High among the reasons why Republicans don’t get votes from African Americans and others who have a distaste for bigotry is the disturbingly high tolerance too many Republican leaders have for the ugliest forms of racism. The latest example from a Political Bulletin e-blast:

Tuesday saw a substantial increase in the coverage of the controversy surrounding House Majority Whip Steve Scalise – following Monday’s revelation that in 2002 he spoke to an avowedly racist and anti-Semitic group founded by the Ku Klux Klan’s David Duke. All three network newscasts had reports on the developing story, and the controversy is front-page news in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Most of Tuesday’s coverage portrayed Republicans, and especially the rest of the House Republican leadership, as steadfastly in support of Scalise continuing on in his position – despite the likelihood that the GOP’s efforts to appeal to minority voters will be undermined. Under the headline, “Boehner Stands By GOP Leader Who Spoke To Hate Group,” for example, USA Today reports that Speaker John Boehner characterized Scalise’s decision to speak at the 2002 event featuring conspiracies claiming that the government of Israel was responsible for 9/11 as an “error in judgment.” USA Today also reports that Scalise claims that he “does not recall the event.”
…Many reports indicate that Scalise’s claims that he did not know what group he was addressing, and that he now has no memory of speaking to the group, have been met with widespread skepticism. On Fox News’ Special Report, Rick Leventhal reported that “critics say it doesn’t pass the smell test,” and McClatchy reports that critics, including “influential conservative blogger” Erick Erickson of RedState, said Scalise’s “explanation that he was unaware…that he was speaking to a white supremacist group was a weak one.” Erickson wrote, “How the hell does somebody show up at a David Duke organized event in 2002 and claim ignorance?”
Indeed, according to Roll Call , “A 1999 Roll Call story revealed that Scalise was well-aware of David Duke’s politics, and he seemed to be courting Duke voters.” The Huffington Post added that in a “Monday night interview,” Duke himself “said it seemed a bit strange that Scalise – who had a friendly relationship with Duke’s campaign manager Kenny Knight, the EURO event’s organizer – claims he didn’t know what the group’s message was about.” Duke is quoted as saying, “It would seem to me, it would be likely that he would know.”
Notably, prominent conservatives are among the most vociferous critics of Scalise and Boehner’s defense of the GOP Whip. For instance, Matthew Boyle of Breitbart notes that conservative radio host Mark Levin and Fox News’ Sean Hannity both “are demanding a clean sweep of House GOP leadership, pushing for Boehner, [House Majority Leader Kevin] McCarthy, and Scalise to be removed.” Boyle also reports that Scalise’s “relationship with Duke’s top political hand, Kenneth Knight…last[ed] several years, and involved the top aide to the former KKK head actually campaigning for Scalise.” According to Boyle, “A top GOP aide with longtime ties to the Louisiana GOP delegation” says “rumors about Scalise’s close relationship with Duke’s top aide have been circling…at high levels in Louisiana for years.”

Not the first time a prominent Republican has been outed for flirting with overt racism. See Pauls, Ron and Rand, or even Reagan, Ron. Back then Republicans thought they could play footsie with racists and anti-semites under the radar. Those days are over and Scalise should have had the smarts to get a clue by 2002.

AP’s Bill Barrow reports on how Republicans hope to buck “the demographics is destiny” edge Democrats are anticipating in 2016 — and why many astute observers believe Dems remain in good shape. Here’s the Republican strategy in short:

“The notion of demographics as destiny is overblown,” said Republican pollster and media strategist Wes Anderson. “Just like (Bush aide Karl) Rove was wrong with that ‘permanent majority’ talk, Democrats have to remember that the pendulum is always swinging.”
…A GOP nominee such as the Spanish-speaking Jeb Bush, a proponent of comprehensive immigration reform, has the potential to capture significantly more than the 27 percent of the Latino vote that fellow Republican Mitt Romney claimed in 2012. Meanwhile, Republicans hope African-Americans make up a smaller share of the electorate with Obama no longer atop the ballot.
“We’re not talking about winning those groups, but these elections are fought on the margins, so improvements here and there can make a difference,” Anderson said.

