Jonathan Bernstein has a post up at The American Prospect warning of the dangers of the latest Republican ploy to undermine the electoral college by eliminating “winner-take-all” election rules. Bernstein explains how it would work:

The GOP may attempt to rig the Electoral College by changing the electoral vote allocation in GOP-controlled states which voted for Barack Obama. The idea would be to shift from the normal winner-take-all plan to something that would split the votes in those states. Ideally, from the Republican point of view, every Republican state would be winner-take-all while all Democratic states would be split more or less evenly, making it almost impossible for a Democrat to win the White House. All of that, as obviously undemocratic as it is, would be perfectly Constitutional; the Constitution leaves every state in charge of how to choose its electors.

It’s a pretty transparent effort to politicize the rules in favor of Republicans. Instead of supporting direct popular election for all states, a genuinely populist reform, it’s a sleazy effort to leverage proportional allocation of electoral votes, but only in states where the GOP sees an advantage.
Bernstein cites a litany of GOP schemes to toy with rules, just inside the parameters of the law, including abuse of the filibuster, mid-decade redistricting, the Clinton impeachment, all of which were legal, but violated established “norms” that have helped government function in a bipartisan way for decades. Bernstein continues:

Much of the American political system actually runs on norms, not rules. It may seem strange to people–especially after 20 years of Republican-led Constitutional hardball–but that arrangement actually can work very nicely. Both parties, and beyond them most other politically active citizens, simply work within the de facto rules of the game and work for the best results under those rules.
The problem is that once a party in such a system starts looking for areas to exploit in the gap between written law and the way the law is practiced, they may find all sorts of small, temporary edges. And there’s really no particular reason for them to stop once it starts. In each case, the case for moving ahead is the same: why not use the rules to your advantage? For the other party, the incentive to fight fire with fire is overwhelming. Not only is sticking to outdated norms while your opponents don’t a sure recipe for losing, but in fact the very norm of following norms rapidly disappears and should be replaced by loophole-exploiting by everyone.
There’s a classic collective action problem here: everyone is far better off under a system in which the basic rules of the game are agreed to and respected than under a system in which the rules are constantly altered, but at any particular point in time anyone who figures out a gap to take advantage of can be better off.

Bernstein adds, “…Coalition building and complex bargaining–both of which are absolutely essential for large-policy democracy–only do that work when they are necessary. When the rules are up for grabs, those processes can become unnecessary.” He acknowledges that some rules changes are a good idea, when they are measured and fair to both parties. But the latest trend of all-out warfare by finagling the rules is a dangerous way to go.
Bernstein believes that such ‘constitutional hardball’ invites a new kind of trench warfare, which is counter-productive in terms of serving democracy. Republicans will undoubtedly argue that using the ‘nuclear option’ to implement the “talking filibuster” is an example of Democratic party abuse of the ‘rules,’ of course neglecting to mention that their unprecedented abuse of the filibuster makes it one of the few options available to restore balance to the system, given GOP intransigence.
Bernstein concludes that “the best hope is that the present generation of Republicans will maybe be replaced by a group who have a bit more restraint; after all, they do call themselves conservatives. But that’s probably just wishful thinking.” Bernstein doesn’t get into it, but the underlying danger to Democrats is that ‘constitutional hardball’ will likely end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which is now dominated by Republican appointees, most of whom have demonstrated their willingness to make highly politicized rulings.

