For a cogent analysis of the President’s Knox College speech, check out Jonathan Chait’s New York Magazine post, “Obama: It’s Not My Fault Republicans Are Crazy,” which observes:

President Obama’s economic speech today is putatively a broad-stroke overview of his economic vision — investing in physical infrastructure and early childhood education, restraining runaway inflation in the cost of health care and college, and marginally shifting the burden of government away from the middle class and toward the rich. In reality, it is a call for a responsible opposition.
Thematically, it is hard to build a speech around the opposition when you’re president, because people expect the president to lead and set the agenda. But the extraordinary tactics of the House Republicans have created an unusual and counterintuitive situation wherein the president’s agenda is mostly irrelevant. Conservatives simply refuse to negotiate with Obama in conventional terms. Their strategy is to threaten a series of crises — government shutdown, defaulting on the debt — in order to force the president to offer unilateral concessions.

Chait notes the House Republicans preference for hiking spending for “ludicrous farm subsidies” over Democratic-supported investments in needed energy breakthroughs, along with Boehner’s reversal on lifting the debt ceiling and holding it hostage for unspecified budget cuts. “But the deeper problem is the Republican opposition to negotiating the differences at all,” explains Chait. Under Boehner’s Custer-like leadership, “the GOP is increasingly rallying around the threat of a government shutdown as a last-ditch stand to prevent the implementation of health care reform,” adds Chait.
Chait credits the president with pointing out that “simply not manufacturing a crisis is an ambitious goal for the House Republicans,” while appealing to the few public-spirited GOP reps remaining “to not muddle along and to take bold action instead.”
“Obama’s ultimate goal,” adds Chait, “is not merely to insulate himself from blame if and when House Republicans shut down the government or threaten to default on the debt, but to build a coalition with pragmatic Republicans to negotiate around Boehner’s back.” Chait quotes Rep. Ryan expressing arrogant contempt for GOP pragmatists, and concludes “Obama’s speech laid out a compelling vision of long-term prosperity, but the inescapable reality he faces is much, much uglier.”
It’s hard to avoid the increasing indications that the GOP leadership’s circle-the-wagons strategy is not going to end well for them. Sadly, millions of Americans are likely to be denied the benefits of pragmatic politics before we get there.

July 22, 2013
Dear Readers:
Several weeks ago Stan Greenberg and Democracy Corps released their 2014 Congressional Battleground survey. The conclusion they reached was startlingly optimistic and at odds with the common wisdom among political commentators.
As the survey stated:

The first Democracy Corps Congressional Battleground survey of the most competitive House races will challenge serious commentary and the informed presumptions about the 2014 election. Analysts, pundits, and commentators have concluded that there will be fewer seats in play in 2014 and that neither party is likely to upset the current balance.
To be honest, our poll results surprised us. They show that Republicans are just as vulnerable as 2012 and that Democrats could at least replicate the net gain of 8 seats they achieved in that last election.

Greenberg’s conclusion challenged a wide consensus among political analysts who argued that Dems could not avoid severe setbacks in the off-year elections and that the Democracy Corps analysis simply had to be too optimistic.
Last Friday, Greenberg fired back at the pessimists in an article that he published in the Huffington Post. As he said:

The serious arbiters of Congressional forecasting reacted to the Democracy Corps survey with an almost ideological aversion to the Republicans-will-pay-a-price-for-extremism framework that really blocked them from considering the evidence at face value. Stuart Rothenberg described our memo as “an advocacy document, not an analytic one”…The Cook Report’s David Wasserman says his reading of the data leads him to the opposite conclusion. Democrats are more exposed than Republicans…Just this past week, one critic in the Guardian embraced the Cook Report analysis and piled on with historical inevitability: only three times since the Civil War has the presidential party made gains in off-year elections.

