The Republicans have used all of their heavy artillery to obstruct economic recovery, and they have slowed it down, but they have failed to stop it. In his Daily Beast post, “Obama’s Economic Triumph,” Michael Tomasky explains: “…Consumer confidence is at a five-year high. Personal debt is back to normal levels, which is a big deal. Housing investment is up, real-estate prices are rebounding everywhere, the stock market is breaking records… Obama has now created a net positive of more than 1.6 million jobs in four-and-a-half years, which is better than Bush’s mark of 1.08 million in all eight of his years…Many economists believe that things would be going even better right now without the austerity imposed on us by the Republicans who run the House of Representatives.”
NBC News Senior Political Editor Mark Murray reports that President Obama’s job-approval rating is at 48 percent, essentially unchanged, according to the new NBC/WSJ poll. Further, “While only 36 percent say they’re satisfied with the state of the U.S. economy, that’s the highest number on this question since 2006. What’s more, the percentage believing the United States is still mired in an economic recession is at its lowest level since Obama became president.”
The New York Times editorial board opines that “patchwork of conscience and callousness” that defines the difference between Democratic and Republican ruled states with respect to Obamacare and other benefits can’t last too long. “…Better examples are not far away. When residents begin to realize the grass is much greener on the other side of the state line, budget-slashing lawmakers will be under pressure to either change their ways or change jobs.”
At Wonkblog Ezra Klein explains why “The House won’t have a bipartisan immigration bill. That’s (maybe) okay.” Says Klein: “There’s a theory going around that that’s actually better for the final bill. The premise is that the purpose of the House process is to get a bill through the House. It could be a good bill. It could be a bad bill. It just has to be a bill. Because once something makes it through the House it will go to conference with the Senate. Once it goes to conference with the Senate, the Senate can force a product that’s more like its bill than the House bill. And once the process is that near to completion, House Republicans will be afraid to kill it. Speaker John Boehner will waive the Hastert rule, it’ll be passed with a bunch of Democratic votes, and President Obama will have something to sign.”
Nate Silver cites a “weak GOP field” as likely to favor Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s election to the U.S. Senate, replacing Sen. Lautenberg and holding the seat for Dems.
“Scarred by years of Republican attacks over Obamacare, with more in store next year, Democrats have settled on an unlikely strategy for the 2014 midterms: Bring it on,” writes Alex Isenstadt at Politico. “Party strategists believe that embracing the polarizing law — especially its more popular elements — is smarter politics than fleeing from it in the House elections…Democratic strategists are convinced there’s plenty to like in the law — such as coverage for pre-existing conditions, eliminating lifetime caps on coverage and allowing children to stay on their parents’ health care plans until they are 26 — and are coaching lawmakers and candidates girding for tough races next year to hammer home those benefits…”Fix the bad, keep the good, and move on” is the message House hopefuls are being advised to use. Offer help to voters navigating the ins and outs of the altered health care system. And flip the script on Republicans by accusing them of wanting to do away with the most popular provisions, the strategy goes.”
The Susan Rice and Samantha Powers appointments will likely whip up a frenzy of Obama Derangement Syndrome from the Republicans, although McCain and others may be encouraged by interventionist comments attributed to Powers.
Ed Kilgore flags the TNR post, “Why the Democrats Still Need Working-Class White Voters” by TDS colleagues Andrew Levison and Ruy Teixeira. As Kilgore sums up their post: “Realistic goals, careful targeting real connections, and a patient, long-term commitment to engagement are what’s needed to rebuild Democratic WWC support, and perhaps to prevent further erosion. It’s good advice for donkeys.”
As a long-time fan, it pains me to admit that Tomasky’s post “The Racist Redskins” is absolutely right. Democratic leaders should speak out in favor of a name change, especially since many attend the games.
Regarding another symbolic topic with political ramifications, Kilgore has what is likely the definitive takedown of the ill-considered argument that the confederate battle flag is an apolitical symbol of southern culture.

