At The New Republic, Nate Cohn has an encouraging observation: “…By Friday: we’ll be able to start assessing whether Obama’s post-DNC boost was a temporary bounce or a resilient bump…If Obama’s four point lead persists through the week, Obama should be considered a very strong favorite for reelection. While it might seem that the heart of the campaign is still to come, the candidate leading two weeks after the in-party convention has gone onto win the popular vote in every presidential election since Truman’s come from behind victory in 1948.”
More reason for Democratic high fives: “Obama has jumped out to an average lead of 3.1 percentage points in 10 national polls taken since Sept. 4. That’s triple the 1.1 percentage-point edge Obama held in polling conducted between Romney’s selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate and the end of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla…Obama holds a lead in the polls in 11 of the 12 battleground states being contested by both candidates…The Republican nominee needs to capture at least eight of 12 swing states won four years ago by Obama to have a chance in an Electoral College,” according to according to Richard S. Dunham’s “Obama Leads in Electoral College Tallies” in the San Francisco Chronicle.
But Nate Silver takes a more sober view of recent polling data, putting unbridled optimism on hold until “Mr. Obama’s numbers hold at their present levels for another two weeks or so. Silver adds, “The forecast model is deliberately reading Mr. Obama’s polls a bit skeptically right now because we are still close enough to the conventions that there could be temporary effects from them.”
Hotline on Call reports that President Obama is in the ballpark, where he needs to be with white working-class voters: “Most notably, the national polls all showed the president at his target for reelection among white voters; Obama won 43 percent of whites in 2008 but is favored for reelection this year if he can clear roughly 39 percent. CNN/ORC showed Obama at 42 percent among whites, Fox News at 40 and ABC News/Washington Post at 41 percent. And a new poll from the Democratic outfit Democracy Corps showed Obama at 40 percent among whites without college degrees, the voters most resistant to the president in this campaign.”
Politico’s “Inside the campaign: How Mitt Romney stumbled” by Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei is getting most of the ‘Romney Campaign in Disarray’ buzz, with it’s finger-pointing at Romney’s top strategist Stuart Stevens. Seems to me this lets the candidate off the hook for his blundering, which began well before the convention and continues afterward.
He looks like a good candidate, but isn’t it just a couple of months early?
At Bloomberg Businessweek, John McCormick’s “Romney Seeks to Blunt Obama Edge With Swing-State Latinos” reports that Romney is readying his pro-small business pitch to Latinos in battleground states, beginning with a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. McCormick reports “The Romney campaign has run Spanish-language television ads targeting Hispanics, including one called “No podemos mas” — translated to “We no longer can” — that contrasts with Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan, “Yes, we can.” Limp.
Game on in NC, via early voting. Swing state IA begins this Saturday, along with half of the states.
Steve Kornacki reports at Salon.com on Elizabeth Warren taking the lead in the U.S. Senate race in MA in two new polls. Kornacki adds: “If the Warren-Brown race were for the governorship, an office that Massachusetts voters have been very willing to elect Republicans to in recent times, there’s little doubt that Brown would win. But because it’s for federal office, Warren has a better chance to harness the state’s aversion to the national GOP brand. We’ve seen a race like this before, when the very popular Republican Bill Weld – who was fresh of a gubernatorial reelection bid in which he racked up 71 percent of the vote – challenged John Kerry for the Senate in 1996. In a popularity contest, Weld would have won. But Massachusetts voters didn’t want to further empower Republicans in Washington, and Kerry survived by 7 points.”
This is a damn good — and important — question.

