James Hohman’s Daily 202 column at WaPo, “The Daily 202: Trumpism rejected by Obama in State of the Union and Nikki Haley in GOP response,” spotlights a host of interesting reactions to President Obama’s State of the Union speech. Here we’ll just share some responses to the GOP rebuttal by Governor Nikki Haley:

— In the latest sign that the GOP establishment fears an electoral debacle if Trump is the nominee, the official Republican response from Nikki Haley also made the case – albeit a little more gently – against going down the path Trump offers. “During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices,” the South Carolina governor said. “We must resist that temptation.”
— Haley’s speech has become a Rorschach test on the right…The far right hated it.
Breitbart headlined its story: “Republican Party Uses State Of The Union Response To Attack Trump.”
“Trump should deport Nikki Haley,” Ann Coulter wrote in one of six-anti Haley tweets.
Radio host Laura Ingraham chimed in: “The country is lit up w/ a populist fever & the GOP responds by digging in, criticizing the GOP candidates dominating polls?! NOT SMART.”
Former Ted Cruz aide Amanda Carpenter wrote: “Haley’s speech would’ve been good except for the GOP self-loathing.”
More mainstream elites in the right-leaning media loved Haley’s speech:
Charles Krauthammer, on a Fox News panel, called it the best State of the Union response he can ever recall hearing.
The Washington Examiner’s David Drucker said Haley’s response “will likely elevate her to the top of the list of potential vice presidential contenders.”
National Review editor Rich Lowry said it’s “always a tough assignment”: “Haley was a little shaky at beginning, but moving treatment of Charleston shooting and nice riff on GOP agenda.”

If one of Obama’s goals was to out the Republicans’ internal divisions, the President succeeded admirably.

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Today, Monday, January 11, will have a big impact on the American Middle Class and all of those who aspire to it.
Today, the United States Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association.
This case has been brought to the Court by the Koch-sponsored “Center for Individual Rights (CIR) ” — an outfit that made its reputation challenging civil rights laws. The CIR is asking the Court to break with forty years of precedent to impose radical new limits on the rights of workers to negotiate together for higher wages and better working conditions.
Four decades ago, the Supreme Court ruled — unanimously — that since public sector unions must represent all of the employees in a bargaining unit, labor agreements can require all employees that benefit from that representation to pay a fair share contribution to support the costs of negotiating and servicing the labor agreement.
This does not mean that all employees are required to join a union and contribute to its lobbying and political work — or to anything else it might do that is not directly related to negotiating and enforcing the terms of a contract.
And recall that public sector unions represent only groups of workers that have voted to form — or join — a union to represent them.
The Supreme Court found that it would make no sense to allow a situation where employees get the benefit of wage increases, paid holidays, health care benefits, etc. that are negotiated by the union leaders elected by the employees — but they can simply refuse to pay the costs of getting those benefits.
Billionaires like the Koch Brothers think otherwise. They want to make it as hard as possible for all workers to bargain together for higher wages, because they actively support a low-wage economy where CEOs, big corporations and Wall Street Banks can pay employees as little as possible and they can keep as much as possible for themselves.
The Friedrichs case itself deals only with public employees. But the Koch Brothers would like to weaken the rights of all employees to organize unions — and they think that a sharp reversal by the Supreme Court would be a great first step in that direction.
Trouble is, if the Koch Brothers get their way it will deliver a body blow to the chances of ordinary Americans to live secure, middle class lives. Remember, the wages of ordinary people have not increased in the United States since 2000. In fact, virtually all of the considerable economic growth that we’ve seen in America over the last three decades has gone to the wealthiest 1%.
That’s because people like the Koch Brothers have used massive campaign contributions and an army of lobbyists to rig the rules of the American economy.
We desperately need to reform government so it will once again level the economic playing field and build an economy that benefits all ordinary Americans — not just the wealthy, CEOs and big corporations.
If the Kochs get their way at the Supreme Court, it will do just the opposite. It will tilt the game even more in the favor of huge CEO salaries, enormous Wall Street bonuses, and gigantic corporate profits.
And it will make it harder for people like teachers, firefighters, road workers, and paramedics to negotiate for the kind of wages that allow them to live secure, middle class lives.
These are the kinds of people that were the foundation of the American Middle Class. It was their skill that educated and protected Americans for generations. And it was their middle class incomes that provided the buying power that allowed the American economy to explode — to become the economic envy of the rest of the world.
And let’s remember that it was the ability of public sector employees to organize and negotiate together for decent wages and safe working conditions that lifted so many out of poverty and made them part of the Middle Class.
Next week Americans celebrate a national holiday to commemorate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King. Fifty-one years ago, Dr. King was shot in Memphis where he had gone to support a strike by mainly black sanitation workers who were organizing to demand the ability to negotiate together for better wages and safer working conditions
The event that touched off that strike was the death of two sanitation workers who were crushed by an unsafe, malfunctioning garbage truck compactor. It had been cheaper to pay the occasional death benefit to a low income, African American sanitation worker’s family, than to invest in safety equipment on those garbage trucks.
The ability of those workers to organize together to negotiate — to form a union — not only brought them higher incomes and safer working conditions. It gave them dignity. In fact, the slogan of that organizing campaign — and the civil rights marches that supported it was: “I am a Man.”
Dr. King always believed that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Organizing campaigns like the Memphis sanitation workers strike bent that arc. So did the Supreme Court case that legitimated the rights of public employees to organize and provided them the ability to succeed.
It’s not surprising that an organization like the CIR — that has tried to weaken civil rights laws for decades — wants to bend that arc back toward injustice — to gut the ability of working people like those sanitation workers to organize to secure a decent middle class income and the dignity that accompanies it.
When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the rights of people like those sanitation workers 40 years ago, it did so unanimously. Every member of the Court — the most conservative Justices and the most progressive Justices — all of them certified the notion that when a majority of workers vote to form or affiliate with a union, then everyone who benefits should be asked to pay their fair share of the costs associated with increasing their pay or making them safer on the job.
Every one of them agreed with the sentiments of teachers like Reagan Duncan, a first grade teacher in Vista, California, who was quoted last week in The New York Times:

It’s not right for some people to get union benefits for free while others have to pay. If I went to a grocery store, I wouldn’t walk out with my groceries and not pay while the guy behind me had to pay for my groceries and his groceries. She added: “It’s corporate special interest that are backing this…”

Precisely.
And frankly. it would be shocking if the Supreme Court of the United States were to over turn a 40-year-old unanimous precedent and make it even harder for ordinary people to restore the American Middle Class.

At The Atlantic Molly Ball profiles “The Pugnacious, Relentless Progressive Party That Wants to Remake America,” a.k.a. the Working Families Party. In one part of her article, Ball focuses on the activism of one of the WFP’s top leaders, Analila Mejia, director of New Jersey Working Families:

A longtime union organizer who actually postponed her wedding to work on the Obama campaign, Mejia had previously served as New Jersey political director of the powerful mid-Atlantic janitors’ union, SEIU 32BJ, whose 145,000 members can be found everywhere from Yankee Stadium to the Pentagon…
Union work was satisfying but limiting for Mejia. Given the dramatic contraction of the labor movement, which has fallen to just 7 percent of private sector workers (in 1984, it was 16 percent), she longed to improve the lives of all workers, not just those lucky enough to be in a union. (In this sense, the WFP represents a stab at an American labor party, a common feature of European democracies that the U.S. has historically lacked.)
The WFP gives activists like Mejia an outlet for their frustration with national politics. It channels their anger at the constricting terms of the national debate into ground-level organizing–where the politics may seem unglamorously small-time, but there’s a chance to make a difference in people’s lives.
“We’ve found ways of electoralizing our issues,” Mejia told me. “We make politicians walk the walk–and pay the price if they don’t.” The idea is to make Democratic politicians more accountable to their liberal base through the asymmetric warfare party primaries enable, much as the conservative movement has done to Republicans. “The rules are rigged against working people, so we have to think outside the box to find different ways to win at this game,” Mejia said.
When the Democratic-controlled New Jersey Legislature wasn’t advancing a statewide paid-sick-leave bill, the WFP went to the municipal level to find a workaround; 10 New Jersey cities have now mandated paid sick leave. And when Governor Chris Christie vetoed a set of voting reforms–including automatic voter registration and restoring felons’ voting rights–the party set out to collect signatures to put it on the ballot instead, hoping to put the issue before voters in November 2016.
Mejia has also spearheaded the party’s role as Christie’s chief harasser–a task the state’s sclerotic, Christie-co-opted Democratic Party originally hesitated to take up. The WFP’s protests, ethics complaints, and calls for Christie’s resignation helped put the Bridgegate scandal on the map, severely wounding the presidential hopes of the man once considered a top 2016 GOP contender. The party also worked to elect Ras Baraka, an opponent of education reform, to succeed Cory Booker as mayor of Newark over a better-funded candidate. (WFP-style liberals generally side with teachers’ unions in viewing education reform, which the Obama administration and many Democrats have championed, as a corporatist plot to undermine public education.