From John Zogby at Forbes: “A new poll by Zogby Analytics shows President Barack Obama actually regaining lost ground in his job approval. His approval rating now stands at 53% — the exact percentage he had when he won re-election last November and up 2 points over his rating in early May. His disapproval rating remained at 46%. The poll of 887 likely voters was taken online May 29 and 30.”
At NYT’s The Caucus, Katherine Q. Seelye explains why women are likely a pivotal constituency in Edward Markey’s bid for the U.S. Senate.
And The Fix’s Chris Cillizza has an informative profile of a constituency that is growing in size and influence — single mothers, including this nugget: “…Obama lost to Romney among white voters, 59 percent to 39 percent. But among white single mothers, Obama bested Romney 56 percent to 43 percent. Lower-income voters are another good example. Obama took 60 percent to Romney’s 38 percent in all households making $50,000 or less a year. Among under-$50,000 households that also included a single mother, Obama took a whopping 79 percent to Romney’s 20 percent.”
TNR’s Nate Cohn probes the politics behind R.I. Governor Lincoln Chafee’s party switch.
At Campaigns & Elections, Erik Nilsson has a sobering take on the power of social media in electioneering in his post, “Can Twitter help you raise money? “According to a new study published in Ecommerce Quarterly, social commerce is almost non-existent. Social media generated only 1.55 percent of traffic to e-commerce sites. To make matters worse, only 0.71 percent of that traffic resulted in any kind of financial transaction.”
For some non-electoral visioneering, try Lyle Jeremy Rubin’s review article “A Realistic Radicalism” in Dissent. Rubin culls insights from three books, “America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy” and “What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution” by Gar Alperovitz and “After Capitalism” by David Schweickart. Some provocative insights here, among them: “Alperovitz is most compelling on Employee Stock Ownership Programs (ESOPs) and worker-owned firms. He brandishes a number of studies that have repeatedly confirmed that both ESOP companies and more ambitious worker-owned firms are often “more profitable, more competitive, and more efficient” than their traditional counterparts…Though there are significant differences in levels of employee participation and democratic decision-making in each setting, the standard is more democratic than its alternative, the trend-line leans in the direction of more democracy, a growing number of unions are coming on board, and proposed bipartisan legislation continues to push for federal tax benefits to ESOP companies operating under a one-person, one-vote system.”
And as long as you’re thinking in terms of transformative societal change, check out Derek Thompson’s data-rich post “How Did Work-Life Balance in the U.S. Get So Awful?” at The Atlantic — which also hints at why working single mothers are a potent demographic asset for Democrats.
If you haven’t been there yet, peruse Progressive Majority’s ‘Message Guide,’ which has useful tips for choosing the best words and phrases for advocating a broad range of progressive reforms.
Oliver Willis takes a perceptive look at conservative websites and observes: “The new generation of conservative media could be the best thing to happen to the left. They make the attacks of Limbaugh, Fox, and company look coherent and solid by comparison…As a liberal who wants conservatism to fail, I thank God for sites like Breitbart.com and Twitchy. They are frustrated conservative rage hubs with little to no application in practical politics or movement advancement.”
Just for fun, read “The 11 Biggest Conservative Scandal Flops” by Ryan Cooper at The Washington Monthly.