Ben Schreckinger reports in his post “Democrats Widen Enthusiasm Gap” at The National Journal that “Democrats are now significantly more engaged by the presidential race and view it more favorably than Republicans, according to a Pew survey published on Wednesday…Two-thirds of Democrats find the campaign “interesting” compared with only half of Republicans, while 68 percent of Dems find it “informative,” compared with just under half of Republicans, according to survey, conducted over the weekend by the the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.”
Nate Silver has a lot more to say about the “decline of the enthusiasm gap” at FiveThirty Eight, which leads him to conclude that “for now, our forecast has stabilized a bit, with Mr. Obama holding in the range of about a four-point lead in the popular vote and an 80 percent chance of winning the Electoral College.”
If you thought that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus might want to lay a little low for a while and let the wake of his hideously bungled convention quietly subside, you would be quite wrong. David Atkins cuts Priebus and his party no slack at Hullabaloo, regarding the RNC chair’s inane tweet “Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic.” Says Atkins: “That’s the actual, nominal head of the Republican Party speaking, not some radio shock jock…But this this is who they are, and what the official Republican discourse has been reduced to. It’s time the press started reporting the callous, lying extremism of the mainstream Republican Party for what it is.”
The Boston Globe piles on in today’s editorial “Romney’s comments raise doubts about his foreign-policy savvy,” as did The Washington Post editorial “Mr. Romney’s rhetoric on embassy attacks is a discredit to his campaign.”
In keeping with Romney’s dazzling display of diplomatic ineptitude, note that Russian President Vladimir Putin has thanked the GOP nominee for his myopic comment that Russia is our “number one geopolitical foe.” As Kirit Radia reports at abcnews.com’s ‘OTUS’ blog, Putin said, “I’m grateful to him (Romney) for formulating his stance so clearly because he has once again proven the correctness of our approach to missile defense problems,” Putin told reporters, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.”
Here’s some really great stats for the Obama campaign, from The New York Times editorial “Fewer Uninsured People“: “The Census Bureau reported on Wednesday that the number of people without health coverage fell to 48.6 million in 2011, or 15.7 percent of the population, down from 49.9 million, or 16.3 percent of the population, in 2010. Health experts attributed a big chunk of the drop to a provision in the health care reform law that allows children to remain on their parents’ policies until age 26. Some three million young adults took advantage of that provision, other surveys show.”
Add to that a new government report that the Affordable Care Act has saved health care consumers an estimated $2.1 billion in premiums, as Allison Terry reports at The Monitor..
Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball takes a sneak peek at an article taking an overview of 13 current political forecasting models in PS: Political Science & Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association. Sabato’s summation: “…They vary widely, with eight of the 13 showing victory for President Obama and five seeing Mitt Romney as the next president. The chances of an Obama plurality range from a mere 10% to a definitive 88%. For whatever it is worth, the average of the models’ projected vote for President Obama (of the two-party total, excluding third-party and independent candidates) is 50.2% — a tiny advantage for Obama, but hardly ironclad.”
Lots of buzz about a new study of facebook as a GOTV tool. As John Markoff reports in the New York Times, “The study, published online on Wednesday by the journal Nature, suggests that a special “get out the vote” message, showing each user pictures of friends who said they had already voted, generated 340,000 additional votes nationwide — whether for Democrats or Republicans, the researchers could not determine. ”
In a more partisan vein, GOP-friendly consultant Vincent Harris reports at Campaigns & Elections on how Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ted Cruz used social media in his upset win of his party’s primary in Texas. Harris explains: “Most importantly, digital was baked into all aspects of the campaign from communications to political fieldwork to polling….Ted announced his candidacy for Senate on a conference call with conservative bloggers. Texas has a large network of active conservative bloggers and giving access to them was important to promoting Ted’s conservative message and helping generate buzz about his candidacy among the party base. Ted met with bloggers in person and via phone often, and the campaign created a robust blogger action center encouraging bloggers to post supportive widgets, and created a segmented email list to update bloggers from.” Dems take note.

The reviews are already coming in regarding Romney’s ill-considered, shoot-from-the-hip response to the tragic attacks in Egypt and Libya, and it ain’t pretty. For a little taste, read Jack Mirkinson’s HuffPo post, “Mitt Romney Response To Libya, Egypt Attacks Called ‘Irresponsible,’ ‘Craven,’ ‘Ham-Handed,” in which he observes:

The Romney campaign drew fire on Wednesday morning for issuing a blistering statement condemning the American embassy in Egypt for speaking against an incendiary anti-Muslim film, even though the embassy made the statement before any attacks had taken place. NBC’s Chuck Todd, for instance, called the statement “irresponsible” and a “bad mistake.” ABC’s Jake Tapper said that Romney’s attack “does not stand up to simple chronology.”
National Journal’s Ron Fournier called Romney’s actions “ham-handed” and “inaccurate.”
Conservative pundit Erick Ericson, while disagreeing with Todd’s response, also warned Romney to be “cautious.”
Despite that criticism, Romney continued this line of attack in an appearance on Wednesday morning, saying that the White House had made a “severe miscalculation.”
This drew a fierce [tweet] response from analyst Mark Halperin: “Unless Mitt has gamed crisis out in some manner completely invisible to Gang of 500, doubling down=most craven+ill-advised move of ’12”