However, notes Barrow:

…Despite Democrats’ midterm shellacking and talk of a “depressed” liberal base, many in the party still like their starting position for 2016. Ruy Teixiera, a Democratic demographer, points to a group of states worth 242 electoral votes that the Democratic presidential nominee has won in every election since 1992. Hold them all, and the party is just 28 votes shy of the majority needed to win the White House next time.
Obama twice compiled at least 332 electoral votes by adding wins in most every competitive state. He posted double-digit wins among women, huge margins among voters younger than 30 and historically high marks among blacks and Latinos.
As non-white voters continue to grow as a share of the electorate, a Democratic nominee that roughly holds Obama’s 2012 level of support across all demographic groups would win the national popular vote by about 6 percentage points and coast in the Electoral College, Teixeira estimates.
“Could a Republican win? Sure,” Teixeira said. “But they have to have a lot of different things happen.”

Yet demographics, however powerful are not the only factor that can turn an election. As Barrow cautions, “…further analysis of the raw numbers alone ignores the potential of the candidates themselves to shape the election — not to mention dramatic changes in the economy, national security events or other developments that fall outside the control of any candidate.”
Barrow notes, however, that white voters cast 87 percent of presidential ballots in 1992 , but only 72 percent in 2012 — and few believe that percentage is going anywhere but south in 2016.

Here’s Eric Alterman writing in The Nation:
….the most damaging of [The New York Times political] narratives is the one that posits a Republican Party with competing factions, one “conservative” and the other “moderate” or even “centrist.” In fact, the party has been wholly taken over by ideologues so extreme that their views–and policy proposals–bear no resemblance to the laws of science, economics or, in many cases, reality. But the Times’s reports consistently elide this truth, up to and including omitting crucial facts in order to craft a false and far more comforting fable.
The latest beneficiary of this tendency is soon-to-be presidential candidate Jeb Bush. According to the recent Times coverage, Bush is a “moderate” and “centrist” who wonders “whether he can secure the Republican nomination without pandering to the party’s conservative base,” as it explained in one story, and “whether he can prevail in a grueling primary battle without shifting his positions or altering his persona to satisfy his party’s hard-liners,” as it explained in another.
Reporter Jonathan Martin adds: “Though [Bush] is deeply conservative on some issues such as taxes and abortion…he has pushed for an immigration overhaul that would include a path to citizenship for people who are here illegally.” In fact, Bush did do this, before changing his mind because of opposition from Republican crazies and deciding that “permanent residency” for unauthorized immigrants “should not lead to citizenship,” calling that “an undeserving reward for conduct that we cannot afford to encourage.”
…Because at least Martin allowed for the fact that Jeb Bush is “deeply conservative on some issues such as taxes and abortion,” let’s take a look at some of the other positions he holds that apparently do not disqualify him from being called a “moderate” and “centrist” according to theTimes.
On economic matters, Bush endorsed Paul Ryan’s punitive budget that seeks to zero out virtually all federal assistance to the poor. He also supported George W. Bush’s deeply unpopular plan to privatize Social Security.
On social matters unrelated to abortion, Jeb sees “very strong justifications” for restrictive voter-ID laws that are transparently designed to reduce minority participation. He not only opposes gay marriage but says he “personally” believes that gay couples should be denied legal adoption rights; he also opposes all legal protections for LGBT people, calling them “special rights.”
He happily signed the NRA’s “stand your ground” legislation, which led to the legal murder of Trayvon Martin. Regarding science, he has moved from the completely ridiculous position of disputing the fact of global warming to the only slightly less ridiculous one of questioning whether it is “disproportionately man-made”–a position that puts him at odds with approximately 97 percent of the world’s qualified climatologists. On Cuba, he has also sided with the crazies. The list continues almost indefinitely.
True, Jeb Bush may be a “moderate” or “centrist” in a context where one of America’s two political parties has all but gone insane. But without such context, those labels are a lie–one that not only misinforms readers but also dishonors a great newspaper.

