The following article is cross-posted from a DCorps e-blast:
The economy is still the main issue in the 2014 election, impacting the mood of the country, driving likely voter turnout, and defining what is at stake. With voters uncertain of President Obama and the Democrats’ direction on the economy, Democratic voters are 7 points less likely than Republicans to say they are ‘almost certain to vote’ in the off-year election in November.
But Democrats can change that equation if they show they understand people’s financial struggles, get the narrative right, push back against an economy that works only for the 1 percent, and offer an economic agenda that puts working women first.
These are the key elements of the working women’s agenda – tested in our recent national survey with Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund. This agenda drives Democratic support and increase turnout, not just among working women, but among a broad range of voters.
Read the memo here.
See the graphs here.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo.
Much has been written about the difficult road faced by Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. But virtually all of it presumes that turnout among reliable Democratic voters will decline 3 to 5 percent more from 2012 levels than turnout among reliable Republican voters.
There is no question that most midterms do in fact follow that model. The results of the disastrous 2010 midterms can be chalked up almost entirely to the fact that record numbers of Democratic voters failed to show up at the polls.
But before the pundits and ambitious Republicans get too cocky, it is important to remember that this kind of turnout differential is not at all preordained. A three to five percentage imbalance in turnout can have a massive impact on in-play elections — but it is also small enough that Democrats can do something about it.
In fact, as recently as 2013 — in a completely off-year election in Virginia, Democrats kept the turnout mix at 2012 levels. To win — as we did in Virginia — Democrats don’t have to turn out the same number of voters as we did in 2012. We only have to ensure that the turnout mix is the same as it was in 2012. In other words, we have to make certain that the drop-off between 2012 and 2014 is no greater than the drop-off for Republican voters.
So what affects turnout?
In general, electoral turnout is not affected by the factors that dominate the discourse of the chattering class. For persuadable voters — voters who always vote but are often undecided in elections — the factors that affect the voters’ decisions involve the candidate. Persuadable voters made their decisions based on candidate qualities like:
Is the candidate on my side?
Does the candidate have strong core values?
Do I think the candidate is a strong effective leader?
Does the candidate respect me?
Do I like or make an emotional connection with the candidate?
Is the candidate an insider or outsider?
Is the candidate self-confident?
Does the candidate have integrity?
Does the candidate have vision?
Does the candidate inspire me?
With one exception, turnout it not affected by any of these factors — or for that matter by the “issues” being used by the candidates to demonstrate that they are on the voter’s side. That’s because low-propensity Democratic voters would already vote for Democratic candidates if they went to the polls — the question is not how they would vote, but whether they are motivated to go to the polls.
The messages that motivate low-turnout voters are not about the candidates or issues — they are about the voters themselves.
This fall, Democrats have the ability to motivate the voters to turnout at levels adequate to replicate the 2012 turnout mix — just as they did in Virginia last year. But we need to focus 100 percent of our energy on motivation. That requires that we follow several important rules:
1). Rule #1: Motivation is about emotion. We must engage the voters’ feelings — their anger, their love, their passion, their humor. You engage emotion by making things concrete and personal — not abstract or cerebral. Our messages to low-turnout voters must engage the senses. The political dialogue between now and November needs to make people hear, visualize, feel — experience — the battle.
2). Rule #2: People are motivated (and convinced) more easily by getting them to take action than by explanation or argument. Getting someone to take an action engages emotion and commitment to the outcome of a battle much more easily than any form of rhetoric or discussion.
Action can include any level of activity from going to a rally or meeting, to rooting for a candidate in a debate, to making a donation online. The more people have the opportunity to act, not just hear about the upcoming election, the more likely they are to vote.
Research has shown that this principle even extends to how we talk to voters about going to vote. If we ask them to tell us how and when they plan to vote, they are more likely to vote than if we just ask them if they plan to vote. That’s because they begin to visualize the act of voting and begin to commit themselves to the act of voting through their own visualization of action.
If voters are asked to take the action of signing a pledge form committing them to vote — they are even more likely to cast a ballot.
3). Rule #3: The fight’s the thing. Motivation flows from engagement in a political narrative that involves a protagonist and an antagonist. When people root for a sports team, they become invested in the team.
Democrats need to provide every opportunity to create a battle between the Right-wing’s leaders and our champions. We need to force the battle — proudly and visibly. And,we need to enlist low-propensity voters to join us in the battle.

