Regarding our post below about Republican leaders denying their party is pushing toward impeachment, do check out this link-rich post, “GOP’s base Clamors to Impeach Obama” by Drew Courtney at People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch, documenting the growing number of Republicans guzzling the impeachment Kool-Aid. Here are some of Courtney’s examples (click on the article for the links — there are more than 30 links, too many to include here for now):

• In a radio interview last week, Rep. Michele Bachmann said that she believed the president has “committed impeachable offenses” but that first “the American people have to agree with and be behind and call for the president’s impeachment.”
• This month, Rep. Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania said that there are “probably” the votes in the House to impeach the president for “absolutely ignoring the Constitution, and ignoring the laws, and ignoring the checks and balances.”
• In March, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California hinted at impeachment proceedings in response to illegal immigration.
• Last year, Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas toyed with the idea of impeaching the president over “the whole birth certificate issue.”
• Also last year, Rep. Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan said that impeaching the president would be “a dream come true.”
• Rep. Steve King has promised impeachment proceedings if President Obama issues an executive order granting work permits to undocumented immigrants.
• Sarah Palin has repeatedly called for impeachment in recent weeks.
• Glenn Beck has repeatedly called for the president’s impeachment for the IRS scandal, an imaginary plot to give weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria and for a supposed cover-up of the role of a Saudi national in the Boston Marathon bombings. “You need to file the articles of impeachment. He needs to have the stain on his record that they cannot remove,” he said.
• The prominent right-wing legal group Liberty Counsel launched a campaign in February to call on the House to start the process of impeaching the president before he succeeds in “remaking the United States of America into a godless, socialist nation.” The group launched a similar campaign in 2011. Although Liberty Counsel officials have cited President Obama’s executive order on LGBT nondiscrimination, the Benghazi attack, marriage equality as possible reasons for impeachment, ultimately the group’s chairman Mat Staver said an impeachable offense can be “whatever Congress says it is at any given time.”
• Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano has floated the idea of impeachment for at least a year.
• In 2012, American Family Association President Tim Wildmon called for the president’s impeachment because he “intentionally misled the American people” about the attacks in Benghazi. This year, he declared that the GOP would have impeached President Obama even if he had been a Republican because the “Christian element” in the party would never tolerate “lawlessness and lying.”
• The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer demanded President Obama’s impeachment for his handling of the court case challenging the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act.
• Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt has called for Obama’s impeachment for his backing of “pagan” gun safety laws and before he takes “total control.”
• WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian wants Republicans to impeach Obama and remove him from office if they take control of the Senate: “We need to remove this guy or to stop what he’s doing as soon as possible. The next opportunity is in November and we’ll see what the Republicans and the Christians and the conservatives can do then.” The site’s editor in chief, Joseph Farah, has also repeatedly called for impeachment proceedings.
• Former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo called for Obama’s impeachment earlier this year, claiming that the president has become “addicted to dictatorial behavior.”
• Tea Party Nation urged its members to sign a petition calling on Congress to “impeach and arrest the tyrant king Obama!”
• Alan Keyes who lost the 2004 Illinois Senate race to Obama, advocated for impeachment over the Fort Hood shooting, Obama’s “dictatorial intentions,” and something to do with “gay lovers.” He has alsocalled on Michele Bachmann and Jesus Christ to help in the impeachment endeavor “before it’s too late.”
• In 2012, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s Peter LaBarbera called for Obama’s impeachment for trying to “pander to his homosexual activist base.”

There are just two possible conclusions to draw from all of these examples : Either the Republican leaders know perfectly well they are careening toward squandering tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on an impeachment effort that is doomed to fail, or they have totally lost control of their unhinged base. Neither one will inspire much support from thoughtful voters.

From Nick Corosaniti’s “Impeachment, on G.O.P. Lips, Animates Democrats’ Base” in the New York Times:

Democrats cannot get enough of Republicans talking about impeaching President Obama.
They are using it to raise money and claim to have collected $1 million on Monday alone. They are using it to add supporters, with 74,000 new contributors. And, to animate their base, they would like to goad Republicans into debating impeachment in close races in the midterm elections…The talk of impeachment has had a catalytic effect on fund-raising for the Democratic campaign committee, which raised $7.6 million online through more than 400,000 donations since Mr. Boehner announced the lawsuit against the president. That is an average of $19 per donation
…All of which has forced Republican leaders in Congress to talk down any notion of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” saying that Democrats were cynically using the specter of impeachment as a “scam” to generate support.

