At last some action to at least weaken Mitch McConnell’s abusive veto power. In his NYT article, “Democrats Plan Challenge to G.O.P.’s Filibuster Use,” Jeremy T. Peters reports that “The rule change they would seek is intended to be limited. It would allow senators to continue to filibuster legislation and judges, but not appointments to federal agencies or cabinet posts.”
And McConnell’s re-election is by no means a sure thing, as Micah Cohen explains at FiveThirtyEight.com.
At The Fix Chris Cillizza explains why Dems are in serious need of young congressional candidates: “In 2011, the average age for a Democrat in the House/Senate was 60.8 years old while the average Republican was 56 years old.Compare that to ten years ago — the 107th Congress — when the average age was 55.7 for Democrats and 54.7 percent for Republicans.”
While Cillizza’s article sheds no light on which states are doing better or worse at recruiting younger congressional candidates, there are indications that some Democratic parties are in crisis. In Georgia, where Obama got 46.9 percent in 2012, for example, Jim Galloway reports in the Atlanta Journal Constitution that the state Democratic party had only $15K banked at the end of May, which “won’t quite buy you a new Hyundai Elantra.”
Also writing in the new York Times, Cornell University economics professor Robert H. Frank reports on the success the Germany has had with their no-nonsense commitment to infrastructure investment and the folly in postponing needed infrastructure repairs in the U.S.: “The Germans are investing in infrastructure not to provide short-term economic stimulus, but because those investments promise high returns. Yet their undeniable side effect has been to bolster employment substantially in the short run…The Germans didn’t become bogged down in debate over stimulus policy, and they didn’t explicitly portray their infrastructure push as stimulus. But that didn’t hamper their strategy’s remarkable effectiveness at putting people to work. The unemployment rate in Germany, at 5.3 percent and falling, is now substantially lower than in the United States, where it ticked up to 7.6 percent last month. (By contrast, in March 2007, before the financial crisis, the rate in Germany was 9.2 percent, about five percentage points higher than in the United States.).”
The GOP’s filibuster dictatorship in the Senate notwithstanding, Greg Sargent says it well at the Plum Line: “The problem isn’t generic “Washington gridlock.” It’s the House GOP.”
The Crystal Ball’s Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley see a GOP net gain in the Senate in 2014, but a takeover is a little more problematic. At this juncture they see Dems with 48 safe seats, vs. 47 for the GOP, with 5 toss-ups. If Brian Schweitzer runs in MT and Michelle Nunn runs in GA, the picture brightens considerably for Dems.
Texas Governor Rick Perry’s decision not to run for re-election in 2014 has kick-started buzz excitement for Democratic rising star Sen. Wendy Davis as a possible replacement. But Davis faces the possibility of stiff competition from San Antonio’s Democratic Mayor Julian Castro. Either way, The extremely well-financed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott seems to have the GOP field all to himself, which gives any Democratic candidate a hard way to go, reports Sean Sullivan at The Fix.
TNR’s Nate Cohn explains why “Winning More White Voters Won’t Save the GOP.” Says Cohn: “Reversing the anti-GOP trend among non-southern white voters will probably require changes in messaging or policy, probably by moderating on both economic and cultural issues. The Electoral College encourages the GOP to make gains across a diverse swath of swing states, and they need to push back against the equally diverse Democratic attacks that have hobbled the GOP: the attacks on cultural issues that hurt Republicans around Denver, Washington, and Columbus; the depiction of the GOP as the party of the elite, which has hurt the GOP just about everywhere; and yes, the challenges immigration reform poses in Las Vegas, Denver, Orlando-Kissimmee, and Miami.”
Michael Tomasky flags a clever new Koch brothers television ad designed to whip up opposition to Obamacare. At the Daily Beast Tomasky argues that Dems need to get equally-creative to confront the GOP’s latest assaault on the Affordable Care Act. “The pro-reform side isn’t going to get very far with statistics. They need their own army of sympathetic mothers.” He cites the impassioned pro-ACA presentation of Stacy Lihn, mother of a toddler with congenital heart disease at the Democratic convention last year as an excellent template.