Sure there is an argument that the departure of Michelle Bachman from office is good for Republicans, as per LC Granderson’s CNN Opinion post “Bachmann exit helps GOP scrub stupid away.” But it can’t be a bad thing that the quality of congressional dialogue won’t be quite as lame.
Or, as E. J. Dionne, Jr. puts it in his WaPo column, “Bachmann’s retirement should foster some soul-searching about the nature of our political discourse and how easy it is for falsehood and innuendo to get treated as just one more element in the conversation — no more or less legitimate than any other… She perfected a tactic well-suited to the current media environment: continually toss out outlandish, baseless charges, and, eventually, some of them will enter the mainstream media…”
Jeremy W. Peters’ “G.O.P. Sizes Up Obama as Midterm Target” at The New York Times reports on the strategic debate now underway in the Republican Party.
Virginia’s Republican Governor does something good in announcing plans to restore voting rights to people convicted of nonviolent felonies. But he can do even better, as Sue Sturgis reports at Facing South: “While civil rights advocates are lauding McDonnell’s action, some are calling on him to go further by automatically restoring voting rights to all Virginia citizens with past criminal convictions who are living and working in the community.”
At last, the filibuster may be ripe for nuking, reports Jamelle Bouie at The Daily Beast..
Andy Kroll’s Mother Jones post “Meet the New George Soros” showcases the new bogeyman for the wingnuts, Dreamworks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg: “All told, Katzenberg gave or raised more than $30 million to reelect Obama, helping Hollywood make up for Wall Street’s plummeting financial support of the president. And that’s not counting the funds he marshaled for other Democrats, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and California Gov. Jerry Brown.”
In his New York Times Opinionator blog, Thomas B. Edsall discusses the a trendy justification for cutthroat capitalism: “In a more detailed paper, “Can’t We All Be More Like Scandinavians?” Acemoglu, Robinson and Verdier expand on their argument that the world is dependent on American leadership in technology and innovation to sustain global growth. In order to maintain its position at the forefront of global innovation, the authors contend, the United States must maintain an economic system that provides great rewards to successful innovators, which “implies greater inequality and greater poverty (and a weaker safety net) for a society encouraging innovation.”
At Brookings William A. Galston and E. J. Dionne, Jr. consider “The New Politics of Marijuana Legalization: Why Opinion is Changing” and observe that “demographic change and widespread public experience using marijuana imply that opposition to legalization will never again return to the levels seen in the 1980s. The strong consensus that formed the foundation for many of today’s stringent marijuana laws has crumbled.”
From Josh Krushaar’s “Republican Red Flags All Over in Bellwether States: The GOP’s recruitment struggles in Virginia and Colorado don’t bode well for the party’s long-term health“: “For all the lip service given by Republicans to the party’s efforts to modernize its image, a quick look at the GOP’s standing in two must-win battlegrounds doesn’t paint a promising picture of their efforts. In Colorado and Virginia–the archetypes of suburban, demographically changing states–Republicans are barely contesting next year’s Senate races, are facing fresh setbacks in the two pivotal upcoming gubernatorial races, and are dealing with persistent issues recruiting new talent into the pipeline.”
Eugene Robinson should be able to get about 70 million “Amens” for this one.

Ari Shapiro reports at npr.org on “Obama’s Next Big Campaign: Selling Health Care To The Public,” leading up to October 1, when 7 million uninsured Americans will be able to purchase health insurance on the public exchanges implemented by the AffordableCare Act.
At The Plum Line, Jonathan Bernstein explains why it makes sense to ignore the latest CNN poll finding that 54 percent oppose Obamacare: “Yes, 54 percent oppose the ACA, but almost half of those think it’s not liberal enough…it won’t really matter what people thought they were going to get in the many long months before the law was fully implemented. So if you want to know what people will think of Obamacare next year, follow the news on implementation — not the current polls.”
Also at The Plum Line, Jamelle Bouie has some sobering advice for Republicans regarding the ACA: “…At this point, repeal is unlikely. With President Obama’s reelection, we crossed a point of no return. States have already begun to implement major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, and governors of all stripes — including conservatives like Arizona’s Jan Brewer — are pressuring their legislatures to sign on to the program. Within a year, large numbers of Americans will begin to see concrete benefits from the law, giving them reason to support the system as a whole…Even if a Republican wins the White House in 2016, the Affordable Care Act is likely to survive, for the simple reason that people don’t like to lose benefits. Republicans will have to accept Obamacare as part of the political landscape and move on.”
Joshua Holland’s Alternet post “How America’s Retirement Crisis Is Crushing the Hopes of a Generation of Young People” merits a thoughtful read, especially by Democratic policy-makers and strategists.
Former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole has cited the GOP’s gridlock strategy in congress in saying his party should be “closed for repairs.” In some states, however, Republicans are actually reversing social and economic reforms. As Michael A. Fletcher reports at The Washington Post, North Carolina has become the new laboratory for right-wing “reforms.” He quotes Rev. William J. Barber II, head of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP: “Most of the laws that take us backwards do not come out of Congress but out of state legislatures.” Barber is leading a growing protest movement against the GOP assault on social programs and voting rights in the state capitol.
For more on the NC protests, check out Sue Sturgis’s by-the-numbers post at Facing South.
TNR’s Alec Macgillis writes on the arrival of a much tougher gun-control movement.
In his WaPo column on “The Obama Riddle,” D. J. Dionne, Jr. shares a perceptive take on the President’s leadership style: “He’s an anti-ideological leader in an ideological age, a middle-of-the-road liberal skeptical of the demands placed on a movement leader, a politician often disdainful of the tasks that politics asks him to perform. He wants to invite the nation to reason together with him when nearly half the country thinks his premises and theirs are utterly at odds.”
Do share Paul Krugman’s review article “How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled” at the New York Review of Books with your swing voter friends and acquaintances.
Media Matters’ Tyler Hansen’s “Collapsing Bridges, Collapsing Spending, And Neil Cavuto’s Infrastructure Denialism” shows just how distorted MSM reporting can be on an issue of public safety. Or, as one of the post’s commenters puts it: “this is why we can’t have nice things.”