Greenberg then boldly continued:

But I encourage everyone to step back and listen to voters in the current context and not allow a pre-conceived beltway presumption to screen out what people may be saying and feeling…
…What is brewing is evidence that voters are indeed paying attention to the mayhem, gridlock and extremism in Washington — and that is precisely where the Democracy Corps poll shows the biggest changes from last year.
First, working with President Obama rather than trying to block his agenda. By 64 to 30 percent in the Republican battleground seats, these off-year voters want their member to work with the president — up 5 points from October and 10 points from last summer…
Second, the Tea Party. Though the off-year battleground is more Republican, negative feelings about the Tea Party have jumped 5 points since the election to half the electorate. The Tea Party is even more unpopular in the Democratic seats…
Third, tax increases to address to our problems and reduce the deficit. Just 39 percent of the voters in these Republican off-year districts want to vote for the kind of no-tax Republican that represents them. A majority want to raise taxes in a balanced way like the President — again, tied for the highest margin on this question, despite the off-year.
And fourth, Medicare and seniors. The Republicans faced their biggest electoral pull back since November among seniors in both the Republican and Democratic districts. Maybe seniors noticed the centrality of Medicare and entitlements in all the Republican battle plans.

Greenberg concludes:

…Maybe voters are now connecting the dots that they were not inclined to do during a presidential election and choice…We would all benefit from listening to the voters who may be trying to tell us something about what is happening in Washington and the U.S. Congress.

Greenberg’s complete analysis is vitally and urgently important for all Democrats to examine because there is one fact about the 2014 elections that is indeed absolutely certain: if Dems accept a fatalistic, “history says we can’t do well” point of view today, this will guarantee a negative result sixteen months from now.
So Dems owe it to themselves to read Stan’s commentary and not passively accept today’s common beltway wisdom. After all, Democrats already proved the common wisdom about bi-elections wrong once before recently — in 1998 when a nationwide backlash against GOP extremism produced a Democratic wave that none of the experts predicted.
Read Stan Greenberg’s article here:
Is there no price to be paid for GOP extremism?
We believe you will find the analysis profoundly important and extremely useful.
Sincerely Yours,
Ed Kilgore
Managing Editor
The Democratic Strategist
www.thedemocraticstrategist.org

From Eduardo Porter’s New York Times article, “Pro-Baby, but Stingy With Money to Support Them“:

…There is an odd inconsistency in conservatives’ stance on procreation: many also support some of the harshest cuts in memory to government benefit programs for families and children.
First Focus, an advocacy group for child-friendly policies, will release on Wednesday its latest “Children’s Budget,” which shows how federal spending on children has declined more than 15 percent in real terms from its high in 2010, when the fiscal stimulus law raised spending on programs like Head Start and K-12 education.
Some school districts have been forced to fire teachers, cut services and even shorten the school week. Head Start has cut its rolls. Families have lost housing support. And the 2014 budget passed by Republicans in the House cuts investments in children further — sharply reducing money for the Departments of Education, Labor and Health and Human Services.

No doubt readers could add a lot more to this litany of Republican neglect of children, including their long-standing opposition to adequate appropriations for improving child health care and nutrition. Despite all of the pious “family friendly” rhetoric trumpeted by Republicans, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that child health and welfare are far lower priorities for Republicans than tax breaks to fatten the assets of the already-wealthy. Noting declining birth and fertility rates which have kicked in since the recession, Porter continues,

But though American families may have adapted better than others to women’s march into the labor force, the United States lags far behind in providing the government support that makes it easier for many couples to start a family.
There is widespread evidence that government assistance to families increases fertility. France’s generous child subsidies, for instance, have been credited with lifting that nation’s fertility rate above 2, from about 1.75 in the mid-1990s. A study in Quebec found that increasing benefits to new parents by 1,000 Canadian dollars increased the probability of having a child by 16.9 percent. One study in Sweden traced its higher fertility compared to other Scandinavian countries to government programs like paid leave and subsidized day care, which made it easier for mothers to work.