Even Ice Kween Peggy Noonan weighed in with a chilly scold, noting “I don’t feel that Mr. Romney has been doing himself any favors in the past few hours…Sometimes when really bad things happen, when hot things happen, cool words or no words is the way to go.”
At WaPo, Chirs Cillizza adds at ‘The Fix’: “Romney’s approach hands the Obama team an opening to cast the challenger as not ready for the job, someone who jumps to conclusions before all the facts are known. And, at least at the moment, that appears to be the stronger (political) argument”
Romney’s comments didn’t do much to encourage GOP congressional leaders to defend him, as Politico’s Scott Wong reports in his post, “Hill GOP leaves Romney out on limb on Libya” and Alex Seitz-Wald explains in “GOP leaves Mitt hanging ” at Salon.com.
Slate.com’s Fred Kaplan may have summed up Romney’s blundering “diplomacy” best in commenting:

…Imagine if Romney had called President Obama, asked how he could be of assistance in this time of crisis, offered to appear at his side at a press conference to demonstrate that, when American lives are at risk, politics stop at the water’s edge–and then had his staff put out the word that he’d done these things, which would have made him look noble and might have made Obama look like the petty one if he’d waved away these offers.
But none of this is in Romney. He imagined a chink in Obama’s armor, an opening for a political assault on the president’s strength and leadership, and so he dashed to the barricades without a moment of reflection, a nod to propriety, or a smidgen of good strategy.

If the reception Romney is getting across the political spectrum continues in similar vein, he may soon wish he was back in London during the Olympics, getting dissed by the Prime Minister, the Queen and pretty much every bloke from the East End to Notting Hill.

The recent New York Times editorial on “Jobs and Politics” offers some salient insights in the wake of the latest unemployment figures, including “…The Republican agenda misdiagnoses the cause of slow job growth, blaming taxes and regulation, while championing more tax cuts for the rich and deregulation of the banks and other businesses as a cure. Those policies, however, are precisely the ones that were in place as the bubble economy of the Bush years inflated, and then crashed, with disastrous consequences. They are the problem, yet they are all that Mr. Romney and his party have to offer…”

Ezra Klein debunks the myth that the unemployment rate dropped because of an increase in the number of ‘discouraged workers.’ Klein shows that the number of discouraged workers actually decreased between July and August.

The new Reuters-Ipsos poll brings good news for President Obama. In addition to edging Romney by 4 points on the “if the election were held today” question, the President is seen as better on jobs, according to Reuters’ Alina Selyukh: “..Asked which of the two “will protect American jobs,” 32 percent of independent registered voters picked Obama, while 27 percent sided with Romney…Among all the 1,660 registered voters surveyed, Obama scored 42 percent compared to Romney’s 35 percent…Obama’s ranking in that category has climbed steadily over the past two weeks of the daily poll, starting with 34 percent on August 28, reaching 40 percent on September 7 and peaking Sunday.”

Matt Bai has a long article in the New York Times Magazine mulling over different answers to a question a lot of pundits are thinking about “Did Barack Obama Save Ohio?”
In his post, “The Washington Post’s Feckless ‘Fact-Check’,” at The Nation Eric Alternman calls out WaPo’s Glenn Kessler for being “the single most aggravating example of the press’s lack of interest in keeping anyone honest anymore…Today he’s the perfect example of a well-worked ref: an unwitting weapon in the Republicans’ war on knowledge and, sadly, a symbol of the mainstream media’s failure to keep American politics remotely honest–or even tethered to reality.”