As disheartening as was the Supreme Court ruling on voting rights, there was one bright spot in the news yesterday. You can read about it most anywhere, but HuffPo’s “Texas Abortion Bill Filibustered By State Senator Wendy Davis Is Dead” provides a well-described and vividly-illustrated account:

The Texas anti-abortion bill, which threatened to close nearly all of the abortion clinics in the state and prompted an 11-hour filibuster by state Sen. Wendy Davis (D), is dead, The Austin American-Statesman reported…Lawmakers had to vote on Senate Bill 5 before the special session’s end at 12 a.m. local time. However, protesters halted the proceedings 15 to 20 minutes before the roll call could be completed.
The crowd of demonstrators in the capitol cried “Shame! Shame!” when Davis’ filibuster was halted by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who ruled that her discussion of mandatory ultrasound testing was off-topic. Then the protesters roared after state Sen. Leticia Van De Putte asked, “At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over her male colleagues?”
Their cries continued to echo inside the chamber — and over a livestream watched by thousands around the world — until after the midnight deadline passed.,,,A time stamp showing the vote completed after midnight was the deciding factor. “This will not become law,” Sen. John Whitmire (D), told The Austin American-Statesman.

Naturally the Republicans are all bent out of shape about it, and they will surely try again to press the case that clueless guys with bizarre understanding of sexual biology should have dominion over women’s bodies.
For now, however, stetsons off to the progressive women of Texas who refuse to be bullied. As Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, tweeted about the incident “The official vote was recorded at 12:03 a.m. Know why? Because of you. #StandWithWendy #SB5 #TXLege.” Howya liking the filibuster now, Republicans?

In his Wonkblog post, “Ross Douthat gets Washington right, then very wrong,” Ezra Klein gets the New York Times columnist right. Douthat argued that the political establishment’s current focus on lower-priority concerns like gun control, immigration and climate change, when the public wants action on jobs and the economy, shows how out-of-touch ‘Washington’ is. Klein explains:

Much of the work here is done by bundling all the relevant players into a disappointing, elitist mass Douthat simply calls “Washington.” It’s “Washington” that’s failing. “Washington” that is not “readying, say, payroll tax relief for working-class families.” “Washington” where “we’re left with the peculiar spectacle of a political class responding to a period of destructive long-term unemployment with an agenda that threatens to help extend that crisis.”

Douthat departs from the “blame Washington” meme long enough to note that “the public’s non-priorities look like the entirety of the White House’s second-term agenda.” It’s a fairly transparent propaganda trick. Blame the entire political system for the paralyzing obstructionism of a faction in congress, while singling out the major player willing to compromise for the common good as somehow responsible for the failure to secure an agreement.
The political system in Washington — not the capitol itself — is broken in places, but not in ways that Douthat is willing to acknowledge. The abuse of the filibuster, for example, is a destructive systemic malady, which must be fixed before a working consensus can be secured. Yet, even this systemic impediment exists because of the Republican Party’s refusal to negotiate in good faith on the priority concerns of jobs and the economy, as well as nearly all other issues.
“Washington” has become a term that conflict-averse and pro-Republican commentators use to delude the public, and in some cases themselves, that GOP obstructionism is not the core problem. Opinion polls indicate that it’s not working all that well. Sure, millions of people parrot silly expressions like “Washington is out of touch.” But when specifically asked which party is more out of touch, in poll after poll more will say it’s the Republicans.
The better conservative columnists and commentators like Will, Brooks and Douthat, will occasionally fault the GOP for lame comments by its leaders and dumb tactical moves. But when it comes to assessing the GOP’s grand strategy of knee-jerk, full-tilt obstructionism to anything significant proposed by the President or Democrats, top conservative commentators shrug it off. They never defend the gridlock strategy directly, but their silence knowingly gives it a free pass. Their party — and America — would be better-served if they opened up the dialogue.

Start your day by reading John Blake’s “Veterans of forgotten voting war count the cost” at CNN.com. Then use it to evaluate the humanity of the Supreme Court majority’s decision on voting rights, expected later today.

