Jonathan Bernstein has a good post up at Salon.com, “GOP antics will not damage Obama one bit,” urging President Obama to take a step back and shrug off the never-ending teapot tempests that come his way, secure in the knowledge that the sane majority is mostly with him on the important issues — that’s why he got re-elected. It’s sound advice. No chief executive should get bogged down in every controversy that clamors for attention.
McCain, Graham and other yammering Liliputians are always going to be there, griping about every little thing that comes up in hopes of damaging the president’s leverage. They really can’t do much, so why engage with them? As Bernstein puts it:

There’s plenty of things that capture the attention of people who are intensely interested in politics, which everyone else ignores unless they have a particular interest in it. Personnel flaps similar to the Hagel nomination are likely suspects. Think, if you remember them, of similar controversies around Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod or Peter Diamond. Each of these was all the talk of Washington for a while, and then it wasn’t. Most people, however, hardly noticed any of them.
Moreover, we know that the more people pay attention to politics, the more partisan they are likely to be. That’s important, because it means that those people who did pay attention to the Chuck Hagel nomination fight are the most likely to interpret it through their strongly held partisan biases: Democrats will support the president, Republicans will oppose him.
What all that means is that these kinds of controversies, even fairly large ones, are very unlikely to matter at all. Most people ignore them; everyone else merely sticks to their previous opinions.

As a result, Bernstein opines in his key insight, “presidents are a lot more free to take risks than they realize…Barack Obama should realize, then, that he has quite a bit of latitude to make “mistakes” that cause media flaps as long as they don’t produce serious policy disasters.” it’s a liberating insight if it empowers the president to focus more effectively on a grand strategy for securing reforms that matter most. This is more true for presidents in their second term for obvious reasons.
Let the minions respond to the small stuff. Obama was elected to fix the economy and move America forward toward greater shared prosperity. All else is unworthy of too much presidential attention. As Bernstein concludes, “What really does matter is getting the policy right; do that, and the politics will usually follow.”
Obama is a president who seems temperamentally suited for such a Taoist perspective. He picks his fights carefully, and lets congress do most of the rat-a-tat-tat and then acts. Several writers have noted the “Tao of Obama.” As the Tao puts it, “It is because he does not contend that no one in the empire is in a position to contend with him.” Perhaps it’s not a bad strategy, especially for the president tasked with dealing with the most wholly obstructionist opposition in U.S. history. To paraphrase another Taoist saying, the water that goes around the rock reaches its destination before that which fights the rock.