In a more rational Republican Party, here’s a headline that would encourage the leadership to stop and rethink a few of their assumptions: “Fewer Americans Identify as Economic Conservatives in 2013: Thirty percent say they are liberal on social issues, a new high.” The headline comes from Andrew Dugan’s report on Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 2-7.
The percentage of Americans who identify themselves as “economic conservative” has declined 5 percent, to 41 percent from 46 percent in the 2012 edition of the Values and Beliefs poll. Those who identify themselves as economic moderates picked up the gain, increasing their percentage from 32 to 37 percent. Those who call themselves economic liberals declined a point, from 20 to 19 percent, a figure that “has not fluctuated much since 2001”.
But there is some good news for liberals in the poll, as Dugan reports:

While economic liberalism remains stagnant, the percentage of Americans describing their social views as “liberal” or “very liberal” has achieved a new peak of 30% — in line with Gallup’s recent finding that Americans are more accepting on a number of moral issues. Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are conservative or very conservative on social issues and 32% self-identify as socially moderate.
Most Americans are ideologically consistent in their views of economic and social issues. For individuals who gave an answer to both questions, 75% of social conservatives also considered themselves economic conservatives, while 60% of social moderates were also economic moderates. Social liberals were less “consistent,” with a slim plurality, 44%, saying they were also economically liberal.
“Pure” conservatives — individuals who say they are conservative in both policy spheres — make up a substantial portion of self-identified or leaning Republicans, 63%. Pure liberals, by far less common than their ideological polar opposites, are a less sizable contingent of the Democratic Party, constituting 28% of its overall base.

While the poll may not reflect a political earthquake in the making, there is no good news here for the GOP. As Dugan concludes, “… The trend suggests that ideological attitudes in the country may be shifting. Social liberalism has grown by six points since 2001 and now attracts half of rank-and-file Democrats and Democratic leaners. It is possible that Americans are returning to a certain sense of normalcy on economic ideology, while social ideology continues to charter new ground.”
Perhaps the more interesting possibility is that Republican Party obstructionism has reached the point of diminishing returns — that the “conservative” brand has been tainted by association with the GOP, and growing numbers are more comfortable calling themselves something else.