If you thought that the GOP had reached rock bottom in dysfunctionality, read Eleanor Clift’s “The GOP’s Kamikazes Are Back” at The Daily Beast. If this keeps up Dems need only ask swing voter friends, “Do the Republicans really look like a party that can run the country? Really?”

Moyers & Co. are doing a great job of “Keeping an Eye on ALEC.”

At The Atlantic, Molly Ball gets on the “Can Democrats Win Back the Deep South?” story, and notes a growing role for new political groups: “…New groups such as South Forward and the Southern Project could make an impact — by providing resources and support to races and states that are often off the radar of the national Democratic Party. A third group, the Southern Progress Fund, also is gearing up to launch in the coming months…”

Micah Cohen’s NYT post “From Campaign War Room to Big-Data Broom” reports on the GOP’s efforts to match the data mining prowess of Team Obama. It does not sound like Dems have much to worry about just yet.

Catherine Hollander’s “Time Is Running Short for Big ‘Obamacare’ Push” At The National Journal outlines the challenge ahead for the Administration: “But Keith Nahigian, who helped design the Medicare Part D prescription-drug enrollment campaign during the Bush administration, thinks the White House and other pro-Obamacare groups are starting this push far too late…”If you don’t build partnerships, and you don’t have third-party validators and local trusted sources, you only have one-way communication of government telling people to take a personal health care decision, and right now there’s not a lot of trust of people [in] government, and also there’s a cost,” Nahigian said, referring to the fact that unlike voting for a candidate, individuals will be paying for insurance under the new law.”

Todd Lindberg argues at TNR that “The NSA Scandal Was Good for Obama.”

If you’re tired of the same ole, same ole social metrics being trotted out year after year, read “Governor O’Malley Leads in the Fast-Rising Movement around Measurement Issues” at Demos. A new indicator, the “Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)” is being embraced by Maryland, Oregon and Vermont, with other states expected to follow suit. It measures “valuing natural resources and ecosystem services is a staple of GPI, along with other “non-market” goods such as family care-work, volunteerism, and public investments in education, health, infrastructure, and scientific research.”

E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s “Boehner’s House implodes over flawed farm bill” says it plain about the Speaker and his minions: “…Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) exposed hypocrisy on the matter of government handouts by excoriating Republican House members who had benefited from farm subsidies but voted to cut food stamps…The collapse of the farm bill will generally be played as a political story about Boehner’s failure to rally his own right wing. That’s true as far as it goes and should remind everyone of the current House leadership’s inability to govern. But this is above all a story about morality: There is something profoundly wrong when a legislative majority is so eager to risk leaving so many Americans hungry. That’s what the bill would have done, and why defeating it was a moral imperative.”

J-school teachers should use this distorted screed as an example of cheesey reporting.