“Pro-life” Republicans go on and on about about the inhumanity of abortion. But when it comes to making sure impoverished children have a good chance to lead a healthy life, their concern rapidly evaporates. As Porter concludes, “If conservatives truly believe that the United States needs more babies, they might temper their hostility to programs that help families afford them.”

Ed Kilgore’s “Are Old Folks Souring on the GOP?” at The Washington Monthly raises the interesting possibility that Republicans are losing their most reliable edge in the mid term elections, putting 2014 into serious play for Dems. Kilgore quotes Charlie Cook on Greenberg Quinlan Rosner polling data:

Democrats are closely watching the voting pattern of older Americans, a group that voted heavily Republican in the 2010 midterm and, to a lesser extent, in 2012; in March and July surveys, older voters’ responses are showing only about half the GOP margin they voted last November and about a quarter of the Republican margin in the 2010 midterm election. It’s unclear what exactly is going on, but this formerly strong Democratic group had moved pretty heavily against Democrats and Obama since he took office. Some signs indicate, however, this trend could be diminishing somewhat. And because older voters tend to vote in disproportionately higher numbers in midterm elections, any changes could be important.

Kilgore explains further:

In 2006, when Democrats made major gains, they took 49% of the senior vote. In the next mid-term, they lost seniors by a catastrophic 59-38 margin. And the Democratic share of the senior vote in the last three presidential elections has dropped from 47% in 2004 to 45% in 2008 to 44% in 2012. So it would be natural to expect a pretty bad number in this demographic for Democrats in 2014, with perhaps an even higher percentage of the electorate at play.
If, as GQR’s numbers suggest, the Republican momentum among old folks has not only diminished but reversed, that’s a very big deal.

With respect to GOP strategy to address eroding support among seniors, Kilgore adds:

As Cook notes, it’s not clear why this is happening if it is happening. But if Republicans are paying close attention to the phenomenon, as they should, the implications are pretty clear for those whose ideological inclinations point in this direction anyway: it’s time for another big Mediscare effort linked to attacks on Obamacare that encourage white retirees to view the Affordable Care Act as a raid on their hard-earned benefits and hard-earned earned tax dollars to show welfare on those people. Since Republicans also believe there’s big political hay to be made on Obamacare at the other end of the age spectrum, with young folks who perceive their need for health insurance as about as high a priority as their need for real estate on Mars, it’s really a no-brainer, and what “the base” would want to focus even if it didn’t represent a political opportunity.

Yet, with Republicans always trying to screw around with Social Security and Medicare, and increasing reports of GOP state officials welching on earned pensions hundreds of thousands of seniors have been counting on, you have to wonder, what took them so long?