Demos has a good update on the benefits of same day voter registration, which includes: “States that allow Same Day Registration consistently lead the nation in voter participation. Four of the top five states for voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election all offered Same Day Registration. Average voter turnout was over 10 percentage points higher in SDR states than in other states…Research indicates that allowing young people to register to vote on Election Day as much as 14 percentage points…African Americans comprised 36 percent of those who used SDR to vote in the 2008 presidential election in North Carolina, the first such election when SDR was available there…eleven states (California, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) and the District of Columbia have now enacted the reform.”
Maria Liasson’s “One Strategy For A GOP Overhaul? Follow The Democrats’ Example” at NPR’s ‘It’s All Politics’ blog distill’s some of the thinking going on inside the GOP makeover discussion, including this weird nugget from LA Gov. Bobby Jindal: “We seem to have an obsession with government bookkeeping. This is a rigged game, and it is the wrong game for us to play,” he said. “Today it’s the fiscal cliff; tomorrow it’ll be the fiscal apocalypse; then it’ll be the fiscal Armageddon.” But we encourage Republicans to ignore Michael Gerson’s call for Republicans to change, “not just in tone, but actually in substance.”
And, until adults regain control of the GOP, this is the right fight for the president and Dems.
At The Kansas City Star Jordan Shapiro’s “Missouri Democrats stall bill on union dues” reports on the latest GOP union-bashing scam in the state legislature, a “paycheck protection” bill, which is a Frank Luntz-like euphemism for preventing public unions from automatically deducting dues from their members’ paychecks. Similar measures, sort of ‘right-to-work lite,’ have passed in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Ohio, Michigan and Washington state. Missouri Democrats have blocked the bill on the state senate floor…for now.
The Hill’s Brendan Sasso notes an interesting angle on political donor disclosure in his ‘Hillicon Valley’ blog. The FCC, if not the FEC, “already has the power to require outside groups, like super-PACs, to reveal who is paying for the pricey, often negative ad campaigns that blanket the airwaves ahead of elections…FCC regulations currently require TV broadcasters and cable providers to identify the “true sponsor” of all ads, whether they are commercial or political. The FCC rarely investigates or penalizes violations of the rule, however.”
In her post, “In Voting Rights Arguments, Chief Justice Misconstrued Census Data,” NPR’s Nina Totenberg calls out the Chief Justice for his statistical shenanigans (large m.o.e.’s) in arguing that Massachusetts has a worse record than Mississippi in African American voter turnout. Roberts, like his predecessor Rehnquist, has a long history of involvement in voter suppression, ably reported by Adam Serwer at MoJo.
The partisan stink behind the effort to overturn the Voting Rights Act is growing stronger. Zachary Roth fleshes out the connections at at MSNBC.com.
At FiveThirtyEight.com Micah Cohen provides some encouraging stats as part of an answer to his question “Can Democrats Turn Texas and Arizona Blue by 2016?“: According to demographic projections by the Center for American Progress for 2016, “In Arizona, more than 175,000 Hispanics will enter the voter pool as roughly 10,000 white voters leave it. In Texas, 185,000 new white eligible voters will be overwhelmed by the roughly 900,000 Hispanics expected to enter the electorate.” Florida will gain 600,000 eligible Latinos and 125,000 eligible whites. African American eligible voters will also increase in these states.
Here’s the false equivalency headline of the week, selected for promoting the delusion that Democrats have not offered any reasonable compromises and the GOP’s rigid obstructionism is not unprecedented. The article is similarly myopic.
The nit-pickers are abuzz with accusing the President of conflating sci-fi films (Star Wars vs. Star Trek) as a result of his recent statement “I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow, you know, do a Jedi mind meld with these folks and convince them to do what’s right.” But Chris Peterson, an M.I.T. research assistant, has a different take: “…There is a Jedi Meld well established within the admittedly capacious but nonetheless official contours of the Star Wars: ‘Expanded Universe. In Outbound Flight,’ a novel written by the prolific Timothy Zahn, the Jedi Master Jorus C’baoth instructs a young Anakin Skywalker that the Jedi Meld “permits a group of Jedi to connect their minds so closely as to act as a single person…According to Wookieepedia, the Jedi Meld was deployed by dozens of Jedi, including (but not limited to) Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade Skywalker, and Anakin, Jacen, and Jaina Solo, across dozens officially-licensed books. Indeed, its recovery and redevelopment, principally by the Solo children, was an important turning point in the Yuuzhan Vong War as chronicled exhaustively in the New Jedi Order series….not only is the Jedi Meld, through general acceptance and uncontroversial use, authoritatively established within the official Star Wars universe: it was the right reference for Obama to make.” So there.

In his post, “Woodward Does Duty With Phony Outrage Machine,” Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America has an interesting take on the alleged complaint by Bob Woodward that he was somehow threatened by the white house:

Woodward’s hard-to-believe tale about being threatened, based on a single innocuous sounding phrase from an email sent by a senior White House aide, was cheered by Obama’s conservative critics who claimed it proved their long-running theory about the administration’s “thug” culture. But the shaky story of a threat quickly collapsed when the full context of Woodward’s email exchange with the White House aide, Gene Sperling, was revealed. Rather than a threat, the two men had simply engaged in a vigorous, respectful debate.
Yesterday, Woodward summoned two reporters from Politico to his home and told them his tale of woe. According to the Politico article, Sperling had pushed back on Woodward’s assertion that President Obama was “moving the goalposts” on the issue, telling Woodward in an email, “I think you will regret staking out that claim.”
From that, Woodward insisted he’d been threatened, even though “I think you will regret staking out that claim” doesn’t sound like very threatening language. Instead, it sounds like someone trying to tell Woodward he would regret publishing facts that are inaccurate. (Kind of the opposite of a threat, no?)
Indeed, when Politico published the email exchange in its entirety, the whole story fell apart. Sperling had actually written, “I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.” And Woodward’s response certainly did not indicate that he felt threatened; he told Sperling, “I also welcome your personal advice. I am listening.”
Why Woodward decided to stage a media tour based on a false premise of a non-existent threat remains to be seen. But we do know Woodward’s now an honorary practitioner of the far right’s Phony Outrage Machine.
That’s where never-ending allegations of Obama misconduct are churned out on a daily, and even hourly basis. And it’s where there’s always a new claim to replace the last debunked one in an effort to meet readers, listeners and viewers’ insatiable appetite for news about Obama’s supposedly wicked ways…