Now that the chicken littles have all had their say about the one outlier poll that had President Obama’s approval ratings down 8 points, along come top polling analysts Mark Blumenthal and Ariel Edwards-Levy to set the record straight at HuffPo: “A new Pew Research Center survey finds President Barack Obama’s job approval rating remains “fairly steady” despite recent controversies: “Currently, 49% approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president while 43% disapprove. That is little changed from a month ago, before the NSA surveillance controversy and the revelations that the IRS targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.”
Tom Curry’s “Liberals brace for Supreme Court decision on voting rights” at NBC Politics considers possible strategies if the Supreme Court ruling on section 5 of the Voting Rights Act goes the wrong way.
What we call stuff matters in shaping public opinion. As Sandhya Somashekhar reports at Wonkblog: “According to the poll, overall favorability of the law jumps from 35 percent to 42 percent when the term “Obamacare” is used. That’s almost entirely due to the enthusiastic reception it gets from Democrats, 58 percent of whom responded favorably to “health reform law,” compared with 73 percent for “Obamacare.”…Independents in the poll reacted about the same to both descriptors (about a third responded favorably while around a half responded unfavorably). Among Republicans, 76 percent responded unfavorably to “the health reform law.” That number jumped to 86 percent when “Obamacare” was used.”
For the definitive down-to-cases update on the 2014 governors’ races, look no further than “Governors 2014: The Incumbent Avalanche” by Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley at the Crystal Ball.
Thomas B. Edsall’s ruminations on “Our Broken Social Contract” at the New York Times Opinionator are worth a read. But the “social disintegration, inequality and rising self-preoccupation” he cites is more a reflection of Republican party obstructionism than the Obama Administration’s “legacy.”
At CNN.com Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, makes the case for digital modernization of voting in America: “We need to change the way we think about voter registration and move our system into the digital age. If citizens take the responsibility to register to vote, the government has the responsibility to ensure they can…We can also enable citizens to register online and stay registered if they move or change their address. This would add 50 million eligible Americans to the rolls, cost less and curb the potential for fraud.”
RMuse’s “Republicans Are Passing ALEC Written Laws Banning Paid Sick Leave” at PoliticusUSA has an update on the GOP’s assault on worker benefits and protections at the state and federal level.
Here’s an interesting email pitch from the cell phone service, Credo: “Just in 2012, working through the CREDO SuperPAC, we defeated five of the worst Tea Party Republicans in Congress. And we launched more than 500 campaigns on issues like marriage equality, the environment and human rights…AT&T and Verizon Wireless have given $1,047,500 and $179,600 respectively to House and Senate Tea Party Caucus members since 2009–including Representatives Michele Bachmann, Steve King and Allen West (whom the CREDO SuperPAC helped defeat in November)…”
R. J. Eskow’s “9 Ways the Right’s Ayn Randian Experiment Screws Over the Young” provides an antidote to the facile Libertarianism Sen. Rand Paul is hoping to sell to young voters.
I do hope the Republican party regains some sanity, at least enough to negotiate like grown-ups. But this is just… nuts.

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to announce its decision on section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, Ari Berman has a poignant post up at The Nation , “John Lewis’s Long Fight for Voting Rights.” Says Berman: “… It’s shocking that the Supreme Court appears to be leaning toward overturning the centerpiece of the country’s most important civil rights law… If the Court upholds Section 5, as it has in four prior opinions, Lewis’s legacy will be cemented. And if the Court eviscerates it, Lewis’s voice will be needed as never before.”
In other voter suppression news, Josh Israel reports at Think progress that “Colorado’s state ethics panel has ruled that Secretary of State Scott Gessler (R) violated state ethics laws and breached public trust for his own personal gain. Gessler, best known for his failed voter purge and his crusade against largely nonresistant voter fraud, received a fine for the violations.”
At least same-day voter registration is moving forward at the state level, explains Steven Carbo at Demos. Yet here too there is resistence: “Sadly, voting rights opponents are also seeing Same Day Registration’s potential, and are moving to end the reform in several SDR states. Last month, Montana lawmakers voted to put an SDR repeal question before the voters on the November 2014 ballot. In North Carolina, the conservative majority is championing a string of voter suppression measures that would eliminate Same Day Registration, impose a strict voter ID requirement, and shorten the state’s early voting periods.”
Here we have an interesting meditation on “What are ‘Liberals,’ What are ‘Progressives,’ and Why the Difference Matters.”
Mark Caputo reports at The Miami Herald why “Fla. Democrats see Gov. Rick Scott as easy target in 2014.” Caputo explains: “The most recent public polls, released in March, indicate Crist would soundly beat him and that Scott is viewed far less favorably than favorably. One survey, from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling showed that Scott would lose to Crist by 12 percentage points and to Sink by 6 points, but that he’d beat Rich by 6 percentage points.
At The Fix, Chris Cillizza reports on the intensification of the GOP’s internecine battles.
Alex Roarty’s “Will North Carolina Shape the Future of the Senate?” at The National Journal limns the challenge Dems face in holding Kay Hagan’s Senate seat — and the Senate majority: “The Republican Party’s hopes for a Senate majority will rise and fall on 2014 elections in seven red states where Democratic senators are running for reelection or retiring…Within this group (Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia), one state stands apart. North Carolina is represented by freshman Kay Hagan, seeking reelection for the first time since her 2008 victory.”
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham certainly has a way with words, as Phillip Ellito reports in his Talking Points Memo post: “Graham: GOP Is ‘In A Demographic Death Spiral.”
Georgetown poly sci proffesor Dan Hopkins addresses the question “Is it really the GOP’s anti-immigration stances that turn off Latinos?” at Wonkblog.
At The Atlantic Norm Ornstein explores “Why Can’t House GOP Leaders Stand Up to Radical Members of Their Party?” Ornstein observes: “Why have we privatized and subcontracted the lions’ share of our national security intelligence apparatus? Because mindless budget cuts, a long-standing zeal to privatize reflexively, along with multiyear pay freezes for all civilian government employees and other efforts to undercut and demoralize those who work for government, have made it nearly impossible for government security agencies to compete with the private sector for top-flight electrical engineers and computer scientists. So we have turned to the back door, relying more and more on less-secure private contractors. This is the consequence of moving from a commendable focus on lean, efficient, and functional government in areas where we need it to an unthinking hatred of all government that is transcendent in the new GOP, and unchallenged by those who know better.”