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:
Those big headlines about the bankruptcy of Detroit were like a punch in the gut to those of us who grew up in working class in the Midwest, and they should sober anyone who cares about working families all across America. But the headlines alone don’t tell the whole story. When you look at the details about who will benefit, you notice that the bondholders will probably come out just fine, while the folks who will lose by far the most are the city’s pensioners and workers. Shocking, right? That is the kind of country we are living in right now, and you see it every time you look around. Here are two headlines from the Washington Post business pages the other day, lined up side by side on the page:
“Strong Earnings Send Stocks To New High”
and
“US Middle Class Still Suffering Amid Economic Recovery”
Detroit’s bondholder-friendly, worker/retiree-unfriendly bankruptcy, and the two headlines above tell the story of an economy — and a society — where the priorities are completely screwed up. This is not how you build a healthy sustainable economy. And remember, this is an economy that is officially four years into recovery, with a Democratic president who ran on a platform of fighting for the middle class. The fact that this economy is so lopsidedly in favor of the top 1 percent is not the result of a short term glitch in the economy; it is not something we will grow our way out of. Tinkering will not make the changes we need. Having success in electing a few more Democrats alone will not fundamentally alter these realities. We are going to have to build a movement that can be sustained for the long haul, and we are going to have to recognize that the short term legislative and electoral fights we need to fight are not going to be able to make the big changes that have to be made. Short term tactical wins are great, but it is not nearly enough, not even close. We are going to have to recognize the big things going on in the economy that must be addressed, the things that are foundational to the economic situation we find ourselves in.
The first foundational thing we have to understand is that we are living in an era where not only is wealth concentrated, but entire industries are becoming so concentrated as to be near-monopolies. The pioneering work of Barry Lynn in his book Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, and in numerous other articles written as a fellow at the New America Foundation, documents this trend — and its terrible impact on our entire economy and society — in industry after industry. Everyone knows that Wal-Mart has become the dominant retailer in the country, that Amazon dominates the book industry and other forms of online commerce, that a few banks have become Too Big To Fail, that there are fewer and fewer airlines. But what Lynn’s work has documented is how this trend toward consolidation, concentration, and near-monopoly power has taken over industry after industry, and how this fact has been crushing entrepreneurialism and has warped our economy in a hundred different ways. The DOJ stopped enforcing most of the anti-trust laws during the Reagan administration, and no administration since has picked up the task since. We are all paying the price, and it is an incredibly steep one.
The second foundational thing we need to understand is how the financialization of the economy is weakening the entire middle class. The Too Big To Fail banks are 30 percent bigger than they were in 2008, and the industry takes a higher and higher share of both total corporate profits and the entire economy all the time. Financial services as a share of the economy has tripled since 1950. Compensation in the financial industry used to be about the same as that of other industries, but since 1980, it has skyrocketed and is now 70 percent more on average. Financial services now make up more than 40 percent of all corporate profits in this country. What all this means is that a very small number of bankers is now hoarding more and more of the money circulating in the economy. And it’s not like they are investing in mom-and-pop start-ups, either: more and more of the money is going into speculative trades and overseas investment, and less and less into entrepreneurs trying to start a new business.
The third foundational thing is that we are stuck in a low wage economy, and the “recovery” isn’t doing anything to make that better. After steady and consistent growth in the 40 years after the New Deal, average wages compared with inflation have been pretty flat in the 40 years since. This recovery is the worst we have ever seen in terms of wage growth, because the new jobs that are being created are mostly low wage jobs. Median earnings have actually fallen 4 percent since the recession ended (since it ended!) Labor unions no longer have the bargaining clout to make wage gains; the minimum wage hasn’t gone up in six years; decent paying manufacturing and construction jobs are very rare. And in the meantime, inflation in college tuition, health costs, groceries, and utility rates doesn’t seem to be slowing much at all. You want to know the worst insult of all? It is government contractors that are creating more low-wage jobs than any other company in America — just what we need, our own government tax dollars driving down wages.
These three factors are killing the 99 percent. They explain why even in the midst of a four-year economic recovery, we still have way too many people unemployed and even more on the edge hanging on for their dear lives. The fact is that neither political party seems to want to do much about any of this. There are more Democrats who are willing to speak out, and the number is growing, but it is nowhere near enough — most politicians are stuck in short term tactical battles on issues that rarely get to the main point. President Obama is planning on doing a series of speeches, and the rumor is that they will take a populist tack. I hope so, but whatever he says isn’t coming soon enough, and is unlikely to do anything on these big topics that matter.
There are a few political leaders who are saying what needs to be said, thank goodness. Elizabeth Warren is so good that TV networks are taking down their own video feeds because she so embarrassed their reporters, and she keeps fighting for the middle class and against the wealthy special interests trying to rip them off. And there are some other fighters as well. But more Democrats need to be willing to take on the powers that be.
Mostly, it is going be those of us outside of government. We are going to have to build a movement that keeps fighting for a better economy for working families. It has happened before in American history, and will have to happen again. A friend of mine notes that when we look back on the 1960s, where people stood on civil rights is what people in politics were judged by. That was their seminal struggle, and they risked their lives to win the battle. 50 years from now, he notes, it will be where people stood on issues about breaking up the power of concentrated wealth. That is our generation’s ultimate struggle, and we’d better get to the barricades.