Boehlert concludes, “But again, the story isn’t true. There was no threat issued. The only question that remains is why Woodward felt the need to concoct such a bizarre and public Beltway drama…By signing up for duty with the Phony Outrage Machine and by parading around on Fox News wringing his hands over a fictitious threat, Woodward does serious damage to his reputation.”
Woodward was on ‘Morning Joe’ this morning, walking everything back as gracefully as he could. To be fair, he did not use the word “threat” in his reporting of the incident, but it does appear that he was trying to imply it, when he had to know better, given the full context of the email exchange. David Axelrod confronted him on the program, pointing out that Woodward’s home paper, the Washington Post used the term “was threatened” in the headline. Give Axelrod credit for being fair and temperate in making his points.
In The Nation, Greg Mitchell’s “From Legend to Laughingstock: Bob Woodward Cites Bogus ‘Threat,’ Calls Obama ‘Nixonian’ gooses some chuckles out of the dust-up, beating up on Politico, as much as Woodward, and observing:

Published at the Politico site, this obsequious report (the writers also backed Woodward’s view on Obama as bad guy in the sequester debate) drew wide mockery on the web last night, even from some on the right. The “threat” appeared no different from someone’s simply warning another that they might be embarrassed if they continue with their current line of action or thinking…The White House quickly pointed out what most readers had already concluded: Woodward was completely hyping the alleged threat–sort of like Bush did with Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons. He had even said much the same thing in a hasty CNN appearance.
Now the White House has released the full text of the e-mails exchanged by the official, IDed as Gene Sperling, and Woodward–and they should bring (but probably won’t) full shame to Woodward, Vandehei and Allen.
Politico has released the full e-mails and they give lie to Woodward’s claim of feeling “threatened,” as you’ll see in Woodward’s reply and Sperling calling him “a friend.” Now we learn that Vandehei and Allen deliberately left out the key “as a friend” lead-in to the alleged “threat.” Sperling also wrote, “my bad,” and closed with: “My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.” Some threat!
…Dan Froomkin calls the whole affair in a tweet: “Bob Woodward’s Mad Hatter tea party with Allen and Vandehei…. All of them puffed up and delusional.” A writer at The Atlantic Wire observed: “We hope Woodward never gets an e-mail in ALL CAPS.” As Dick Cheney might put it, we are simply hearing the cries of old-line DC journos in the “death throes” of their game…Charles P. Pierce has fun with it all here, but adds, seriously, that Woodward played the pair “like the two-dollar fiddles that they are.” Even The Daily Caller admits they got played by Woodward.

And Ed Kilgore adds that the illustrious Pat Caddell has weighed in on the matter, at the Fox News web page, no less, likening Obama to Nixon and calling out Woodward for not adequately popping off about Benghazi. “C’mon into the fever swamps, Bob! The water’s fine!,” urges Kilgore.
It should be acknowledged that Woodward has given a hard time to Republicans, also, going back to Watergate, though many would agree that he has drifted rightward since then. However, as one of America’s most respected MSM reporters, he shouldn’t be anywhere near the GOP’s phony outrage machine.

