While many believe that Senator Lugar’s defeat by a right-winger, who believes Paul Ryan’s budget is not conservative enough, gives Dems a good shot at a pick-up, yesterday’s elections were generally hailed by conservatives, especially in NC, where voters approved a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage. Campbell Robertson of The New York Times got it right in his lede; the big story in NC was the record turnout.

As expected, North Carolinians voted in large numbers on Tuesday for an amendment that would ban same-sex marriages, partnerships and civil unions, becoming the 30th state in the country and the last in the South to include a prohibition on gay marriage in the state constitution…About half a million people voted early, a record for a primary in the state, and turnout on Tuesday was unusually high as well.

Further down in Robertson’s article, he notes, “Opponents had raised almost twice as much money as the amendment’s supporters and had a robust network of volunteers and get-out-the-vote workers.”
The ad war was also fierce in NC, and no doubt GOTV muscle is even more effective in non-presidential elections, in which overall turnout is normally smaller. There was also a lot of interest in the gubernatorial primary and some congressional races — Republicans hope to pick up as many as four congressional seats in NC alone. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the NC vote supports the argument that investing significant financial resources into GOTV is cost-effective, even for conservatives. And it’s clear that tea party GOTV in Indiana was instrumental in defeating Lugar.
Despite Democratic chest-beating about our superior ground game, one of the lessons of yesterday’s elections is that Republicans can leverage it to good effect also. Yes, Dems have a GOTV edge, particularly with experienced union campaign and turnout workers. But Republicans are not clueless about campaign warfare. They will also be investing heavily in GOTV in the months ahead.
Also in The Times, Jeff Zeleny reports on the intensifying debate among Dems regarding the strategic deployment of financial resources in ads or GOTV. As Zeleny reports, key Dems leaders are concerned that a $100 million plan by liberal donors to lift voter turnout could duplicate Obama campaign efforts already in place and undermine Dems air war:

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and other officials conveyed concern that Democratic candidates could be at a disadvantage if the contributors, many of whom had stayed on the sidelines of the 2012 campaign until now, decide not to spend money on television ads that push back against a torrent of attacks from conservative “super PACS” in the presidential election and Congressional races.
…”The idea that these progressive groups are essentially re-creating the wheel is perplexing and troubling,” said David Krone, the chief of staff to Mr. Reid. “Why go off and build a redundant grass-roots and get-out-the-vote organization that the Obama campaign is clearly invested in?”

Zeleny adds that many Dem strategists still believe that “television advertising was the most powerful way to win races. Democratic strategists have spent months trying to lure Mr. Soros and other donors into the fray of election spending…”Why would they rule out this tried-and-true medium?” Mr. Krone said on Tuesday. “I can guarantee the Republicans are covering all bases and will have a coordinated plan.”
The Obama campaign is reportedly in pretty good shape in terms of preparations for the ad campaign, with Jim Margolis as chief ad guru (profile of Margolis and his strategy here). But down ballot, many Dem candidates are in urgent need of funding for ads.
The debate will likely continue until all possible ads buys are made. No one really knows what is the optimum allocation of pro-Democratic funds into the air war and ground game. But Krone is right that it would be folly to assume that the GOP will come up short in funding either offensive.

