At Reuters, Patricia Zengerle and Susan Cornwell report that “After shooting, some Republicans more open to gun controls,” but note that “…Any legislation would likely wait until 2013, after negotiations on how to address the “fiscal cliff” of spending cuts and tax hikes due to kick in at the beginning of the year.”
Better late than never, I suppose, even though he won’t be in the Senate next session. Could this be groundwork for a run for Kerry’s seat?
In a saner world this one sentence from Jonathan Wesiman’s New York Times report on the House Democrats press conference urging Speaker Boehner to take up restrictions on high capacity ammo clips and assault weapons would win enough Republican votes for passage: “Representative Ron Barber, Democrat of Arizona, who was shot by the gunman who gravely injured his predecessor, Gabrielle Giffords, recalled living through the 45 seconds it took for the gunman who shot him to fire 30 rounds, taking down 19 and killing 6.”
At The New Republic Adam Winkler has an informative mini-history of gun control in the U.S. from FDR forward.
In FL, Rick Scott seems to be making a bid for the nation’s most unpopular Governor. As Ashley Killough reports at CNN Politics “…Rick Scott’s ratings with voters are just plain awful. The numbers cannot be sugar-coated,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “When voters in a politician’s own party want him to be challenged in a primary by another candidate, it’s difficult to see it as anything but outright rejection.”
States where Obama improved on his ’08 numbers, according to Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley at the Crystal Ball: “There were five states where Obama actually improved upon his 2008 performance. Among the 26 states he won, Obama saw his vote share go up by a bit more than 1 percentage point in New Jersey and by a negligible 0.05 points in Maryland. The other three states where Obama’s portion of the vote grew were Louisiana (+0.65), Mississippi (+0.79) and Alaska (+2.92), where the absence of Sarah Palin probably led to the slight Democratic addition.”
At The Boston Review, Jake Blumgart has “The Next Left: An Interview with Bhaskar Sunkara,” young editor of The Jacobin, a new American socialist magazine. “Today, its Web site gets around 250,000 unique views a month. Sunkara decided the project would get boring if left entirely online and so financed a print magazine from a handful of subscriptions and $2,000 from his own pocket. Today the magazine has more than 2,000 subscribers, including influential activists, labor leaders, and some of the very mainstream media figures it occasionally targets. (Full disclosure: I periodically contribute to Jacobin.) The press is paying attention.”
Also at TNR, Timothy Noah asks — and pretty much answers — a worrisome question “Are Democrats Reverting to Wimps?”
Digby puts it well in her post, “The Dem leadership steps right on the third rail,” which concludes, “Remember, Social Security doesn’t contribute to these deficit numbers. The Democratic leadership is just doing it to appease a bunch of cold hearted conservatives. And if they succeed the supporters of those cold-hearted conservatives are going to blame it all on the Democrats. Brilliant.”
David Callahan reports at Demos Policy Shop on what is really driving the deficit: “Going after Social Security instead of more fully rolling back the Bush tax cuts and more deeply cuttting defense is like grabbing the wrong suspect while letting the real offenders walk free…In any case, now is not the time for deficit reduction at all, given the still fragile economy. Congress should turn to this challenge once unemployment falls — say, to under 6.5 percent. But if there is going to be deficit reduction, it should logically focus on tackling the near-term drivers of the deficit, not messing with Social Security..”

NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the political world’s most eloquent champions of meaningful gun control, said something interesting — and important — on Meet the Press last Sunday:

This myth that the NRA can destroy political careers is just not true…The NRA’s power is vastly overrated.