From Peter Beinart’s “Why Hagel Matters” at The Daily Beast: “At the heart of the opposition to Hagel is the fear that he will do what Republicans have thus far largely prevented: bring America’s experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan into the Iran debate…And Hagel was changed, in large measure, because he bore within him intellectual (and physical) scar tissue from Vietnam.”
Is filibuster reform toast? Maybe not, explains Dave Weigel at Slate.com. Seven of nine new Democratic Senators support the ‘talking filibuster’ reform, reports Alexander Bolton at The Hill.
At The Nation Herman Schwartz faults President Obama with a limp response to GOP stonewalling of his judicial appointments — and the President’s non-appointments, explaining “As a result of the White House’s laggardness, right-wing justices continue to dominate the federal courts–meaning that many of Obama’s most important legislative achievements could be eviscerated and his legacy dissipated, because most of the circuit courts of appeal are controlled by Republican appointees…Obama’s response to these GOP tactics has been weak and ineffectual. First, he has failed to send up enough nominees. Second, he has neglected to think and act strategically with respect to those he has nominated.”
At The Campaign for America’s Future Terrance Heath puts “The House GOP’s Disaster Relief Disaster” in perspective. John Avlon’s “Callous Conservatives: Gulf State Republicans’ Sandy Shame” piles on at The Daily Beast.
Good video and content for Democratic attack ads against Republicans’ failure to respond to Hurricane disaster right here.
MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry hosted an informative forum on “Long-term party Building for Democrats,” featuring Governor Howard Dean, and Democratic strategists Karen Finney and John Rowley.
At The Daily Beast Will Marshall opines about The Deal that “the result was a one-sided victory for Obama, who got $620 billion in revenue from raising rates on very wealthy households, plus an extension of the stimulus tax breaks for low-income families and $30 billion in new spending on unemployment, without having to convince Democrats to swallow cuts in entitlements…without significantly more tax revenue, lawmakers would have to make truly draconian cuts in entitlements to fix the debt. They shouldn’t and they won’t.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr. agrees, explains why and lights the way forward for President Obama: “if Obama hangs as tough as he now says he will; if he insists on more revenue in the next round of discussions; and if he immediately begins mobilizing business leaders to force Republicans off a strategy that would use threats to block a debt-ceiling increase to extract spending cuts. Real patriots do not risk wrecking the economy to win a political fight…He needs to move the discussion away from a green-eyeshade debate over budgets and foster a larger conversation over what it will take to restore broadly shared economic growth. His presidency really does depend on how he handles the next two months.”
At TNR Alec MacGillis has an informative tribute to the late Jerry Tucker a union reformer who advocated broader worker education, corporate campaigns and pioneered the “work to rule” strategy, “in which workers frustrate employers by slowing down operations all the while technically hewing to the letter of their contract. Work-to-rule appealed to Tucker because its success depended on the full understanding and empowerment of the entire workforce.”
John Rodgers and David Friedman, both officials of the Union of Concerned Scientists, urge “Don’t listen to the Chicken Littles: Obama made smart investments in green tech” at The Monitor: “Despite the critics’ naysaying prophecies, clean tech is on the rise nationwide in large part due to federal investment….Of course there are risks when government and industry invest boldly in new technology. But if they don’t, America will cede its leadership on clean transportation and energy technology to other nations like China that already have thriving green industries that also benefited from government assistance.”

Democrats will be arguing about President Obama’s strategy in negotiating the fiscal cliff deal for months, and there is a lot to criticize from all points on the Democratic spectrum. Senate passage of the compromise was predictable enough. But one day out, it’s worth looking at the breakdown of the votes in the House of Representatives to fairly evaluate the white house and Democratic strategy.
The New York Times has the complete House roll call, along with a good roll-over map. The final House vote was 257-167. In all, 172 Democrats and 85 Republicans voted for the bill. In opposition were 16 Democrats and 151 Republicans.
Among Republicans Speaker Boehner and Rep. Ryan supported the compromise, with Majority Leader Eric Cantor and other GOP “leaders” opposing it.
The 16 Dems who opposed the compromise included a few strong progressives, who objected on principle to elements of the compromise and a small group of remaining Blue Dogs who couldn’t accept any tax hikes. Eight members did not vote, for varying reasons, some personal. (e.g. Liberal stalwart Rep. John Lewis’s wife, Lilian just died). Of course, most of the ‘Yes’ votes included strong progressives, who disliked elements of the deal, but held their noses and took one for the team. Here’s the Democratic breakdown of the “no” votes, according to the Washington Post:

The 16 Democrats voting no split between the liberal and the moderate. More liberal Reps. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), Earl Blumenauer (Ore.), Peter DeFazio (Ore.), Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), Jim McDermott (Wash.), Brad Miller (N.C.), Jim Moran (Va.), Bobby Scott (Va.), Pete Visclosky (Ind.) voted no. But they were joined by moderate-to-conservative Reps. John Barrow (Ga.), Jim Cooper (Tenn.), Jim Matheson (Utah), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Collin Peterson (Minn.), Kurt Schrader (Ore.) and Adam Smith (Wash.).