Charles Babington’s AP article “Republican losses obscure US drift to right” is more about Republican success in pushing policy rightward than than a real transformation of public attitudes.
Molly Ball’s post, “5 False Assumptions Political Pundits Make All the Time” at The Atlantic is based on an article in The Forum by Stanford political scientist Morris Fiorina arguing that: 1. The electorate is not “polarizing.” It’s “sorting.”; 2. Candidates change more than voters do; 3. Independents aren’t partisans; 4. “Division” is easy to overstate; and 5. Campaign ads really, really, really don’t make much difference.
Linda Feldmann’s “Obama’s divide-and-conquer strategy: Is it really about destroying GOP?” at the Monitor observes: “there’s a case to be made that Obama has helped exacerbate the GOP’s internal divisions by highlighting wedge issues. Gay marriage, the expansion of Medicaid, immigration reform, even the “sequester” – all have splintered the Republicans and at times forced them into debate among themselves as much as with Democrats…”Obama’s doing a good job of exploiting internal discord,” says Ford O’Connell, president of the conservative Civic Forum PAC.
Thomas Ferraro’s Reuters post, “In separating gun-control bills, Democrats reveal strategy” signals a departure from the Democratic proclivity for “big package” reform. As Ferraro explains, “President Barack Obama’s fellow Democrats in the Senate have spread his gun-control proposals across four bills in an effort to get at least some of the less controversial measures – such as expanded background checks for gun buyers – passed into law…By breaking Obama’s gun-control agenda into pieces, supporters hope to avoid having a less popular proposal such as the assault weapons ban contribute to the rejection of other proposals, aides said.”
Milwaukee police Chief Edward Flynn takes no guff on gun control reforms from the insufferable Sen. Lindsey Graham in this video clip.
“Democrats Oppose Flexibility in Sequester Cuts” by Shane Goldmacher, Amy Harder and Stacy Kaper of the National Journal provides perspective on the latest debates going on inside both Democratic and Republican strategy sessions.
Liberal Supreme Court justices are reportedly making a big pitch to Justice Kennedy to join them in upholding the Voting Rights Act, according to Reuters’ Joan Biskupic. Seems like a long shot, given Kennedy’s hardening conservatism. But if he joined the liberals on the court on this important vote, it would increase his influence considerably to the dismay of the CJ who prefers the idea of “the Roberts court.”
At The Daily Beast Ilana Glazer reports “A new Washington Post-ABC News poll reveals more self-identified Republicans disapprove of the way Republicans are handling federal spending than approve of their performance. Barack Obama’s handling of federal spending did not rate well, either, with 52% of all adults disapproving. Democrats, though, show much more unity and cohesion, with 74% of self-identified Democrats approving of President Obama’s handling of federal spending.”
Commenting on the same poll, Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake note at the Fix that “Republicans have put their battle to rein in federal spending front and center as they seek to (re)define who they are as a party. And, at least according to these numbers, that effort has yet to pay dividends — even within their own base.”
According to a new Field Poll, 54 percent of California RV’s now support legalization of pot, with 43 percent opposed — quite a contrast from the 13 percent who favored legalization in 1969, the 30 percent who supported the reform in 1983 and 2010, when voters rejected Proposition 19, which would have legalized pot, by 54 percent to 46 percent.

From Paul Krugman’s ‘The Conscience of a Liberal’ blog:

I love Jonathan Chait’s phrase “the fever swamp of the center”; it really is true that self-identified centrists are sounding crazier and crazier, as they try to reconcile their fanatical devotion to the proposition that both parties are equally at fault with the distressing reality that Obama actually advocates the policies they claim to want….

Krugman goes on to cite a Washington Post editorial calling “entitlement reform” an “urgent national need.” He calls out the editorial for going all Chicken Little about the “astonishing” $857 billion interest on the debt, which is actually close in percentage terms to what it was when Bush I ran the white house –“not particularly astonishing in the aftermath of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s,” says Krugman, who concludes:

So it’s all there: hyperventilating about the deficit, together with an absolute determination to blame both sides equally no matter how unbalanced they really are. And as Chait, Greg Sargent, and others say, this refusal to hold the worse parties accountable is in itself an important source of our political dysfunction.

Unfortunately, the fever swamp centrists do seem to sway public opinion to some extent, as suggested by the results of a just-released to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, noted by Ariel Edwards-Levy at HuffPo:

Opinion on the automatic budget cuts is conflicted, if not confused: A majority of people say the sequester is a bad idea, but the public is split over whether Congress should embrace more or fewer cuts, and respondents only narrowly preferred avoiding the sequester altogether to facing its results (and reducing the deficit), the survey found. In addition, the pollsters caution those numbers could look very different should the cuts go through.

While it is disappointing that nearly half of the public thinks we need more spending cuts, at least they are clear about which party is more responsible for the problem, as Edwards-Levy explains:

For now, Americans aren’t convinced that anyone in Washington is interested in compromise, but they view Republicans as especially intransigent, echoing the results of another poll released Tuesday that found most view the party as extreme. While President Barack Obama is viewed as only slightly more interested in unifying the country, the Republican party is seen as emphasizing partisanship by an almost 3-to-1 margin.
Just 29 percent of Americans hold a positive view of the Republican party, compared to 41 percent with a positive view of the Democrats, the NBC/WSJ poll found. The GOP is still more trusted to manage the debt and control government spending, but, for the first time in years, the new polling gives Democrats a small edge on handling the economy and taxes.