No doubt Bloomberg is correct with respect to urban congressional districts. But not everyone would agree that it applies as a blanket generalization across the nation. What hasn’t changed, according to Nicholas Confessore, Michael Cooper and Michael Luo, writing in the New York Times, is the NRA’s formidable assets: “A $300 million budget, millions of members around the country and virtually unmatched ferocity in advancing its political and legislative interests.” As The NYT article points out, quoted by Tracy, “Over the years the NRA has perfected its strategy for responding to mass shootings: Lie low at first, then slow-roll any legislative push for a response.”
But that was before the Sandy Hook shootings. In the past the NRA has been able to shrug off massacres, and the politicians have been able to get away with making statements backed by no action, as the incidents faded to the back pages of newspapers. At The New Republic, Marc Tracy quotes veteran Republican strategist Todd Harris: “The public is not interested in hearing reasons right now for why assault weapons shouldn’t be banned. They may be receptive to those arguments in a month or two, as they have been in the past.”
But the massacre of 20 young children in an elementary school is so brutal and horrifying that members of congress who now vote against modest and reasonable reforms in firearms policy are going to have to answer to a growing chorus of middle class parents who are now paying close attention.
Some no-brainer reforms that should be ripe for enactment would include a ban on public sale of high-capacity ammo clips, assault weapons and armor-piercing cop-killer bullets, along with a stronger national data base to identify criminals and people with a history of violent behavior at point-of-sale. The NRA will try to stall and delay action, hoping public attention will evaporate, so political moderates can run for cover. But it may be too late for that tactic to work this time, especially if the parents of the slain children of Newtown organize themselves into a political force that can’t be ignored. The NRA’s ‘slippery slope’ arguments against these reforms are not likely to get much traction in the current political climate.
As Mayor Bloomberg says, quoted by Amanda Sakuma at msnbc.com, the president must take “immediate action” and show leadership on the issue. “If he does nothing during his second term, something like 48,000 Americans will be killed with illegal guns,” Bloomberg said of Obama. “That is roughly the number of Americans killed in the whole Vietnam War.”
if Mayor Bloomberg is right that the NRA is losing influence in America’s electoral politics, it would be welcome development for public safety in America. And by getting out in front on the issue as a compelling spokesman for a sane firearms policy at the right time, while other candidates dither, Bloomberg may be strengthening his cred as a potent force in national politics.

At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum flags Reid Wilson’s National Journal article, “The GOP’s Electoral College Scheme,” which warns Democrats of a coming battle:

Republicans alarmed at the apparent challenges they face in winning the White House are preparing an all-out assault on the Electoral College system in critical states, an initiative that would significantly ease the party’s path to the Oval Office.
Senior Republicans say they will try to leverage their party’s majorities in Democratic-leaning states in an effort to end the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. Instead, bills that will be introduced in several Democratic states would award electoral votes on a proportional basis.

Drum adds that “If, say, Michigan switched to a proportional system, then Mitt Romney wouldn’t have won zero of its 16 electoral votes this year. He would have won eight or nine. Voila! More votes for Mitt.” Further, says Drum,

Do this in other states that are either solidly Democratic or trending Democratic, and you could snag 40 or 50 extra electoral votes for the Republican nominee. Needless to say, there are no plans to do something similar in states that tend to vote for the Republican candidate. Texas and Georgia have no intention of going proportional and allowing the Democratic nominee to get a share of their electoral votes.

In his post, “Electoral College Shakeup: How Republicans could put a lock on the presidency” at In These Times, Rob Richie explains:

If Republicans in 2011 had abused their monopoly control of state government in several key swing states and passed new laws for allocating electoral votes, the exact same votes cast in the exact same way in the 2012 election would have converted Barack Obama’s advantage of nearly five million popular votes and 126 electoral votes into a resounding Electoral College defeat.
The power of elector-allocation rule changes goes further. Taken to an extreme, these Republican-run states have the ability to lock Democrats out of a chance of victory in 2016 absent the Democratic nominee winning a national landslide of some 12 million votes. In short, the Republicans could win the 2016 election by state law changes made in 2013.

Richie notes that the scheme is already in motion in Pennsylvania and “In the last year, Republican leaders have indicated interest in dividing electoral votes in such states as Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and, just this week, Virginia, where state senator Bill Carrico has introduced a bill to allocate Virginia’s electoral votes by congressional district.” He crunches the numbers and provides an interesting chart showing two scenarios using the ‘allocation by district’ method under which Romney would have won an electoral college majority. He demonstrates that under existing political realities, there is no possibility of Democrats using the technique to their advantage.
Jamelle Bouie’s post on the topic, “Republicans Float Plan to Make Electoral College More Unfair” at The American Prospect adds “Republicans…want to “reform” the system by adopting the worst of all worlds–winner-take-all for Republican states, proportional distribution for Democratic ones…it amounts to little more than a scheme to rig presidential elections in favor of GOP candidates.”
As Richie concludes,

…The very fact that such a scenario is even legally possible should give us all pause. Election of the president should be a fair process in which all American voters have equal ability to hold their president accountable. It’s time for the nation to embrace one-person, one-vote elections and the “fair fight” represented by a national popular vote. Let’s forever dismiss the potential of such electoral hooliganism and finally do what the overwhelming majorities of Americans have consistently preferred: Make every vote equal with a national popular vote for president.