Brad Plumer’s Wonkblog post, “Do private-sector unions still have a future in the U.S.?” addresses a question of enormous importance, not only for the union movement and the nation, but also for the Democratic Party. Plumer riffs on Rich Yeselson’s even wonkier essay, “Fortress Unionism” in the journal Democracy, and distills a few key points.
Regarding the Taft-Hartley Act’s effect on union power, Plumer notes: “Yeselson offers a slightly recast argument here, suggesting that the blizzard of new legal restrictions “bureaucratized labor unions,” by forcing them to lawyer up and “drain[ing] the energy and creativity out of the members and their rank-and-file leadership.”
Plumer notes Yeselson’s critique of Labor’s “creative campaigns to organize workers in fresh territory,” and explains:

Some of these campaigns were quite successful on a small scale — like SEIU’s “Justice for Janitors” push. But Yeselson, who worked on many of these efforts, argues that they simply haven’t been enough to stop labor’s overall decline. One reason, he notes, is that it’s simply much harder to organize on a large scale today. When the UAW organized its famous sit-down strike in GM’s Flint plant in 1937, there were 47,000 workers at stake. A single Wal-Mart store today might yield about 300 workers.

Plumer takes a look at labor organizing history in the U.S. and other developed nations and comes to a disturbing conclusion:

Organized labor tends to expand only at rare points in history, so unions should hunker down and wait for that moment to come along. Labor economist Richard Freeman has argued that labor unions in advanced nations tend to follow a similar pattern. They’ve only grown during a few rare “spurts” of social upheaval — World War I, the Depression, World War II. But the rest of the time, they usually wilt….
As such, Yeselson argues, it’s unlikely that incremental organizing pushes can break this long-standing pattern. Instead, he argues, unions should work to shore up their existing strengths: Bolster their locals; organize only where they’re already strong; invest in “alt-labor” campaigns for non-union workers. And then… they should wait for another one of these “spurts” to come along.
“Wait for the workers to say they’ve had enough,” Yeselson advises. “When they demand in vast numbers collective solutions to their problems, seize upon that energy and institutionalize it.” The big question, of course, is what that moment of social upheaval might look like — or whether anything like the worker unrest in the 1930s is even possible today.

Plumer adds that “certain changes to labor law could at least slow that inexorable erosion of union density — even if they can’t stop it entirely.” However, he adds that “Favorable labor law only passes when unions are already strong — and rarely happens otherwise. He cites Dems’ failure to pass card check in 2009 when they had big majorities, intimidated as they were by the filibuster. He concludes, “if the goal is to hope that big changes to labor law will save unions, that could be a very long wait.”
The future of the labor movement and the Democratic party are inextricably intertwined. When one is sick, the other suffers and neither will prosper unless both are in good health. That’s why unions must stay deeply involved in politics and the Democrats must push harder for labor reforms that can strengthen the ability of workers to organize their power into trade unions. The bleak, unacceptable alternative is continued gridlock.
I appreciate the data mining done by Yeselson, Plumer and all political and social science writers. There are important lessons we must learn in historical patterns. At the same time, however, let’s not allow history to make a hostage of hope. Sometimes a creative tweak can make a failed strategy viable.
Perhaps it’s premature to judge recent experimental labor organizing techniques a failure. If the ones that have been fully tried have failed thus far, then lesson learned. To the extent that they haven’t been fully explored, there may be some room for future successes. Surely there is always room for innovative organizing ideas and more creative forms of membership.
As for waiting for the most opportune moment to organize, certainly unions will be alert and move decisively when such a time ripens. But, like the savvy civil rights leader Dorothy Height once said, “When the times aren’t ripe, you have to ripen the times” — which is damn good advice for any progressive movement.