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:
There is a lot of talk in Democratic party circles about populism (which among Democrats is generally of a more progressive nature) vs centrism. All three terms — progressive, populism, and centrism — are thrown around way too loosely by pundits who rarely know what they are talking about. For some, it all boils down to the differences (stylistically as well as substantively) between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. For others, it is a debate about whether Democrats should talk about growth or inequality — a recent report from Benenson Strategy Group and SKDKnickerbocker ominously warned that swing voters want the focus to be on growth rather than inequality. Some pundits talk about whether Democrats should be pro-business or more for income distribution.
Even though I happily identify myself as a proud populist progressive, I think these kinds of pundit-driven definitions don’t do much to build a winning message or agenda for either Democrats or the progressive movement. I think we need a populism that doesn’t just repeat old formulas but answers voters’ real concerns about progressive policies. Here’s what I think a winning populist progressive program entails:
1. Fairness leads to growth. I am so tired of polls asking people to choose between economic fairness and growth. These two things are the furthest thing from being opposites — in fact, there is a great deal of economic research and analysis that documents the exact opposite conclusion. The economy grows faster when most workers are getting raises and have more disposable income. The wealthiest 1 percent are more likely to hoard their money, or speculate with it in trades, than to actually invest it in something that creates good jobs. And when the wealthy pay more in taxes and government invests more in human capital, infrastructure, and R&D, the economy tends to boom. Note that the three most prosperous decades in American history — the 1950s, 1960s, and 1990s — were when taxes on the wealthy were high, or had just been raised, and major investments were being made in public goods.
2. Don’t talk to voters about income inequality. I know I am a progressive and am supposed to be in favor of talking about inequality, and I don’t mind hearing about in academic circles or high level wonkfest forums in DC. But I have bottom line rule when it comes to talking to voters: don’t ever talk to them using words they would rarely use. When I knock on doors or hang out in bars and cafes back home in the Midwest, I never hear people talk about income inequality. I hear them talk about how they haven’t gotten a wage increase in years, whereas the company they work for seems to be making a lot of money; I hear them say they don’t know how to make ends meet; I hear them bitch about wealthy special-interest lobbyists getting sweetheart deals, and how the rich keep getting richer and no one else seems to have any money; I hear them talk about the way big businesses screws regular folk; how ridiculous the prices being charged for the most simple health care procedures; and how Wall Street banks are too big and have no morals. But the phrase income inequality never comes up, and that is not how we political folks should be framing these issues either.
3. Being for small business, innovation, entrepreneurialism, and fair competition are progressive values. In our language and our policies, progressives should embrace all of those things. We are for the corner retailer making a good living, without having to worry that Walmart will crush them. We are for innovators being able to compete in a fair marketplace, without bigger competitors being able to corner the market. We are for small family farms being able to compete successfully with bigger agribusiness, and for them not having to kowtow to the big meatpackers and food industry giants. We are for small community banks lending to local businesses without their mega-competitors on Wall Street being subsidized by the federal government. We want fair regulations to level the playing field for the small guys, and we want the Anti-Trust division at DOJ to start enforcing the law again so that small businesses and start-ups have a chance.
4. We believe that long-term deficits matter and waste in government should be eliminated. There are plenty of ways to reduce waste in government and the federal deficit both. Weak safeguards on government contracting waste probably a hundred billion a year, according to studies by groups on both the left and the right. Billions of dollars in farm subsidies to highly profitable agribusiness giants are wasted every year. Programs like the Export-Import bank and Commerce Department trade junkets waste more billions in subsidies to highly profitable corporations. Big, mega-profitable oil and coal companies get billions in subsidies every year. And the military budget hasn’t had a decent audit in decades and wastes huge amounts of money on weapons programs that aren’t needed and don’t work, military bases that have no strategic use anymore, and luxury perks for generals that are outrageous by any standard. Then there is the tax side of things: closing corporate tax loopholes and raising taxes for the wealthy would do an enormous amount to cut the deficit.
5. We are not pro-government. We want government to be on the side everyday folks. Chuck Schumer is as wrong about his pro-government message as he is about Credit Default Swaps- we should not be pro-government, we should be for a government that is on the side of the 99%. Let’s be honest: government does a lot bad stuff. As referenced above, government should be a lot smaller when it comes to wasteful Pentagon spending and military intervention into countries where we usually make things worse, big corporate farm subsidies, NSA spycraft, CIA torture, police brutality, subsidies for coal and oil and nuclear power, overseas junkets for big business CEOs, wasteful no-bid/no-penalty for overrun contracts, and a host of other things. Government needs to stop being on the side of Wall Street, and needs to start prosecuting them for the serious crimes they commit. I don’t want a bigger government, and I’m not all that interested in defending government in general. What I hunger for is a government that is fighting like a demon for everyday folk instead of the big money guys. I want a government that helps senior citizens through Social Security and Medicare, and helps poor children through Head Start, public education, and school lunches. I want a government that takes on big businesses who are trying manipulate markets, squeeze out their smaller competitors, and screws consumers.
I have never seen the progressive movement as all about promoting government. Organizing unions, launching boycotts, holding corporations accountable and hurting their brands when they do wrong, starting a hundred thousand local immigrant legal/social services and domestic violence orgs, creating Alinsky-style community orgs that hold both businesses and local government accountable — it’s all a part of progressive organizing and none of it is about a bigger government, only a more responsive one to the needs of the people. But where more government makes sense — a bigger regulatory stick against big business, more schools, more Social Security and health care benefits, safer roads and bridges? Hell, yes, we need more government.
Progressive populists have the ability to have a clear, strong economic agenda and message that appeals to and inspires both the Democratic base and working and middle class folks who are swing voters. We should not let pundits and DC centrists pigeonhole us into language and beliefs that we don’t have. We should tell our story about a movement that is about taking the country back from the big money special interests and putting it on the side of the rest of us.