The Republicans have had a pretty easy ride of it, pandering at every opportunity to lower-information/lazy or conflict-averse voters who, against all evidence, hold both parties equally responsible for our economic predicament. But recent polls indicate Dems are beginning to make a little headway with the public in terms of a more realistic assessment.
Robert Reich is undoubtedly correct that Dems must more vigorously challenge the GOP’s core myths about the merits of austerity when the economy is down and trickle-down largesse of the wealthy as a panacea for all of our economic ills. President Obama is the messager in chief, but all Democrats must do more to help him bust these twin enablers of Republican obstructionism.

Postpone the sequester, say 54 percent of respondents in a new Bloomberg news poll.
The Monitor’s Brad Knickerbocker has more numbers in his post,”Sequester and public opinion? Advantage Obama. (+video)“.
Anna Chu breaks down “The Impact of the Sequester on Communities Across America” at The Center for American Progress web pages.
Despite all of the Democratic anxieties about the sequester, Lisa Lerer’s Bloomberg post “Democrats Zero In on Vulnerable Republicans Tied to Cuts” reveals a major political liability for the GOP, particularly in districts which are disproportionately impacted by defense cuts.
Ezra Klein explains at Wonkblog why Bob Woodward’s gripe that the Obama Administration is “moving the goalposts” on the sequester is a big stretch.
Claude S. Fisher’s “Can Liberals Get a Witness?” at the Boston Review illuminates the relationship of religious belief to voting. Among his revelations: “In the 2000s, 49 percent of white Gore-Kerry-Obama voters were church avoiders, nineteen points more than the white Bush-McCain voters. Put another way, nearly all of the white Americans who drifted away from organized religion in the last few decades were liberals…The latest election reinforced the trend. Obama lost weekly church attendees (of all races) by 20 points, while winning those who never attended by 28 points…Obama lost white evangelicals by 57 points and won the unaffiliated by 44 points, but white evangelical voters had twice the numbers of the unaffiliated of all races. Fisher goes on to suggest that the disconnection is a formidable obstacle for Dems in the south.
“A majority of Kentucky voters say they favor amending the state constitution to allow convicted felons to regain their right to vote once they serve their full sentences,” reports Andrew Wolfson for the Lousiville Courier-Journal.
24/7 Wall St. profiles “The States with the Strongest and Weakest Unions.”
You won’t find a more thorough, state-by-state update on how the Governor’s races are shaping up than “Red Alert, Part 2 – the Governors” by Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley at Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
Rob Kall has an OpEd News podcast, “NeuroPolitics; Darren Schreiber Does Brain Studies that Differentiate Democrats and Republicans.” Among Kall’s notes accompanying the podcast: “Amygdala activations, associated with externally directed reactions to risk, are stronger in Republicans, while insula activations, associated with internally directed reactions to affective perceptions, are stronger in Democrats. These results suggest an internal vs. external difference in evaluative process…” OK, now I understand…