Democratic leaders must be pinching themselves and asking giddily, “Can this be real?” If the Republicans proceed, they may write a new chapter in the annals of political stupidity, or at least a new take on “Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory.”
Boehner and McConnell are denying there is any such master plan. “Impeachment, who us?,” while several Republican members of congress are talking it up. Meanwhile Boehner is going forward with his lawsuit against the president for “abusing his power,” even writing an op-ed defending it, which looks a lot like a set-up for impeachment. As Corosaniti reports,

On Monday, an op-ed article published in USA Today, written by Mr. Boehner, defended his lawsuit, claiming, “President Obama has overstepped his constitutional authority.” Democrats seized on the language, sending email that threats of impeachment were “no laughing matter” and asking for contributions to help “take on the Tea Party.”

President Obama has plenty of messaging ammo to ridicule Boehner’s lawsuit, including the reality that he has issued fewer executive orders than Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Bush II and fewer total vetoes than any president since James Garfield.
Put all of that together with the “do-nothing congress” meme, and Dems have a potent message strategy to leverage for November. As DCCC Chairman Steve Israel, explains “This is going to be 98 days of daily process between Republicans, who are obsessed with lawsuits and appear to be moving closer to impeachment…It’s having the unintended consequence of moving our base in a midterm election and also moving persuadable voters to us in a midterm election…”
If it turns out that Boehner’s lawsuit tips the election enough to enable Democrats to hold the senate, Dems — and the nation — will likely get a bonus in the form of a new Republican House speaker, presumably one less opposed to any form of bipartisan cooperation.

From “Presidential Politics and Predictions: Be Ready to Be Wrong” by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be“:

… If you look at the history of presidential politics in the modern era, the last half-century-plus, the strongly favored frontrunner almost never cruises easily to victory. Big stuff, little stuff, insurgencies popping up out of nowhere, scandals, stumbles — frontrunners, even the dominant ones, have lost a lot more often than they won, and generally even when they have won, they had a hell of a tough road getting there. In fact, in only two of the past 11 Democratic presidential primaries where there wasn’t an unchallenged incumbent president has the clear frontrunner at this moment in the four-year cycle gone on to win the nomination, and in one of those two situations (Mondale), he had a far tougher fight than expected.
In 1960, LBJ was the clear frontrunner, the dominant figure in national Democratic politics. He had by far the most important endorsements, and the strong support of the party establishment in most of the states. Hubert Humphrey was widely thought of as the only guy with a decent shot of beating him. Jack Kennedy was a lightly regarded upstart, with his youth and Catholicism considered obstacles way too big to overcome.
In 1968, LBJ — this time as the incumbent president — was of course going to win the nomination hands down. He completely dominated the party machinery, had limitless campaign money stashed away, was further ahead in the polls than Hillary. Gene McCarthy’s campaign was considered worse than a joke, it was assumed to be a short-lived token protest movement. My first political memory, as a 7-year-old just getting interested in politics, was seeing that LBJ speech where he stunned the world by announcing he would not run again, and I will never forget the looks of shock on my parents’ faces.
In 1972, Ed Muskie was the overwhelming frontrunner — way ahead in the polls, the money, the endorsements, everything. A silly media frenzy over whether he cried, and a hippie volunteer army for McGovern in New Hampshire, were all it took to quickly dislodge him from the race.
In 1976, Teddy Kennedy was the frontrunner in the polls but did not run. There were several Senate heavyweights who were thought to be top tier candidates, all of them faltered. Absolutely no one predicted Jimmy Carter.
The 1980 race was the only serious primary against an incumbent in modern presidential election history, and oddly, Teddy Kennedy actually started with a huge lead in the polls, as Carter was pretty unpopular with the Democratic base. But after Kennedy’s disastrous 60 Minutes interview, everything reversed and Kennedy never recovered.
In 1984, Mondale was the overwhelming favorite, as far ahead as Hillary in the polls and with every major group and most politicians’ endorsements. He didn’t make any big mistakes, ran a strong early campaign, and easily won Iowa as predicted, beating Gary Hart 50-17. But Democratic primary voters were restless, bored with Mondale’s safe establishment-mandated coronation, and looking for someone new. When Hart came out of the pack of candidates with a surprising second place finish, he trounced Mondale in NH and was on a roll, winning most of the next several primaries. Without some stumbles, Hart would have been the nominee.
Speaking of stumbles, Hart’s big one on his friend’s boat, the Monkey Business, with Donna Rice forced him to withdraw in 1988 after being the overwhelming favorite in the early polling. Gephardt, who had been working Iowa for years, became the favorite after that, but last minute entry Dukakis raised a lot more money than anyone else, and Gephardt split the populist vote with Simon, Gore, and Jesse Jackson. Gephardt won Iowa, Dukakis finished a pretty anemic 3rd there, but the late-entry candidate who had been at 1% in the polls ended up easily winning the nomination in the end.
In 1992, Cuomo was the strong favorite in the polling and among pundits right up until the time he decided not to run (quite late in the cycle, he was still debating with himself in the fall of ’91). After that, Clinton was one of the favorites until he stumbled, after which everyone pronounced his campaign over, after which he came back and won the nomination. (And after he won the nomination, up until the Democratic convention no one thought he had a shot of beating Bush.)
In 1996, no one challenged President Clinton for the nomination after he decisively beat the Republicans in the budget showdown. In 2000, there was the only primary fight in this entire saga that went pretty much as predicted, with Vice President Gore keeping his early lead and turning back a challenge from Bill Bradley, although a lot of us who closely followed the race think that if Bradley hadn’t spent too many resources contesting the Iowa contest where he was never going to win, that he would have beaten Gore in NH (he only lost 51-47). In that scenario, Bradley might well have made that race a hell of a fight.
In 2004, Hillary Clinton was way ahead in the early polling but did not run, and there was no real favorite. In the early days of the race, it was thought that Gephardt would win Iowa and Kerry would win NH, but then both faded and Dean came on from nowhere (literally 0 or 1% in the early polling, with no one predicting he had a chance) to a big lead in the polls, money, and endorsements. When Dean made some late mistakes, and Kerry and Edwards put together a late surge, the race was reshaped again.
Finally in 2008, people have already forgotten how inevitable Hillary was seen then. At this time of the cycle then, July of 2006, it looked unlikely that Obama would even run. And throughout 2007, she had a wide lead in the polls and endorsements.
That’s the track record, folks: 11 contested primaries over the last 54 years, only one of them turned out pretty much as expected, and only two where the pre-season favorite even won…

Looking at the record of front-runner fade-outs, you could make a pretty good argument that it’s not such a good thing for Hillary Clinton that so many think she has a lock on 2016. Early coronations also invite lots of potshots and negative attention.
Measure that, however, against the considerable advantages of having lots of time to unify the party, rack up the contributions and recruit GOTV muscle. But Lux is surely right that betting on any candidate months before the campaign begins is unwise.

From Democracy Corps and Womenms Voices Womens Vote Action Fund:
A new poll of the 12 states where control of the Senate is being contested, fielded by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voice Women Vote Action Fund, shows that control of the Senate rests on a knife’s edge, but that Democrats’ have a powerful weapon in a policy agenda and narrative centered around the needs of working women and men. This survey, the first to poll in all 12 battleground states using a named ballot, reveals a 44-46 race in states that were won by Mitt Romney by 9 points just 2 years ago.
This survey also shows that Democrats have a way to improve their fortunes. They are currently being held back by a serious underperformance with unmarried women, who give them just an 11-point advantage on the vote. But engaging in a populist economic debate and attacks on Republicans with a strong emphasis on women’s issues brings these critical voters back in the fold. It also may be the critical strategy in the open battleground Senate seats.
An “in your shoes” populist narrative about people’s economic struggles, a policy agenda about finally helping mothers in the workplace and making sure those at the top are paying their fair share are issues, and, most important, a critique of Republicans for their polices that hurt seniors and women result in significant gains with unmarried women and other key electoral targets when matched against the Republican agenda and could prove the difference between majority or minority-leader Harry Reid come next January.
Key findings:

• Unmarried women are, perhaps, the most important target for Democrats across this senate battleground.
• The senate race in this battleground is tied and stable, with Democrats held back by underperformance among base RAE voters and unmarried women.
• The Democratic incumbents in this battleground are much better liked than Obama and have significantly higher ratings than their Republican opponents. Their approval rating is 6 points above that for the president.
• Two dynamics could shift this race: the president’s approval in these states is just 37 percent, but stable. Meanwhile, the Republican Party, and particularly the Republicans in the House, is extremely unpopular. And regressions show that sentiment about House Republicans drives the SENATE vote more strongly than sentiment about Senate Republicans.
• Democrats have a message that can move the vote. A populist economic narrative, including strong messaging around the women’s economic agenda, moves the vote in Democrats’ favor when matched against a Republican economic narrative with big gains in the open-seat race and the state that Obama won in 2012.
• A critique of Republicans for their positions on seniors, women’s economic issues and women’s health are powerful and help move the vote among younger voters and women, as well as help move the vote in some of the most competitive races in the battleground.
• And a debate about money in politics, particularly over a Constitutional Amendment to repeal Citizens United and a proposal to get big money out of our campaign system, results in further gains.
• Exposing unmarried women to the economic message shifts their support for Senate Democrats from +11 to +20.
• The economic agenda for working women and men includes a cluster of powerful policies on helping working mothers, equal pay and equal health insurance, and making sure that the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share.
• Unmarried women are the pivotal group of the debate, as Democrats currently underperform even their 2010 margin significantly, but these voters move strongly in response to the debate.
• Voters in this Republican-leaning district are split on the electoral impact of the Republican candidate supporting the Hobby Lobby decision, but the issue provides an opening for Democrats to make a powerful critique on Republicans on the issue of women’s health. The issue is very powerful with unmarried women and other key blocs of women.

Read the full memo here.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
On October 1, United Airlines is planning to outsource 630 gate agent jobs at 12 airports to companies that pay near-poverty level wages. The airports affected include Salt Lake City; Charlotte, North Carolina; Pensacola, Florida; Detroit and Des Moines, Iowa.
As a result hundreds of employees who formerly made middle-class, living wages will be forced to transfer to other cities, take early retirement or seek employment elsewhere. Union employees who have been with the company for years — many making a respectable $50,000-per-year salaries — will be replaced by non-union employees who will be paid less than half — between $9.50 and $12 per hour.
Nine-fifty an hour is a poverty-level wage if you are trying to support a family — and $12 barely exceeds the poverty level. In fact at $12 a family of three makes so little that they are eligible for food stamps.
That, in effect, means that United and its subcontractor will be subsidized by American taxpayers for the food stamp payments made to their new low-wage workers.
United’s move to convert middle-class jobs into near-poverty level jobs is shameful — it’s that simple.
And United’s move to cut employee pay is emblematic of corporate America’s systematic campaign to lower wages and destroy the American middle class in order to increase returns to Wall Street shareholders. It is exactly the kind of action that must come to a screeching halt if the middle class is to survive — and our children are once again be able to look forward to prosperous secure lives.
Remember that United is not slashing wages in order to compete with firms that pay cheap foreign wages. You have to use American workers to run your gate operations in the United States.
United claims it is outsourcing these jobs to improve its financial performance. The company lost $609 million in the first quarter — though last year United netted over $1 billion for shareholders overall. And over the last four quarters, earnings and revenue figures for the airline have been increasing quarter over quarter, which overall have left investors pleased.
On the other hand, United management is unhappy that its stock is not performing well relative to other airlines, so they have begun a systematic campaign to cut costs.
But whatever their financial needs, big companies cannot be allowed to solve them by exploiting the people who work for them by paying near-poverty wages.
In America we believe that you should have the opportunity to strike it rich. But you should not be allowed to do that by exploiting other people. You can make all the money you want so long as you pay your employees a living wage first.
Over the last 30 years per capita productivity and per capita gross domestic product have both increased by almost 80 percent. If the benefits of that increase were widely distributed, most average Americans would be 80 percent better off today than they were 30 years ago.
But instead average wages have stagnated — and most normal people are struggling just to keep up. That’s because almost all of that increase has been siphoned into the hands of the top 1 percent and out of the pockets of middle-class families.
United’s outsourcing plan is one of the methods that has been used systematically by corporations and Wall Street banks to achieve this result.
And it is exactly the kind of action that we must stop if we are to prevent America from becoming a society composed of a tiny number of wealthy semi-aristocrats and a massive number of workers who barely make enough to make ends meet.
The victims of United’s outsourcing will not just be the employees and their families. The move will contribute to the increased proportion of gross domestic product going to wealthiest Americans and the big Wall Street banks — and lower the proportion going to everyday Americans.
That means that ordinary Americans will have less money to spend on the increasing number of goods and services that our increasingly productive economy produces. If this trend continues the inevitable results will be to lower demand for products and services, lower economic growth and fewer jobs.
It is ironic that one of the stations United is outsourcing is Detroit — the very location where Henry Ford raised the wages of his employees because he understood that in the long run, it was better for business if his employees made enough to buy the cars the produce.
Today, short-term bottom lines seem to be the only benchmark that guides economic decision makers at America’s largest corporations and Wall Street Banks.
United is not the only airline to resort to massive outsourcing of middle class jobs. According to the Wall Street Journal:

American said the vast majority of its domestic airports already are staffed by Envoy or other contractors. Delta said only 42 of its 230 domestic airports employ Delta employees exclusively. Thirty-three airports have Delta workers as customer-service agents and Delta Global Services workers employed as ramp workers. In 80 airports, Delta Global Services workers perform both functions. Another 75 airports use other outside vendors.

Delta Global Services is Delta’s own non-union subsidiary.
The new round of outsourcing just builds upon United’s past actions:
According to the Journal:

United said it employs its own workers at 47 of 227 domestic airports and 27 airports use a mix of United and vendor employees. Fully 153 airports use outside handlers. United has said that as many as 30 more airports may be targeted for outsourcing…

United’s move to cut employee wages also reflects a broader view of big corporations and Wall Street banks, that the work of ordinary people should not be remunerated with middle-class salaries at all.
“It does make economic sense,” Michael Boyd, a consultant at Boyd Group International, told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s not a $40,000 job to load bags. Cleaning planes is not a $20-an-hour job.”
Really? I suppose clipping coupons and hanging out at the country club is a multimillion-dollar job. Or making successful bets on Wall Street is a billion-dollar job.

Read more…

Amid new reports that African Americans had a higher turnout percentage than their white counterparts in the 2012 general election, Nate Cohn writes that “Black Southern Voters, Poised to Play a Historic Role” at NYT’s the Upshot. Cohn explains:

Nearly five decades after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, black voters in the South are poised to play a pivotal role in this year’s midterm elections. If Democrats win the South and hold the Senate, they will do so because of Southern black voters.
The timing — 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and 49 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act — is not entirely coincidental. The trends increasing the clout of black voters reflect a complete cycle of generational replacement in the post-Jim Crow era. White voters who came of age as loyal Democrats have largely died off, while the vast majority of black voters have been able to vote for their entire adult lives — and many have developed the habit of doing so.

Cohn then drops this:

This year’s closest contests include North Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia. Black voters will most likely represent more than half of all Democratic voters in Louisiana and Georgia, and nearly half in North Carolina. Arkansas, another state with a large black population, is also among the competitive states.

Cohn notes also that African American voters upset the tea party’s plans to replace Republican Sen. Thad Cochran with one of their own.
No pressure or anything, African American voters, but it’s kind of up to you to save America from descent into tea party madness. The African American vote has been pivotal for Democrats for a long time. But this year ups the ante, as Cohn projects,

… There has not been a year since Reconstruction when a party has depended so completely on black voters, in so many Southern states, in such a close national contest…If Democrats win this November, black voters will probably represent a larger share of the winning party’s supporters in important states than at any time since Reconstruction.

Such statistics also reflect the failure of too many white voters to vote in behalf of their own economic interests, and yes, the Democratic Party’s frustrating inability to effectively counter the GOP’s politics of distraction.
Getting down to cases, Cohn continues,

Nowhere has the remigration done more to improve Democratic chances than in Georgia, where Democrats have a chance to win an open Senate seat this November…The state’s growing black population will give her [Michelle Nunn] a chance to win with less than one-third of the white vote, a tally that would have ensured defeat for Democrats just a few years ago.

And the same resources Dems put into turning out African American voters in GA to elect Nunn senator could also elect Jason Carter governor. That would be an historic Democratic twofer — in a big way.