The Middle Aged: Democrats have failed to sufficiently address the economic insecurity of this large and important cohort of working- and middle-class citizens
by Henry Moss
Henry Moss is a retired private sector educational administrator with a PhD in philosophy. He lives in the Bronx and can be reached at hmoss011@gmail.com
About 45% of Americans are between the ages of 40 and 65, roughly the middle ages. Their political importance, however, is even greater than the numbers suggest as they worry not only about themselves but about their adult children and aging parents, and, in many cases, grandchildren and grandparents. This “sandwiching” means they worry far more than any other cohort and are interested in policies that are multigenerational in scope. They speak for the vast majority of the electorate.
This worry transcends race, gender and sexual preference and stretches from the working poor to the many upper middle class workers who are experiencing economic insecurity. Weak productivity growth over the last generation and sustained economic stagnation since 2008 have significantly amplified this anxiety.
Today’s Democratic Party, progressive and centrist alike, does not directly address this cohort and is suffering the consequences. Minimum wage, women’s issues, climate change, NSA surveillance, gay marriage, money in politics, voter ID, immigration, net neutrality, affirmative action, consumer protection and too-big-to-fail banking reform are all worthwhile causes but largely distant and abstract for the majority of those seeking to provide for extended families. Promoting issues aimed at getting specific constituencies out to vote is not the basis for bringing more of this cohort into the party.
On the more relevant matter of jobs and economic security, we hear from Democrats mostly vague neo-Keynesian proposals regarding road and bridge repair and subsidized jobs in green energy. Infrastructure and more infrastructure, we are told, along with a commitment to education and training that are supposed to ensure future economic growth. Promoting trade barriers to keep unions happy and railing against corporations, Wall Street and rich CEO’s adds a touch of motivational populism, but does not tangibly address needs.
We need to address real needs and we do so without considering costs. If we can mobilize resources to fight wars, we can do the same to protect and improve living standards.
What middle-aged voters want to hear from Democrats concerning economic security
Income security and underemployment: Losing a job at 50 years of age can be devastating. Transitioning to a new job is fraught with difficulty. Such workers can be victimized by narrow or outdated skill sets or prior income levels that cannot or will not be met by new employers who rightly expect such new employees to “keep looking”. There are also geographical challenges and the threat of bankruptcy, foreclosure and bad credit ratings. With the economy in a prolonged period of stagnation and with labor unions in decline, underemployment is now a major problem. Increased stress and anxiety levels can cause or exacerbate chronic health conditions.
• Unemployment compensation should be significantly lengthened and compensation levels must allow for meeting critical expenses during transition
• Recognize and include those who are involuntarily underemployed in the unemployment compensation system.
• Automatically reduce mortgage, student loan and medical debt payments up to a limit during transition.
• The retirement age should not be raised. It should even be lowered in the event of economic stagnation.
• Expand grants to states to support short-term and on-the-job retraining and internship programs. Community colleges should run these programs and tax credits should be provided to companies who provide the service.
• Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit.
• Increase the federal minimum wage. This will support spouses and children who are forced into the workforce to support family income.
• Require that disability benefits, paid sick leave, paid parental leave, at least five paid holidays and at least one week of paid vacation time be provided for all full-time and permanent part-time workers.
• Ensure that working two-earner families and working single mothers receive childcare support through direct transfers or tax credits, sufficient to allow for a decent standard of living.