Chis Kromm has another good post, “From Clinton to Castro: Democrats’ Southern strategy reaches out to both older and newer South” up at Facing South. regarding former President Clinton’s role, Kromm observes “Kevin Alexander Gray, a civil rights activist also from South Carolina, compares Clinton’s role with appealing to white voters to how Democrats used to deploy the Rev. Jesse Jackson when trying to mobilize African-American voters. “They used Jackson to ‘vouch’ for white Democrats to black audiences,” Gray told Facing South. “Clinton is vouching to whites for Barack Obama…”Bubba’s” mission of appealing to whites, including whites in battleground Southern states, exists in delicate balance with another key goal of this week’s convention: to win over the increasingly diverse South of the future. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviews Kromm and Kevin Alexander Gray right here.

Bloomberg’s Tom Schoenberg has an encouraging report on “Republicans Losing Election Law War as Campaign Ramps Up.” Schoenberg explains: “All told, across the U.S., there are at least eight challenges to state voter-identification laws, six to state redistricting plans, four to early voting restrictions, four to voter roll purges, two to registration rules and two to ballot disqualification measures…The challengers so far have won favorable rulings in about 10 of the cases.”

In his post, “Bad Economy? Blame It on Mitch McConnell and the GOP,” The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky says what many Dems, including yours truly, want President Obama to do: “…The smart and aggressive thing to do is to call out the people who’ve been blocking attempts at progress…One of the Democrats’ biggest strategic mistakes of the last two years has been their unwillingness to say plainly and openly that Republicans don’t want to see jobs created as long as Obama is president…Imagine if Obama called out Mitch McConnell personally for that infamous comment of his. The base would be in heaven, and voters in the middle would at least see him standing up for himself, not letting himself get kicked around.” I would only add that, if the President doesn’t want to do it, then have his surrogates start doing it loud and often until it becomes common wisdom, even among low information swing voters.

Josh Goodman has an interesting report on “Democrats seeking comeback in state legislatures” at The Seattle Times. Goodman explains: “In November, three-quarters of the nation’s state legislative seats will be on the ballot. With only 11 governorships up this fall, it’s the legislative races that will do the most to determine the direction of state policy over the next two years…The 2012 elections give Democrats their first chance to bounce back nationally from the Republican landslide victories in 2010, which gave the GOP more legislative seats than it has had since 1928. As of this June, Republicans outnumbered Democrats in state legislatures 3,975 to 3,391..”

As the polls narrow, we are hearing increasing talk about how to reach “the low-information voter.” Fortunately, we have The Onion to shed light on the question in this nifty clip on “In the Know: Candidates Compete for the Vital Idgit Vote.”

Since convention ‘bumps’ tend to evaporate, there may not be any measurable impact of the GOP and Dem conventions on election day. In terms of lasting, but immeasurable impressions, few would argue that the GOP convention could help Republicans much. If there is any edge, it would probably go to the Democrats. In his Wapo column, “The tale of two conventions favors Obama,” Eugene Robinson puts it this way “…Frankly, in terms of speechifying, any one night in Charlotte was better than the whole week in Tampa…It’s not that the Tampa hall lacked enthusiasm; it’s that the Charlotte hall seemed absolutely on fire.”

In his Politico post, “Conventional warfare: Why Democrats won,” former Republican Congressman/’Morning Joe’ host Joe Scarborough says the conventions may prove more consequential than many pundits believe: “Maybe there seemed to be such a disparity between the two conventions because the Republican Party has never been the least bit excited about its nominee. Or maybe it’s because Democrats were simply blessed with a deeper bench of political athletes in 2012. But whatever the reason, Republicans were lapped by their rivals and may ultimately pay in November for botching Mitt Romney’s debut…And that means that these conventions will have mattered — a lot.”

TDS managing Editor Ed Kilgore shares one particularly encouraging observation about the convention in his Washington Monthly post, “Table Set“: “The only thing I’m really confident about is that the “enthusiasm gap” we’ve been told about the entire cycle may have largely dissipated… After Charlotte it appears Democratic “base” voters are going to be “fired up and ready to go.” They need a skillful organization to give their enthusiasm its maximum electoral clout.”

In his FiveThirtyEight post “Obama Would Be Big Favorite With ‘Fired Up’ Base,” Nate Silver explores the implications of the gap between ‘likely’ and ‘registered’ voters for each party. Although Republicans have a smaller gap, reducing the gap among Democrats should give Obama a more significant edge in electoral votes.

Lee Fang of The Nation reports that Obamacare repeal advocate and GOP veep nominee Paul Ryan has made an under-the-radar request for Obamacare funding for a clinic in his congressional district.