Ball details many other WFP accomplishments, which leads readers to conclude that this is the progressive vanguard role the Democratic Party should be embracing and supporting to expand its voter base. The Democratic Party clearly needs more progressive activists with strong working-class roots, like Mejia, who would likely find traditional Democratic Party structures and too limiting, slow and timid. Yet when presented with the stark two party choice on the ballot, most WFP members will likely vote Democratic, instead of sitting it out or casting votes for a third party candidate who have no chance.
Ball quotes WFP National Director Cantor:

The WFP, Cantor explained, doesn’t expect to overthrow the two-party system–nor does it want to be a hopeless cause like the Greens or the Libertarian Party. “Every good idea in American history started with a third party: abolition, the eight-hour day, women’s suffrage, child-labor laws, unemployment insurance, Social Security,” he said. “These didn’t start with the Democratic or Republican Party–they started with the Free Soilers and the Liberty Party and the Populist Party and the Socialist Party. That’s where these things germinate, and then when you do well, they get adopted by one of the major parties, or in very rare cases the major party collapses.
“So we’re not naïve,” he continued. “The Democratic Party is not about to collapse. But we think there’s a huge number of people inside the Democratic Party that actually agree with us, and we want the Democratic Party to be feistier, tougher, and more focused on the needs of ordinary people, not the preferences of their donors.”

Ball adds “The WFP’s victories to date have been numerous but small-bore–a far cry from the Tea Party’s attention-getting mass rallies and defeats of veteran U.S. senators. But the WFP would argue that, with Congress gridlocked and in Republican hands, more effective policymaking happens at the state and local level.”
The WFP, which distributes “Kicking Ass for the Working Class” bumper stickers, endorsed the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders in December. But Clinton, or any other Democrat, would likely get an overwhelming share of their votes if nominated.
Although many WFP members are quick to criticize the Democratic Party, many see themselves as advocates for the reforms Democrats must pursue to become a stable, majority party. Thus the Working Families Party is a significant plus for the Democratic Party, and it will become an even more influential force in the future.

The following article by John Russo, a Visiting Research Fellow at Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Institute, Visiting Scholar,Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor of Georgetown University, and former Co-director, Center for Working-Class Studies, is cross-posted from Working Class Perspectives:
While the white working class is shrinking in the US, it remains the largest voting block in the country. That may be why leaders of both parties are concerned that white working-class voters, especially in the Midwest and South, are supporting populist candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. They don’t understand that many of these voters blame Wall Street, corporate leaders, and politicians – the East Coast establishment -for destroying their jobs and communities over the past few decades.
Recent polls suggest that almost 60% of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, “don’t identify with what America has become.” According to Cliff Young and Chris Jackson, these “nativist” Americans are older, whiter, and less educated than the rest of the population – more working-class, in other words. For some middle-class professionals, this “nativism,” exemplified in support for Donald Trump’s racial comments, simply reinforces the assumption that the white working class is inherently racist and foolish. They conveniently ignore the way racism is resurfacing among the middle class as they, too, feel resentment over their economic displacement. As Barbara Ehrenreich warns, “Whole professions have fallen on hard times, from college teaching to journalism and the law. One of the worst mistakes this relative elite could make is to try to pump up its own pride by hating on those — of any color or ethnicity — who are falling even faster.”
The focus on racism and xenophobia ignores an essential reality: precarity is bringing working-class and middle-class voters together politically. As Guy Standing has argued, the emerging precariat is a political class in the making. We see this in the “Fight for $15.” The struggle to increase the minimum wage seeks economic improvement for both the non-college and college educated.

Read more…

All Democrats who are interested in party-building should read “How the Right Trounced Liberals in the States: Conservatives have mastered the art of cross-state policy advocacy, while liberal efforts have fizzled. Here’s what has to change” by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and Theda Skocpol. As the authors outline the challenge:

State politics loom large for liberals. As Washington gridlock halts big new national initiatives, states are where the action (or inaction) is to be found on important liberal priorities ranging from legislative redistricting and boosting wages to addressing climate change and, of course, expanding Medicaid coverage for low-income people as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
But just as state-level action turns out to be crucial, the legislative terrain across much of the country looks downright disheartening for centrists and liberals alike. Building on huge electoral gains in state legislatures and governors’ offices in 2010 and 2014, hard-line conservatives have wasted no time in passing state measures that gut labor protections and the ability of workers to organize, that eviscerate health and environmental regulations, cut spending on the poor, shrink taxes on business and the wealthy, and erect new voting restrictions that disproportionately affect young, low-income, and minority citizens. Radical policy changes, often undoing decades of progress on liberal issues, have not been limited to traditionally very conservative areas in the Deep South and inner West. “Purple” states in the upper South and once “blue” states in the Midwest have also been the sites of sharp rightward policy turns.

