Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. disagrees with those who say the deal Dems cut to avoid major filibuster reform amounts to a cave to Republicans.
At the National Journal, for example, Jill Lawrence argues that the deal is flawed because “Senate Republicans are letting President Obama fill a few important slots in his administration, but they haven’t given an inch where it really counts–on the federal judges who could define his legacy for generations.” But Dionne takes a look at the larger picture and observes:

For all the railing against dysfunction in the nation’s capital, very little actually happened to overcome it — until this week. That’s why the agreement to begin putting an end to Senate filibusters of presidential nominees is a very big deal. It is an acknowledgment that the only way to stop political bullying is to confront the bully.
On its face, the accord allowing seven of President Obama’s executive-branch nominees to gain confirmation without having to reach 60 votes would seem to be a climb-down by Democrats. They shelved plans to change the Senate rules and to bar filibusters of the president’s appointments to agency and Cabinet jobs.
But this understates the magnitude of the victory. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell would have let the nominees through only if the Democrats promised not to alter the rules for the rest of this Congress. Yet such a capitulation would have opened the way for future filibusters….Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stoutly refused to sheath the sword of a subsequent rules battle…

Dionne notes that Republicans blocked confirmation of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “because they were still mad that the agency, which expands consumer power over financial institutions, had been created in the first place.” Dionne quotes Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who candidly observed in a rare display of humilty “Cordray was being filibustered because we don’t like the law…That’s not a reason to deny someone their appointment. We were wrong.”
Cordray’s confirmation with 66 votes represents “a genuine shift in the balance in Washington toward consumers and away from banking interests,” says Dionne. He credits Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Tom Udall of New Mexico for pressing their colleagues and energizing progressives.
Dionne sees the deal as a “major advance for those who want government to do its job.” He warns, however, that “it will take continuing pressure to keep the obstructionists at bay.”

From Erica Seifert’s DCorps post “Jobs You Can’t Live Off“:
While Wall Street aims for another record-breaking week, we would like to remind economic forecasters of the harsh reality facing the rest of the country.
Last month, we conducted focus groups among voters in Orlando, Florida and Columbus, Ohio. These voters were not talking about their investment portfolios. Instead, much of what we heard was about the quality of jobs available to middle-class and working people. People believe that America is producing jobs “you can’t live off.” And they are right.
When we conduct focus groups on the economy, we almost always read the most recent jobs report to see and hear participants’ reactions. In the middle of the recession, when so many were unemployed, our focus group respondents would get angry and doubt that jobs had been created at all. When participants in our most recent groups heard the new jobs report, however, they were less angry than skeptically resigned. The discussion was totally focused on the quality of jobs. Participants tell us that they have had to replace “one career job” with two or more “disposable jobs.” They understand that “you have to work twice as hard to make half as much as you used to.” And they ask, “how do these jobs stack up to the cost of living?”
As a result, sacrificing in big and small ways has become part of their routine. One woman in Columbus, Ohio told us, “After we pay our bills we make sure that our children eat but there’s times my husband and I can’t afford it and we eat peanut butter, potatoes, or rice. We make sure our children are eating 4 food groups but we can’t.” She works full-time. Her husband has two jobs.
Unsurprisingly, they say “I can’t afford to lose right now.”
Despite big gains on Wall Street, more people tell us that they have moved in with family members. Or that they get by with the help of neighbors, family, friends, and the PennySaver. But when three jobs per household are not enough, it is difficult to say that “getting by” is an appropriate level of economic security for American families. And when three jobs per household are not enough, it is difficult to say that there are not deeper structural problems with the American economy.
You can read our new memo about “The New American Economy” here. Or check out a colorful display of quotes from those groups here.

In her Washington Post column, “The Appalling GOP,” Katrina vanden Heuval, editor of The Nation, has unearthed a quote from President Eisenhower, which says a lot about the sorry state of the modern Republican Party:

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things … their number is negligible, and they are stupid.

Sound like anyone you know? As vanden Heuval adds:

Eisenhower was a conservative and frugal president who insisted on balancing the budget. He put a lid on Pentagon spending. He defended Social Security and labor laws, while building the interstate highways and funding the national education defense act. He was re-elected in a landslide.
Now it looks like the “stupid” wing of the Republican Party has taken over. Our nation suffers as a result. And Republicans are likely to pay the price for that.

And may that price be a Democratic landslide in 2014.