A couple of fun stats re the Dem Convention. The Daily Beast reports that: 1. More than 25 million people watched Clinton’s speech, while only 20 million people watched superbowl champs the New York Giants vs. the Dallas Cowboys 2nd half, and 2. Twitter reports 52,756 tweets in the minute following Obama’s speech — a new record for a political event.

It may be a hoax, but hacker-extortionists are reportedly threatening to release Romney’s tax records.

At Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Geoffrey Skelley discusses the ramifications of the Virginia State Board of Elections ruling that former Rep. Virgil Goode, the Constitution Party’s conservative nominee, has qualified for the state’s presidential ballot. Skelley’s bottom line: “…the only way Goode will truly be a spoiler is if the Virginia result is decided by just a relative handful of votes.”

I’ll close this week with a shout out to a couple of under-appreciated progressive heroes. Give it up for the DNC’s tough workhorse Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz for overseeing the most well-organized Democratic convention, maybe ever. Also MSNBC President Phil Griffin for whipping all other cable networks, including Fox and CNN, with MSNBC’s coverage of the Democratic convention, and, beyond that, for having the mettle to put together the best progressive news programming in TV history.

In his New York magazine column, “Obama’s Non-Disappointing Presidency,” Jonathan Chait takes on a common complaint of many progressives that President Obama’s first term failed to meet their lofty expectations, and finds his liberal critics awash in political myopia. Chait begins by conceding the part of their argument that is correct:

…Plenty of things have gone wrong. Most of them are outside Obama’s control: a worldwide economic collapse, a brilliantly executed Republican strategy to withhold cooperation for everything, and a series of self-defeating bungles by the Democratic Congress (which has somehow escaped the endless orgy of liberal self-recrimination.) What’s more, Obama has screwed up plenty of things himself, most notably his doomed strategy of trying to secure a deficit agreement in 2011, his failure to keep pressing on financial reform, and his broad acceptance of the Bush administration’s civil liberties rollback.

Comparing Obama’s first term accomplishments to president Clinton’s much-trumpeted achievements, however, Chait explains:

I expected Obama’s legislative record to exceed Clinton’s, but by less than it actually did. The domestic reforms embedded in the stimulus alone — the scope of which is described in Michael Grunwald’s book The New New Deal — did more to reshape the face of government in areas like education and energy than Clinton managed in eight years. Then you had health-care reform (which I hoped would pass, but would not have been shocked to be filibustered to death), financial reform (which I expected to fail completely), gays in the military, and so on. It is true that, as stimulus, Obama’s economic recovery bill was not nearly large enough to restore full employment. But for some perspective on its scale, recall that Clinton (facing a sluggish recovery from a far milder recession) proposed a $19.5 billion stimulus as his first major legislative measure, negotiated it down to $15.4 billion, and finally saw the whole thing collapse. In that light, Obama’s $787 billion bill looks like a fairly impressive political achievement.
Now, perhaps comparing Obama to Clinton’s record is setting the bar too low. Yet you have to go back to Lyndon Johnson to find a Democratic president who effected as significant change as Obama has, and L.B.J.’s presidency was not exactly an unmitigated blessing.

Chait then notes the shortcomings, as well as the major achievements, of every Democratic president of the post-World War II period, including some of the unsavory compromises they had to make. Regarding the sainted JFK, Chait adds:

…After his assassination, Americans came to look back on Kennedy’s presidency through a golden-hued nostalgia, which is what allows writers…to present Kennedy as a glamorous poet-king who represented something larger than the pedestrian struggles that actually consumed his presidency…That feeling, more than a legislative record, is the missing quality so many people long for in Obama — the sense of a presidency filled with glamour and purpose, not tedious negotiations with the Senate Finance Committee…The Kennedy myth perfectly embodies the amnesiac quality of that longing. Kennedy’s presidency was experienced as a frustrating series of half-measures and moral compromises.

More the sober realist than the Democratic myth-polisher, Chait explains, “There can be fleeting moments of inspiration, but the lived reality of politics can never feel inspiring…I’m not disappointed in Obama at all. His first term has actually exceeded my expectations.”
It’s another eye-opening column by Chait. I would only add that in this context, the Affordable Care Act, its significant shortcomings notwithstanding, is an historic accomplishment that provides more health security for millions of Americans. If Democrats will now rally behind the president and lengthen his coattails, it can be amended and made even better.

