers while lowering the tax burden on American workers and the profits of productive businesses.”
Here’s a switch. Joseph M. Schwartz Dissent article, “Social Democracy for Centrists” observes, “The Economist, long identified with libertarian economic ideals, lauded the “Nordic model” in a cover story last month as a “centrist” economic path for global capitalism. Long hostile to “tax-and-spend” social democracy, the publication’s change in tack arises from its recognition that austerity policies are deepening the economic crisis and that the inequality and declining social mobility of “free-market,” Anglo-American capitalism threatens the very legitimacy of the capitalist system that the Economist holds dear…The magazine praises Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway for accomplishments often touted by social democrats–low poverty rates, egalitarian distribution, and efficient public services. But the magazine argues that these are now “centrist” societies because they balance their budgets, allow for consumer “choice” within their public services, and nurture risk-taking entrepreneurs. The Economist sheepishly admits that these countries funnel over 50 percent of their GDP through the public sector (versus a meager 30 percent in the United States and 36 percent in Great Britain)…”
Ronald Brownstein’s “The Man Who Could Turn Texas Blue: Rick Perry” explains “…Gov. Rick Perry, back from his stumbles in the 2012 GOP presidential race, has insisted that Texas will not accept the federal money provided by President Obama’s health care law to expand Medicaid coverage….Texas Democrats are too weak to much affect the Medicaid debate. But if state Republicans reject federal money that could insure 1 million or more Hispanics, they could provide Democrats with an unprecedented opportunity to energize those voters–the key to the party’s long-term revival. With rejection, says Democratic state Rep. Rafael Anchia of Dallas, Republicans “would dig themselves into an even deeper hole with the Hispanic community.””
Heather K. Gerken of Yale Law School has an interesting proposal at Scholars Strategy Network: “The United States would benefit from a new Democracy Index that makes our shortfalls visible for all by ranking states and localities based on how well they run their elections…This index would function as the rough equivalent of annual rankings of colleges and universities in the U.S. News and World Report. It would focus on the concrete issues that matter to all voters -How long did you spend in line? How many ballots got discarded? How well is the registration process working? The Index would also include regular, objective measures of the election process.”

At The Atlantic, Jim Arkedis, senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, has a post “Memo to Democrats: Never Mind the GOP, Here’s What *We* Need to Fix: The left is crowing over Republican disarray. But the progressive advantage isn’t as entrenched as many of them seem to believe.” Arkedis describes the upbeat mood of many Democrats in the wake of the RNC’s self-flagellating “Autopsy”:

“After notching a victory last November against weak competition, it’s tempting to be content with our advantages in organizing, data analysis, and candidate quality, and to kick back and enjoy the Republican civil war…While much of the country wishes a pox on both parties these days, President Obama’s major policy positions — on handling the economy, budget negotiations, social issues, or national security — are at least less toxic to voters than the GOP’s.

However, cautions Arkedis, “Not so fast. That attitude guarantees the next defeat will come much sooner than Republican disarray suggests. Now is the time for Democrats to engage in some serious introspection of our own.” He posits “five issues Democrats must consider to ensure the 2012 victory isn’t squandered,” including:

First, progressives need to make serious investments in intellectual firepower…The army of analysts employed by the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, and Cato Institute. According to the most recent data available at Guidestar.com, these conservative research and advocacy organizations raise over $140 million a year. Their left-leaning and much younger counterparts at the Center for American Progress, Third Way, and the Progressive Policy Institute (where I am a senior fellow) together lag behind with a meager $40 million annual haul combined.
Closing the gap is possible but requires buy-in from on high…concerted efforts to steer donors toward allied think tanks.
Second, the Democratic Party must avoid an impending woman problem — not to mention a Latino problem, a gay problem, and a youth problem…All these groups could waver if Democrats continue to exploit them as coalition building blocks and pocketbooks, rather than integrating them as full partners.
Should immigration reform fail — a high risk in any Congress, let alone this one — many Latino groups will sour on President Obama no matter where fault lies. Witness Hispanics’ disgruntlement with the administration until it backed off on forced deportations. That’s why Democrats must broaden their focus to other issues Latinos care about beyond immigration — such as small-business empowerment, leadership development, and increasing personal wealth.
Third, Democrats need to expand their coalition, particularly among faith voters and lower-income whites. As I’ve written elsewhere, polling shows that religious voters, particularly Catholics, are more open than ever to progressive faith-based messaging. And it’s maddening to watch lower-income whites vote for Republican social positions and against their own economic interests. Targeted messaging to make a distinctly progressive pitch to these two often-overlapping communities on faith and social welfare will fray the conservative coalition even further.
Fourth, the party has to push digital and organizing innovations down-ballot…State legislatures are the key to controlling redistricting, and that’s the key to controlling Congress. National Democrats’ massive digital and organizing edge will be wasted if they are not shared with and adopted by candidates running for state legislatures.
Finally, the party needs to avoid the intramural fistfight brewing over “Organizing for Action,” the president’s campaign apparatus that has morphed into a voter mobilization and advocacy organization — in other words, sort of but not exactly what the Democratic National Committee already does…OFA and the DNC need to come to an understanding of their responsibilities, and share those decisions with party operatives.