The following article by TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore, is cross-posted from The Washington Monthly:
I haven’t seen it yet, but I’d bet that by sundown today someone will have written a column arguing that Brian Schweitzer’s decision against running for the Senate ought to give Harry Reid pause in pursuing filibuster reform. It’s in the nature of national political chatter to overreact to something like Schweitzer’s decision–someone refusing the opportunity to spend 16 months of living hell in hopes of a “promotion” to the U.S. Senate still seems a bizarre and irrational act in Beltway circles, doncha know. And Reid’s decision on filibuster reform is assumed to be a very short-term proposition based on whether or not he’s sure he’ll be majority leader the day after tomorrow.
In reality, the news from Montana was good for Republicans, but hardly some sort of ’14 clincher. TNR’s Nate Cohn looks at the new landscape carefully today, and basically raises the probability of a Republican Senate takeover next year from remote to unlikely but possible. A lot depends on how you look at Senators like Landrieu and Hagan and Begich, whose track records contradict the partisan dynamics of the states they represent to a greater extent than is typical in these straight-ticket-voting days.
Even if Republicans get all the breaks and regain Senate control, they won’t, of course, control the White House for the ensuing two years. And in 2016, they will face the more daunting proposition of a presidential-year electorate that’s a lot younger and darker than the midterm electorate, and a very difficult Senate landscape. No matter what happens in Montana, or indeed anywhere in 2014, the much-feared GOP “trifecta” of control of both congressional chambers and the White House will still be a long way off and far less than an even bet.
But you know what? Even if I knew for a fact that Republicans would regain the Senate in 2014 and keep it in 2016 while taking back the White House, I’d still be urging Harry Reid to “go nuclear.” For one thing, the odds are very high that a Republican “trifecta” government, acutely aware of the demographic tide against which they are swimming, would cast aside the filibuster like a cardboard barricade if it got in its way (or just liberally utilize loopholes like the budget reconciliation procedure they used in 2001 to enact Bush’s tax cuts, and were planning to use to enact the Ryan Budget this year had things turned out right last November). And for another: at some point gridlock just becomes poison for progressive government and politics. The only thing rivaling a period of conservative “rule” as a threat to the Republic is a period in which neither party can prevail and an incoherent combination of policies misgovern the land. This is how we’ve wound up with a federal government trying hard to undermine a national economic recovery; a massive health reform law that cannot be fully implemented; and a voting public that blames the “other party” for everything that goes wrong, since no one is fully in charge. If you remember, moreover, that the kind of filibustering habit the “nuclear option” is intended to curb is a historical anomaly never intended by the Founders, the case for foreswearing reform become almost completely unintelligible. Reid should cover his ears and go “la-la-la” and if necessary keep a toe on the nuclear “button.”

Richard L. Hasen of the University of California, Irvine School of Law has an interesting paper, “Three Wrong Progressive Approaches (and One Right One) to Campaign Finance Reform” at the Social Science Research Network. From the abstract :

…Since Citizens United, outside spending in federal elections has increased markedly, such as a 245 percent increase in outside spending on presidential elections, a 512 percent increase in outside spending on House elections and a 1,438 percent increase in outside spending on Senate elections, raising dangers of corruption and increasing political inequality. The Court could well take further steps toward deregulation in its new term, when it considers the constitutionality of aggregate limits on campaign contributions. While Citizens United leaves ample constitutional space for the enactment of effective disclosure laws, disclosure is a poor substitute for more serious and effective campaign regulation including limits on outside spending and ample public funding. Even worse, Congress has not fixed holes in our disclosure laws exploited by clever campaign finance lawyers which not only increase the danger of corruption but also deprive the public of important information to make intelligent voting decisions. The prospect for legislative responses in the near term are bleak, when Democrats cannot get Republicans to sign on even to disclosure fixes. The Federal Election Commission has become mired in ideological struggle, with three Republican Commissioners marching lockstep to disable what remains of campaign finance enforcement. President Obama, who campaigned as a reformer, has done nothing significant to help the cause of reasonable campaign regulation, and in fact his own new 501(c)(4), Organizing for America, will push politics further toward deregulation.
The current reality is far from progressive ideal campaign finance regulation for the 21st century: strong protections for robust political debate, a free press, and multi-dimensional partisan competition; programs such as voucher-based public financing fostering the voice and power of all voters; a strong disclosure regime, deterring corruption and providing valuable information to voters; and sensible limits on contributions and spending to inhibit political corruption and promote political equality.
What are progressives to do to move from bleak reality closer to this ideal? In this short essay, I argue against three misguided approaches to reform: seek to amend the Constitution to overrule Citizens United; pay lip service to the cause of reform but take no concrete steps against the worst problems with the system; and throw in the towel, giving up the fight to limit money in politics. Each of these approaches likely will make things worse rather than promote the progressive ideal. Instead, I argue that progressives should seek to preserve and protect what remains of campaign finance law today, especially contribution limitations, public financing, and disclosure laws, and progressive thinkers and lawyers should lay the intellectual groundwork for effective campaign reform proposals and constitutional arguments to be presented to a future, more progressive Supreme Court majority.