Without getting into the elements of the deal and the specific concerns of the members who voted, the tally reflects a fairly comfy pillow of 39 more votes than were needed for passage, since 218 votes were needed to pass the compromise. From a purely bipartisan standpoint, the bigger the ‘pillow,’ the better the compromise. From a progressive perspective, the smaller the margin, the better the indication that “the best possible deal” has been negotiated.
Of course it can be argued, as many do, that the negotiating strategy was flawed from the get-go, so the tally on this vote means little with respect to all of the more optimistic ‘might-have-been’ scenarios. Not surprisingly, much of the progressive critique falls into the ‘Obama-gave-away-the-store-too-early’ category. See here, here, here and here, for example.
The vote tally reflects a pretty good measure of tea party strength in the House. It appears that there are 151 unrepentant tea party votes in the House. These Republicans are unfazed by national economic concerns and narrowly focused on what right-wing activists in their district want. Most of them are well-protected by gerrymandered districts. These are the obstructionists Dems have to work around to get any legislation passed until the new congress is seated in January, 2015.
From my perch, maybe the President could have hung a little tougher. But it was a tough call with all of the bluffing and bluster going on to determine how many Republicans were running scared enough to be persuadable.
We Dems must have our hour of self-flagellation before we can move on to the next struggle. But it would be folly to overlook our party’s failure to mobilize a good voter turnout in 2010 as a root cause of the fix we’re in now. Instead of hand-wringing about the deal we are going to have to live with, let’s apply what we have learned in this vote and in our successful 2012 voter mobilization — to win back control of the House in 2014.

Michael Tomasky makes the case at The Daily Beast that the Republican Party has morphed into something fairly new in American politics — a political party wholly dedicated to sabotaging legislation. “They didn’t come to Washington to govern. They came to sabotage. So our working assumption must be whatever the issue, sabotage is what they’re going to do.” (See also this TDS post on the topic by Vega, Kilgore and me) Further, adds Tomasky, the only forces that can stop them now are “the high-profile figures of Wall Street and the corporate world,” since they are already among the big losers of the current fiscal crisis and have more to worry about in a few months.
Jared Bernstein believes going over the cliff is better than cutting a bad deal. As Bernstein explains, “it would be better to go over and quickly repair the damage on the other side. How do I know we’d get a better deal there? I don’t, but at that point, I suspect Congress would quickly implement the president’s back-up, bare minimum plan: cut the now-higher taxes on households below $250,000 (which after Dec. 31 scores as a big tax cut, so Rs can enthusiastically get behind it), extend UI, patch the AMT and doc fix, and maybe suspend the sequester. The estate tax will have reset to a much worse deal for those Rs and Ds who want to protect the top few tenths of a percent of wealthy estates ($1 million exemption, 55 percent rate), so they too would be motivated to accept the WH’s deal ($3.5 million exemption, 45 percent top rate, as opposed to what we might get from the Senate deal: $5 million, 35 percent).
HuffPo’s Ryan Grim adds clarity to the coverage of filibuster reform prospects, Grim reports that “Merkley’s “talking filibuster” proposal is wildly popular with the public. A HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted in late November found that 65 percent of Americans believe senators should have to participate in debate for the duration of a filibuster, while only 9 percent said that senators should be able to filibuster without being physically present.” He adds, “The Constitution allows the Senate to write its own rules, which is why Democrats say that only a majority is needed at the beginning of the term to write new rules. Opponents point to Senate Rule V, which states that the rules can only be changed with a two-thirds vote. Democrats point out that Senate Rule V is not part of the Constitution and argue that no previous Senate can tie the hands of a current one.”
Ezra Klein observes that the McCain-Levin proposal “…is filibuster reform for people who don’t want to reform the filibuster.”
About 49K Floridians were discouraged from voting by long lines — and about 30K of them would have voted for President Obama, according to this report.
At FiveThirtyEight, Jon Sides argues that evidence is scant that front-loading attack ads against Romney helped President Obama much.
Mother Jones’ staff has put together “151 Victims of Mass Shootings in 2012: Here Are Their Stories.” Share it far and wide until we get a worthy gun control bill enacted.
David Brooks dissed President Obama on MTP because “sometimes he governs like a visitor from a morally superior civilization,” which recalls Frank Rich likening Mitt Romney to “an otherworldly visitor from an Aqua Velva commercial circa 1985.” Not hard to pick which ‘visitor’ is better for America.
At Daily Kos, John Perr provides the numbers that show quite conclusively “The national debt? Republicans built that.”
Krugman explains why Starbucks should just make the overpriced coffee and leave the muddle-headed national debt palaver to the MSM.