Arkedis concludes on a hopeful note, saying Dems are in a “healthier place” than their adversaries, but adds “…Remember who won that race between the tortoise and the hare — and make sure it’s not repeated with the elephant and the donkey.”

Democrats are pounded on a daily basis by Republicans, who are eager to point out our failings and shortcomings. That’s the way it should be, and vice versa. Yet, attacks by a political adversary have limited value. They can be helpful in terms of identifying policies and ideas which need to be modified or corrected. But there is always a lot of partisan axe-grinding that comes with it and doesn’t merit much consideration.
For a political party to stay honest and keep faith with its principles, however, it should undergo periods of rigorous self-criticism from time to time, and the year after a presidential election is a much better time for it than the year or two just before one. Toward that end, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has a provocative HuffPo post that can serve as a good starting point for Democrats to assess where they are and where they need to go. Here’s some of Reich’s assessment regarding what Democrats should be about on two of the most critical issues, Social Security and Medicare:

Prominent Democrats — including the President and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — are openly suggesting that Medicare be means-tested and Social Security payments be reduced by applying a lower adjustment for inflation.
This is even before they’ve started budget negotiations with Republicans — who still refuse to raise taxes on the rich, close tax loopholes the rich depend on (such as hedge-fund and private-equity managers’ “carried interest”), increase capital gains taxes on the wealthy, cap their tax deductions, or tax financial transactions.
It’s not the first time Democrats have led with a compromise, but these particular pre-concessions are especially unwise.
For over thirty years Republicans have pitted the middle class against the poor, preying on the frustrations and racial biases of average working people who can’t get ahead no matter how hard they try. In the Republican narrative, government takes from the hard-working middle and gives to the undeserving and dependent needy.
In reality, average working people have been stymied because almost all the economic gains of the last three decades have gone to the very top. The middle has lost bargaining power as unions have shriveled. American politics has been flooded with campaign contributions from corporations and the wealthy, which have used their clout to reduce marginal tax rates, widen loopholes, loosen regulations, gain subsidies, and obtain government bailouts when their bets turn sour.
Now five years after the worst downturn since the Great Depression and the biggest bailout in history, the stock market has recouped its losses and corporate profits constitute the largest share of the economy since 1929. Yet the real median wage continues to fall — wages now claim the lowest share of the economy on record — and inequality is still widening. All the economic gains since the trough of the recession have gone to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans; the bottom 90 percent continue to lose ground.
What looks like the start of a more buoyant recovery is a sham because the vast majority of Americans have neither the pay nor access to credit that allows them to buy enough to boost the economy…If there was ever a time for the Democratic Party to champion working Americans and reverse these troubling trends, it is now — forging an alliance between the frustrated middle and the working poor. This need not be “class warfare” because a healthy economy is in everyone’s interest…
But the modern Democratic Party can’t bring itself to do this. It’s too dependent on the short-term, insular demands of Wall Street, corporate executives, and the wealthy.
It was Bill Clinton, after all, who pushed for repeal of Glass-Steagall, championed the North American Free Trade Act and the World Trade Organization without adequate safeguards for American jobs, and rented out the Lincoln Bedroom to a steady stream of rich executives.
And it was Barack Obama who continued George W. Bush’s Wall Street bailout with no strings attached; pushed a watered-down “Volcker Rule” (still delayed) rather than renew Glass-Steagall; failed to prosecute a single Wall Street executive or bank because, according to his Attorney General, Wall Street is just too big to jail; and permanently enshrined the Bush tax cuts for all but the top 2 percent.

This not a blanket critique of Presidents Clinton and Obama. Clinton deserves great credit for having the wisdom to stay out of stupid, costly wars, which we have learned is not to be taken for granted. Obama has achieved a lot with unprecedented obstruction from Republicans, including the most significant health care reform since the 1960s. Former Speaker Pelosi is arguably one of the best House leaders ever.
But Reich is quite right that weakening Social Security and Medicare is not what America’s progressive party should be about. He points out that Dem leaders have been complicit in allowing the Social Security fund to be raided, chickened out on supporting reforms to help unions thrive and are now opening the door to “pre-concessions” weakening Medicare and Social Security. Reich believes Dems must stand firm in protecting these two key programs:

…Social Security and Medicare are the most popular programs ever devised by the federal government, which is why Republicans hate them so much. If average Americans have trusted the Democratic Party to do one thing it has been to guard these programs from the depredations of the GOP.
Putting these two programs “on the table” is also tantamount to accepting the most insidious and dishonest of all Republican claims: That for too long most Americans have been living beyond their means; that we are rapidly approaching a day of reckoning when we can no longer afford these generous “entitlements;” and that prudence and responsibility dictate that we must now begin to live within our means and cut back these projected expenditures, particularly if we are to have any money left to invest in the young and the disadvantaged.
The truth is the opposite: That for three decades the means of most Americans have been stagnant even though the overall economy has more than doubled in size; that because almost all the gains from growth have gone to the top, most Americans haven’t been able to save enough for retirement or the rising costs of healthcare; and that because of this, Social Security and Medicare are barely adequate as is.