This may indeed be the most viable strategy for Democrats, since some Republicans will likely join the direct popular vote movement, concluding that direct popular vote gives them a better shot than trying to ‘run the table’ in winning district allocation of electoral votes reforms in all the swing states. Democrats on, the other hand, will continue to have a growing edge caused by demographic trends. It’s the only way to insure a fair playing field for all parties.

From Bob Herbert’s post, “War at Home” at Demos ‘Policy Shop’: “Our hearts should feel broken every day. A few days after the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, in which 32 people were killed, I had lunch with Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund. “We’re losing eight children and teenagers to gun violence every day,” she said. “As far as young people are concerned, we lose the equivalent of the massacre at Virginia Tech about every four days.”
Remember the 223-caliber Bushmaster rifle used in the Washington D.C.-area sniper shootings? Same gun was used at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Nate Silver’s “In Public ‘Conversation’ on Guns, a Rhetorical Shift” provides an interesting data-driven analysis of the terminology the media uses to discuss gun control and related issues, noting “Those who advocate greater restrictions on gun ownership may have determined that their most persuasive argument is to talk about the consequences of increased access to guns — as opposed to the weedy debate about what rights the Second Amendment may or may not convey to gun owners.”
Blair Hickman, Suevon Lee and Cora Currier have a good round-up on “The Best Reporting on Guns in America” at ProPublica.
E. J. Dionne, Jr. sounds the call: “If Congress does not act this time, we can deem it as totally bought and paid for by the representatives of gun manufacturers, gun dealers and their very well-compensated apologists…We should begin with: bans on high-capacity magazines and assault weapons; requiring background checks for all gun purchases; stricter laws to make sure that gun owners follow safety procedures; new steps to make it easier to trace guns used in crimes; and vastly ramped-up data collection and research on what works to prevent gun violence, both of which are regularly blocked by the gun lobby.”
Also at WaPo, Brad Plumer explores “Why are mass shootings becoming more common?”
The questions raised in this video clip about the possible role of certain antidepressants and psychiatric drugs merit consideration.
Michael Cooper’s “Debate on Gun Control Is Revived, Amid a Trend Toward Fewer Restrictions” at The New York Times discusses some of the formidable obstacles to enacting meaningful gun control legislation.
At The Nation Sasha Abramsky has a short, but instructive interview with Professor Garen Wintemute, Baker-Teret Chair of Violence Prevention, at the University of California at Davis medical school. Among Wintemute’s suggestions: “…Require a background check for all firearm purchases. Forty percent of gun sales in the U.S. do not involve a background check. Number two, we improve the data on which those background checks are run, so somebody whose mental illness is known in one state, that mental illness is known in all states. Improving the mental health records database would help us identify seriously mentally ill people so that they can’t buy guns…Expand the criteria we now use for denying the purchase and possession of firearms…Under federal law we do not ban people from purchasing firearms for alcohol abuse…We don’t ban people from purchasing firearms who have long records of violent crimes when those crimes are misdemeanors. If I beat my partner, I am prohibited [from gun ownership] for life. If I beat you up, nothing happens; I can buy guns the next day.”
Jamelle Bouie makes the Salient point in his American Prospect article, “Gun Control, No Longer the Dems’ Electoral Kryptonite: Democrats don’t need rural white guys to win anymore.” Says Bouie, “On the presidential level, at least, Democrats don’t need to worry about alienating their coalition…With all of that said, the calculus is different for congressional and state-level Democrats, some of whom can’t afford to alienate traditionally gun-owning groups. But in those cases, of course, the Democratic Party’s flexibility is a big asset.”