The authors add that “a lot depends on whether progressive organization-builders can figure out why previous efforts to organize cross-state policy networks have failed, and discover ways to fashion their own versions of successful right-wing strategies.”
Toward that end, progressives have launched the State Innovation Exchange (siX) to challenge the right-wing’s state initiatives, like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which many credit for empowering the conservative take-over of state governments, the State Policy Network (SPN) and Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the latter of which has paid staff in 34 states.
Despite their “nonpartisan” fig leafs, these three Republican-controlled organizations have worked so well together that their joint efforts were instrumental, for example, in taking over the state of Michigan, a once-Democratic stronghold. But it’s not just MI. In other states, the three conservative groups have had alarming success, write Skocpol and Hertel-Fernandez:

In Maine, for instance, bipartisan legislative majorities came very close to overriding vetoes of Medicaid expansion by a Tea Party governor, but a determined minority of GOPers, many of them ALEC members, got public backing from AFP-Maine and the SPN-affiliated Maine Heritage Policy Center to hold firm. In two pivotal states, Missouri and Virginia, the naysaying far-right troika has prevailed, using activist pressures stoked by AFP and other groups, along with opposition research and testimony to legislative commissions prepared by SPN think tanks. In Tennessee, the troika even defeated a conservative proposal to expand and revamp Medicaid that was put forward by an extraordinarily popular GOP governor, Bill Haslam, who had just been reelected with 70 percent of the vote.

The authors detail the strategy and tactics ALEC, SPN and AFP used to gain control in the states over the years, while progressives lacked an effective counter-initiatives. It’s pretty clear that Democrats and liberals were simply out-organized, as well as out-funded, at the state level. As a direct result, “ALEC-derived state laws tripled from the 1990s through the early 2000s.”
As for the remedy, Hertel-Fernandez and Skocpol cite “two networks of state-based policy research organizations, which survive to this day and in some respects rival SPN think tanks across the country”:

One network, originally called the State Fiscal Analysis Initiative and recently renamed the State Priorities Partnership (SPP), is directed by Robert Greenstein’s Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). SPP has enrolled or stimulated the creation of policy research organizations in 41 states and the District of Columbia so far. These mini-CBPPs offer research on state tax and budget issues, with a special focus on programs to help the poor. Increasingly, they also help to build political coalitions of advocacy groups to lobby state legislatures and executives.
The other network, called the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN), is coordinated by Lawrence Mishel’s union-backed Economic Policy Institute. More loosely knit than the SPP network, this assemblage of 61 groups across 44 states and the District of Columbia disseminates research on wages, job benefits, and other economic issues relevant to unionized workers and the broad middle class.
Each of these networks convenes annual meetings and keeps in touch with affiliates, and SPP holds an additional meeting for state directors each year. EARN does not have many resources to invest in its affiliates, but SPP deploys funds from center-left donors such as the Ford Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation to provide some infrastructure support to affiliates, and it has a steering committee that thoroughly vets potential new state affiliates. Yet that process is so slow that some key, historically divided states like Tennessee have not installed SPP affiliates yet.

Progressives still lack an effective counter-force organization that can match ALEC’s success, particularly in fund-raising. “Supporters of past efforts to counter ALEC–including foundations, individual donors, and labor unions–have not matched the efforts of right-wing donors and, perhaps more importantly, have not provided sustained and predictable resources…In many ways, the funding problem has gotten worse now that unions are struggling with declining dues-paying memberships and adverse legal decisions that threaten their very existence.”
However, add, the authors, “We see five areas where SiX leaders–and others endeavoring to build liberal policy capacities in and across the states–might learn from conservative experiences. The trick is to look for the left’s own versions of clever innovations and organizational solutions discovered years ago by the right.” These include establishing ‘meaningful membership’; leveraging existing ‘networks and social ties within states’; creating ‘mechanisms for dealing with competing policy priorities’; finding ‘better funding solutions’ and viewing policy ‘as a means to political goals.’ Read the article for an illuminating discussion of the five strategies.
Skocpol and Hertel-Fernandez conclude, “The challenge is bigger than simply raising more money. Network builders have to get out of their comfort zones in the worlds of liberal advocacy groups mostly headquartered in New York, Washington, California, and a few other blue enclaves to find and activate network connections across the vast heartland. And if progressives want to gain credibility and clout in the states, they will need to become far more strategic about engaging in widespread policy fights with the greatest potential to reshape the political landscape in conservative as well as liberal states across America.”
It’s a formidable challenge Democrats must meet, if we want to break the pattern of having gains achieved in national elections all but erased by the Republicans at the state level. National politics will continue to draw the most media and public attention in 2016. But Democrats should begin mobilizing their resources to meet the challenges presented by Hertel-Fernandez and Skocpol. With such a commitment, we could have even more to celebrate in November than holding the White House.