Nate Silver crunches some numbers relating presidential election prospects to average job growth per month, and reports at FiveThirtyEight that “…if 150,000 jobs are created in an average month from now through October, the regression equation projects a very close result, showing a victory for Mr. Obama in the popular vote by about 1 percentage point…Mr. Obama’s breakeven number on job creation is now slightly lower than when we had calculated it a few months ago — about 125,000 jobs per month rather than 150,000.”
A new USA Today/Gallup poll of swing states has some welcome news for Dems, according to Susan Page’s USA Today report: “For the first time, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting — a shift from a 14-percentage-point GOP advantage at the end of last year to an 11-point deficit now….By a yawning 27 points, those surveyed describe Obama as more likable than Romney — not a frivolous asset. The candidate viewed as more likable has prevailed in every election since 1980. Even among Romney’s supporters, one in four call Obama more likable…By 10 points, voters say Obama is more likely to care about the needs of people like themselves. By 7 points, they call Obama a stronger and more decisive leader.”
Brian C. Mooney’s Boston Globe article “Democrats doubling down on Swing States” has this interesting spending strategy note: “A Globe analysis of Democratic National Committee disbursements in recent months shows that the party is investing more money per electoral vote in New Hampshire than in any other state.”
At The Fix, WaPo’s Chris Cillizza does a good job of explaining why Arizona really is in play for Dems this year: “According to the 2010 Census, three in 10 Arizonans are Latino, up from roughly 25 percent of the state’s population 10 years ago. In both 2004 and 2008, the Democratic presidential nominee won the Hispanic vote convincingly — Kerry by 18 points, Obama by 15 — but there simply weren’t enough Latinos to counter the strong margins the Republican nominee enjoyed among white voters…The growth among the Latino population — along with the presence of [Democratic senatorial candidate Richard] Carmona, who is Hispanic, and outrage within the community over Brewer’s immigration law — makes Democrats optimistic that 2012 will be different…Democrats are also banking on moderate white Republicans — particularly women — being turned off by the conservative direction Brewer has taken the state, highlighted most recently by her signing a bill that would effectively defund Planned Parenthood.”
Adam C. Smith of the Tampa Bay Times (via Politico) has an update with some state-by-state stats on why the Latino vote is shaping up as the pivotal force in the 2012 presidential elections. “…If Romney can’t narrow Obama’s considerable lead among Latino voters, key battlegrounds including Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Florida could be out of reach for the Republican nominee.”
Virgil Dickson reports at PR Week that “Republicans are launching a door-to door outreach campaign targeting Latinos in the coming weeks to raise support for Mitt Romney in the general election,” but “Romney and the Republican National Committee have virtually ignored Hispanic media outlets, according to NBC/Smart Media Delta.”
Krugman riffs on the failure of austerity in the French and Greek elections, which indicate a popular preference for expansionary policies. Krugman doesn’t get into it here, but the end of “Merkozy” as a viable economic strategy for recovery in the real world makes austerity a little tougher for the GOP to sell.
David Gauthier-Villars’s “Voter Anger Sweeps Europe ” in the Wall St. Journal notes that the anti-austerity wave was also reflected in local elections in Germany: “…Ms. Merkel’s coalition of Christian Democrats and pro-business Free Democrats suffered defeat in a closely watched state election in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein Sunday, suggesting Ms. Merkel’s options for ruling beyond 2013 are narrowing. ”
In The New York Times, Thomas B. Edsall takes a sobering look at the GOP’s Super PAC edge, and he quotes David Axelrod to underscore the point: “No president has ever faced the kind of onslaught we are about to see. We expect the super Pacs, and their more insidious, non-disclosing cousins – the 501c4 front groups – to spend as much as a billion dollars. They will act as a tag-team with Romney, allowing his team to carry a positive message as the super Pacs rain negative ads down on the president. To date, they have dwarfed Priorities and other Democrat-leaning efforts, so we’ve had to spend millions of dollars responding to super Pac attacks.”