The Newt-Rove conflict is getting a little gnarly for the GOP. At HuffPo John Ward quotes Newt: “I am unalterably opposed to a bunch of billionaires financing a boss to pick candidates in 50 states,” Gingrich writes, casting Rove as the “boss” picking candidates through groups like American Crossroads. “No one person is smart enough nor do they have the moral right to buy nominations across the country…Handing millions to Washington based consultants to destroy the candidates they dislike and nominate the candidates they do like is an invitation to cronyism, favoritism and corruption.”
Former Bush speechwriter David Frum makes a couple of good points in his CNN Opinion post, “Obama needs a ‘Plan B’ on guns.”
Christie Thompson’s ProPublica round-up “Graphing the Great Gun Debate” provides great eye candy for data junkies.
Julian Selzer’s “How to fight climate change,” also at CNN Opinion, has some good suggestions for progressives, including this from Theda Skocpol: “To counter fierce political opposition, reformers will have to build organizational networks across the country, and they will need to orchestrate sustained political efforts that stretch far beyond friendly congressional offices, comfy board rooms and posh retreats … insider politics cannot carry the day on its own, apart from a broader movement pressing politicians for change.”
Mike Dorning reports at Bloomberg Businessweek: “Fifty-five percent of Americans approve of Obama’s performance in office, his strongest level of support since September 2009, according to a Bloomberg National poll conducted Feb. 15-18. Only 35 percent of the country has a favorable view of the Republican Party, the lowest rating in a survey that began in September 2009. The party’s brand slipped six percentage points in the last six months, the poll shows…Americans by 49 percent to 44 percent believe Obama’s proposals for government spending on infrastructure, education and alternative energy are more likely to create jobs than Republican calls to cut spending and taxes to build business confidence and spur employment.”
More bad news for GOP hopes for making inroads into the Latino vote: “In a new USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll, the president’s approval rating among Hispanics has rebounded to 73%.,” reports Susan Page at USA Today.
Do read Jonathan Chait’s post, “John Boehner Traps Himself on the Sequester” at New York Magazine, which makes a persuasive case that Boehner has become Obama’s not-so-secret weapon in the budget battle. “He’s given himself no way out save the total victory of forcing Obama to swallow entitlement cuts without revenue, a goal he almost certainly can’t attain. He’s the unpopular leader of an unpopular party advocating unpopular ideas against a reasonably well-regarded president, so a public fight will decrease rather than increase his leverage.
At The Daily Beast John Avlon explains why Dems should be able to make John Boehner eat his sequester albatross.
Are web-based polls now more credible? Molly Ball’s post on the topic, “A More Perfect Poll” at The Atlantic observes, “…a funny thing happened last fall, even as polling paranoia was raging: the polls got smarter, thanks in part to Internet-based polling, a method that had previously been seen as the industry’s redheaded stepchild. After the election, when Silver ranked 23 pollsters by how closely they approximated the presidential-election result, firms that had conducted their polls online took four of the top seven spots; in a separate ranking by a Fordham University professor, they took three of the top seven. Meanwhile, traditional, telephone-based survey groups like Gallup and the Associated Press scored near the bottom of both lists. That’s right: in 2012, polls that relied on people clicking on the equivalent of those “Your Opinion Counts!” pop-up ads proved a more effective gauge of the American electorate than the venerable Gallup Poll.”
Jason Easeley’s “Rachel Maddow Annihilates the Paranoid Delusions of Rand Paul ” at PoliticusUSA includes this observation: “The underlying problem that Maddow was getting at is that there is no buffer between the whack job conservative media, and Republicans who serve in powerful positions in our government. Some may argue that bigger issue is that someone like Rand Paul got elected to United States Senate, but in the history of Congress there have always been a few flakes, weirdos, oddballs, and lightweights holding office. There have always been ideologues and fringers like Rand Paul floating around in our political atmosphere. The difference between then and now is that the Rand Paul’s of today have a whole facts optional, but ideology required, media complex feeding their delusions.”

Richard Parker’s NYT op-ed, “Lone Star Blues” takes a sober look at prospects for Texas becoming a Democratic state. It would be a game-changer for presidential politics. But, as Parker points out, Dems must overcome formidable obstacles, including:

…The Hispanic vote is not monolithically Democratic, nationally or in Texas. In 2004, 40 percent of Texas Hispanics backed George W. Bush for re-election. In 2010, Rick Perry got almost 40 percent of the Hispanic vote statewide, and nearly half in South Texas, the purported base for Democratic growth.
Then there is the problem of Democratic infrastructure: there hasn’t been one for years. In 1995, Ron Kirk forged a coalition of Hispanics and African-Americans to become the first black mayor of Dallas, but he could not do the same statewide; he lost a Senate race to John Cornyn in 2002.
That same year, the millionaire oilman Tony Sanchez, a Democrat running for governor, had money, a Mexican heritage and an ability to appeal to Mexican-American voters. For it, he still lost 35 percent of the Hispanic vote to Mr. Perry, who claimed the governor’s mansion.
But the biggest problem is voter participation. Only about half of eligible Hispanic voters show up nationwide; this edged up slightly in 2012 to 53 percent. In Texas, just 4.1 million Hispanics are registered to vote, and only about half of them make it to the voting booth.