Despite significant reforms, like the Affordable Care Act, the Democratic Party has folded on too many critical issues in recent years. If we allow Social Security and Medicare to be further undermined in return for puny concessions by Republican leaders, we can’t blame working people for wondering what, if anything we are willing to fight for.
Noting record wealth concentration in the U.S., Reich concludes,

…An increasing share of that wealth is held by a smaller and smaller share of the population, who have, in effect, bribed legislators to reduce their taxes and provide loopholes so they pay even less…The budget deficit “crisis” has been manufactured by them to distract our attention from this overriding fact, and to pit the rest of us against each other for a smaller and smaller share of what remains. Democrats should not conspire.

Democrats have benefited substantially in recent elections by growing extremism in the Republican Party. But we can’t count on ever-increasing tea party lunacy contaminating the GOP brand forever. That’s not much of a foundation on which to build a viable party going forward. If Democrats now cave on two programs as fundamental to the security of working families as Social Security and Medicare, we shouldn’t be surprised if they begin to look elsewhere for leaders who will serve their interests.

At The Atlantic Molly Ball asks “Has Obama Turned a Generation of Voters Into Lifelong Democrats?,” — and answers in the affirmative.
CAP’s President/CEO Neera Tanden and CAP senior fellows Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin have a WaPo op-ed “On government spending, GOP faces a reckoning,” which observes that Latinos, African and Asian Americans, as well as yougn voters, have little use for GOP government bashing and they provide the numbers to prove it. They add, “To conservatives’ discomfort, changes in attitudes about government cannot be finessed by softer words on immigration and same-sex marriage. Likewise, new leaders or better outreach and technology will not solve their problems with these rising voters. Perhaps that is why conservatives are being so adamant and extreme about cutting government: Tomorrow’s political terrain is likely to be less congenial to their anti-government fervor, and they want to accomplish what they can before the tide turns.”
It’s early for 2016 horse race heats, but Hillary beats Floridians Jeb and Marco by double digits in FL Quinnipiac University Poll conducted March 13-18.
Same poll shows 56 percent of Floridians, who have more concealed gun permits than any other state, support a nation-wide ban on the sale of assault weapons, with 41 percent opposed, reports the Miami Herald.
As yet another Bush prepares to run for president, The Nation’s Phyliss Bennis does a good job of succinctly relating the costs, human and financial of the Iraq war started by his brother: “…There was the lie that the US could send hundreds of thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars worth of weapons across the world to wage war on the cheap. We didn’t have to raise taxes to pay the almost one trillion dollars the Iraq war has cost so far, we could go shopping instead…But behind these myths the costs were huge–human, economic and more. More than a million US troops were deployed to Iraq; 4,483 were killed; 33,183 were wounded and more than 200,000 came home with PTSD. The number of Iraqi civilians killed is still unknown; at least 121,754 are known to have been killed directly during the US war…More died from crippling sanctions, diseases caused by dirty water when the US destroyed the water treatment system and the inability to get medical help because of exploding violence.”
David Sirota has an interesting read up at Salon.com, “How to turn a state liberal: Colorado’s progressive miracle is a road map to a much brighter America. Here are 9 steps behind the transformation.” Sirota quotes Dean Singleton, “Denver Post publisher and longtime Republican power broker in Colorado”: “I think (the GOP) is dead in Colorado … It really doesn’t matter whom the Republicans put up. Republicans, in my view, won’t win another presidency in our lifetime …They pick candidates that aren’t in the mainstream … I think Colorado is probably a Democratic state from now on. It is a Democratic state today, and I don’t think it’s going back.”
It’s a little late, but support for filibuster reform is apparently growing to the point where Majority Leader Reid is making noises about bringing it back up…somehow. Greg Sargent, however, is unimpressed and says “Empty threats make Dems look weak and do nothing to discourage continued GOP obstructionism.”
TNR’s Nate Cohn explains why the Libertarian Lightweight is not going to mobilize young voters for the GOP.
At the NYT Opinionator Thomas B. Edsall’s take on “The Republican Autopsy Report” sheds light on the dicey future of the GOP. Calling the report “a remarkably hard-headed diagnosis of the party’s many liabilities,” Edsall succinctly enumerates the Republicans internal maladies as “ideological rigidity, its preference for the rich over workers, its alienation of minorities, its reactionary social policies and its institutionalized repression of dissent and innovation.” Edsall concludes that “What has yet to be determined is whether they are fighting over a patient who can be quickly resuscitated or a patient with a chronic but not fatal illness — or a corpse.”
Scalia is apparently campaigning for lead shill in the GOP echo chamber, an oddly undignified role for a self-described ‘textualist.”