Read more…

From The Guardian’s “How to reverse a supreme court attack on democracy: fight for voting rights: John Roberts’ wrecking ball got you mad as hell? Don’t take his court’s electoral destruction for granted anymore” by Richard L. Hasen, author of The Voting Wars:

The worst thing about the [McCutcheon v. FEC] decision is that there’s not much you can do about it, other than fight to uphold what remains of the rules. The only ways to restore the pre-Roberts court campaign finance rules would be for Congress and the states to amend the Constitution (something that’s all but impossible in today’s partisan environment), or for the supreme court to change its interpretation of the First Amendment (something that would take the retirement of Justice Scalia or Kennedy and their replacement by a Democratic president, which is not impossible but not something to bank on).
A lot more can be done to roll back some of the Roberts court’s other unfortunate decisions involving our electoral process. Somehow, the political will just doesn’t seem to be there. Many white Americans are exercised about campaign finance but little else. But the American public – all of it – should be just as exercised by the assault on voting rights as it is by the court’s new views on money in politics.

Be that as it may, Hasen believes the Shelby County v Holder ruling offers more potential for corrective action:

But the Shelby case did leave open the possibility that Congress could adopt a new coverage formula tied to current conditions. And in the last few months, Sen Patrick Leahy, Rep John Conyers and Rep James Sensenbrenner – a Republican – introduced a new law, the Voting Rights Amendments Act (VRAA). It would impose a new preclearance regime tied to current voting rights violations by the state. States that recently have violated other provisions of the Voting Rights Act can get covered again under the proposed preclearance rules.
The VRAA is far from perfect – and there’s a chance the Roberts wrecking crew would take its ball to this new law, too – but the provision is a whole lot better than nothing. It’s an improvement on the status quo, where a number of (mostly Republican) states have made it harder to register and vote. Capitol Hill observers believe that the VRAA has an actual chance of making it through the Republican House, if majority leader Eric Cantor decides to support it.

Hasen decries the lack of “agitation” from progressives regarding the Shelby ruling, and adds:

…The voting rights issue seems to have fallen off the radar screen, even though the Roberts court’s reasoning in the Shelby County case is just as indefensible as its reasoning in Citizens United and McCutcheon in the campaign finance arena. But this is an area where something can and should be done, despite the Roberts court…If the supreme court won’t do its job and actually defend democracy, there should be agitation for Congress to do it.

Hasen is right to wonder where is the outrage regarding the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority’s shameless assault on voting rights and democracy itself. Ditto for his concluding challenge: “It’s about time for Congress to pass some new laws protecting voting rights, and it’s high time – right now – for us to dare the supreme court to strike even more of them down.”
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has arrived at a moral crossroads which will likely define his legacy in congress as either a profile in courage who stood up for the most sacred of American rights or as just another tea party stooge. By all indications, Dems have no choice other than an all out effort to replace the obstructionists in November.

Sally Kohn reports some encouraging news for Dems in her Daily Beast post “New Poll Shows Voters in Red States Want to Expand Medicaid: A core part of Obamacare is popular in states from Kansas to Georgia where Republicans are blocking it. They’ll pay come November.” Says Kohn:

…Republicans face stiff opposition from voters in states where they blocked Medicaid expansion…According to new polling by Public Policy Poling conducted for MoveOn, in voters support Medicaid expansion in key states by wide margins: 52 to 35 percent in Kansas, 58 to 33 percent in Florida, 59 to 30 percent in Pennsylvania, 54 to 38 percent in Georgia. All are states where Medicaid expansion has been blocked by Republican politicians. In Virginia, where the GOP has also blocked Medicaid expansion, a previous poll found that even a majority of state Republican voters support extending coverage for the state’s low-income residents. And other polls show that three-out-of-four Americans nationwide, including a majority of Republicans, support Medicaid expansion.

Kohn reports that tone-deaf, Obama-deranged Republicans are nonetheless “actively, single-handedly blocking health coverage for 5 million Americans in 24 states.” The consequences are extremely serious:

…One academic study suggests that of those 5 million, 10,000 Americans will die this year alone due to lack of insurance. The Medicaid expansion is the law of the land, it’s already paid for, and 5 million more Americans would be getting coverage if Republican politicians hadn’t taken it away because of petty partisanship. Largely because Republicans want to spite President Obama on a key piece of his namesake, thousands of Americans may die.

Kohn cites Obamacare’s increasing popularity and continues, “as the law’s positive effects continue to spread, running against Obamacare will be increasingly self-destructive. Of course, that won’t stop the “kamikaze caucus.” Also,

The take-away for voters is clear: Democrats are actively working to provide affordable care and insurance to Americans, while Republicans are actively working to deny coverage to Americans by restricting Medicaid and attacking Obamacare in general. Polls show Republicans are already on the losing side of this issue. As voters hear more and more stories of Americans able to afford a heart transplant or get their cancer detected early thanks to Obamacare, versus stories about rural hospitals closing and Americans not getting care they need because Republicans blocked Medicaid expansion, voters will even more emphatically support the Democrats.