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A Teachout Moment For Hillary Clinton:
A First Look At 2016 Through The Lens Of 2014
by Sean McKeown
scientist and engineer Sean McKeown has been involved in several national and New York-based campaigns, and is writing a book on finance and economics.”
There is an emerging progressive populist movement that many in the media have called “The Elizabeth Warren Wing of the Democratic Party” thanks to the skyrocketing popularity of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Groups such as the PCCC embrace this label for the purposes of memes and soundbites, but while describing this emerging movement as a “wing” might be useful as a fundraising strategy, downplaying these shifting values within the Democratic Party trivializes what appears to be a meaningful political realignment. These “Warren Wing” Democrats do not consider themselves a “wing” at all, seeing themselves instead as the neglected backbone of the Democratic Party, embodying values and beliefs that appeal to many voters in the center and across the political spectrum. It is crucial to disaggregate the terms ‘progressive’ and ‘populist’ in order to understand this in a transpartisan perspective, for the meteoric rise in popularity of Senator Warren’s brand of economic populism is not a purely-Left phenomenon. Since she can potentially access groups of voters which no other Democratic candidate can reach, her political fate is not limited by Democratic Party insiders’ current strategies for advancing pragmatic, viable candidates.
Populist History
Populism’s resurgence in the modern era can be viewed as a response to the 2008 financial crisis, particularly as a negative response to bank bailouts known and the TARP program in the last year of the Bush administration. Components of an economic-populist agenda were present in early Tea Party rhetoric, fueled by activists who wanted to prevent future bailouts and tax-dollar giveaways to big business by cutting Washington’s ties to moneyed interests. This insurgency helped advance them to a significant position within the Republican Party in 2010 and 2012. As it grew larger and obtained big-donor support, however, it shifted focus and tactics. Rather than presenting its own legislative agenda, today’s Tea Party has instead stood in the way of the same critical repairs their initial voting constituency had pressed for, such as firmer controls on “Too Big To Fail” banks.
Self-identified “moderates” who banish Senator Warren to the fringes of the Party (except as a useful election-season surrogate ) handicap the Democratic Party by continuing to forfeit sizable constituencies whose economic opinions mirror Warren’s. Consultants and strategists inside Washington seem to ignore a crucial historical fact: the anti-government views of this constituency are rooted in the belief that government disproportionately favors the anti-competitive monopolistic behavior of big business, corporations, and Wall Street – a sentiment Senator Warren herself espouses.
With recent calls for Elizabeth Warren to run for President in 2016, it is critical to analyze this “struggle for the soul of the Democratic party” and its potential fissures to see what a Clinton vs. Warren primary might look like to voters across the political spectrum. To do so, let us look at a recent New York race, where Zephyr Teachout challenged Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary.