From “The President Acts on Gun Violence” by the New York Times Editorial Board:

In the hope of combating America’s intolerable levels of gun violence, with Congress refusing to pass hugely popular gun-safety measures, President Obama is issuing a modest, limited set of executive actions on guns.
Most of the actions are aimed at making it harder for criminals and other dangerous people to get their hands on a firearm. But to listen to the Republican presidential candidates, who weighed in before they even knew the details, one would think Mr. Obama had declared martial law and called in the tanks.
On “Fox News Sunday,” former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida said Mr. Obama’s “first impulse is always to take rights away from law-abiding citizens.” Donald Trump told CBS’s “Face the Nation,” “I don’t like anything having to do with changing our Second Amendment.” Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, also on “Fox News Sunday,” dismissed the orders as “illegal” and called Mr. Obama, among other things, a “petulant child,” a “king” and a “dictator.”
Spare us the bluster. Mr. Obama is not taking away any law-abiding citizen’s guns or changing the Second Amendment. To the contrary, his actions are in line with the stated priorities of gun-rights activists: keeping guns from people likely to use them in crimes, and enforcing gun laws already on the books.

The editorial goes on to explain that gun sellers will be required to implement background checks for all sales and place limitations on multiple sales. The background check data base will be improved. The editorial notes that “In Virginia, follow-up investigations of those denied a gun because of a background check have led to more than 14,000 arrests.”
Further, “Other presidential actions include delivering a budget proposal with money for 200 new agents and investigators for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to help enforce existing gun laws.” Obama would also require “dealers to notify authorities when guns are lost or stolen in transit” expand “law enforcement access to mental-health records” and “funding for research into gun-safety technology.”
The editorial notes that “Congress could pass far more expansive and effective legislation, such as universal background checks, which have been associated with large declines in gun deaths in the 18 states that have implemented them.” However, “members of Congress, almost all of them Republican, have chosen to do the bidding of a gun lobby that is astonishingly out of step with the public. For years, about 9 in 10 Americans — and nearly as many households with a National Rifle Association member — have supported universal background checks, and yet the N.R.A. reflexively opposes them.”
Perhaps it’s time to frame gun violence as a central national security issue, as much as the threat of terrorism from outside the U.S. Indeed, Republicans in congress have been equally-reluctant to restrict access to automatic weapons by anyone and many more Americans have been killed by thugs with guns than by international terrorists of any sort.
Republican elected officials at every level have obediently followed NRA directives for decades. As a result, the death toll of Americans who might have been saved by reasonable restrictions on access to the most deadly weapons continues to mount.
Some Democratic office-holders in red states are understandably apprehensive about supporting any gun access restrictions. But a careful reading of opinion polls indicates that a number of reasonable, specific restrictions have broad support, especially when accompanied by a public education campaign.
For example, the public overwhelmingly supports background checks, restricting purchase and sale of automatic weapons and denying gun access to individuals on terrorist watch lists. It’s time for Democrats to provide stronger leadership on behalf of such popular measures, and President Obama’s initiative is a good beginning to address this long-lingering threat to our national security.

Helaine Olen’s Salon.com post, “How Elizabeth Warren Wields Power: Even without running she’s forcing the Democratic candidates to look out for consumers” reveals one way a leader who is not a presidential candidate can set her party’s economic policy agenda. Olen’s article also provides a solid rebuttal to the GOP meme that the Democrats’ “bench” is weak. Sen Warren is already amassing an impressive record and wielding considerable influence
But Olen’s post also provides an intriguing idea to help Democrats get a bigger bite of the high-turnout senior demographic on election day, 2016. As Olen explains,