Kohn acknowledges the pundit buzz favoring Republicans and the fact that it’s early for Dems to get overly optimistic. But she concludes that, “in terms of Obamacare, the landscape will just keep getting better for Democrats as petty, partisan Republican obstructionists continue to keep hurting themselves–and their poor constituents.”
Republican opposition to Medicaid expansion is essentially indefensible and the horror stories resulting from it are mounting almost daily. If Democrats do their job in terms of revealing the effects of the GOP’s reckless disregard for the health of Americans and getting the RAE voters cited below to the polls, Dems should be able to hold the Senate and do better than expected in the House, state legislatures and governorships.

Greg Sargent’s Plum Line post “Why 2014 looks so bad for Dems, and what they can do about it” makes it clear that Democrats have an uphill battle ahead, but at least their best strategy is increasingly clear. Commenting on a new DCorps/Womens Voices, Women Vote Action Fund poll, Sargent writes:

…RAE voters [Rising American Electorate – unmarried women, young voters, minorities]are increasingly key to the victorious Dem coalition in national elections, thanks to the diversifying electorate. But they are among the least likely to turn out in midterms, unlike more GOP-aligned non-RAE voters, such as middle-aged and older white males and married women.
…64 percent of RAE voters who voted in 2012 say they are “almost certain” to vote in 2014. Meanwhile, 79 percent of non-RAE voters from 2012 say they are almost certain to vote this year, a 15 point edge.
…Among RAE voters who say they are “likely” to vote in 2014, Dems hold a 25 point edge in the generic ballot matchup, 57-32. But that is down 10 points from the edge Dems held among these voters in 2012, when it was 35 points, 67-32.
…Among those voters who will drop off from 2012 and not vote in 2014, Dems hold a big edge of 16 points, 49-33. In other words, the voters who are more likely to stay home are overwhelmingly Democratic voters.

On those terms alone, it’s a grim scenario for Dems. But there is one significant ray of hope — that Democrats are out front on issues of intense concern to RAE voters, particularly unmarried women, and therefore the possibility of energizing them to vote for Democrats by November is a realistic goal.
Sargent adds that the poll shows that “94 percent of unmarried women favor a combination of pay equity and protections ensuring insurance companies no longer charge women more than men, as Obamacare does, with 82 percent favoring it strongly.” Further, “75 percent of unmarried women favor a combination of pay equity and increasing the minimum wage, with 55 percent favoring it strongly” — reforms generally opposed by Republican candidates.
Sargent concludes with a quote by Page Gardner, president of Women’s Voices Women Vote: “This survey is a roadmap showing candidates how to succeed, by speaking about equal pay and an economic agenda that benefits women and their families. Our poll make clear that raising the minimum wage, ensuring equal pay for women and guaranteeing paid sick leave for working women are popular policies that will win elections.”
In addition to unmarried women, these policies are popular with African American voters, as well as young people. Democrats have a clear edge on the issues with RAE voters. If their GOTV game is optimized before October registration deadlines, the ‘Dems in disarray’ echo chamber may be eating crow, instead of crowing, in November.

The following article is cross-posted from a DCorps e-blast:
Whether we are at a tipping point in the 2014 election depends, first, on whether Democrats can get to a strong economic message– and next week we will be releasing our results on the women’s economic agenda. But it will depend further on whether the Affordable Care Act – now at a tipping point – is embraced with enthusiasm by its natural base of supporters and whether they become willing to defend its benefits against the threat of repeal at the ballot box.
The Republicans have bet heavily on Obamacare’s unpopularity, but that misreads the public’s views on the Affordable Care Act. The latest national survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund finds evidence that prompts us to urge the political class to re-examine its assumptions about the Affordable Care Act and about this being a Republican year.
This is a base and genuine turnout issue for Republicans, but public judgment about the new law is dynamic and moving and could come to haunt the Republicans. Support for the law is rising, particularly among Democrats and minority voters. Only a minority is opposed because this is big government and only a minority wants to repeal the law.
But to counter Republican intensity and turnout in this off-year, Democrats will have to feel just as strongly about the risks of repeal and the loss of benefits. In this poll, we find that a message on the really positive changes that would be lost if the law were repealed gets attention with these off-year voters – who do respond with heightened intensity. With more than 7.1 million successfully signing up through exchanges, voters could be at a tipping point – and Democrats need to making the right case.
That could impact turnout on the Democratic side and should prompt the political class to re-consider many of the dominant assumptions about the ACA and the 2014 election.