I LOL’d when I first read Dave Zirin’s post in The Nation referring to “Koch Brothers’ meat puppet Governor Rick Snyder.” Something about the image of a meat puppet parroting the barely-disguised voice of his corporate master was funny. But then came the awful realization that the description was depressingly accurate.
The Republican party is now full of elected officials who are utterly shameless about copying and pasting ALEC’s agenda into state law. Not one of the GOP’s state-wide executives has yet had the gonads to stand up and say to the Koch brothers, Norquist and others of their ilk “Go to Hell. Nobody elected you greedheads. I’m doing what is best for the people of my state.” I’m a little ambivalent here. If such a Republican ever came forward from the cowering shadows where his GOP brethren grovel, he might prove to be a serious threat to the Democrats.
But that’s a remote possibility, considering the current Republican landscape. There are zero Republican leaders today who reflect the moral seriousness of ‘Newsroom’s’ mythic Will McAvoy, which is conservative, but unbought and unbossed. America would be better off if there were a few, because it would challenge Democrats to higher levels of conscience and integrity, and both parties would be stronger.
At The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky cites a post by Theresa Riley at Bill Moyers’s web site, which exposes some of the rancid origins of the GOP’s union-bashing agenda:

The Detroit News reports that after requests from Grover Norquist and others, Snyder switched sides on the issue. United Auto Workers President Robert King said in an interview, that the Koch brothers and Amway owner Dick DeVos “bullied and bought their way to get this legislation in Michigan.”
In an editorial headlined “Drinking the Kochs’ Kool Aid,” the Detroit Free Press was unable to account for the governor’s change of heart, but offered some theories on the motivations of State Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville. He may have been under pressure, the newspaper said, from the anti-union Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), both financially supported by the Koch brothers. ALEC’s model right-to-work bill “mirrors the Michigan law word for word.

Tomasky adds that “I’ll give them credit for a certain perspicacity. Norquist and the Kochs and others on the right are constantly taking the pulse of state legislatures to see where potential opportunities arise. ALEC, cited above, is the vehicle for much of this activity.” Democrats have to own that we have been out-organized and out-worked in too many states where Dems should have working majorities. Governor Meat Puppet has provided us with a sobering end to our 2012 victory gloating and a reminder that unions are critical to the future of the Democratic party.
As Tomasky concludes, “Democrats can’t afford to leave this fight to unions. The ultimate goal here is to weaken not just unions, but the Democratic Party. So the Democrats–the national party, the money people, and so on–have no choice but to put some muscle into this fight, starting today.”

At The American Prospect Anna Clark reports on the next step being taken by We Are Michigan organizers to resist the Republicans’ campaign to eviscerate unions in Michigan: “…Right-to-work could still be overturned, not as a referendum but as a ballot initiative to “approve or reject” the law…It has to meet the higher threshold of turning in petitions with enough signatures to equal 8 percent of the turnout in Michigan’s last gubernatorial election–more than 258,000 signatures. Organizers will have 90 days to do it, starting after the legislature adjourns. If they are successful, right-to-work would then go to a state-wide vote.”
Dems must have better monitoring of future ‘right-to-work’ sneak attacks. The Washington Post’s Felicia Sonmez and David A. Fahrenthold survey the GOP’s prospects for mobilizing ‘Right-to-work’ campaigns in other states.
Republicans had high hopes for getting a hefty bite of the Asian-American vote, but Bobby Cervantes Politico post “Poll: Obama won 71% of Asian vote” makes short work about that pipe dream.
Also at Politico, David Catanese reports that Dems are going after the SC governorship. SC’s senate seats are a bigger stretch, as Nate Silver explains.
If you need more evidence that Speaker Boehner has boxed himself into a political nightmare, check out Jonathan D. Salant’s Bloomberg post “Poll Says Republicans Get More Blame if Budget Talks Fail,” which notes: “The NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey also showed that more than three-fourths of respondents — 76 percent — would accept as part of a deal taxes increasing as scheduled on families with annual incomes exceeding $250,000, the position Obama has staked out. Additionally, twice as many people said they trusted Obama over U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, in the talks on avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff.”
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich makes an airtight case for reforms to require full disclosure of large campaign donors and matching federal grants for small donations.
Charles M. Blow coins an alliterative term, “the Ecru Era,” to describe the demographic transition, which was so powerful in the 2012 presidential race, long-ago projected by TDS Founding Editor Ruy Teixeira and John Judis in their prophetic “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” Blow observes, “The browning of America is very real and unrelenting. Our task is to find a way to move into this new Ecru Era with as much ease and grace as we can muster. ”
Steve Benen reports at The Maddow Blog that Republicans in Virginia (as well as in PA and OH) are planning to tweak VA voting law to end “winner take all” electoral vote allocation.
Here we go with the ‘middle class malaise.’ But Annie Lowrey’s NYT article about middle-class income stagnation as an increasingly pivotal political force suggests Dems will have to factor it in the policy mix better, tempered by the party’s cornerstone commitment to help the working and unemployed poor.
Politifact gives Mitt the prestigious “Lie of the Year” honors for his silly distortions of Chrysler’s Jeep production plans.