A.P.’s Thomas Beaumont reports on a ‘reverse coattails’ phenomenon shaping up, in which President Obama is likely to benefit from key House of Reps races with strong Democratic candidates, like Christie Vilsack in IA-4, Orlando Police Chief Val Demings in FL-8 and several others.
Jonathan Bernstein makes the case at WaPo’s ‘PostPartisan’ blog that “Yes, the Democrats have become more liberal,” while Kevin Drum argues that “Democrats Have Moved to the Right, Not the Left” at Mother Jones.
At the Washington Monthly ‘Ten Miles Square’ blog, Bernstein makes an interesting observation about the core dysfunctional weakness of today’s GOP, which sounds a lot like the monomaniacal egotism of its leaders: “…When your leadership is so radical, and radically dishonest as well (consider, just as one example, the “fight” against the UN swooping in and taking away everyone’s guns, or the claim that Democrats are trying to do that), it’s very difficult for a party to really develop either viable policy or principled policy.”
At FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver explains why some Dems are rooting for the defeat of once-moderate Sen. Richard Lugar in Indiana’s GOP primary: “If Mr. Lugar loses, it should increase Democrats’ odds of picking up the Senate seat in November. Democrats have a fairly good candidate in Indiana in the form of United States Representative Joe Donnelly, who represents the Second Congressional District and who narrowly retained his seat in a very tough environment for Democrats nationally in 2010.”
Chris Van Hollen outlines the Democrats’ path to regaining a majority of the House at MSNBC.com. “The momentum is with us…”
At Salon.com, Steve Kornacki writes that “The Democratic Senate might just survive,” noting that “A Senate map that looked bleak a year ago is now littered with surprise pick-up opportunities.”
According to Betsy Towner’s article the May Bulletin of the AARP (hard copy only), a Pew Research Center poll for the AARP sketches a snapshot ideological profile of senior voters, who have the highest turnout rates. In terms of political leanings, respondents over age 65 (includes the ‘Woodstock Generation’ and their older sibs) fell into these categories: “staunch conservatives” (15%); “Main Street Republicans” (14%); Libertarians (9%); “Disaffecteds (11%); “Postmoderns (moderates, liberal on social issues) (8%); “New Coaltion Democrats” (11%); “Hard-Pressed Democrats (15%); “Solid Liberals” (13%) and; “Bystanders” (3%). The study also has figures for the 50-64 demographic. The AARP has good infographics on seniors right here.
At WaPo’s ‘The Fix,” Chis Cillizza discusses whether “The Catholic vote is the 2012 bellwether.” Cillizza points out that “in the last two presidential contests the Catholic vote has tracked almost exactly with the popular vote.” and “It’s not just presidential elections where Catholics have been a key swing bloc. In the 2006 midterms when Democrats made huge congressional gains, the party won Catholics by 11 points. In 2010, when Republicans re-took the House, Catholics voted for GOP candidates by 10 points…In each of the past five presidential elections, Catholics have comprised somewhere between 26 percent and 29 percent of the overall electorate. (Catholics were 27 percent of the electorate in both 2004 and 2008.).”
Sen. Rob Portman, frequently-cited to be atop the GOP veepstakes short list, may have just uttered the political understatement of the year: “It’s not about sizzle for me.”

For those who had any doubts that the modern Republican Party has lost its collective mind, Dave Johnson, senior fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, has an instructive post for you. Johnson’s theme is the unhinged neo-McCarthyism/Obama Derangement Syndrome of the GOP, in which almost every utterance of the President is instantly termed “Socialism.” Johnson begins by citing a Washington Times article, entitled “New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism“:

The Obama campaign apparently didn’t look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, “Forward” — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism…Vladimir Lenin founded the publication “Vpered” (the Russian word for “forward”) in 1905. Soviet propaganda film-maker Dziga Vertov made a documentary whose title is sometimes translated as “Forward, Soviet” (though also and more literally as “Stride, Soviet”).

Johnson explains that “No, this isn’t just some isolated nut, it’s the “national news editor” writing in Washington’s top conservative newspaper,” and he provides 18 hot links to articles from various organs of “the right’s echo chamber” which parroted the Washington Times lunacy, presumably without irony. He cites another wingnut rag which claims that ‘Forward’ is a “Hitler Youth marching tune,” which, come to think of it, may backfire and endear him to some wingnuts.
Johnson adds “Next, go look at the 9.8 million Google hits that come up if you search on Obama and Marxist, or the 29 million hits if you search on Obama and Socialist” and notes also that “This follows Republican Congressman Alan West’s recent claim that 80 Democratic members of Congress are members of the Communist Party.”
Johnson provides even more citations of articles and videos featuring GOP leaders, yes, including Romney, piling on with message du jour red-baiting. All of which will give real socialists a huge chuckle. I can almost hear them now “Oh sure, Geithner, Summers — real Bolsheviks, those guys.”
Andrew Levison warned in a recent TDS strategy memo about the GOP’s descent into all out “propaganda campaign of a scope and ferocity unparallelled in American history” directed against Democrats. Levison suggest some useful messaging to challenge the onslaught of fear-mongering and demonizing GOP attacks and forcing the Republican nominee to own it or disavow it.
Perhaps the most disgusting thing about the modern GOP’s red-baiting is that, thus far, none of them, not Olympia Snowe, John McCain, Richard Lugar, or any of those smart enough to know better, have stepped up and urged their GOP brethren to give the paranoiac delusions a rest. In a way, that’s a good thing for Dems because it lays bare the GOP’s party-wide integrity deficit that won’t be lost on more thoughtful swing voters.