The following is cross-posted from an e-blast by DCorps and Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund:
Last week, House Democrats released a new policy agenda called “When Women Succeed, America Succeeds.” Their agenda is divided into three broad policy areas–pay, work and family balance, and childcare–with policies in each category aimed at addressing fundamental challenges in women’s economic lives.
While the ways in which American families earn income has changed dramatically over the last 30 years, the laws, assumptions, institutions, and structures that govern the economy have not. This has left many women on the edge–or struggling to keep up with demands at work and costs at home.
A new survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund confirms that a women’s economic agenda could not be more timely or necessary. In this survey, we find that an agenda specifically focused on women’s economic issues is not only the right thing to do for American women; it is also good politics for Democrats.
The Democrats’ policy agenda is stronger and more motivating when it includes women’s economic policies. We tested a range of policies on pay equity, childcare, education, worker protections, and family leave. Those who heard the women’s policies are more likely than those who did not to say that Democrats are better on the economy, looking out for the middle class and looking out for women. This is especially true among key subgroups, including all women, unmarried women, and college-educated women.
Read about the policies that voters care about now in a new memo by Stan Greenberg, Erica Seifert, and Page Gardner.
Read about our survey results.
See the graphs of the survey results.
See the topline questionnaire.

The following article by John Russo, is cross-posted from Working Class Perspectives:
In November 2011, I published a New York Times op-ed entitled “How Obama Can Win Ohio Again.” Now, with my pundit credentials firmly established (sic), I am opining that Ohio Governor John Kasich will win reelection in 2014. This could play havoc with Democrats’ hopes for the 2016 Presidential election.
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are usually thought of as swing states that are gradually but decisively getting bluer. But the 2010 midterm elections were a watershed for Republican governorships in those states. Four right-wing Republicans came to power and immediately mounted formidable attacks on traditional Democratic supporters, including unions, blacks, and women. Major political struggles ensued in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio, but with very different results. Following the 2012 Presidential election, where all four states went for Obama, those attacks continued, especially on issues of immigration, abortion, and same-sex marriage.
In Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio in 2011, rust belt Democrats counterattacked. Particularly important were mass mobilizations around collective bargaining changes and recall elections for state officials. While receiving most of the media attention, the Wisconsin actions did little but slow the state’s draconian labor law changes, though they did put Republican legislators on notice for the dangers of overreach. The same was true in Michigan, where changes occurred on a piecemeal legislative basis. The mobilization in Ohio was more successful, resulting in a stunning repeal of anti-union legislation, SB5. Since then, Governor John Kasich and Ohio Republican legislators have scaled back direct attacks on unions and collective bargaining.
This year, Republicans legislatures have once again gone on the offensive in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, while Kasich is playing a somewhat different game in Ohio. For example, after the 2012 Presidential election, Michigan Governor Richard Snyder extended the attack on organized labor and broke his promise not to enact a right-to-work law. Republican legislatures in all four states want to push their political advantage in hopes of turning at least two of these four rust belt states red in the 2016 elections. They are doing this by securing their base support on social issues such as abortion, immigration, and same-sex marriage while continuing their attack on unions and voting rights.
Kasich has taken a more arms length approach than fellow governors on wedge issues and stayed away from anti-union legislation. Several conservative Ohio legislators have attempted to push right-to-work legislation, but taking a cue from Kasich, Republican legislators did not provide legislative support for the initiative, and it died in Committee. No doubt, the last thing that Ohio Republicans want in 2014 is a repeat of the 2011 mobilization that brought together labor and community groups and defeated SB5.