President Obama received 41.38 percent of the popular vote in Texas last November, compared to Mitt Romney’s 57.17 percent. In addition, Latinos are 37.6 percent of Texans, and African Americans are 11.8 percent of state residents. Latinos and African Americans accounted for over 60 percent of births in Texas in 2010.
The challenge for Dems is clear, as Parker explains:

… It may be that the demographic wave makes all this beside the point, and that increasing turnout among Hispanics just a little might make a big difference…
But that requires ground troops, voter education and turnout efforts over a multicycle campaign. It also requires that Democrats stop assuming they’re going to lose. “If we start treating this as a purple state,” said Matt Glazer of the activist group Progress Texas, “we would be one that much sooner.”
…Aside from get-out-the-vote efforts and pro-immigrant posturing, the Democrats need to develop a better understanding of Texas Hispanics as more than just immigrants. Their No. 1 issue: jobs. Polling and focus groups by the University of Texas political scientist Daron Shaw suggest that economic themes — including education and entrepreneurship — may draw Hispanics to vote in greater numbers…

As Parker concludes, “It has been 36 years since the Democrats last captured Texas in a presidential election. It could well happen again. But to make it happen, they have to look beyond demographics and start focusing on the hard, long road of party building first.”
It can be argued that North Carolina, where Obama got 48.35 percent of the vote and Romney got 50.39 percent (Obama’s narrowest loss), or even Georgia, which gave Obama 45.48 percent of the statewide vote, are better bets for allocating Democratic resources for party-building.
But Texas has 38 electoral votes, compared to North Carolina’s 15 ev’s and Georgia’s 16. Only California has more electoral votes, And the Texas Republican Party has had a pretty easy ride in presidential elections in recent years, owing to limp turnout of Latino voters as much as anything else. That luck can’t last much longer, especially if the state Democratic party gets its act together, and does more to register and educate Hispanic voters, recruit and train more Latino candidates and do a better job of branding the GOP as the party of immigrant-bashing.

Taegan Goddard explains why “Why Democrats think they can retake the House in 2014,” based on this cheery assessment by Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.): “Redistricting has empowered the worst elements of the Republican Party, amplifying the extremist echo chamber and making the tea party Republican congress toxic to voters. Republicans redrew already-safe members into even more Republican districts, driving control of their party more to their base, forcing more primaries, and making it less likely that they can put forward a party agenda that appeals to Independents.”
Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley preview “2014 Senate Ratings: Red Alert” at Crystal Ball, with a state-by-state rundown of raises as they stand now, noting “The seven most imperiled seats in the whole country are all currently held by Democrats.”
CNN Politics’s Ted Barrett and Tom Cohen mull over Democratic strategy for addressing the sequester cuts in light of Republican opposition to any revenue-raising.
In his column, “The G.O.P.’s Nasty Newcomer,” the NYT’s Frank Bruni has a pretty good capsule summation of why Sen. Ted Cruz is not going to be the GOP’s Great Latino Hope : “He’s an ornery, swaggering piece of work. Just six weeks since his arrival on Capitol Hill, he’s already known for his naysaying, his nit-picking and his itch to upbraid lawmakers who are vastly senior to him…Republicans who look to him and see any kind of savior overlook much of what drags the party down, which isn’t merely or even principally the genealogy of their candidates. It’s the intransigent social conservatism, the whiff of meanness and the showy eruptions.”
Also at The Times, Trip Gabriel has an update on Ashley Judd’s prospects for running and whipping Mitch McConnell in the KY Senate race.
Ronald Brownstein discusses President Obama’s strategy for “Courting the Twenty-Somethings.” Among Brownstein’s observations: “The most striking aspect of Obama’s remarks was how unreservedly he articulated the views of the coalition that reelected him, and how little need he felt to qualify those views for fear of alienating voters beyond it. There was a confidence bordering on swagger in his call for action on immigration reform, climate change, and gun control–issues that he almost entirely sublimated through his first term–and his unwavering defense of collective action through government…That edge reflects the Obama team’s assessment of the political landscape after he survived the headwind of 7.8 percent unemployment to become only the third Democrat ever to win a majority of the popular vote twice. Obama crossed that threshold despite historically weak numbers among the older and blue-collar whites who traditionally anchored the conservative end of the Democratic coalition. He did so with strong support from the growing groups at the center of the Democrats’ new national coalition: minorities; socially liberal, college-educated whites (especially women); and the millennials.”
The National Journal’s Beth Reinhard reports on “The Democrat’s War to Win Women Voters”
For those who were wondering which major corporations are providing political dark money for Republican causes through the State Government Leadership Foundation, Justin Elliot of ProPublica has some answers: “Exxon, Pfizer, Time Warner, and other corporations put up at least 85 percent of the $1.3 million the foundation raised in the first year and a half of its existence, starting in 2003.” Elliot’s article sheds light on how the organization serves as a conduit for funneling big corporate money to GOP causes.
Congratulations to David Corn, Mother Jones D.C. Bureau Chief, on winning the George Polk Award, one of journalism’s top prizes, for his report “exposing Romney’s infamous remarks at a fundraiser about “47 percent” of Americans who receive entitlements.”
At Campaigns & Elections, Bryan Merica explores some of the hot social media tools in politics: “Tracx is another monitoring and engagement platform in our team’s arsenal that any political communications junkie ought to look into. It contains in-depth metrics to help gauge the size and velocity of a conversation on social media–digging down so far as to show you on a map where sentiment is spiking…The toolset that shows the most promise is now calling itself Zignal Labs. During the 2012 cycle, it was deployed in beta format on a number of campaigns as “Politear.” Its developers have the right idea: use algorithms to determine how quickly and broadly a particular story or sentiment is being spread across social networks.”