Jim Hightower’s “Ballot-Measure Democracy a Notable Success in 2012” at Nation of Change, notes overwhelming majorities favoring a repeal or reversal of the Citizens United decision in CO (72 %), MT (76%) and Chicago (73%).
At The Atlantic Anne-Marie Slaughter reports on “The Gender Divide on Gun Control,” explaining, “According to an ABC/Washington Post poll released on December 17th, 59 percent of women but only 47 percent of men support more gun control. Thus when we read that 54 percent of all Americans support greater gun control, that majority is actually a significant majority of 59 percent American women who support it overriding the 50 percent of American men who oppose it.
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich makes his case for ‘going over the cliff.’
Regarding “Democratic leaders’ handling of negotiations,” a new Gallup poll finds that “Fifty-four percent approve of Obama’s efforts in talks, up from 48 percent last week,” according to Meghashyam Mali at The Hill.
From CNN’s Political Ticker: “A CNN/ORC International poll released Thursday morning indicates that 46% say they expect Obama will do a better job as president over the next four years than he did the past four years, with 22% saying he’ll do a worse job, and just over three in ten saying he’ll perform about the same as he did in his first term.”
File this one by Jamie Henn of Ecowatch News Report under “cool stuff Mayors can do.”
At The Center for American Progress, Scott Keyes’s “Strengthening Our Democracy by Expanding Voting Rights” reports on “11 pieces of legislation that lawmakers can enact to strengthen voting rights in their state. A number of these policies would make registering to vote more accessible, including online voter registration, Election Day registration, and requiring public schools to help register voters. Others would make it simpler for citizens to cast a ballot, such as expanding early voting, permitting citizens to vote at any polling location, and allowing no-excuse absentee voting. States can also discourage those trying to suppress the vote by outlawing voter caging, strengthening penalties for knowingly deceiving voters, and reforming the voter-challenge process. Finally, legislators can pass other pro-voting policies, such as restoring voting rights to ex-felons and enacting constitutional language affirming an equal right to vote.”
“The Growing Electoral Clout of Blacks Is Driven by Turnout, Not Demographics,”
says Paul Taylor at the Pew Research Center.”Blacks voted at a higher rate this year than other minority groups and for the first time in history may also have voted at a higher rate than whites, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data, election day exit poll data and vote totals from selected cities and counties…Unlike other minority groups whose increasing electoral muscle has been driven mainly by population growth, blacks’ rising share of the vote in the past four presidential elections has been the result of rising turnout rates…These participation milestones are notable not just in light of the long history of black disenfranchisement, but also in light of recently-enacted state voter identification laws that some critics contended would suppress turnout disproportionately among blacks and other minority groups.”
Alternet’s Adam Lee reports on “There Are Now As Many Nonreligious Americans As Evangelicals — 6 Ways Politicians Can Court Their Vote.”
At The New York Review of Books, Andrew Hacker’s “How he Got It Right” explores Nate Silver’s impressive powers — and methods — of prognostication.

It seems like just a few months ago a lot of pundits marveled at congressional Republicans’ lockstep unity and discipline in obstructing almost every legislative proposal introduced by Democrats, in stark contrast to earlier eras when Republicans would usually compromise for the good of the country. Republican still have the power to obstruct progressive legislation. But there are signs that GOP unity is beginning to unravel.
As Ronald Brownstein puts it in his National Journal post, “A Role Reversal: Dems Grow More Unified While Cracks Form in the GOP“:

The endgame over the fiscal cliff, like the first stirrings of debate about gun control and immigration, all capture a subtle but potentially consequential shift in the Washington dynamic.
On each front, Democrats are growing more unified while Republicans and conservatives are displaying increasing cracks. That inverts the alignment through most of President Obama’s first term–and indeed most of the past quarter-century.
In the decades immediately before and after World War II, both parties were divided in Congress between the moderate and the more ideological wings. But since the 1980s, the two sides have diverged. Conservatives have established unquestioned dominance in the GOP. Meanwhile, Democrats, though moving to the left overall, have maintained much greater divisions.
The debates over taxes, guns and immigration all reflect this evolution. Not long ago, each issue divided both parties.

Brownstein provides several instructive examples of political divisions within the two parties and temporary bipartisan agreements that emerged in congress during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations. Brownstein then describes the beginnings of the transformation:

But while Democrats have remained divided on all three issues, Republicans more recently have moved right almost monolithically. On taxes, every congressional Republican voted against the Clinton 1993 budget plan and Obama’s health reform proposal that raised taxes, and virtually all Republicans backed the younger Bush’s tax cuts. Almost every House Republican from even the leafiest suburban districts voted with the National Rifle Association in 2011 to override state concealed-carry laws. And support for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants grew so toxic inside the GOP that John McCain, during his 2008 presidential campaign, felt compelled to renounce his own 2006 legislation providing one. On all of these issues, Democrats remained split through the Bush years and Obama’s first term.
Now this unity gap is narrowing. On taxes, Republicans and conservatives are agonizing over whether to accept an increase not only in tax revenue but also in marginal tax rates–a party anathema since the 1990 deal. By contrast, Democrats are adamantly behind raising rates on the top earners. (If anything, Obama is courting resistance by setting the bar too high with this week’s offer to preserve current rates for those earning less than $400,000.) On immigration, Obama and congressional Democrats have signaled that they intend to move forward aggressively; the same trajectory seems to be developing, in a more qualified way, on guns. On both issues, most Republicans will still oppose the Democratic initiatives. But unaccustomed cracks have emerged in that wall of opposition.
Shifting electoral incentives on each side are driving this role reversal. Overall, Democrats still operate as more of a coalition party, harboring a broader range of views, than Republicans. That’s largely because self-identified conservatives outnumber liberals in the electorate, which means that Democrats in most races (including the presidency) need to attract more votes from moderates to win than Republicans do.