The Obama campaign has settled on ‘Forward’ as a slogan for the coming weeks/months of the general election campaign, and it is fleshed out in a new, 7-minute video. The elegantly simple slogan has its merits (discussed here), though it’s not as provocative as, say, the “GM is Alive and bin Laden is Dead” bumper sticker (versions here and here).
Nate Silver explains at FiveThirtyEight why Arizona is not a true swing state in his view: “…if he does win Arizona it will probably be superfluous, since in all likelihood he’ll already have won states like Ohio, Colorado and Virginia that are closer to the tipping point.”
Lots of articles on the resurrection of Mayday as an activist holiday, thanks mostly to the Occupy Movement and the GOP war on workers. Peter Dreier has a good overview at The Nation.

The most devastating article for the GOP during the last few days has to be WaPo’s op-ed, “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem” by Brookings’ Thomas E. Mann and A.E.I.’s Norman J. Ornstein, who say: “The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics..ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition…Thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington…The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau…We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality…Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views.”

An interesting tidbit from David Grant’s lengthy Monitor article “US Senate race in Virginia shaping up as national battleground“: “Of the 10 US Senate races considered to be the most competitive, only one other contest [besides Kaine vs. Allen in Virginia]- Nevada – is in a swing state. Both campaigns and independent analysts believe that is leading, already, to a massive infusion of outside money and attention unmatched in the commonwealth’s recent political history.”

Yay Clooney!

Sarah Jones reports on “Scott Walker Blames Protesters for Wisconsin’s Highest in Nation Job Losses” at PoliticusUSA, noting that “You haven’t truly seen waste and debauchery until you watch a post-Reagan “fiscal conservative” in office…If you want to know what a “businessman” Mitt Romney presidency would look like, just take a look into Wisconsin under Scott Walker. It is the only state with statistically significant job losses…When you hear these words, “I’m a businessman and I’m here to help,” run. Just run. ”

Karl Rove’s state by state polling averages map is surprisingly encouraging — for Democrats.

Michael Tomasky argues that the Obama campaign is right to claim some credit for the raid that killed bin Laden. And it’s OK to remember Romney saying “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person,” even though he has walked it back. Says Tomasky: “For Republicans, 9/11 politics are supposed to be permanently frozen in mid-2002, with Democrats shivering like Proust under the bedcovers as all the manly Republican men (Five-deferments Cheney and the rest) explained to America that Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat and that anyone who didn’t agree with this assertion hated freedom…” Tomasky adds that Republicans will try to “intimidate Democrats into not mentioning it–because they know it hurts them and makes them look like the incompetents they are. Well it’s not 2002, and Democrats should be afraid no longer.”

“Don’t get mad, get elected,” say Debbie Walsh and Kathy Kleeman, director and senior communications officer, respectively of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. They report in the Washington Post that 2012 is shaping up to be a banner year for women in U.S. politics: “By our tally, 225 women — 145 Democrats and 80 Republicans — have filed to run for the House of Representatives this election cycle, although 12 lost their primaries. Seventy more are considered candidates in states where filing is still ahead..That means we’re on track to beat the previous record of 262 female House candidates set in 2010.”

The Wall St. Journal reports that a growing chorus of European economists are making the case that austerity is the wrong way for the EEC to go. Meanwhile in France, anti-austerity challenger Francois Hollande is holding a strong edge in the latest polls over President Nicolas Sarkozy on the eve of Sunday’s presidential elections. Should be a rollicking May Day in Paris.

A tough new ad by Priorities USA Action and the League of Conservation Voters, “Mitt Romney — in the tank for Big Oil” should be emailed to all voters concerned about rising gas prices.

Linda Feldman at The Monitor has an update on the Senate gamesmanship surrounding the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, crediting Democratic leaders with securing 61 co-sponsors — a comfy super-majority — in favor of the bill (including 8 Republicans). Remaining Republicans are fretting over whether they should support the bill or not, alienating either women or their conservative base, which opposes the bill’s provisions helping gays and lesbians, native American women and women immigrants who need visas. The bill faces a tough sell for Dems in the GOP-controlled House, and, without re-authorization, it will expire inn September.