The Democratic convention in Charlotte is beginning to generate some decent coverage of political dynamics in the southern states. When President Obama won the electoral votes of Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, along with 47 percent of the popular vote in Georgia back in 2008, his victory provided a compelling rebuttal to the “skip the south” strategy going forward. As a northern refugee now living in the sunny south, however, I’m not sure that the scope and pace of the demographic transition now underway even in the deep south is yet well-understood.
Fortunately, some good reportage on the topic has recently emerged. Start with Chris Kromm’s Facing South post, “As Goes the South: Your convention guide to Southern politics 101,” which explains:

…while states in the Mountain West had similarly large percentage increases, Southern states are bigger and had larger increases in total numbers. That trend appears to be continuing: The Census Bureau estimates that the states adding the most people between 2010 and 2011 were Texas (529,000), California (438,000), Florida (256,000), Georgia (128,000) and North Carolina (121,000)…Southern states gained eight Congressional seats and Electoral College votes in post-Census redistricting and reapportionment. Today, nearly one-third of the total Electoral College votes needed to be elected president come from Southern states — and that share will likely grow in the future.
In other words, bypassing the South (for Democrats) or taking the region for granted (for Republicans) is not an option for any party interested in a winning political strategy.

With respect to the explosive growth of Latinos in the 13 southern states, Kromm adds:

Nine of the 12 states with the fastest-growing Latino/Hispanic populations in the 2010 Census were in the South. The political clout of Latinos is clear in a state like Florida, where Latino eligible voters increased by two-thirds over the last decade and now make up nearly 17 percent of the state’s voters. But the Latino electorate is also growing in North Carolina, with registrations doubling since 2008 and making up two percent of voters — enough to sway a close election…The key here is a registration gap. In North Carolina, for example, about 60 percent of eligible Latino/Hispanic citizens aren’t registered to vote. (For great information on the Latino vote, visit www.latinovotemap.org.)

And, the African-American vote is pivotal for Dems, especially in the south, As Kromm says:

Half of the nation’s African-Americans live in Southern states. An under-reported story of the 2010 Census was the growth of black communities in the South — including an acceleration of return migration from cities in the North and Midwest. The growth is especially clear in cities: Six of the 10 urban areas with the biggest increase in African-Americans were in the South, including Charlotte (number six, 121,500-person increase) and two in Florida (Miami, where the black population grew by 191,700, and Orlando, by 100,600)

In a recent article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Aaron Gould Sheinin noted that,

In January 2001, Georgia’s electorate was 72 percent white and 26 percent black, while Hispanics made up less than two-tenths of 1 percent, according to data compiled by the secretary of state. As of Aug. 1, those numbers had changed dramatically.
Blacks now make up 30 percent of active registered voters while whites are at 60 percent. Hispanics make up nearly 2 percent of the electorate after seeing their registration numbers increase from just 933 in 2011 to 85,000 as of Aug. 1.

Given recent polling and turnout patterns, it appears that, if Dems can win just three out of ten white voters in Georgia, they can take the state’s electoral votes. Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz, cited in Gould’s article, doubts that the demographic changes will swing Georgia to Obama this year, but the odds favoring Dems will improve significantly in future elections. Meanwhile the Obama campaign is running plenty of TV ads in Georgia, and they have 57 paid organizers on the ground in key neighborhoods in GA, reports Gould.
In his AJC article, “Democrats try to make inroads in South,” Wayne Washington quotes Republican U.S. Sen Lindsay Graham’s surprisingly candid assessment, “The demographics race, we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”
Kromm concedes that the conservative rural vote is a still powerful factor outside southern cities. But the cities are where the growth is accelerating. He adds that voter suppression and anti-immigrant legislation remain potent Republican tactics to undercut demographic transition favoring Democrats. He could have added that, if not for draconian felon disenfranchisement laws, Florida (520,000 African American voters disenfranchised) and Virginia (242,000 Black voters disenfranchised) would likely be blue on political maps.
If President Obama can win two of the three southern states he won in ’08, he will probably be re-elected. Regardless of the outcome of November 6 election, however, Republicans will be unable to stop the emergence of purple and possibly blue states in the south as early as 2016.