At Wonkblog, Evan Soltas has “A policy primer for the 2013 SOTU,” including a good collection of quotes from the top rags, including this from Colleen McCain and Peter Nicholas at The Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Obama’s speech on Tuesday before a national audience and both houses of Congress will keep a sharp focus on job creation, a White House aide said. Hoping to boost the economy and shore up the nation’s middle class, he will lay out initiatives in energy, education, manufacturing and the nation’s network of aging roads, bridges and ports.”
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has some salient suggestions for President Obama’s SOTU address.
A new Quinnipiac University poll finds that 47 percent of respondents trusted President Obama more to “handle the economy,” vs. 41 percent favoring congressional Republicans.
When even George Will agrees with Sen. Sherrod Brown that it is time to break up the big banks, it’s time.
If the president is looking for support for a little more balance in our economic policy toward China, Mike Hall’s “New Report: End China Currency Manipulation, Create Jobs” at AFL-CIO Now is a good place to begin.
The Big Dog warns Dems not to rely on negative attacks vs. Republicans going forward toward the mid terms. “Make no mistake, the Republicans are going to try very hard to make it not as easy for you to win [on negativity] … we are now going to have to have an affirmative agenda for jobs and innovation.” Clinton also underscored the importance of Dems being boldy pro-reform to reduce gun violence: “I see this whole gun issue as an opportunity and not a toxic landmine. But it really depends on how you do it…It’s important not to give up on anybody, to talk to them. The worst thing that can happen is they can see we’re not crazy,”
Kos highlights a worthy cause for all Americans who want stronger opposition to the NRA — electing Robin Kelly as a congresswoman from Chicago. From his recent e-blast: “Two of the three top candidates in this race have received “A” ratings from the NRA. They filled out questionnaires in 2010 pledging to stand in the way of sensible reform, from banning high-capacity magazines, to requiring background checks for all gun sales…Chicago and our nation deserve better, which is why we’re blessed to have Robin Kelly in the race. Not only is she a great progressive through and through, but wears her “F” rating from the NRA with the pride it deserves.” Dems who want to support Robin Kelly can do so at her ActBlue web page right here.
The “Buffett Rule” is apparently poised for a comeback as a cornerstone of democratic tax policy, reports Tony Nitti at Forbes.
At Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Alan I. Abramowitz, Kyle Kondik and Rhodes Cook assess Democratic prospects for winning House seats in 2014 in separate articles. Abramowitz and Kondik agree that “incremental gains” for Dems are likely but reclaiming a majority is unlikely at this point, given the gerrymandered realities. Cook is only a smidge less pessimistic about Dems’ prospects.
Nate Silver crunches some interesting numbers to arrive at a skeptical conclusion regarding prospects for Karl Rove’s new Super-PAC, which is designed to contain the crazier tea party candidates with more “electable” Republicans. “Mr. Rove’s efforts could backfire, therefore, if they result in the insurgent candidate receiving more sympathetic treatment through these channels; the amount of so-called “earned media” that the insurgent receives could outweigh the extra advertisements that the establishment candidate is able to afford.”