The heat is on Michigan Governor Rick Snider to reverse his position and refuse to sign the so-called ‘right-to-work’ bill the Republicans snuck through the state legislature last week. Here’s a good example of a creative protest being mobilized by ‘We Are Michigan’ to persuade the governor to do the right thing. The President will meet with Snyder today, and here’s an update on other protests being planned in the state.
Dave Zirin reports at The Nation on the groundswell against the right-to-work bill, including the pro baseball and football unions. He quotes DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFLPA: “When you look at proposed legislation [called] ‘right-to-work’ let’s just put the hammer on the nail. It’s untrue… What this is instead is a right to ensure that ordinary working citizens can’t get together as a team, can’t organize, can’t stand together and can’t fight management on an even playing field…So don’t call it a ‘right to work.’ If you want to have an intelligent discussion about what the bill is, call it what it is. Call it an anti-organizing bill. Fine. If that’s what the people want to do in order to put a bill out there, let’s cast a vote on whether or not ordinary workers can get together and represent themselves, and let’s have a real referendum.”
And Greg Sargent has an excellent update on the Democratic strategy to encourage the governor to allow the RTW bill to be subjected to popular referendum.
At The Daily Beast Hedrick Smith argues persuasively that the “Fiscal Cliff Is Latest Symptom of Unfair Redistricting“: “…The partisan manipulation of congressional districts garbles more than the numbers. It sharpens the partisan divide in Congress. Both parties try to create safe districts and within those highly partisan lines, moderates tend to lose out and extremists tend to win. Both parties become more polarized. Without gerrymandering, red states would be less red, and blue states would be less blue. The middle would have more chance to re-emerge.”
And Crystal Ball’s Larry J. Sabato and Geoffrey Skelley take an extensive, state-by-state look at the 2014 battle for control of governorships, and why it is critically important for national politics.
Here’s an interesting NPR post by Liz Halloran about an overlooked demographic group which gave President Obama 70 percent of its votes — the “nones,” a.k.a. the “religiously unaffiliated.”
Peter Grer has a Monitor update on “Obama’s Medicaid expansion: How many states are likely to rebel?”
The “we don’t need no stinkin’ science” crowd apparently gets much more MSM coverage in the U.S. than elsewhere. Mijin Cha reports at Demos that “the U.S. gives a significant amount of media attention to climate deniers — far more than any other country. Over one-third of articles on climate change in 2009-2010 contained viewpoints from climate deniers, even though only a fraction of the scientific community questions the existence of climate change…of 13,950 peer-reviewed climate articles, just 24 reject the idea of global warming — a mere 0.17 percent.”
From CNN Politics: According to the Politico/George Washington University Battleground survey released Monday, 62% of registered voters say they back an immigration reform proposal that would allow illegal or undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship over a period of several years, with 35% opposed…The new poll is in line with an ABC News/Washington Post survey conducted right after the November election that indicated Americans supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants by a 57%-39% margin.”
The accolades for Mitch McConnell’s unique achievement keep on coming.