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The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Over the last week we have seen played out in the national political spotlight the fundamental reason why Democrats have the high political ground in 2016.
Senator Ted Cruz used every procedural move available to block Senate consideration of the “CRomnibus” appropriation bill that he demanded defund President Obama’s Immigration Executive Actions.
Senator Warren and House Leader Nancy Pelosi led campaigns to prevent inclusion of a provision to once again allow a federal bailout of big Wall Street banks that engage in the same kinds of risky investment schemes that precipitated the 2008 financial meltdown and the Great Recession.
Neither side was successful in the legislative short run. At the same time, both sides engaged and motivated the bases of their respective parties with their stands.
But the similarities stop there. These two battles are powerful illustrations of a major emerging fact in American politics.
It is widely understood that the more GOP candidates for president adopt the priorities of the base of their party — particularly hard-core opposition to immigration reform — the more difficult it is for them to win general elections. That’s because hard-core stances against immigration reform, women’s reproductive rights, gay rights, etc. alienate huge sections of the electorate that are required to win presidential elections. That is especially true of socially moderate suburban women swing voters and elements of growing segments of the electorate like young people, single women, Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans and of course LGBT voters.
What is not so widely understood is that by adopting the populist positions championed by the progressive base of the Democratic Party — especially when it comes to raising the wages of ordinary Americans, reigning in Wall Street, and ending the widening chasm of income inequality — Democrats are more likely to win general elections at all levels.
Political consultant and former Senior Advisor to the President, David Axelrod, was asked Sunday on Meet the Press if the Democratic Party could accommodate both the Clintonites and the Warrenites. He answered absolutely — if Hilary Clinton moves to adopt the more populist position of the Warren wing of the party — because those are the positions that will also increase Democratic chances of winning general elections.
No one with an ounce of political sense would ever say that it makes Republican candidates more likely to win general elections if they adopt the radical positions of Ted Cruz.
But the fact is that the core positions of the base of the Democratic Party are widely popular in America: raising the minimum wage, eliminating loopholes that allow employers to escape paying overtime to employees, raising the wages of the middle class, making student loans more affordable, regulating — and even breaking up big Wall Street banks.
Even positions that used to be wedge issues in the Democratic coalition — universal background checks for all gun purchasers, women’s reproductive rights, sanctioning gay marriage, civil and voting rights — receive overwhelming support among Democratic voters and majority support among swing voters.
The more the Democratic Party reflects the values, priorities and policies of its progressive base the more likely it is to win. The more the Republican Party reflects values, priorities and polities of its Tea Party conservative base, the more likely it is to lose — it’s that simple.
This political reality reflects the basic underlying economic and social reality of 21st century American life. Most Americans have experienced stagnant incomes for over three decades. Our Gross Domestic Product and productivity per person have gone up about 80 percent, but average incomes didn’t go up 80 percent. Instead nearly all of the increases went to the top two percent — and especially to the speculators on Wall Street.
As a result today — even after the shock of the Great Recession — the stock market is at record highs, corporate profits are at record highs, and the share of national income going to wages is at a record low.
The party who speaks to that fact, will have the support of the American people — and the populist, progressive base of the Democratic Party does just that.
There was a time, when many Americans understood that Republicans stood up for the rich and Democrats stood up for the average person. Now, it is true that many people in the middle class believe that — where they are concerned — there isn’t much of a difference. Many understand that the Republicans stick up for the rich alright, but they also think Democrats only stick up for the very poor and their friends on Wall Street — leaving them — the people in the middle — without a champion.
The fact is that the more the Democratic Party adopts the populist, progressive, anti-Wall Street positions of its base, the more it attracts the middle class swing voters whose votes are critical in a general election.
And, of course, these are exactly the same messages that motivate the party’s progressive base to turn out in large numbers.
Unfortunately, the messages that motivate the Republican base to turn out in large numbers do not have that effect on swing voters at all. Sounding more like Ted Cruz might excite the GOP faithful, but it is frightening to soccer moms and sounds down right strange to young people.
And something else is important to remember. When swing voters don’t believe that one of the two parties is their champion — when they don’t think there is a clear contrast when it comes to who is on their side — they are much more likely to be open to try the opposition if they don’t think things have been going so well for them under the current management.
If voters don’t think there is any more difference between Republicans and Democrats than there is between American and United Airlines, they make a simple and seemingly rational calculation: if my income hasn’t gone up much under a Democratic president, might as well try a Republican president.
But that calculation changes enormously when they become convinced that one party is truly their champion and the other party is not.
The populist economic message of Progressive Democrats is a huge winner when it comes to ordinary middle class voters who are just trying to live their lives and don’t follow the ins and outs of politics every day. And it makes them tune in.
My wife, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, was approached as she was shopping by six ordinary customers at the Jewel Food Store — and a sales clerk at Carson Pirie Scott Department store on Saturday after she voted with House Leader Pelosi to oppose the new Wall Street bailout that was included in last week’s appropriation bill. All of them had been following the battle and thanked her for her vote. This is not at all what ordinarily happens after a vote in Congress.
Washington insiders and pundits can go on until they are blue in the face trying to convince us that there is an equivalency of those who advocate for the values of the Tea Party on the GOP side, and the populist values of the progressive base of the Democrats on the other. They would do well to get out more.