It’s good to see an effort to better coordinate strategy with respect to climate change among Democratic leaders, as reported by Zack Coleman at The Hill’s ‘E2 Wire’ Energy and Environment Blog. White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, Sen Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Henry Waxman have begun meeting to explore ways to initiate executive action for needed climate change reform. “The liberal lawmakers have pressed President Obama to take more aggressive action on climate, noting partisan gridlock will likely close off the legislative route…They want Obama to forge ahead with emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants, expand energy efficiency efforts and sign more international climate accords, among other items.” Such executive action and the ensuing GOP outcry would also highlight Republican obstructionism.
With less than two weeks to go before the special election, Rep. Edward J. Markey is up 7 points (12 points in internal Democratic polling) in his bid to hold John Kerry’s U.S. Senate seat for Dems, report Katharine Q. Seelye and Jess Bidgood at the NYT. Still, his campaign needs money to help reduce the Republican edge in turnout in non-presidential election years. Donations accepted right here.
Politico’s Alexander Burns explains why immigration reform should be a done deal: “Immigration reform continues to attract broad public support as the Gang of Eight compromise legislation moves through the Senate, according to a huge raft of polling conducted for three pro-reform groups: the Partnership for a New American Economy, the Alliance for Citizenship and Republicans for Immigration Reform…In a polling memo set for release Tuesday – and shared early with POLITICO – Democratic pollster Tom Jensen and Republican pollster Brock McCleary reveal that their surveys found “overwhelming, bipartisan support for the bill” across 29 states.” In each of the states, “The average support for the “Gang of Eight” legislation was just under 68 percent, according to the pollsters.”
Media Matters nails Sean Hannity for his shameless two-faced position on NSA surveillance. “Like most ‘wingers, Sean writes history in pencil,” adds one commenter. “Hmm, I thought it was crayon,” says another.
At Wonkblog Timothy B. Lee comments on the findings of a new Gallup poll regarding NSA’s compiling telephone logs and Internet communications: “Interestingly, the most intense opposition to the programs comes from the political right. Republicans disapprove of the program by almost a 2 to 1 margin. Independents disapprove, 56 to 34 percent. But 49 percent of Democrats approve of the program, compared with 40 percent who disapprove.”
Michael P. McDonald reports “A Modest Early Voting Rise in 2012 ” at HuffPo: “The increase of 1.9 percentage points in early voting rates in the past two presidential elections is in stark contrast to the sharp rise of 9.7 percentage points from 2004 to 2008, from 20.0% to 29.7%…The rate of increase in early voting over the past two presidential elections may have slowed since some states have nearly maxed out the pool of people who may wish to vote early. Also, fewer new states came online to offer an early voting option to their voters, beyond the traditional excuse-required absentee ballot.”
Ari Berman’s “North Carolina is the New Wisconsin” provides an excellent update on the ‘Moral Monday’ uprising in the tarheel state, a possible template for progressives struggling with gerrymandered wingnut power-grabs in other states.
Joan Walsh’s Salon post “Hillary must own 2014” spells it out quite clearly: “…She needs to be part of a Democratic team making the 2014 midterms a referendum on the uncompleted business of the Obama presidency – and on the GOP’s outrageous abuse of its minority status to block everything from popular legislation to agency nominations…Clinton has enormous political capital with the Democratic base, and beyond it. She needs to spend some of it turning out voters in 2014, or the presidency might not be a prize worth winning, except as another title in your Twitter bio.”
At The National Journal Josh Krushaar’s “Three Signs Republicans Haven’t Learned Any Lessons From 2012” notes a growing disconnect between the hopes of GOP leaders and the teaps: “The composite is a party stuck in the status quo despite its leaders’ public hand-wringing. Much of the desire for change is coming from the top, while the more-populist conservative grassroots–skeptical of wide-ranging legislation and disdainful of pragmatic problem-solvers–are pulling in another direction.”
Tim Murphy is on to something with his MoJo post “The Private Intelligence Boom, By the Numbers.” The privatization of U.S. intelligence and our national security should be more of a media concern regarding the Snowden case than has been the case thus far.