Alex Altman posts on “For Republicans, Oklahoma Tornado Revives Questions About Disaster Relief” at Time Swampland, noting that Republican Sens. Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe, who opposed emergency aid for new England in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, are catching heat for their position on emergency aid for their state. Coburn is insisting of offsetting cuts in the federal budget elsewhere, while Imhofe is trying to sell a double standard, arguing that there will be no pork in aid for Oklahoma, so it’s OK.
NY Republican Rep. Peter King ain’t having Imhofe’s equivocating: “We know the type of suffering that people go through during these types of crises and we’re not going to hold – I’m certainly not going to hold the good people of Oklahoma hostage because they may have some hypocrites in their delegation,” King told WCBS 880′s Steve Scott on Wednesday…We had to wait over 100 days before we even got the aid approved to New York and New Jersey. Now, we find the senator from Oklahoma who voted against aid to New York and New Jersey saying that aid should be sent to Oklahoma because there’s a difference between tornado assistance and hurricane assistance,” King told Scott. “This is absolute hypocrisy.”
But Joan Walsh’s Salon.com post “Inhofe and Coburn: Red state hypocrites” hits the core issue most squarely: “Especially in the wake of the sequester cuts, the notion that the federal budget is larded with easily eliminated spending is ludicrous. Would Coburn like to see more kids thrown out of Head Start? More seniors losing Meals on Wheels? The federal deficit is shrinking faster than at any time since just after World War II, but Coburn is going to insist that someone, somewhere, must lose their federal help so Oklahoma can get it instead…We now apparently have deserving and undeserving disasters. When tragedy strikes, most Americans tend to want to pull together, but many Republicans look to pull us apart, placing their own constituents’ needs above everyone else’s.”
At PolitcusUSA Sarah Jones adds a little clarity to the I.R.S. ‘scandal,’ noting that “Conservative Nonprofits That Received Tax Exempt Status Outspent Liberals by 34-to-1.”
So, “Is the Economy Saving Obama’s Approval Ratings?” at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver says “…It may be that the talk surrounding Benghazi, the I.R.S. and the Justice Department has negatively affected Mr. Obama’s approval rating by two or three percentage points, but that the economy has lifted his numbers by about the same amount.” In a word, yes.
Michael Tomasky makes a convincing argument that Dems should resist all calls for a special prosecutor. “Just say no, and say it firmly,” says Tomasky.
At The Daily Beast Eleanor Clift explains how “Obama’s Minimum-Wage Gambit Puts Republicans on Defensive” and explains: “Democrats and Republicans disagree about the economic consequences of a higher minimum wage, but they do agree on the politics, that it’s a loser for Republicans and mostly a winner for Democrats. “It should resonate,” says Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. “No one will win an election on this, but it rounds out with some base voters that he’s focused on their needs, too.” Democratic pollster Stefan Hankin agrees that it speaks to the Democratic base, but warns that it also risks deepening the divide between the business community and Democrats at a time when the GOP is in such disarray that an olive branch to business might be better politics. Either way, Democrats have set a proposal in motion that if it doesn’t pass in this Congress, it likely will in the next.”
The common wisdom has it that Huntsman can’t get nominated in his party, since right-wingers now have veto power. But Dems should keep an eye on him, just in case the wingnut base of the GOP’s House of Cards is ready to implode. His new PAC appears to be a well-planned base-building vehicle.
Greg Sargent reports at The Plum Line that “Harry Reid escalates `nuclear’ threat” as the only reasonable response left to GOP obstruction of nominations that ought to be routine.
Diogenes can finally stop looking. We found an honest man right here.

As one of the most important swing states, Florida’s election law reforms are of more than local interest. So, when Florida’s right-wing governor Rick Scott reverses his earlier opposition to early voting and suddenly signs into law reforms that actually improve voting rights, it may indicate that growing public discontent about voter suppression is making swing voters tilt Democratic. As Aaron Deslatte Tallahassee Bureau Chief of the SunSentinel, explains:

Gov. Rick Scott has signed an elections bill that allows more early voting, in an attempt to reverse some of the restrictions the Republican-controlled Legislature put in place in 2011…is a response to the ridicule Florida received in the days after President Barack Obama’s re-election, when votes were still being counted in a few counties…some urban counties like Miami-Dade, Broward and Orange saw lines that stretched for hours.
Miami-Dade, in particular, has been blasted for not re-aligning its voting precincts with updated population data, resulting in some polling sites that were slammed and others largely empty. Other counties like Palm Beach complained that vendors botched up ballots and software…The bill, HB 7013, lets the State Department fine vendors $25,000 for voting-machine problems that don’t get fixed.
…It also increases the allowable early voting hours, and goes from eight days to 14 days. The Legislature had reduced that early-voting window to one week in 2011, which some evidence has found decreased early-voting turnout last year — particularly among minorities.
And it expands the locations for early voting from just election offices and city halls to include courthouses, civic centers, stadiums, convention centers, fairgrounds and government-owned senior and community centers.
“…With this election reform package, Florida has achieved what many of us thought at one time might be impossible: a huge improvement to our democratic process and a giant step forward for Florida voters,” said Deirdre Macnab, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida.
…But Democrats and some voting-rights groups have been less-than-thrilled with the bill because it gives county election supervisors discretion in the number of hours of early voting they offer — as much as 168 hours — and whether or not to hold early voting on the Sunday before a general election. Some rural counties have said that Sunday is rarely used by voters, while it’s a main get-out-the-vote day among minorities in more urban counties…