…In late March, Warren–along with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin–thrust Social Security into the spotlight by adding an amendment to a congressional budget resolution calling for an increase in benefits. The move seemed like so much political theater. After all, there was zero chance the measure would pass the Republican-controlled Congress. But the deft legislative maneuver forced Senate Democrats to take a stand on the issue. As Mother Jones enthused prophetically, “Warren just turned Social Security expansion–once a progressive pipe-dream–into a tough-to-ignore 2016 issue.”
No kidding. Now, all three Democratic candidates are competing to expand the program. Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders are calling for increasing retirement benefits, while Hillary Clinton is advocating a tax credit for those who take time out of the paid workforce to manage family responsibilities. On the other hand, with the exception of Donald Trump, all the leading Republican contenders are campaigning on promises of raising the retirement age or taking other steps to cut back on Social Security payments, likely setting up a clear contrast for voters in the general election next year. (Marco Rubio, for example, supports raising the retirement age and would increase benefits for low-income retirees by reducing the growth in benefits for wealthier seniors.)
Warren also contributed to breaking a five-year logjam over a Department of Labor effort to expand investor protection for retirement accounts. At the beginning of the year, the effort appeared to be foundering, derailed yet again by fierce financial services industry pushback.

There are no recent polls which show whether or not most seniors would favor a hike in Social Security benefits financed by lifting the cap on wages taxed for SS. But studies have indicated that most seniors have inadequate assets for a comfortable retirement, so it’s hard to see much downside in Democrats making it more of a campaign issue.
Half of all Americans “say they can’t afford to save for retirement,” and one-third “have next to no retirement savings at all,” according to a recent Frontline report. The Retirement Income Deficit, “the gap between what American households have actually saved today and what they should have saved today to maintain their living standards in retirement,” is currently estimated to be about $7.7 trillion, according to the Center for Retirement Research.
It’s not about securing a ‘sea change’ in senior voting trends in 2016. That’s a longer-term project. But if Democrats can reduce by just 2 or 3 percent the proportion of seniors who vote Republican, it could make a big difference down-ballot, as well as in electing the next president.
Democrats simply have to do a more effective job of messaging to seniors, making the case why voting Democratic is good for the living standards of older Americans. A campaign including youtube videos, TV ads, ‘message du jour statements’ and soundbites by all Democratic candidates, particularly in battleground states, could help persuade enough seniors that Democrats have more to offer them.
During the last year, it’s fair to say that Republicans demonstrated more relentless ‘message discipline’ than did the Democrats. 2016 would be a good time for Dems to reverse that trend, starting with our presidential candidates focusing more on measures to improve retirement security.

Greg Sargent’s post at the Plum Line, “Republicans are caught in a brutal demographic trap. But they can still win in 2016” features an interview with TDS founding editor Ruy Teixeira, Sargent sets the stage for the interview:

…A comprehensive new analysis from the Center for American Progress…concludes that while the demographic trends are clearly moving in the Democratic Party’s direction, giving Democrats a “clear advantage,” the 2016 election remains “wide open.”
To win, the report concludes, Democrats need to replicate something close to 2008 and 2012 levels of enthusiasm among the core Democratic voter groups that powered Barack Obama’s two victories. That’s hardly a slam dunk, given widespread voter dissatisfaction and a historic pattern that has shown that “time for a change” sentiment works against the party that has held the White House for eight years.

Sargent adds that Democrats are expected to benefit from growth projections of a 2 percent “minority share of the vote,” while non-college white voters share of the vote is projected to drop by 2.3 percent. An excerpt of Sargent’s interview of Teixeira follows:

PLUM LINE: You define the central question of 2016 as: “Can the Obama coalition survive?” Can you explain what you mean?
RUY TEIXEIRA: The Obama coalition in 2012 consisted of the minority vote (blacks, Latinos, Asians, and those of other races); the millennial generation; and more educated white voters. If you look at the support rates these groups gave to Obama in 2012, and walk those support rates into the probable representation of these voting groups in 2016, the Obama coalition would deliver a third victory for Democrats. It would probably increase their popular vote margin from four to six points. The question is to what extent can Democrats absorb a certain amount of attrition among those groups.
…PLUM LINE: You set forth three major variables as determinants for 2016: How much of the minority vote the Democrat loses compared to Obama; and how the college educated white vote and the non-college white vote break down. You conclude that the shifts in vote share give Democrats more leeway to lose ground among whites.
TEIXEIRA: In the last two elections, the Democrats got 81 percent of the minority vote. That can’t be assumed for 2016. So we are conservative about the minority vote, giving the Democrats in 2016 the average of their share of the minority vote in the last four elections — 78 percent.
In 2012, in our assessment, Democrats lost the white non-college vote by 22 points. We estimate the Democrats’ deficit among the white college vote was 11 points.
Let’s say the Democrats do get 78 percent of the minority vote. We find that the white non-college support for the Republican could actually go up substantially — to the 30 point margin Republicans won in 2014 — and the Democrats would still win the popular vote nationally, if they held their white college support.