Brownstein adds that “Democrats are now operating with a far more ideologically cohesive coalition that overwhelmingly supports action on issues that previously paralyzed the party.” He predicts “more polarization” in the short run, but sees Democrats as gaining more leverage to force reasonable compromises.
If Brownstein is right, then President Obama’s negotiation strategy makes sense. Offering concessions that many of his supporters oppose shows that he is at least negotiating in good faith, while Boehner is stuck with an increasingly unreasonable party that shows no interest in anything resembling a fair compromise.Whatever Obama gives up in the short run can be restored later, since demographics and souring public attitudes towards Republican obstructionism should help Democrats regain control of the House over the next two elections.

Whatever else can be said about Speaker John Boehner, he appears to be a man who loves his country. Indeed it’s hard to think of a politician who gets more emotional about the topic, as a Youtube scan will quickly verify.
Yet, now that the Speaker’s ‘Plan B’ has been nuked by his fellow Republicans, Boehner stands at a crossroads of decision: love of country vs. love of power. The choice he makes will likely define his character in public memory. If he makes the wrong choice, and chooses career over country, he could damage America’s economy dramatically. If he makes the right choice, country before career, he will provide another ‘profile in courage’ for future generations of elected officials.
Noam Scheiber outlines Boehner’s dilemma in his New Republic post “Plan B Dies, Prepare to Go Over the Cliff“:

…Once the House GOP deserted John Boehner last night, there were basically two options for striking a deal before January 1. Either Boehner passes a cliff-averting deal with a majority of House Republicans, or he passes one with a few dozen Republicans and a majority of House Democrats. Alas, I see neither of these things happening this year.

I’m going to hold on to the admittedly long-shot hope that Boehner will consider going with Scheiber’s second option. There is nothing in Boehner’s history that provides reason for this hope — you don’t get to be Speaker without a ruthless careerist mentality. He will almost certainly lose the speakership if he makes the courageous choice. But he might lose it even if he doesn’t, so unhinged are many of his Republican House colleagues, who are demanding an even more obstructionist position in the fiscal cliff negotiations.
Here’s how Scheiber explains the political implications of Boehner making the courageous choice:

That leaves option two: Boehner passes a bill with a rump group of Republicans and a majority of House Democrats. There are actually two ways this could happen. First, Boehner could essentially accept the offer on the table from Obama, perhaps with a tiny symbolic concession that lets him claim he squeezed more out of the president. Or Boehner could take up the bill the Senate has already passed, which extends the Bush tax cuts for families making under $250,000 per year and lets them expire above that.
Unfortunately, it’s extremely hard to imagine Boehner embracing either of these measures and putting them to a vote, for the simple reason that passing either one over the opposition of his caucus would leave him incredibly vulnerable only days before he stands for re-election as Speaker. (That happens on January 3.) If Boehner wants to keep his job, this just isn’t something he’ll screw with. And for whatever reason–certainly not the quality of life it affords him–Boehner comes across as a man who wants to keep his job.

It’s also questionable that Boehner could get the needed “few dozen Republicans” Scheiber noted above. I won’t be surprised if Scheiber’s conclusion that Boehner will opt for the ‘Thelma and Louise’ pans out.
Yet, when all the strategic choices are a pretty big gamble, there is something to be said for going with the one that challenges with a bit of courage, vision and bipartisan spirit. Sure, it’s a tall order for a guy who hasn’t shown much of it thus far. But Boehner may realize that, on another level, his choice is between taking a chance on a genuinely bipartisan resolution of the crisis or continuing to be a herder of rigid ideologues who will never enact any legislation that benefits the American people.
I won’t be surprised if this possibility is dashed before the sun sets. But America is in urgent need of hope and healing. President Obama has done as much as he can. Now somebody else has to accept the challenge.

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.