The Nation’s John Nichols has a sobering article for Dems who may still be basking in the warm glow of the election. Nichols’s “GOP, Koch Brothers Sneak Attack Guts Labor Rights in Michigan” tells the disturbing story of how the government of the once mighty industrial state of Michigan has been turned into an anti-labor bastion almost overnight:

In the state where workers sat down in Flint General Motors plants 75 years ago and emboldened the industrial labor movement that would give birth to the American middle class, Republican legislators on Thursday voted to gut basic labor rights.
…After Republican leaders announced Thursday morning that they intended to enact so-called “Right-to-Work” legislation – which is always better described as “No-Rights-at-Work” legislation – the Michigan state House voted Thursday afternoon to eliminate basic union organizing and workplace protections that generations of American workers fought to establish. Several hours later, the Michigan state Senate did the same thing, as part of a bold anti-labor initiative launched in coordination with a Koch Brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity project to “pave the way for right to work in states across our nation.”
As the Republicans launched the attack on unions and their members, Americans for Prosperity — a group developed and funded by right-wing industrialists and billionaire campaign donors Charles and David Koch — was in the thick of things. AFP recruited conservatives to show up at the state Capitol in Lansing to counter union protests and prepared materials supporting the Michigan initiative, including a 15-page booklet titled “Unions: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: How forced unionization has harmed workers and Michigan.” Within minutes of the announcement by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder that Republicans would ram through the “Right-to-Work” legislation, AFP was hailing the move in formal statements “as the shot heard around the world for workplace freedom.”
Snyder, a Republican, has indicated that he will sign the measure that was passed during a lame-duck session of the legislature.

This despite the fact that President Obama carried Michigan by a 10-point margin and his stated opposition to the so-called “right to work” law. Nichols adds that “The Republican legislators evidenced no intention to listen to logic, or to entertain honest debate. GOP legislative leaders had plotted behind closed doors with Governor Snyder, to have Michigan join the traditionally lower-wage states that decades ago enacted “Right-to-Work” laws to thwart the rise of a labor movement…” Protestors who managed to get inside the legislative chamber were pepper-sprayed, while others were locked out.

Read more…

Not all conservatives are tea party puppets or monomaniacal ideologues. Some top business and defense executives are now calling for tax hikes on the wealthy and defense budget cuts, according to this Huffpo report by Ryan Grim and Sabrina Siddiqui.
Yet another Associated Press-GfK poll indicates that “Americans prefer letting tax cuts expire for the country’s top earners, as President Barack Obama insists, while support has declined for cutting government services to curb budget deficits…There’s also a reluctance to trim Social Security, Medicare or defense programs, three of the biggest drivers of federal spending, the survey released Wednesday found.”
In another just-released survey, “American voters give President Barack Obama a 53 – 40 percent job approval rating – his best score in three years – and by a wider 53 – 36 percent they trust the president and Democrats more than Republicans to avoid the “Fiscal Cliff,” according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today…Voters 65 – 31 percent support higher taxes on households making more than $250,000 per year, with 84 – 14 percent support from Democrats and 66 – 31 percent support from independent voters. Republicans are opposed 53 – 41 percent…American voters say 56 – 38 percent that Obama and congressional Democrats will make a good faith effort to cooperate with congressional Republicans on important issues. By 51 – 43 percent, voters say congressional Republicans will not act in good faith.”
Was there ever a more hypocritical Republican than John Sununu, who now echoes his version of Romney’s “Obama won because of those who are dependent on government” meme? Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia’s bio of Sununu: “As White House Chief of Staff, Sununu reportedly took personal trips, for skiing and other purposes, and classified them as official, for purposes such as conservation or promoting the Thousand Points of Light. The Washington Post wrote that Sununu’s jets “took him to fat-cat Republican fund-raisers, ski lodges, golf resorts and even his dentist in Boston.” Sununu had paid the government only $892 for his more than $615,000 worth of military jet travel. Sununu said that his use of the jets was necessary because he had to be near a telephone at all times for reasons of national security…After leaking rumors of financial difficulties in his family, he traveled to a rare stamp auction at Christie’s auction house in New York City from Washington in a government limousine, spending $5,000 on rare stamps. Sununu then sent the car and driver back to Washington unoccupied while he returned on a corporate jet. In the course of one week, 45 newspapers ran editorials on Sununu, nearly all of them critical of his actions…Sununu repaid over $47,000 to the government for the flights on the orders of White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, with the help of the Republican Party. However, the reimbursements were at commercial rates, which are about one-tenth the cost of the actual flights; one ski trip to Vail, Colorado alone had cost taxpayers $86,330.”
At PoliticusUSA, Jason Easley explains why Fox is benching Dick Morris and Karl Rove.
Lois Romano has an interesting Politico report on Democrats trying to get access to the Obama campaign’s 16-million voters, donors and volunteers data base, noting: “The data is rich with intricate layers of information about individuals’ voting habits, television viewing tastes, propensity to volunteer, car registration, passions, email address, cellphone numbers, and social media contacts. The historical trove enabled Obama to connect with voters on a highly personal level and get them not only to vote but to actively persuade their neighbors to do the same.
A new poll by the Barna group indicates a strong majority, with growing conservative support, for dumping the electoral college.
At CNN Politics, Kevin Liptak’s “Digital experts: Social media and dual screens the future of online campaigning” notes that “…Metric trends don’t end at viral photos and funny memes. Increasingly, the web is offering predictive tools that could become essential for campaigns looking to gauge their position ahead of important contests. Charles Scrase, Google’s head of elections, issue advocacy and non-profits, said search volume had become “so prominent we’re able to predict the outcome of primary elections,” including Rick Santorum’s surprise Iowa caucus win in January…”People want to gather information earlier,” Scrase said, saying 51% of voters were looking for information about the election more than a year before Election Day.”
Transparency International has released the Corruption Perceptions Index 2012. which “ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be…” The ten ‘cleanest’ are, in order (several are numerically tied), from the top: Denmark; Finland; New Zealand; Sweden; Singapore; Switzerland, Australia; Norway; Canada and The Netherlands. The U.S. ranks 19th, a little behind Japan, Germany, the UK and a few smaller nations.
This will likely be mother’s milk for John Stewart.