Sabato has a data-driven discussion about electoral college strategy at this political moment, focusing on MI, PA and WI as key potential swing states.

At the Washington Post, Dan Eggen’s revealing report notes that “Most independent ads for 2012 election are from groups that don’t disclose donors…Politically active nonprofit groups that do not reveal their funding sources have spent $28.5 million on advertising related to the November presidential matchup, or about 90 percent of the total through Sunday,…Most of the ad spending has come in swing states from conservative groups that criticize President Obama’s policies, the data show. Secretive groups have spent tens of millions more targeting congressional races, again mainly in support of Republicans.”

According to a new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, “54 percent of likely voters said they’d vote for Gov. Jerry Brown’s ballot measure to temporarily hike the sales tax and income tax on wealthy Californians to help fund education, while Nearly 80 percent oppose $5 billion in ‘trigger’ cuts to state schools, reports Jill Tucker in the San Francisco Chronicle.

As Democrats struggle to get more help for students facing burdensome tuition and personal debt, you can get up to speed on the political considerations by reading “10 Ways Student Debt Is Blocking the Economic Mobility of Young Americans” by Jack Temple, Heather C. McGhee and Tamara Draut.

It’s good that President Obama is putting some energy into turning out youth votes, because there is a problem looming, reflected in a new poll by Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. As Clare Malone reports at the American Prospect, President Obama still has an edge with young voters, but “…61 percent of college-age Millennials (the futuristic-sounding name given to the generation born in the late 1980s and early 1990s) are registered to vote, but only 46 percent say that they will likely do so in November. By way of comparison, in 2008, 58.5 percent of the same age group was registered to vote, and 48 percent of them actually did.”

Romney does have one very firm, unalterable principle, notes E. J. Dionne, Jr in his WaPo column, “Romney’s principled, radical view for America.” It is that low taxes for the rich are a kind of panacea for all social problems. As Dionne aptly puts it, “…Magical capitalism is the centerpiece of Romney’s campaign, and it may prove to be his undoing.”

Rachel Weiner’s post at The Fixx, “How ALEC became a political liability,” could have been re-titled “How the Trayvon Martin Tragedy Crippled ALEC.” Weiner gives earlier protests by activists due credit, but adds “The civil rights group Color of Change began pressuring the group’s corporate partners late last year over ALEC’s support of voter ID laws. Pepsi Co. dropped out in January. But the boycott really gained steam after the Martin case; a dozen groups have now pulled out.”

CNN’s ‘Political Ticker’ reports on the latest additions to the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” list of House seats Dems hope to take in November. They include: Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-01); Pete Aguilar (CA-31); Raul Ruiz (CA-36); Joe Miklosi (CO-06); Patrick Murphy (FL-18); David Crooks (IN-08); Gary McDowell (MI-01); John Delaney (MD-06); Shelley Adler (NJ-03); Julian Schreibman (NY-19); Manan Trivedi (PA-06); Pat Kreitlow (WI-07); Arizona’s 9th District; New York’s 18th District. These districts bring the overall list to 35 potential flips.