While attacks on labor have decreased, Kasich is touting Ohio’s improving economy. At the 2012 Republican Convention, where Obama’s economic policies were being trashed, Kasich gave a speech touting all the economic improvements, tax cuts, and job creation in Ohio and bragging that Ohio was a great place to do business. Party leaders didn’t much like the speech, but Kasich’s “enterprise” approach made sense. Ohio has seen a substantial but uneven economic recovery, in part due, ironically, to the continuing benefits of the stimulus package and auto bailout and the growth of the oil and natural gas industry. The result has been that Ohio’s economy grew faster than the national average, and since 2011 the unemployment rate has fallen below the national average.
Even though that economic growth has primarily benefited whites, and minorities continue to lag in the current economic recovery, Kasich might have race on his side in 2014. In Ohio and elsewhere, Republican have pinned their 2014 election hopes on attracting white working-class voters who didn’t participate in the 2012 Presidential elections. Washington Post exit polls showed that about half of Ohio voters fall into this category, and 42% voted for the President. Nationally, only 36% of white working-class voters supported Obama. If Obama brought black and Latino voters to the polls in 2012, Republicans like Kasich hope that they can prevail in 2014 because minority voters won’t show up. Obama won’t be on the ticket, Ohio urban centers are being depopulated, and the Supreme Court has largely gutted the Voting Rights Act. All of that could depress minority turnout, making the white working-class vote statistically more important to Ohio Republicans.
Overall, Kasich’s strategy of avoiding major mobilizing issues and following traditional Republican fiscal conservatism has resulted dramatic increase in his approval ratings. So solid does Kasich appear that some potentially strong Democratic candidates, such as Richard Cordray, former governor Ted Strickland, and Representative Tim Ryan, have decided not to run against him. The Ohio Democratic Party has been left with a weak gubernatorial candidate, Ed Fitzgerald, a one-term Cuyahoga County Commissioner who some see as a position jumper. To make matters worse, the ODP is being led by the same apparatchiks whom many blame for the 2010 Republican sweep. That, in turn, led to redistricting that will make it impossible for Ohio Democrats to gain control the legislature in this decade.
So what could go wrong for Kasich? He must keep the most conservative elements of his party under control. Already this year, conservatives nationally and in Ohio have pushed laws that attack poor whites, seniors, and women. Cuts to food stamps and Medicaid primarily hurt whites, for example. In Ohio, 65% of households receiving food stamps and 61% of those on Medicaid are white. Also, despite widespread public support for same-sex marriage and less restrictive abortion policy, new Ohio Republican legislation dramatically restricts abortions. Republicans are also fending off challenges to Ohio’s Constitutional ban on same-sex marriages. Changes in voter registration, which would primarily affect minorities and seniors, could work against Kasich by sparking another round of organizing and resistance. Finally, a political scandal like the one that dogged Ohio Republican candidates in 2006 could help Democrats campaign on a clean up government message. One may be brewing over the lack of transparency in Kasich’s privatization of Ohio’s job development agency.
Taken together, these conservative attacks, potential scandals, and union fears of right-to-work legislation following a successful reelection could make Kasich vulnerable to a broad mobilizing effort. But only if Ohio Democrats can develop a strong economic and legislative message and tap into Ohio’s organizing culture. Absent this, it seems likely that Kasich will win Ohio again. And if other rust belt governors follow suit and take a more moderate approach in the short term, this could mean problems for Democrats in 2014 and make the 2016 Presidential election much more competitive in these crucial states.

From Jonathan Chait’s “Anarchists of the House: The Republican Congress is testing a new frontier of radicalism–governmental sabotage.” at New York Magazine:

The Republican Party has spent 30 years careering ever more deeply into ideological extremism, but one of the novel developments of the Obama years is its embrace of procedural extremism. The Republican fringe has evolved from being politically shrewd proponents of radical policy changes to a gang of saboteurs who would rather stop government from functioning at all. In this sense, their historical precedents are not so much the Gingrich revolutionaries, or even their tea-party selves of a few years ago; the movement is more like the radical left of the sixties, had it occupied a position of power in Congress. And so the terms we traditionally use to scold bad Congresses–partisanship, obstruction, gridlock–don’t come close to describing this situation. The hard right’s extremism has bent back upon itself, leaving an inscrutable void of paranoia and formless rage and twisting the Republican Party into a band of anarchists.
…The Republican strategy has transmogrified from a particularly ruthless version of legislative opposition into one in which incidents of reckless behavior–tactics like hostage-taking, say, or economic or political sabotage–become more frequent each passing month. After they won the midterms, giddy Republicans took their victory not just as a check on Obama but as a full abrogation of his presidency.
…The rational way to view these events is that Republicans have marginalized themselves. But the hard-liners see it differently. In their minds, every bill that passes is a betrayal by their leaders. They know that letting Democrats carry bills through the House has been the leadership’s desperate recourse to avoid total chaos, and since chaos is their leverage, they are now working feverishly to seal off that escape route. This year, an increasing proportion of conservative media is given over to conservative activists’ extracting pledges from Republican leaders not to negotiate with Democrats….Conservatives have increasingly come to see the entire process as a morally unacceptable compromise of their ideals. “The idea of Boehner’s negotiating with Pelosi over how to proceed is implausible,” a recent story by Jonathan Strong, a National Review reporter, noted as an aside. “It would telegraph weakness.”
…In the actual world, the economy is recovering and the deficit, currently projected at half the level Obama inherited, is falling like a rock. Yet messianic Republican suicide threats in the face of an imagined debt crisis have not subsided at all. The swelling grievance within the party base may actually be giving the threats more fervor. The reign of the Republican House has not yet inflicted any deep or permanent disaster on the country, but it looks like it is just a matter of time.

In short, there is no realistic possibility of congressional Republicans negotiating in good faith on anything of substance. Given that regrettable reality, It should be clear to all thinking swing voters that the only way out of the approaching disaster is a resounding defeat for the GOP and it’s embrace of anarchy and sabotage.

The following article,by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo.

Despite warnings of some of its wisest strategists, the GOP is racing headlong into a political box canyon — and potential political marginality.
On issue after issue, the GOP has veered far from the mainstream of the American electorate. Worse, they are swimming upstream against a tide of changing demographics — and an electorate with ever-increasing numbers of young voters from the “millennial generation” that polls show is the most progressive generation in half a century.
So far, at least, efforts to “rebrand” the GOP have simply collapsed. And even though most Americans are primarily concerned with jobs and the future of the economy, the GOP leadership in Congress insists on focusing on cultural issues that pander to a narrow segment of the electorate — and are downright unpopular.
They seem to be practicing the politics of “subtraction” — which is not a good plan if you want to achieve an electoral majority.
A quick look at the issue landscape tells the tale.
Women’s Reproductive Rights. Women constitute more than a majority of the voting electorate and poll after poll shows that women want the right to make their own reproductive choices without interference from predominantly white, male lawmakers. But the GOP has made its campaign to ban abortion job one. And for many GOP lawmakers and activists it’s not just reproductive choice — it’s banning contraception. Really — in 2013.
Whether in state legislatures like Texas, or the House of Representatives in Washington, instead of jobs, the GOP focuses on passing laws that require doctors to insert unwelcome, medically unnecessary ultra-sound devices into women’s vaginas.
Recently, a GOP consultant advised Republicans to never utter the word “rape” — but they can’t help themselves. You’d think the spectacular collapses of the Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock Senate campaigns in 2012 would have made the point. But just this week, the sponsor of Texas’ restrictive abortion law, Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, explained that after being raped, that “rape kits” are used “clean out” a woman and help protect her from pregnancy. No, Jodie, “rape kits” are used by police to collect evidence to prosecute rapists — not as a primitive form of Plan B — which you presumably oppose.
Immigration Reform. The fall elections sent an unmistakable message that the GOP will be unable to compete for votes from Hispanics and Asian Americans — two fast-growing components of the new American electorate — if they continue to oppose immigration reform.
Some in the Senate got the message. But there is every bit of evidence that many House Republicans will continue to worry more about their narrow Tea Party base than the long-term ability of the GOP to compete.
Earlier this week, Public Policy Polling (PPP) published a poll of voters in the districts of seven GOP lawmakers who represent competitive districts with sizable Hispanic or Asian American populations. The poll found that, by almost two to one, voters said they would be less likely to vote for the GOP incumbent if they voted against immigration reform.
Just as importantly, by equal numbers, they said that if the GOP blocked immigration reform, they would be less likely to vote for Republicans generally.
That means that if Republicans in the House block immigration reform with a path to citizenship for immigrants, they could likely lose seven of the 17 seats the Democrats need to take over the House. And there are many additional districts where the poll results would likely be the same.
Blocking immigration reform could cost the GOP its House majority, but still — notwithstanding the political cover provided them by pro-immigration evangelical and business groups, and many GOP senators — you see large numbers of House Republicans who are dead set against it.
Climate Change and the Environment. Polling shows that very few issues move “Millennials” more than the threat of climate change. But many in the GOP are oblivious, or down-right anti-science — or they are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Big Oil. The result: they are driving away millennial voters in droves.
Millennials and the public at large support legislation to cut down on greenhouse gases, both because they are concerned with public health and because they correctly understand that renewable energy development underpins the economy of the future.
Gun Violence. As if reproductive choice wasn’t enough to drive away women voters, most GOP lawmakers have sold their souls to the NRA and oppose commonsense legislation to limit gun violence.
Of course there are big exceptions, like Senator Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania who noticed his state includes massive numbers of suburban women and decided to co-sponsor the Toomey-Manchin bill to create universal background checks.