The Editors of the American Prospect have “A Strategic Plan for Liberals,” a forum with 11 contributors including: Jan Schakowsky; Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson; John Podesta; Heather McGhee; Thomas Mann and others.
James S. Hohman reports at Politico that “A survey of 800 Obama voters, conducted last month by Global Strategy Group for the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way and shared first with POLITICO, finds that 96 percent believe the federal deficit is a problem and that 85 percent support increasing taxes on the wealthy.”
The New York Times is running a mini-forum on “Do Filibusters Stall the Senate or Give It Purpose?”
On MTP Sen Claire McCaskill aptly described the dilemma the Speaker of the House is facing — and a question the media should keep asking: “…I feel almost sorry for John Boehner. There is incredible pressure on him from a base of his party that is unreasonable about this, and he’s got to decide, is his speakership more important or is the country more important?”
Nader does what he does best: Making the case for conscientious consumerism, this time with respect for holiday shopping. Might it also be a good idea for all Dems to make a commitment to buy a couple of gifts with a union label?
Paul West’s “Crunching the numbers: How big was Obama’s win?” at The L.A. Times has a couple of interesting stats: “Overall, the popular vote fell by about 3.5% from 2008 in most of the country — the 42 states that did not feel the full effects of campaign advertising and organizing (turnout, as a percentage of the vote-eligible population, was off by even more). But the popular vote total rose by 2% overall in the eight most heavily contested swing states (Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Hampshire), all of which Obama won…Obama is likely to become the first presidential candidate since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 to gain at least 51% of the popular vote in two consecutive elections. And as votes continue to be tallied, his margin over Romney is gradually expanding.”
Norquist is working overtime, badgering the media with his “tea party 2.0” meme, which they are eagerly parroting. At New York magazine, Jason Zengerle explains “Grover’s Best Trick: How he herds reporters.”
In his WaPo op-ed column, E.J. Dionne, Jr. argues that “Democrats could use their own Grover Norquist.”
NYT’s Peter Baker takes a look at President Obama’s tougher negotiation strategy, explaining that the bend-over-backwards conciliatory pose the President took in ’09 is over: “The president is not going to negotiate with himself,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “He’s laid out his position, and Republicans have to come to the table.”
At the National Journal, Ronald Brownstein reports that “The Senate’s Democratic Coalition Is Growing More Unified.” Says Brownstein: “…Almost all major Democratic Senate candidates did a better job than their Republican rivals of unifying their base and attracting more crossover voters. That pattern allowed Democrats to virtually sweep the Senate races in the states Obama that won and to triumph in four states that Romney carried decisively–Indiana, Missouri, Montana, and North Dakota.”