Despite the implicit warning in the phrase ‘the popular vote,’ demographic trends look increasingly favorable for Democrats. “There are a lot of moving parts here,” Teixeira adds. “If the white working class support for Republicans goes up in a big way, and minority support levels for Democrats go down, and in addition to that, turnout among minorities tanks enough, then you’re getting very close to tie ball game.”
Teixeira calls Republican prospects for replicating Reagan’s 63-64 percent share of the white vote in 1884 “implausible.” It would require “a one-sided mobilization of whites.” to overwhelm the demographic projections.
There is also a growing possibility that the GOP nominee will run off many white, college-educated political moderates. Teixeira warns, however, that “If Republicans could get Democratic support among minorities down to 75 percent — and work both sides of the equation — there are more ways to win.”
That’s a lot of “ifs,” especially in light of the current front-runners in the GOP presidential primaries. As for younger voters, Texieira explains,

…The harder data among millennials is, what do they think about the Democratic Party and President Obama? On Obama approval, the millennial generation is still way above other age groups. There’s about a 16-point party identification advantage among them for Democrats. If Democrats can hit roughly 60 percent among them, the way they did in 2012, they can lose a bit of support among other age groups and still win. Because the millennial generation should add 16 million more eligible voters.

Teixeira concedes that down-ballot Dems still face tough battles ahead despite the favorable demographic transformation. Yet, “the contours of the Democratic presidential majority that we outlined a number of years ago are pretty much coming into being…”
As for whether the Obama coalition can survive to help deliver a Democratic victory in 2016, he concludes, “The potential is there. But whether it becomes an actuality depends on a variety of other factors: How Hillary Clinton campaigns if she’s the nominee; how the Republican nominee campaigns; what happens with the economy. There are no guarantees. But the shifts in the structure of the electorate are a kind of thumb on the scale.”
Barring no major surprises, Dems have reason for optimism, not overconfidence, heading into 2016. Translating that edge into a landslide victory that can produce a working congressional majority is the overarching challenge of Democratic strategy.

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from Huffpo.
I wanted to close my blogging for the year by looking at the big picture for the future of the Democratic party. The 2016 cycle feels like it started even earlier than usual, and not just because Donald Trump’s bloviating got the media so worked up so fast. The Republicans, following old Dick Nixon’s Southern strategy to its horrifically logical conclusion, have become the party of open racism and violence: as Karen Tumulty suggested in the Washington Post, Trump can’t go over the line because there are no lines, they’ve all been obliterated. And Democrats are still in a debate over how to respond to the increasing nastiness and cynicism of their opponents.
One camp believes everything is okay, at least in presidential years, because the demographic trends favor us and because the Republicans are so damn good at alienating people. Another camp thinks we need to panic because the numbers of Democratic elected officials are so low and Hillary has weaknesses as a candidate. Both of these scenarios have some truth in them, but they get some big stuff wrong too. Demographic trends do favor us, and the Republicans are driving many of the demographic groups in the new American majority our way, but unless we have a serious strategy for taking advantage of these trends, we can and will still lose the majority of elections — as we have been in startling numbers two of the last three cycles. But given that Democrats have won more votes for president in five of the last six presidential elections, and three of the last five elections in general, the panic thing seems a little far-fetched. More on this in a moment.
Meanwhile, there is the Third Way position, which argues that we should drop all this talk of economic fairness entirely, especially when delivered in a populist tone, and focus instead on policies that are pro-business investments for growth. The paper they recently published, Ready For A New Economy, is an interesting document, actually presenting a few thoughtful policy ideas (once you get past all the corporate HR jargon about modernizing everything and unleashing everyone’s potential) while getting all the big stuff astoundingly wrong.
I will give Third Way credit for one important notion: that Democrats do need to address how technology disrupts key sectors of the economy and destroys thousands of jobs in the process. They make the point that strong profitable businesses with lots of workers (Kodak is their signature example) went out of business not because of bad policy or an uneven playing field, but because technology just changed. It’s not a unique point — plenty of commentators on all sides of the political spectrum, for many decades, have talked about technology changing markets and eliminating jobs — but there is no doubt that Democrats need to address this dynamic in their economic policy and message. However, where Third Way goes with that thought is to suggest a political message that only pro-big business Democrats would like: they want us to stop talking about fairness and inequality entirely. The irony is that even the Republican candidates for president are talking all the time about fairness and income inequality, although the proposals they are putting out would grow the problem exponentially.
President Jon Cowan made the following statement when they released their report:
“The left’s retro economic populism does not work substantively or politically and has cost Democrats the House and the Senate. To regain majorities and boost middle class prosperity, Democrats must move past populism and embrace a modern, pro-growth economic message and agenda. It’s time for Democrats to be Democrats, not Socialists.”
And former JP Morgan Chase Midwest President Bill Daley had this to say on behalf of Third Way:
“I am concerned about where the Party is today. Democrats have lost the middle class in three consecutive elections by an average of 7 points and a combined margin of 20 million votes. Economic populism is not the answer.”
Seriously? You guys are going to join the Republicans in calling most of the Democratic party socialist, and then suggest that will help Democrats win elections? You are going to suggest the entire Democratic Party marched to a unified populist message and that has been the reason for their downfall in 2010 and 2014, while enlisting former JPM exec Bill Daley to buttress your case against populism? This kind of argument is why Third Way has a hard time being taken seriously outside the corporate board rooms in which they raise their money. Here’s the thing: a majority of the candidates who lost the big competitive elections in 2010 and 2014 were running as the kind of centrist “New Democrats” that Third Way loves. Third Way favorites Mark Pryor, Mark Begich, Alison Grimes, Michelle Nunn, and Kay Hagan all went down to defeat in big Senate races both parties targeted. Third Way’s most beloved prototype senator, Mark Warner, was supposed to sweep easily to victory and came within an inch of losing. Meanwhile, the Democratic candidates who won in swing states and tough races, even those running against huge spending by the Koch brothers and GOP, tended to be — wait for it — populists: Jeff Merkley, Al Franken, Gary Peters in the Senate, and Dan Malloy and Mark Dayton in tough governor races.