Read the full memo here
See the graphs here
Listen to the story on NPR

Of all of the gaps between public opinion and political action, none are more frustrating — or harmful to America — than that between overwhelming public support for campaign finance reform and the failure of congress and the U.S. Supreme Court to take corrective action. The most recent in-your-face example would be the McCutcheon decision, in which Chief Justice Roberts delivered yet another tortured rationale for why we should let billionaires buy elections.
While there is widespread agreement among everyday people about what should be done to democratize campaign finance reform: set reasonable limits, the question of how to get it done in the current climate of knee-jerk GOP obstruction cries out for some creative ideas. Josh Silver, director of Represent.Us, has a plan that merits consideration. As he writes at HuffPo:

If you have a heartbeat, you are one of the vast majority of Americans thoroughly disgusted by this week’s McCutcheon Supreme Court decision. It allows one donor to write a $3.6 million check to buy political influence, providing us all with yet another “just-when-you-thought-it-couldn’t-get-any-worse” moment. As if we needed it.
…But don’t give up just yet. Contrary to popular belief, the money in politics problem can be fixed by emulating the stunning successes of marriage equality and marijuana decriminalization over the past twenty years. Here’s how to do it.
First, we need to take the fight to local communities, by passing city and statewide reform initiatives. For too long, reformers have advocated small-step, incremental reforms at the federal level, such as ending secret donations. This is a good and popular proposal, but alone will not come close to fixing the problem. Other reformers are advocating “publicly funded” elections, which is also good policy, but remains unpopular with many voters and would not fix the entire problem if passed without simultaneous ethics, lobbying and transparency reforms.
And here’s the key thing: proposals that overhaul ethics, lobbying, transparency and public funding in one fell swoop enjoy over 80% voter approval, and they are constitutional, even under the current Supreme Court. Together they are much more popular than public funding alone, and far more palatable to moderates and conservatives to boot. As an added bonus, public funds created by statewide laws can go towards federal candidates from those states, and to judicial candidates in states that have them. In the words of one veteran pollster, “with these kinds of numbers, it’s virtually impossible to lose a ballot initiative.”

Makes sense. In some states at least, it should be possible for such reforms to gain traction. Create a few state campaign finance reform templates that are so compelling that neighboring states will eventually have to reckon with them, and maybe, just maybe start a prairie fire.
Silver also suggests that reform advocates “stop talking about “money, democracy and campaign finance,” and start talking about corruption.” He cites a December poll indicating ‘off the charts’ support “for stopping the undue influence of “corruption” in politics rather than “money,” even among conservatives. Silver continues,

It is time to move from defense to offense, and pass a wave of local anti-corruption laws across the nation over the next few years — while simultaneously organizing a 21st century anti-corruption movement made of grassroots conservatives, moderates and progressives.

It’s an interesting idea, creating a broad, locally-rooted anti-corruption coalition that stretches across the political spectrum (as much as possible). As Silver concludes, “It is the combination of passing bold reforms in cities and states, while creating a loud and visible, right-left anti-corruption movement that will provide the political power necessary to force change.”

From Zachary Goldfarb’s Washington Post article “Democrats target unmarried female voters“:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is building a national computer model to predict voters’ marital status, with hopes of targeting what may be the party’s most important demographic group: unmarried women.
“The completed model will let us pinpoint unmarried women as the target of specific, poll-tested messages delivered through field, mail and paid communications,” said a Democratic official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. “The model can also be included in our polling, allowing us to monitor trends in support and enthusiasm over time.”

The key issues Democrats reportedly plan to highlight for unmarried women include minimum wage, pay equity and health care. Dems hope to replicate the success of VA Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who was elected Governor last year with 67 percent of unmarried women voters, vs. 25 percent for his opponent. DCCC Chairman Rep. Steve Israel called the effort our “earliest and most aggressive field and targeting program ever.” Goldfarb adds,

But Democrats have their work cut out for them. Not only do unmarried women tend to vote in far smaller numbers during midterm elections, Democrats are lagging in support from that group of voters compared with 2012.
Recent polling by Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner showed that just under 60 percent of single women likely to vote in 2014 are backing Democrats. Generally, it is a bad sign for Democrats if they are getting less than two-thirds support among this group, said Erica Seifert, a senior associate at the firm.
“The biggest turnout factor for unmarried women is whether they feel the candidates are speaking to the issues that really matter to them,” Seifert said. “That’s the big thing that we’re watching in 2014, if there is a pocketbook-level economic debate that’s going to bring unmarried women out to vote.”