Two ‘Blue Dog” House incumbents, Reps. Tim Holden (D-Pa.) and Jason Altmire (D-Pa.), lost their seats to challengers in Democratic primaries on Tuesday, whittling the centrist Dems coalition down to 23 House seats, a new low in their numerical influence.
Both candidates were defeated by progressive Democrats. Matt Cartwright defeated Holden in Pennsylvania’s redrawn 17th district, with strong support from progressive groups, including MoveOn and the League for Conservation Voters, as well as the anti-incumbent Super PAC, the Campaign for Primary Accountability. Cartwright, who also spent a lot of his own money, attacked Holden for his opposition to the Affordable Care Act.
With strong support from organized labor, Mark Critz beat Altmire, who also opposed the ACA, in PA-12. As Amanda Terkel reports at HuffPo, “Eddie Vale, spokesman for the AFL-CIO’s super PAC Workers’ Voice, said Altmire was a “huge favorite” based on the geography of the new district, but “boots on the ground and the energy of working families upset that paradigm.”
While centrists lament the loss of two ‘Blue Dogs,’ many Democratic progressives are undoubtedly heartened by the defeats, which they see as a kind of party discipline invoked by the grass roots in the vacuum created by the reluctance of Democratic congressional leaders to do so. Blue Dogs rarely paid a price in terms of committee assignments or other perks when they failed to support the legislative agenda of Democratic leadership. Now they will have no doubt that progressive groups have the power to hold them accountable at the primary level.
Centrist Dems fear that the campaign to reduce the Blue Dog coalition may drive moderate voters to the GOP and ultimately increase the GOP House majority. But many political scientists now believe that the percentage of genuine swing voters is very small, and most self-described moderates lean toward one party or the other with predictable regularity.
Altmire and Holden opposed the ACA. But centrist Dems point out that another ‘Blue Dog,’ former Rep. Bart Stupak, was instrumental in securing a favorable House vote for the legislation. His seat is now held by wingnut Republican Dan Benishek.
Progressive Democrats have strengthened their hand with the two Blue Dog defeats. But the debate over whether reducing the number of political centrists is a healthy thing for the party or not will continue.
In either case, more discipline invoked by Democratic leaders in congress against straying members would likely strengthen party unity. The ‘Big Tent’ can be a good thing in terms of holding a majority. But the Democratic Party has to take a clear stand — as unified as possible — for defining reforms like affordable health care.

There’s a bit of a dispute going on in Democratic pundit circles about how best to ‘frame’ the ‘real Romney’ in campaign messaging. Would he be most accurately — and effectively — portrayed as a flip-flopping flibbertigibbet or a slickster wingnut?
The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber comes down on the side of characterizing the GOP nominee-in-waiting as “a Goldwater-esque extremist,” tempered by “an added selling point that the coverage has so far ignored.” As Scheiber says,

My only quibble is with Team Obama’s parsing of the allegation. The formulation David Plouffe gave the Times last week went as follows: “Whether it’s tax policy, whether it’s his approach to abortion, gay rights, immigration, he’s the most conservative nominee that they’ve had going back to Goldwater.” I’d tweak this slightly (not that anyone asked for my advice) and say, “Whether it’s tax policy … abortion, gay rights, immigration, he’s *running as* the most conservative nominee that they’ve had going back to Goldwater.” I don’t think many people look at Mitt Romney and see an authentic, fire-breathing conservative. But I do think they’ll believe he’s been willing to act like one to appease his party. And that the appeasement won’t abruptly end on Election Day…On top of which, phrasing it this way lets you use both the “too conservative” argument and the “soulless” argument in a way that’s perfectly coherent, so you don’t really have to choose.

Describing Romney as a “vulture capitalist who lacks a human core but has embraced a conservative agenda to lead his fellow Republicans and plutocrats to victory in November,” Alec MacGillis’s take, also at TNR, “A False Choice For Obama’s Anti-Romney Message,” offers a melding of the two views:

I also see the two frames as linked and not as inconsistent as some are making them out to be, but in a slightly different way–as fully symbiotic arguments that each would not work all that well entirely on their own, that are stronger if yoked together….Yoking the two frames together works even better when they are combined with the third frame at Obama’s disposal: Romney as the plutocrat who (after a blessed start in life) made his millions slicing and dicing companies, regardless of the human collateral, and who now benefits from a very low tax rate on his fortune. This framing makes each of the other two more persuasive. It buttresses the notion of Romney as one without a core–he’ll do whatever it takes to get on top. And it explains Romney’s current conservatism, making it seem more than just sheer opportunism at least when it comes to taxes and the economy–of course he’s embracing the Ryan plan: It lowers rates for people like himself, even to the point of saving his own sons millions in estate taxes!

Ed Kilgore also envisions a synthesis of the two views at WaMo’s ‘Political Animal,’, albeit angled differently:

I don’t see a problem here. Of course the Obama camp emphasized the “no core” argument during the primaries, since it reinforced conservative doubts about Romney and also painted him as someone so character-less that he’d do or say whatever was necessary to win the nomination. Now that Mitt’s spent months and months pandering to conservative activists and blasting his opponents for ideological heresies real and imagined, it’s perfectly logical to point out how he’s harnessed himself to a political movement that’s partying like it’s 1964. But the “no core” attack line must be recalled now and then to turn on bright flashing lights whenever Romney tries to reposition himself, which he really does need to do lest he come across as Paul Ryan with a lot less personality.
Is it really confusing or risky to depict Romney as an empty suit in the thrall of radicals? Weaver says something I’ve also heard from anxious Democrats who fear that calling Romney is flip-flopper could make him more attractive to swing voters: “Being a flip-flopper might actually help Romney. It shows he’s not an unreasonable person.”
Really? People who don’t like the ideology Romney has been incessantly peddling for the last two presidential cycles are going to vote for him because they believe he’s an incorrigible liar?
I don’t think so. Mitt has built a trap for himself throughout his public career, and Team Obama would be foolish not to bait it and spring it. Persuadable voters don’t much like flip-floppers and don’t much like “severly conservative” ideologues, either. And they really don’t like pols without the character to maintain a reasonably consistent point of view even as they ingratiate themselves to people who are unreasonably enslaved to an extremist ideology against which every decision made by Romney every single day of his presidency would be policed relentlessly and viciously.

Put another way, we are now talking about a flip-flopper who no longer has the wiggle-room to tack back towards sanity, much less moderation. That’s not a problem for the Obama campaign; It’s an embarrassment of messaging riches.

Alternet’s ace Sarah Jaffe has an informative post, “Labor Unions’ Fight for the 99% Goes Way Beyond Raising Campaign Dollars,” which puts organized labor’s political role in clear perspective. I’ll just share a few graphs and urge everyone to take a few minutes and read the whole thing. Jaffe provides an historical overview and sets the stage:

You’d think people would have learned the lesson in 2011: labor is an integral part of the progressive coalition, one of the only forces capable of acting as a counterweight to the organized money that’s taken over our politics.
Yet as election season wears on, many politicians and reporters seem to have forgotten. From Wisconsin, where the former mayor of Madison claimed that candidates shouldn’t be “beholden to big unions,” to the Web, where debates over union endorsements seem to focus only on how much money labor will spend to support its chosen candidates.

Republicans whine about union money in politics. But that’s not thier greatest concern, as Jaffe points out:

“The labor movement has always given money to candidates,” Damon Silvers, policy director and general counsel at the AFL-CIO, told AlterNet. But when it comes down to winning elections, their greatest contribution is boots on the ground. “And not just any boots, but people who are plugged into their communities, who are trusted. They’re the backbone of America’s civic culture, the people who are the poll watchers, the people who volunteer at food banks, local leaders in unions, the shop stewards, the people who pound the pavement. They are the core of civil society in the United States.”
…Most of those little victories — those 4 percent raises and new contracts with health care benefits — are won day by day, inch by inch, in grinding organizing campaigns and lengthy negotiations with management. They don’t make headlines the way a multimillion-dollar ad buy does. As Perlman pointed out, unions are workers’ organizations that do politics, not political organizations. But with only 11.8 percent of Americans represented by a union, the political action unions do has become the public face of labor.

As for the real extent of union financial contributions to candidates, Jaffe notes:

“CNN’s Charles Riley calculates that for 2011-2012 the 100 biggest individual donors to super PACs make up only 3.7 percent of the contributors but supply more than 80 percent of the cash,” Noah noted.
Even as the AFL-CIO launches its own super PAC, Worker’s Voice, the difference is obvious. Eliza Newlin Carney at Roll Call reported that the AFL-CIO’s PAC has raised some $5.4 million and will report $4.1 million cash on hand when it has to file first-quarter disclosure reports. Compare that to the $76.8 million raised by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS–which got 87 percent of its cash from just 24 donations from ultra-rich donors who gave over $1 million apiece. American Crossroads, the super PAC arm of Crossroads GPS, has already spent $29 million since its founding in 2010.
…Even with the super PAC, organized labor’s monetary contribution to the election is going to look small compared to big business. AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer told Roll Call, “We were outspent 20-to-1 last time. We will probably be outspent 20-to-1 this time. But we are going to out-organize them by more than 20-to-1.”
…The labor movement is built upon grassroots organizing. Organizing workers takes conversations, face-to-face, personal connections, and solidarity. That’s why the most important contribution from labor even in today’s big-money era is going to be, as Perlman said, “actually talking to people, explaining the issues in a real way, not in a 30-second ad way.”