The Republicans’ heavy-handed voter suppression may be backfiring with swing voters. Certainly the outrage about FL’s long lines at the polls in 2012 — 8 plus hours in some Miami precincts — aren’t helping the state GOP. Gov. Rick Scott seemed to be campaigning for poster boy for voter suppression before the election. Now he is all about expanding voter access, no doubt to save his political skin. He is running scared.
Looking toward 2014, polls taken in March by Public Policy Polling and Quinnipiac University showing Gov. Scott running 8 and 6 points, respectively, behind likely Democratic candidate for FL Gov. Charlie Crist.
Whether Dems can beat Gov. Scott or not in 2014, leveraging voting reforms in key states is a critical concern for Democratic GOTV. Florida is not only a key swing state with the 3rd largest electoral vote bloc (29 e.v.’s, tied w/ NY) ; it’s also a bellwether, having picked the winner in 12 out of the last 13 presidential elections (12 of the last 14, for those who believe the 2000 election was stolen). The DNC, major party contributors and progressives in general should gladly provide whatever help the Florida Democratic Party needs to take full advantage of the reforms.

Steve Chapman of Real Clear Politics has the best line yet said about the Republicans likening the current I.R.S. dust-up to the Nixon’s Administration’s abuse of the agency to harass political adversaries: “…Equating the two is like concluding that babies are like poisonous snakes because some of them have rattles.”
For a president who “has just weathered one of the worst weeks of his time in office,” in the words of The Fix’s Chris Cillizza, Obama’s approval ratings are looking pretty decent in this latest CNN poll.
Derek Thompson has it at The Atlantic: “A Simple Graph That Should Silence Austerians and Gold Bugs Forever.”
Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight post “New Audit Allegations Show Flawed Statistical Thinking” crunches I.R.S. auditing by income data and shows why Peggy Noonan is wrong to imply that conservatives are more likely to experience I.R.S. abuse.
Sarah Jones’s “ABC’s Jonathan Karl is an Alumnus of a Conservative Media Training Program” at PoliticusUSA raises questions about the cred of ABC’s sr. political correspondent’s “now infamous Benghazi email lie.”
Sarah Kliff has a must-read Wonkblog post, “When Medicare launched, nobody had any clue whether it would work,” which puts all of the current criticism of Obamacare into much-needed perspective. Kliff’s post includes images of newspaper articles showing how attitudes toward Medicare evolved.
Michael Lind has an informative primer on “How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government” at Salon.com.
“The increase in African American turnout, rather than simple byproducts of the changing demographics of the electorate or Obama’s popularity among Black voters, should be attributed to election reform legislation and enforcement over the last twenty years and aggressive targeted outreach by organizations in communities of color. Federal election reforms like the National Voter Registration Act of 1993(NVRA) or so-called “Motor Voter” law and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) as well as similar efforts at the state level reforms like same day registration and early voting, expanded and eased voter registration.” So says Michael Jackson in his post, “Increased Voter Turnout in Communities of Color & the Myth of ‘The Obama Effect‘” at Demos Policy Shop.
Robert Kuttner’s HuffPo post, “Needed: A Mass Movement for College Debt Relief,” illuminates a strategy that could give Dems added support from young voters.
It appears that we have a new frontrunner in the “most useless opinion survey ever conducted” competition.

The labor movement could use a little good news — and they get it from Alana Semuel’s L.A. Times article “White-collar workers are turning to labor unions.”
Greg Sargent argues persuasively that the I.R.S. does not quite “make the broader case against liberal governance that Republicans are trying to weave out of it.”
This NYT editorial says GOP’s scandal-mongering is all about distracting the public from their obstruction of needed economic reforms.
You’re probably sick of the Republican’s Benghazi nothing-burger. But if you can read just one mare article about on the topic, make it Chris Gentilviso’s HuffPo post, “Republicans Altered Benghazi Emails, CBS News Report Claims.”
Sen Ayotte doubles down against background checks, bets on “Blame Bloomberg” strategy to raise dough. ‘American Future Fund,’ reportedly a Koch Bros. political conduit, ponies up $550K to support her.
At Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Geoffrey Skelley probes “How migration does — or doesn’t — change how a state votes.”
Here’s an interesting approach to fighting suppression of young voters —lower the voting age to 17, like they are getting ready to do in Illinois.
Jonathan Bernstein explains “Why Obama’s Popularity Still Matters,” even though he is a lame duck.
Nate Silver debunks the “second-term curse,” noting that “some recent presidents have overcome the supposed curse and actually become more popular on average during their second terms.”
For those who long for a tell-it-like-it-really-is president, Ezra Klein’s “If Obama went Bulworth, here’s what he’d say” is just the tonic.