Golfarb notes that TDS founding editor Ruy Teixeira explained that Democrats held only a 57-to-43-percent advantage among unmarried women in 1988. By 2012, however, the Dems edge increased to 67 to 31. “A large and widening gap in favor of the Democrats and a larger share of voters over time makes them pretty significant,” Teixeira said.

The headline of John Harwood’s New York Times article, “Democrats Scramble to Stave Off Midterm Disaster,” may be more New York Post than Grey Lady, but his post does provide some interesting observations, including:

With its sophisticated voter identification and mobilization programs, the 2012 Obama presidential campaign produced a more Democratic-leaning electorate than many Republicans had thought possible. In 2014 battlegrounds like North Carolina and Colorado, vulnerable Senate Democratic incumbents hope to capitalize on the results of those efforts the way Terry McAuliffe did in winning the Virginia governorship last year.

Articles are appearing every day emphasizing what a difficult terrain Dems face 2014. the cumulative effect adds up to a discouraging “we’re really screwed this year” meme. In addition to Dems’ GOTV advances, however, there are also significant demographic trends and issue advantages that argue for the possibility of a precedent-breaking opportunity, as Harwood concedes:

Democrats have some offsetting assets. One is continued growth among the nonwhite population; exit polls from the 2010 midterm election showed that the white share of the electorate declined to 77 percent from 79 percent in 2006, even amid a House Republican landslide.
Mr. Obama’s party can try to motivate Hispanics by blaming Republicans for blocking immigration legislation, and women by blaming Republicans for blocking equal-pay and early childhood education legislation. While Republicans attack the new health care law to motivate their base, Democrats can warn young voters that repealing it would kick young adults under 26 off their parents’ insurance plans.
More broadly, Democrats can try to alarm supporters by exploiting the Republican Party’s long-running image of being out of touch on economic problems and intolerant on issues like same-sex marriage. Those perceptions only increased during the government shutdown last fall. “The Republicans have given us a bunch of things to work with,” said Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster…Democrats see their biggest opportunity to stem the turnout decline among unmarried women. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to help by campaigning this fall.

Harwood concludes with marching orders for Dems from DCCC chair Rep. Steve Israel: “When you’re looking at historic trends, you don’t agonize, you organize.”

The mid term fall off of young people discussed by Ed Kilgore yesterday is a very serious concern for Democrats, all the more so in light of a new Gallup poll indicating that “Young adults — those between the ages of 18 and 29 — have typically aligned themselves with the Democratic Party, but they have become substantially more likely to do so since 2006.”
The polling data, discussed by Jeffrey M. Jones in his Gallup.com post “Young Americans’ Affinity for Democratic Party Has Grown,” are based on “yearly aggregated data from multiple day Gallup telephone polls conducted between 1993 and 2013.” Jones adds:

From 1993 to 2003, 47% of 18- to 29-year-olds, on average, identified as Democrats or said they were independents but leaned to the Democratic Party, while 42% were Republicans or Republican leaners. That time span included two years in which young adults tilted Republican, 1994 and 1995, when Republicans won control of Congress. Since 2006, the average gap in favor of the Democratic Party among young adults has been 18 percentage points, 54% to 36%.
A major reason young adults are increasingly likely to prefer the Democratic Party is that today’s young adults are more racially and ethnically diverse than young adults of the past. U.S. political preferences are sharply divided by race, with nonwhite Americans of all ages overwhelmingly identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic.
Gallup estimates that 54% of 18- to 29-year-olds are non-Hispanic white and 45% nonwhite, compared with 71% non-Hispanic white and 29% nonwhite in 1995, the first full year Gallup measured Hispanic ethnicity.
In 2013, 62% of nonwhite Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 were Democrats or Democratic leaners, while 25% were Republicans or Republican leaners. That 37-point Democratic advantage, though sizable, is slightly lower than the average 42-point advantage from 1995 through 2013.

It’s not only race that drives the blue trend, however. As Jones explains, “Young white adults, who previously aligned more with the Republican Party, have shifted Democratic. From 1995 to 2005, young whites consistently identified as or leaned Republican rather than Democratic, by an average of eight points. Since 2006, whites aged 18 to 29 have shown at least a slight Democratic preference in all but one year, with an average advantage of three points.”
Jones doesn’t offer any insights about party preferences between college-enrolled youth and those who are working in the labor force, which would be helpful for GOTV purposes. Dems should be encouraged by the trend favoring their party. But it won’t mean much if these young voters don’t show in November. Clearly, Democrats can benefit substantially from some well-targeted youth voter turnout projects.