As Jaffe concludes, “…Really, the most important question shouldn’t be whether labor will spend a lot of money on TV ads. The question instead, for smart political watchers, will be whether the volunteers, who do the grunt work of campaigning, the door-knocking and phone-banking and stamp-licking, will show up…”

For some good news for Democrats, see the Associated Press report, “Swing-state unemployment down,” which notes “unemployment has dropped more sharply in several swing states than in the nation as a whole. A resurgence in manufacturing is helping the economy — and Obama’s chances — in the industrial Midwestern states of Ohio and Michigan…And Arizona, Nevada and Florida, where unemployment remains high, are getting some relief from an uptick in tourism….in Michigan and Ohio. In Michigan, unemployment fell to 8.5 percent in March from 10.5 percent in March 2011. And in Ohio, it dropped to 7.5 percent from 8.8 percent over the same period, putting it well below the national average of 8.2 percent…In Florida, unemployment tumbled to 9 percent in March from 10.7 percent a year earlier. That was more than twice the nationwide drop of 0.7 percentage point (from 8.9 percent to 8.2 percent) over the same period. A rise in tourism is helping.”
Scott Bauer has an AP update on Republican leaders in Wisconsin openly asking their supporters to cross party lines in the May 8 primary to vote for fake Democrats to prevent recall of GOP state Senators. As state Rep. Robin Vos, the Republican expected to serve as speaker of the Assembly next year, put it “We are encouraging Republicans to vote in the Democratic primaries.” Crossing party lines to influence the opposition party’s outcome is defensible. Running fake candidates is pretty sleazy.
Dems have a great ad spot up, riffing on Gov. Scott Walker as a job-killer. “Most states gained jobs last year,” says the narrator of the ad. “But under Gov. Walker, Wisconsin lost more jobs than any other state. Dead last.” See the ad and read Sean Sullivan’s Hotline on Call report right here.
Meanwhile in PA, Republicans are still screwing around with voter i.d. laws on the eve of the state primary. Philly Inquirer reporter Bob Warner adds “A survey by the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group looked at IDs issued by 110 colleges and universities and found only 19 appeared to meet the new standards. Most of them lack the expiration dates the law requires.”
Benjy Sarlin’s “Obama’s Daunting Task: Bring Back The Youth Vote” at Talking Points Memo indicates that the president’s campaign is working some bread-and-butter angles: “…The White House…would prevent interest rates on subsidized student loans from doubling to 6.8 percent. …Student loans are one area where the administration can tout concrete gains: In 2009, Obama passed student-loan reform through a controversial reconciliation procedure, transferring billions of dollars from private lenders to funding for more generous grants and loan terms…Ending the Iraq war is a big applause line on campuses, as is as the president’s successful push to allow gays to openly serve in the military. And some of the Affordable Care Act’s most popular elements have particular weight with young voters, including a provision allowing Americans to stay on their parent’s health insurance up to age 26: Over 2.5 million more young people are insured as a result, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.”
American Prospect’s Paul Waldman reports at CNN on a new Romney strategy, “bracketting” or the “pre-buttal” in which he gets to a town just before Obama and steals a big bite of his opponent’s favorable coverage. Hmm, could this work down-ballot?
Howard Kurtz reports at The Daily Beast that Romney is “carefully avoiding most national interviews outside of Fox.”
Kurtz also reports on a new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism of 52 key newspaper, television, radio, and Web outlets, which found that “Overall, it was no contest. From Jan. 2 through April 15, Romney’s coverage was 39 percent positive, 32 percent negative, and 29 percent neutral, the researchers found. Obama’s coverage was 18 percent positive, 34 percent negative, and 34 percent neutral. That means Romney’s depiction by the media was more than twice as positive as the president’s. So much for liberal bias.”
Sen. McCaskil’s re-election campaign is making GOP Super-PAC money a central issue, according to Rosalind S. Helderman’s WaPo article, “Sen. Claire McCaskill takes fight to super PACs as Missouri swings farther right.” Helderman quotes McCaskill, “You make one company mad by casting a principled vote, and they say, ‘Okay, we’ll just gin up $10 million of our corporate money and take her out anonymously,’ ” she said. “I think if people figure out that’s what’s going on, they’re going to be very turned off by it.”