In a Buzzfeed interview with Ruby Cramer, DCCC Chair Rep. Steve Israel says it plain: “If you relitigate the ideology on the Affordable Care Act, it’s a losing strategy…Roll up your sleeves and solve people’s problems — get them on the exchanges, or if a small business is having a hard time navigating, help them navigate…Don’t be ideologues on the Affordable Care Act — just make it work, be a navigator, be a solutionist.” Cramer adds, The 52 districts the DCCC has targeted in its plan to win back the House — which, many widely agree is an unlikely possibility — are what Israel called “by their nature very moderate, independent, solution-oriented districts.”
At The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky explains “Voter Suppression, Chris Christie Style” with more clarity than most.
According to the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, reports Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News: “Given a list of eight factors and asked to choose the one most responsible for the continuing problem of poverty, 24 percent of respondents in the poll chose ‘too much government welfare that prevents initiative.’ Whether Americans are too dependent on government was a flashpoint of the presidential campaign last year, and shrinking government has been a focus of the Tea Party movement, which has risen since the election of President Barack Obama…’Lack of job opportunities’ was the second most popular answer, at 18 percent, followed by ‘lack of good educational opportunities and ‘breakdown of families,’ with 13 percent apiece.”
As we mark the 20th anniversary of the National Voter Registration Act, Demos assesses the record and probes the unmet potential.
Kyle Trygstad’s “Senate Race a Test Case for Democrats in Georgia” at Roll Call provides a sober assessment of Dems’ projects for picking up a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia. Among his observations: “Blacks now make up 31 percent of Georgia’s population and about 30 percent of its active voters, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. Hispanics now account for 9 percent of the population but remain underrepresented in the voter rolls at just 2 percent. Similar demographic trends are also occurring in states such as Texas and Arizona.” In other words, if the Democratic nominee can win one out of four white voters, a Democratic pick-up is a good bet.
Bill Mayer tells it straight on the gipper: “This has become a kind of conventional wisdom that the Republican Party has gone so far right Reagan himself wouldn’t fit in, but I’m here tonight to call bulls**t on that. Ronald Reagan was an anti-government, union busting, race baiting, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-intellectual, who cut rich people’s taxes in half, had an incurable case of the military industrial complex, and said that Medicare was socialism that would destroy our freedom. Sounds to me like he would fit in just fine.” And that’s just one of his blistering graphs.
The Fix’s Chris Cillizza cites Libertarian-friendly attitudes of young voters towards same sex marriage and marijuana as reason for the hope that Republicans will get a bigger bite of the youth vote. But smart Dems know that Libertarians lose all traction with young voters when they have to defend the Libertarian policy of no government protection for the environment. E. J. Dionne, Jr. also has a commentary on the shallowness of Libertarian philosophy for those who live in the real world.
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains why ‘the states-are-the-laboratories-of-democracy’ is a poor substitute for a functioning national government: “First, it leads to a race to bottom. Over time, middle-class citizens of states with more generous safety nets and higher taxes on the wealthy will become disproportionately burdened as the wealthy move out and the poor move in, forcing such states to reverse course…Second, it doesn’t take account of spillovers — positive as well as negative. Semi-automatic pistols purchased without background checks in one state can easily find their way easily to another state where gun purchases are restricted. By the same token, a young person who receives an excellent public education courtesy of the citizens of one states is likely to move to another state where job opportunity are better…Finally, it can reduce the power of minorities. For more than a century “states rights” has been a euphemism for the efforts of some whites to repress or deny the votes of black Americans.”
Those wondering how two-faced Republicans can get are directed to Lee Fang’s post at The Nation, “Revealed: Letters From Republicans Seeking Obamacare Money.” As the post’s subtitle puts it, “It’s the height of hypocrisy: They call for repeal of the law but plead for its dollars on behalf of constituents.”
Painfully true and excruciatingly boring.