Although “Republicans hope public anger over the Benghazi attacks and their aftermath will besmirch congressional Democrats in next year’s midterm elections,” reports AP’s Charles Babbington, “a major independent inquiry largely absolved [former Secretary of State]Clinton of wrongdoing.” Further, ”The unsubstantiated Republican allegations about Benghazi disintegrated one by one,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the House committee’s top Democrat. ”There’s no evidence of a conspiracy to withhold military assets for political reasons, no evidence of a cover-up.”
Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas argue in “The good reasons for the IRS’s dumb mistake” at Wonkblog that it the IRS should target political groups like the tea party to insure that they are not abusing their 501(c)4 status with political activity. “The IRS is supposed to reject groups that are primarily political from registering as 501(c)4s. If they’re going to do that, then they need some kind of test that helps them flag problematic applicants. And that test will have to be a bit impressionistic.” What would be wrong, say Klein and Soltas, is if progressive groups were not also scrutinized.
The Newark Star-Ledger editorial, “Christie’s early voting veto will hurt turnout” pretty much shreds NJ Governor Chris Christie’s bogus image as a leader committed to bipartisanship.
At The Fix Chris Cillizza asks “Can Democrats rebuild Obama’s winning coalition?” and answers, “Black voters, the census study makes clear, were the story of the 2012 election. For the first time since the bureau started measuring voter participation in 1996, the African American turnout rate (66 percent of eligible voters) surpassed that of whites (64 percent)… The bigger problem for the party in attempting to rebuild the Obama coalition is the youth vote. The census study of the 2012 electorate found that just 41 percent of eligible voters ages 18 to 24 actually voted, well below the overall turnout rate of 62 percent of eligible voters. The youth voting rate was a significant dip from the 49 percent of voters ages 18 to 24 who turned out in 2008….Voters ages 18 to 29 made up just 15 percent of the 2012 electorate — lower than exit poll data have shown for the past few elections. That decline should be of significant concern to Democratic strategists, particularly without Obama on the ballot in future elections.”
That the Obama Administration is leveraging private and nonprofit sector support for publicizing and implementing the Affordable care Act is commendable; That it should have to as a result of GOP obstruction of funding is a sad commentary on the Republican party’s willingness to endanger the health of millions of Americans for political advantage.
At Daily Kos, Joan McCarter reports that “Maine became the 13th state in the nation to call for a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission..Maine joins West Virginia, Colorado, Montana, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, Rhode Island, Maryland, Vermont, New Mexico and Hawaii in calling for that Constitutional amendment…Outside of the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court, Republicans hate corporate spending in campaigns [pdf] almost as much as Democrats (71 percent versus 73 percent, respectively) and want to see reform. A Constitutional amendment is not an easy thing to achieve, but the time is right for this one.”
Michael Wear’s post at The Atlantic “How the GOP Can Win Back the Values Debate–and How Dems Could Lose It” should probably be put in the “not likely, but worth a quick read” category. His point that Dems should tone down the “strident moralizing” and embrace a little more civility in dialogue is not a bad one, although the Republicans are worse offenders by far.
In the Washington Post editorial “The GOP’s Politics of Dysfunction,” the editorial board calls out the Republicans for their “absurdly flimsy pretexts” in blocking cabinet appointments needed to enable proper functioning of government: “Americans elected Barack Obama president, and reelected him. He’s entitled to his Cabinet. It’s possible that Republicans will muster the 41 votes needed in the Senate to block both nominations — despite their strong qualifications and high ethical standards. If they do, Americans will be under no illusions that the GOP has led Washington to new lows of dysfunction.”
Joseph E. Stiglitz’s “Student Debt and the Crushing of the American Dream” at the New York Times Opinionator spotlights an issue of increasing concern to middle class voters, and one which Dems would be wise to address with more assertive leadership.
‘Bout time.