We celebrate Labor Day on the eve of the Democratic convention, with President Obama addressing the United Auto Workers today in swing state Ohio. The Washington Post leads off with a Labor Day editorial about the people who really “built that” and a reminder to Romney and the one-percenters, quoting from Orwell’s “The Road to Wigan Pier“: “…It is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior.”
At The American Prospect, Amy Dean mulls over the decision to hold the Democratic convention in Charlotte, in the “least unionized state in the country.” Unions don’t like it. Yet they know that Democrats must pick off a southern state to stop a Romney victory, which would bring disaster to the labor movement.
If anyone has any doubts about what the Republicans have in store for labor unions, Mike Hall reports at AFL-CIO Now that “For the first time ever, the Republican platform calls for national “right to work” for less law…Today, workers and employers are allowed to enter into voluntary agreements that allow the workers to choose to join a union by signing recognition cards and if the majority does, the employer will recognize the workers’ choice. The Republican platform calls for banning that practice…The Republican platform calls for a California-like Prop. 32 law that would ban the use of payroll deductions–including voluntary–by union members who want to contribute to their union’s political activity…At least today, Republicans no longer mask their hatred of workers and their unions.”
In his WaPo op-ed, Harold Myerson adds, “…If the war that business and Republicans are waging on labor isn’t defeated, good jobs will continue to dwindle and work in America will grow steadily less rewarding.”
In her Labor Day message at HuffPo, American Federation of teachers President Randi Weingarten explains the stakes for American teachers in the November election: “The choice is between a president who fought to keep 300,000 teachers on the job and a Republican candidate who says he would only keep the Department of Education around to use as a club against unions…Rather than support workers at home or investments in public schools, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan support the Bush-era tax cuts for the very wealthy. They want to hand over our schools to private corporations.”
Meanwhile, Mark Trumbull writes in his article on “The Silver Collar Economy” at The Monitor that the trend of seniors working longer, with many taking lower-wage jobs to get by, is squeezing out job opportunities for young people.
At ProPublica, Amanda Zamora, Blair Hickman and Cora Currier, have a round-up post, “Happy Labor Day. Here’s the Best Reporting on Worker Safety” about a much neglected issue of concern to millions of workers, which lays bare the consequences of the Republican war on regulation.
John Nichols reports at The Nation on “Paul Ryan’s Labor Day Promise to American Workers: Candy and a Sports Schedule.” Nichols explains: “As he marched with other politicians in the Janesville Labor Day parade, the congressman was confronted by Wisconsin workers who were struggling with high unemployment and bleak prospects. A man was videotaped asking what his representative planned to do to aid Ryan’s unemployed constituents. “So what should I have to work for to get a job?” the man asked. “Should I have to work the same wages as in China? Should I have to work for $1 an hour?” Ryan tried to brush his questioner off. But when the man persisted, Ryan said, “C’mon, we’re all here to have a good time.” When he was reminded that it was Labor Day, which would seem to be an appropriate time to discuss unemployment and the condition of workers, Ryan finally offered something: “Would you like some candy?” Ryan asked. “Would you like a Packer-Badger schedule?”
At Daily Kos, Laura Clawson’s “Why unions? To fight for good jobs and against inequality” has a reminder for Democrats that the most powerful weapon they have in the struggle against inequality is organized labor. “As unions have declined, income inequality has risen, and that’s no coincidence. Union members or not, workers benefit from a strong labor movement. And yes, road or building or bridge, workers built it.”

That U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan often stretches the truth to make his points comes as no great revelation to politically aware progressives. But it appears that his jaw-dropping whoppers in his vice presidential nomination acceptance speech have set a new standard for political prevarication.
As Chris Bowers explains in a Daily Kos e-blast:

…It’s a rare day when the media takes a break from he said / she said journalism to point out that Republicans are just flat-out lying. However, Paul Ryan was so blatantly and repeatedly dishonest in his speech last night that dozens of major media outlets spent the day slamming him.