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Whatever else can be said about the Republicans Las Vegas fearfest, it certainly failed to present a convincing meme that they are the party best-prepared to keep us ‘safe and secure.’
Some Democratic responses to last night’s GOP’s debate in Las Vegas:
Alex Seitz-Wald notes at MSNBC.com: “The pro-Clinton super PAC Correct the Record, which coordinates directly with the official Clinton campaign, pointed out one flaw with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s plan to work closer with King Hussein of Jordan – the king has been dead for 16 years.”
As for Sanders and O’Malley, Seitz-Wald adds:

After taking heat all month for resisting talking about ISIS, Sanders sought to flip the tables on the GOP. “Like the first [debate], not one word about income inequality, climate change, or racial justice,” Sanders tweeted. His campaign also criticized Republicans for talking about sending more American soldiers into combat, while failing to discuss how to better help veterans who return with PTSD or traumatic brain injury.
Long-shot candidate Martin O’Malley’s campaign stayed mostly quiet during the debate. “Not one Republican presidential candidate on stage showed the thoughtfulness and leadership we need. Instead, we saw a cattle call of fear mongers more eager to stir up uncertainty than serve responsibly as Commander in Chief,” he said in a statement after the debate.

Democrats can actually use one of Bush’s zingers targeting Trump. As NYT columnist Frank Bruni described it, “…Bush more than anyone in any of these debates effectively called Trump out for his galling recklessness…’He’s a chaos candidate,’ Bush said when asked to elaborate on a tweet in which he’d called Trump “unhinged.” ‘And he’ll be a chaos president. He would not be the commander in chief we need to keep our country safe.'”
To give them a little credit for consistency, you could see the message discipline in that all of the candidates performed a ritual-bashing of the Obama Administration, alleging without any specifics, that it has somehow failed to keep us “safe.” Every candidate did this, in addition to attacking each other.
Part of their problem was that Rand Paul kept reminding them that Republicans got the U.S. into the mideast mess in the first place. Many of the GOP wannabes still have an interventionist proclivity for “regime change,” which, not so incidentally for the party that purports to be the champion of fiscal rectitude, is very expensive.
But potentially the most important thing that happened last night for Democratic strategy came after the debate. In their New York Times article on the debate, Jonathan Martin and Patrick Healey report that Trump was “unambiguous” about an independent candidacy in his post-debate CNN interview: “Yes, I’m a Republican, and I’m going to be a Republican,” he said. “I’m not going to be doing a third-party.”
No one is going to bet much on Trump keeping his word. But Dems should prepare for the possibility that he may endorse the Republican nominee after all.
The GOP’s winner-take-all primary season hits high gear in March. Trump’s teflon is already wearing thin, but he keeps reviving in polls. A Clnton-Trump match may not happen, and a Clnton vs. a united Republican Party election just might happen. In any case, Dems should focus on creating the best possible GOTV operation, and not worry too much about which Republican will be the front-man.