What Pope Francis Can Teach the Democratic Party
By John Russo
John Russo is the former director, Center for Working-Class Studies and, currently, a visiting research fellow, Metropolitan Institute, at Virginia Tech.

Most journalists and political commentators covering papal politics have been consumed with the Church’s recent Synod on the Family that concerned social and religious issues of modern marriage and family life. Some conservative commentators warned that Pope Francis and the Synod itself was sowing “confusion” among the flock, while others praised the Pope for providing a breath of fresh air into traditional Catholic thought. Nevertheless, the Synod brought together various groups in a respectful way to build bridges in an attempt to find a common good. While no decisions were made at the Synod, it certainly laid the foundation for future reform within Catholic Social Teaching on family life.
While consumed with the Synod, the Catholic community, journalists, and politicos missed or deliberately ignored an equally important and much more critical populist speech by Pope Francis at the Conference of Popular Movementsin Rome last month that concerned the importance of community organizing and poverty.
In the speech, the Pope praises the conference organizers for their community organizing in getting low-income people and the dispossessed to organize and speak out for themselves. He reminded the audience, “The poor not only suffer injustice but they also struggle against it!” He added that popular movements are necessary “to revitalize our democracies, so often kidnapped by innumerable factors. It is impossible to imagine a future for society without the active participation of the great majorities.”
Pope Francis was critical of both liberal and conservative solutions to poverty (such as some welfare programs) that “go in one direction, either to anaesthetize or to domesticate.” Further, he seems genuinely angry with those who use euphemisms to describe poor people, suggesting that to identify the issues as matters of “segregation” or “disenfranchisement” masks not just the seriousness of the problems but the deliberate injustices they involve. As the Pope puts it, “behind euphemisms there is a crime.”
He noted the special solidarity that exists among the poor and explores its meaning beyond “sporadic generosity.” Solidarity means “to think and act like a community” in “fighting over the structural causes of poverty, inequality, lack of work, housing, and the denial of labor and social rights…and to confront the destructive effects of the empire of money: forced displacement, painful emigration, the traffic of persons, drugs, war, violence and all those realities that many of you suffer and that we are called on to transform.”
He understands that talk like this will lead some “to say that the Pope is a Communist,” but he dismisses such criticism, saying that his critics “don’t understand that the love of the poor is at the heart of the gospel” and that the “struggle for land, roof, and work are sacred rights.” That is, he grounds his belief in no overriding political orthodoxy but rather in religion and human dignity.
The Synod and speech got me thinking about the Pope’s approach in dealing with difficult issues and what model Pope Francis might provide for the future of the Democratic Party. For example, the recent midterm election debacle has been most often attributed to demographic factors. For example, the poor turnout among African Americans, Latinos, and women and the inability to attract white voters and the shrinking middle class have been the most common explanations for its 2014 electoral collapse. But commentators like Harold Meyerson have argued that demographics alone cannot explain the results of the midterm election nor “save” the Democratic Party. Rather, Meyerson suggests that Democrats failed to provide a clear and consistent message regarding economic inequality and wages that appealed to the struggling poor, working and middle classes, Latinos, African Americans, and millennials. Without a clear economic message, Howard Dean asked unapologetically “Where the Hell is the Democratic Party” and chided the Democratic Party leadership and operatives that “You cannot win if you are afraid!” But afraid of what? My guess is Democrats are afraid of angering their corporate and business supporters by addressing issues of inequality and poverty in any but a timid and incremental way.
This is where Pope Francis’s approach could help. First, the Democrats could follow the Pope’s model and bring together various factions for a serious discussion about the future of the party in moral and ethical terms. In the process, they could engage in community organizing and pursue the common good of ending poverty and inequality. They could also build a measure of solidarity and support on moral terms for those experiencing the injustices, the struggling working and middle class and those trying to help organize the struggles. Put differently, less politically expedient efforts to garner electoral support and more solidarity and substantive reform based on moral and ethical stands grounded in human dignity.
Such an approach will worry many Democratic politicians and their apparatchiks who cower in the face of uncertain polling data and angering their corporate patrons. No doubt, some will join with Republicans and call this “class warfare.” Some will claim that Democrats can’t win using populist themes, especially in red and purple states. But politicians like Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio prove otherwise.
Today, Ohio Republicans control all executive-branch positions, the state Supreme Court, 12 of 16 U.S. House seats, and huge majorities in the state House and Senate. Yet, despite the Ohio’s Republican dominance and having $60 million against him, Senator Brown easily won his last election with broad community organizing with a working class and populist agenda that helped carry President Obama in Ohio.
The country is distressed over the level of inequality and the forty-year decline of the middle class, and we’re tired of euphemisms surrounding poverty and austerity. The Pew Research Center shows that Americans are overwhelminglyconcerned with widening inequality. When given an opportunity to reduce inequality, such as increasing the minimum wage, they overwhelmingly vote in favor, even in historically red states. Now is the time for Democrats to follow the Pope Francis’s iconoclastic approach and develop the type of value-based agenda suggested by Meyerson. That could give new meaning to what it means to be a Democrat.