Despite opinion polls indicating that the popularity of the tea party has tanked, their grip on Republican legislators at the federal and state levels, as well as GOP governors, is stronger than ever. In fact, they have achieved something akin to veto power over economic and social reforms, which are supported by substantial majorities of American voters. In effect, tea partyism has been grandfathered in by gerrymandering and the weakness of fearful Republican leaders, especially McConnell and Boehner, but also including McCain and others.
These “leaders” live in a much narrower political universe than do average Americans. They’ve got good health care and income security for themselves and their families, and they apparently believe that they can afford to indulge ideological extravagances with impunity. Not a one of them shows any indication that they give a damn about millions of American children having no access to health care, high unemployment or educational opportunities. The only thing that makes today’s Republican politicians insecure is the fear of being primaried. Even then, however, many of them, know they can fall back on corporate sinecures, if necessary. Economic insecurity is an alien concept which has no bearing on their lives.
There was a time when Republican politicians fought like hell for what they believed in, but would eventually negotiate in good faith for the good of the people. That time is over. Good faith negotiations on major reforms are no longer a part of GOP strategy.
When Olympia Snowe refused to challenge the reactionary tide that engulfed her party, that signaled the end of the hope that some smart Republican would come forward and take a courageous stand in support of bipartisan progress for the common good. When Scott Brown won Sen. Kennedy’s seat, I briefly entertained the hope that maybe he would break the GOP dam and make it possible for a few Republican moderates to offer a more bipartisan spirit. I still think it would have strengthened their party for the long haul.
Many Democrats see value in having a weak, fearful Republican party. It should benefit our candidates, right? Well, maybe here and there. But looking at the big picture, a stronger GOP would be good for the Democratic Party because we would have to step up our game to compete. Regretfully, that calculation seems irrelevant to the current political reality.
If you had to boil down the Democratic message for the 2014 elections into a lucid sentence, it would be “Vote for us because they are nuts and corrupt.” A clear distinction, yes, but it may not be enough to inspire the needed wave election that will make it possible for Democrats to enact the reforms the public supports.
If “nuts and corrupt” seems like an overstatement, consider the following from Paul Krugman’s column about Republicans being driven by spite in their resistance to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion:

…Medicaid rejectionism will deny health coverage to roughly 3.6 million Americans, with essentially all of the victims living near or below the poverty line. And since past experience shows that Medicaid expansion is associated with significant declines in mortality, this would mean a lot of avoidable deaths: about 19,000 a year, the study estimated.
Just think about this for a minute. It’s one thing when politicians refuse to spend money helping the poor and vulnerable; that’s just business as usual. But here we have a case in which politicians are, in effect, spending large sums, in the form of rejected aid, not to help the poor but to hurt them.
And as I said, it doesn’t even make sense as cynical politics. If Obamacare works (which it will), millions of middle-income voters — the kind of people who might support either party in future elections — will see major benefits, even in rejectionist states. So rejectionism won’t discredit health reform. What it might do, however, is drive home to lower-income voters — many of them nonwhite — just how little the G.O.P. cares about their well-being, and reinforce the already strong Democratic advantage among Latinos, in particular.
Rationally, in other words, Republicans should accept defeat on health care, at least for now, and move on. Instead, however, their spitefulness appears to override all other considerations. And millions of Americans will pay the price.

For America to progress, we are left with the hope that our GOTV and candidate recruitment edges are good enough for a net gain of 17+ House seats and hold the Senate majority in 2014. We are going to need some luck for that scenario to materialize. Yet it remains a more realistic hope than the fantasy that some Republican will come forward from the shadows and lead his party to sweet bipartisan reason.
Dems have no alternative to an all-out effort to make 2014 a wave election, challenging though it is, capitalizing at every opportunity on growing public disgust with the GOP. For the longer haul, however, we have demographic advantages, and there is every reason to believe that a more intense commitment to candidate recruitment and training, along with fully developed GOTV resources, can secure a working majority to make the tea party veto a nightmare that belongs to the past.