Bowers links to a Kos post, “Lyin’ Ryan: The Media Push Back” by Middlegirl, which includes links to an extraordinary 25 articles calling out Ryan for his lies. I’ve seen half a dozen others, and I’m sure our readers can add even more to the list. “Lyin’ Ryan” googled up 31,700 hits this morning.
When you look at all the downers of the GOP convention, Romney’s nothingburger acceptance speech, Christie’s snarling invective, Eastwood’s lame joke and others, nothing seems quite so emblematic of their campaign as Ryan’s shameless bundle of lies. The GOP message machine clearly believes that even easily-refuted lies will stick, given adequate repetition.
Rummage through American history, and see if you can find another candidate of either party who earned such a disparaging nickname. In this case it is richly-deserved– Lyin’ Ryan.

David Corn has some perceptive observations in his Mother Jones article, “With Ryan Speech, Romney Campaign Goes Full Tea Party” including “They’re in a mania,” one former Bush adviser said about the Romney campaign. They think America is ready for a grand reconfiguration of its social insurance system”…With such language–which was vetted by Romney Central Command–Ryan was not pressing the obvious case that Romney is a pragmatic Mr. Fixit who could be a competent steward of the still-struggling American economy. He was announcing that he and Romney aim to remake American society. He was essentially issuing a declaration of ideological warfare: Government is the enemy of freedom and the cause of the nation’s economic woes; it must be crushed. And, yes, taxes must be slashed for all, which would include those on the highest rungs…”
I have mixed feelings about this notion. Certainly, the number of boring speeches should be reduced, as well as the over-hyped “suspense” in conventions when the big issues and choices are already decided, especially since veep selections are nowadays rubber-stamped. The two major political conventions also drain too much media attention and resources, which could be better spent on more in-depth issue reportage. Still, a real political party has to gather and hammer out principles sometime, not that today’s party platforms are all that consequential. Might this be done better in the years between presidential elections?
Lest you remain unaware of how trifling, paranoid and bizarre the Republican platform is, read Adam Serwer’s “The 5 Weirdest Bits in the 2012 GOP Platform” at MoJo.
Ed Kilgore has a revealing post “Affirmative Action baby” about the GOP’s race card strategy, in which he nails the Rovian subtext in Republican attacks on Obama: “…The “affirmative action” meme implicitly endorsed by the likes of Karl Rove has such a nasty undertone: You, white Americans, tried to give those people a chance, but you know what? They turned out to be exactly what you always suspected, even in that half-black, cleaned-up, over-educated version named Barack Obama! So screw ’em!” Kilgore adds, “…it infuriates people like Rove that their conservative-majority-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see was derailed in 2008 by this Ivy League black dude from Hawaii. They can’t believe he beat them fair and square, so they’ll say he’s predictably failed in hopes that they can get the course of history back on track. ”
In addition to impressive Latino GOTV preparation in Arizona, Republicans have another development to worry about. At the Hill Cameron Joseph quotes Sen John Kyl: “Ron Paul has totally taken our [state] party over…His folks have taken over half of our party, as a result of which we are split down the middle, totally ineffective, screwed up.”
Juan Cole writes at his Informed Comment blog about Romney’s sabre-rattling towards Iran, concluding that ” Military action in the Gulf would certainly send gasoline/ petrol prices sky high and possibly further derail world recovery from the deep global recession.” Could be the premise for a compelling campaign ad.
This can’t be legal.
Nick McClellan and Chris Kirk have a fun graphic up at Slate.com answering the question: “What Are the Most Republican States?” There are no shockers, but the rankings are interesting nonetheless.
And while at Slate, check out Dave Weigel’s “The Last Gasps of the Ron Paul Movement” which addresses “how the GOP’s new rules are meant to make sure no one rises to replace him.” The interesting question is whether or not Paul can be muzzled by the GOP giving his son, Rand Paul, some sort of bribe.
You couldn’t ask for a better capsule description of Romney’s business legacy than the title of David Moberg’s In These Times article “How To Succeed in Business Without Adding Value.” Moberg concludes his argument with what could be a useful soundbite: “…Even when a private equity firm “succeeds” (usually after buying an above-average business), much of their gains are reaped simply by transferring large amounts of wealth to themselves. The losers are usually the companies they acquire, their investor partners, taxpayers, government agencies and workers-ultimately, the entire economy.”