Read more…

From Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight post, “The White House is Not a Metronome“:

In a series of articles last week, the writer Megan McArdle asserted that Republicans have about a 75 percent chance of winning the White House in 2016. “Mostly, the White House flips back and forth like a metronome,” she wrote. “Voters just get tired after eight years.”
As other commentators, like Henry Farrell, have pointed out, one can find almost any pattern in presidential results if one looks hard enough. By manipulating the definition of incumbency, the time frame that one examines or the measure of success (e.g., the popular vote or the Electoral College), or by selectively excluding “outliers” or exceptional cases, the potential for cherry-picking and overfitting is high. (In layman’s terms, an overfit statistical model is one that is engineered to match idiosyncratic circumstances in past data, but which is not an accurate picture and makes poor predictions as a result.)
…as Jonathan Bernstein writes, looking at wins and losses in such a binary way is probably not the best way to evaluate the evidence. Many United States elections, as in 2000 and 1960, have essentially been ties, where the most minor variations in the flow of the campaign might have changed the winner of the Electoral College or popular vote. With this in mind, it is better to examine margins of victory.
Incidentally, this is close to a universal principle of statistical analysis. It’s almost always more robust to evaluate the margin by which a given outcome occurs than to look at the variable as black or white, win or loss, hit or miss, on or off.

In conclusion, says Silver, after much wonky analysis:

…Popular presidents might seek and win another nomination, while unpopular ones might retire or be rejected by their party. It could be that voters react differently to parties seeking third terms in the era of the 22nd Amendment than they did in the years before it, and that the incumbent party’s batting average will wind up being meaningfully higher or lower than 50 percent in the long run. But we have little empirical evidence for this yet.
Instead, some humility is called for when interpreting the evidence. On the eve of an election — when the polls have become very reliable, and we know the identities of the candidates and something about the state of the economy and the mood of the country — it is possible to make relatively bold and precise forecasts about the outcome. But none of this applies three and a half years in advance.

Add to all that the fact that we have entered an uncharted reality, in which one party is increasingly defined by unhinged political nihilism, and it becomes even more clear that all bets should be off — until a couple of days before election day.