You can download the whole paper at the link at the bottom of the abstract

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The right to collective bargaining in the workplace is a human right — just as fundamental as the right to free speech or the right to vote.
It is enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was adopted in 1948.
Three quarters of a century ago, our country passed labor laws that gave every worker the right to organize a union in their workplace to negotiate wages and working conditions with their employers.
When the largest percentage of private sector workers were in unions in the 1950’s, the economy grew and the gap between high and low income Americans dramatically dropped in what economist Paul Krugman calls the “Great Compression.”
Collective bargaining and growth of the labor movement were the principal engines that led to the creation of the American middle class — the growth of wages, the 40-hour work week, and the weekend.
The reason collective bargaining is so fundamental should be obvious. Markets are good at allocating many resources in an economy. But left to their own devices they do a terrible job distributing the fruits of production among the people who create products and services.
Economic history shows irrefutably that without collective bargaining, the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer. Unless workers have the right to bargain as a group over wages and working conditions, employers have every incentive to hire workers who will work for the lowest possible wage in the worst possible conditions. And in a globalized economy with literally billions of increasingly skilled workers in developing countries, there is always someone who is willing to do the same job for less.
In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2012 union members had salaries that were — on the average — 20 percent higher than their non-union counterparts.
The only way to protect middle class incomes in the United States is to protect the precious right of collective bargaining and to extend it to most Americans. In fact, we would all be much better off if every worker in every place of employment could exercise their right to collective bargaining — the same way we are all better off when everyone has the right to vote.
But for over three decades Wall Street and the largest corporations have waged an incessant war to effectively take away our ability to collectively bargain. The percentage of private sector jobs covered by collective bargaining agreements has shrunk from 35 percent in the 1950’s when middle class wages were on the increase, to only 6.6 percent in 2012.
The one bright spot has been public sector workers, where 35 percent had collective bargaining rights in 2012. And everyone has seen the overt assault on public sector collective bargaining that Republican politicians have waged in state after state.
The Right Wing’s campaign against collective bargaining is all about one thing — allowing a tiny segment of our population to siphon off more and more of the country’s wealth and leaving less and less for everyone else.
The reason the GOP wants to strip the rights of public sector unions is to cut taxes on the rich.
And the reason Wall Street and CEOs want to eliminate collective bargaining and unions is because they want to keep more money for themselves and give less to the workers who actually produce the products and services that are created by the companies they own — it’s that simple.
That kind of rapacious, unbridled greed may be good for them, but it spells disaster for the middle class and the broader economy. If worker incomes don’t go up at the same pace as increased worker productivity — their ability to create more products and services per hour — then there ultimately won’t be anyone with the money to buy the products and services they create and the economy will stagnate and collapse. Henry Ford knew that very well, when he said he wanted to pay his workers enough to allow them to buy the very cars they manufacture.
For the last several years, Senate Republicans have unleashed an insidious new plan to eliminate our right to collective bargaining. The GOP has abused Senate “filibuster” rules to prevent up or down votes on the President’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that enforces the labor laws that allow ordinary people to organize and engage in collective bargaining.
Without theses appointments, the NLRB does not have a quorum and cannot make rulings — effectively ending the enforcement of labor laws in the United States. And that is exactly the GOP’s goal.
This week Senate Democrats will likely bring a vote to the floor that would modify Senate rules and put an end to the GOP’s stealth attack on labor law enforcement by requiring an up or down vote on President Obama’s appointments to critical federal posts — including the NLRB.
That rules change would also stop the GOP’s efforts to undermine the Wall Street Reform law that seeks to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial meltdown.
The GOP has used every trick in the book to prevent the approval of a permanent director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). That’s because the law requires that in order for the CFBP to use its full powers to crack down on the abuses of big Wall Street banks, that a permanent director must be appointed by the President and approved by a majority of the Senate. The President appointed an outstanding director, Richard Cordray — the former Attorney General of Ohio — and a majority of the Senate has been prepared to approve his appointment for months.
But the minority Republicans have prevented an up or down vote on his appointment as well. They are holding his nomination hostage at the behest of Wall Street, and demanding that the law be changed to weaken the agency’s power to prevent precisely the kinds of abuses that lead to the financial collapse and precipitated the Great Recession.
The GOP leadership has attacked this rules change as a Democratic “power grab.” In fact, the new rule is about ending Republican obstruction — demanding that appointments be given up or down votes — invoking the most fundamental premise of democracy: majority rule.
The real power grab has been the way that big Wall Street bankers and high-flying corporate CEO’s have stolen the economic security of most Americans. In fact, a tiny minority of very wealthy Americans has seized economic power in America and is doing everything they can to prevent the majority from reclaiming their economic rights.
By standing up to Republican abuse of rules in the Senate, Democrats will be standing up to the economic abuse inflicted on most Americans by a tiny minority of unelected, wealthy speculators and CEOs who think they are entitled to be “masters of the universe.