The following article by Anna Greenberg, senior vice president of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, is cross-posted from Politico:

What if Democrats are about to learn the wrong lesson from the 2014 midterm election? In the initial period after the Democratic Party’s dramatic defeat, there was much criticism about how the party focused too much on “women’s issues,” an emphasis that allegedly cost the party races like Mark Udall’s Colorado Senate seat. Indeed, just days after the election, unnamed Democrats expressed frustration with Nancy Pelosi for “focusing so strongly on women without a broader message that could play to other groups, such as older voters and men.”
But as post-election research suggests, it increasingly appears that both parties actually missed an opportunity to appeal successfully to female voters. There’s no evidence that Democratic candidates went too far discussing “women’s issues” or that “women’s issues” represent a narrow rather than “broad” message. In fact, there is considerable evidence the discussion (and Democrats) did not go far enough.
Part of the problem with “blaming” Democratic losses on a hyperfocus on women is the narrow way “women’s issues” have been defined by the media and party politicians. The “fight” over the women’s vote has been seen primarily in terms of reproductive rights, with the Democratic Party as the defenders of a woman’s right to choose and the Republican Party as the defenders of “traditional motherhood.” Make no mistake, access to safe, legal abortion is foundational to women’s social and economic freedom. But this focus excludes the broader range of concerns — particularly economic — that women face.
It is true that in 2012, President Barack Obama’s “women’s agenda” expanded slightly to include touting the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter equal pay legislation and opposition to the defunding of Planned Parenthood. But it was not until this year that party leaders like Pelosi and Rosa DeLauro put together a comprehensive proposal called “When Women Succeed, America Succeeds.” It included pay equity, paid sick leave, increasing the minimum wage, expanding educational opportunities and protection from pregnancy discrimination. The agenda was supported with events in congressional districts and a bus tour; many Democratic candidates for the House and Senate in a number of races trumpeted their support for equal pay.
Republican candidates, too, clearly saw the benefit of appearing to be advocates for women. (After all, the electorate is majority female.) Unlike 2010, when Todd Akin and Richard Mourdoch’s statements about gender collectively launched a “war on women,” this time around the GOP moderated its rhetoric and blurred distinctions on issues like access to reproductive health care. The party devoted a lot of energy to training its candidates to be less scary to women, to perform better on abortion rights and to appear more moderate. Some Republicans in swing districts even talked about pay equity, including Frank Guinta in New Hampshire, who beat Carol Shea-Porter, and Elise Stefanik in New York’s 21st District, who will be the youngest women ever elected to Congress.
As such, this focus on women’s issues turned out to be mostly symbolic — less to promote a comprehensive women’s economic agenda and more an issue sprinkled here and there. Democrats used equal pay as an attack on Republicans to suggest they were out of the mainstream, and Republicans used equal pay to demonstrate that they were squarely in it. Their Republican opponents even attacked Democratic candidates Kathleen Rice (New York’s 4th District) and John Faust (Virginia’s 10th District) for being unsupportive of women in the workplace.
Far from hurting them, a more fulsome conversation about the economic standing of women might very well have helped Democrats, as at least one post-election poll shows that a candidate’s position generically on “women’s issues” was among the top reasons to vote Democratic. In regression analysis, a candidate’s position on women’s issues was the strongest predictor of the vote for a Democratic candidate, stronger than a candidate’s position on issues like Social Security and Medicare and on health care.