Dear Readers:
In recent weeks Republicans have started to convince themselves that they can win future elections just by increasing white turnout — making outreach to Latinos, African-Americans and other groups unnecessary.
TDS Contributing Editor Ruy Teixeira and frequent contributor Professor Alan Abramowitz of Emory University carefully evaluate this theory and demonstrate that it’s based on faulty premises and weak data. As they conclude, “No, Republicans, ‘Missing White Voters Won’t Save You.'”
TDS Strategy Memo: Ruy Teixeira and Alan Abramowitz Show Why The “GOP Can Win With White Votes Alone” Strategy is Doomed to Failure”
To read the Memo, Click HERE.
We believe you will find the Memo both useful and important.
Sincerely Yours,
Ed Kilgore
Managing Editor
The Democratic Strategist
www.thedemocraticstrategist.org

From Mike Hall’s post, “Contest Backfires on Social Security Privatizer ” at AFL-CIO Now:

Oh, the sweet irony.
Pete Peterson is the conservative billionaire who is a major financier in the effort to dismantle, cut and privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Recently he and his foundation held a contest asking folks to submit videos on why it is important to “fix” the national debt of which, he and his foundation falsely claim, Social Security is a major contributor.
Sometimes the best-laid plans for a propaganda campaign can go awry. The winner of the $500 grand prize determined by popular vote on the website came from the completely opposite side of Peterson’s cut Social Security argument.
The “Just Scrap the Cap” winning video features rapping seniors rhyming their way to the conclusion that the way to shore up Social Security’s long-term finances isn’t through cuts or privatization but by scrapping the payroll tax cap on Social Security. That means billionaires like Peterson and rich CEOs would pay the same Social Security tax that low- to upper-middle-income workers do. Currently, any income above the $113,700 cap is exempt from the Social Security tax.
Peterson’s check went to Robby Stern of Social Security Works, the group that produced the video. Stern signed it over to Social Security Works and said:

We will use the $500 to finance our education efforts and our Scrap the Cap campaign. We want to save Social Security from Peterson and his band of wealthy supporters.

At The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky comments on the “new consensus among most Republicans and conservatives” that they need not fear the rapidly growing Latino vote because they’ll have even more white voters in the bag. As Tomasky explains:

…There’s an assumption embedded in the argument that no one disputes: namely, that whites will always be as conservative as they are now and will always vote Republican in the same numbers they do now. This assumption is wrong. White people–yep, even working-class white people–are going to get less conservative in coming years, so the Republicans’ hopes of building a white-nationalist party will likely be dashed in the future even by white people themselves.

Tomasky notes that Republicans are counting on the “less-educated white vote,” and notes of a Brookings Institution/Public Religion Research Institute poll on immigration attitudes:

…It’s the first poll I’ve seen that breaks the white working class into four distinct age groups (65-plus, 50 to 64, 30 to 49, 18 to 29) and asks respondents attitudes about a broad range of social issues. And guess what? White working-class millennials are fairly liberal!…Click on the above link, scroll down to page 44, and look at the charts. On most questions, white working-class respondents in all three other age groups yielded results that were pretty similar to one another’s, but the youngest cohort was well to their left.
White working-class young people back gay marriage to the tune of about 74 percent. Another 60 percent say immigrants strengthen the United States (the totals for all three other age groups are below 40 percent). About 56 percent agree that changes immigrants have brought to their communities are a good thing. Nearly 40 percent agree that gays and lesbians are changing America for the better (more than double the percentages in the other three age groups).

Tomasky adds that “only 22 percent of white working-class millennials are evangelical, compared with 32 percent as a whole and 42 percent of seniors. And an amazing 38 percent of the group call themselves religiously unaffiliated.” Further,

All in all, not your father’s white working class. Sure, their views will become a bit more conservative as they age and have kids and own property. More will start attending church, undoubtedly. But the striking differences between their views and those of the three older groups are consistent, they are uniform, and they are pretty vast. (The poll did not ask about their attitudes toward African-Americans, about which I’m curious; I would expect less though still meaningful departure from the older cohorts.)
…These young people grew up in the America of Will and Grace and the relentlessly multi-culti Sesame Street just as surely as children in Berkeley and Takoma Park did. They won’t vote like their counterparts who grew up in Berkeley and Takoma Park, but they–and certainly their kids–just aren’t going to be carrying around a lot of the racial resentments that their grandparents shoulder every day.

By the time the 2020s roll around, concludes Tomasky, “Finally, the Republican Party will be the party of true equality, having equally alienated every racial and ethnic group in America.” And if Dems smartly court these young white voters, that day could come even sooner.