Republican Congresswomen Cathy McMorris Rodgers apparently had nothing better to do with her time than hatch a facebook scam bashing President Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act. So she requested her constituents to submit Obamacare slams. But Jen Hayden reports at Daily Kos that it didn’t go quite as planned. Some examples:

I work for cancer care northwest. We actually have more patients with insurance and fewer having to choose treatment over bankruptcy. Cathy, I’m a die hard conservative and I’m asking you to stop just slamming Obamacare. Fix it, change it or come up with a better idea! Thanks
My daughter is fighting for her life with stage 3 breast cancer! We are about to enter a second go round of diagnostic procedures and possibly more treatment after two full years of treatment! So yah! The ACA is more than helping! I resent that our rep thinks the only problems involve her personal story!
My story is that I once knew 7 people who couldn’t get health insurance. Now they all have it, thanks to the ACA and President Obama, and their plans are as good as the one my employer provides–and they pay less for them. Now, that’s not the kind of story you want to hear. You want to hear made-up horror stories. I don’t know anyone with one of those stories.
And now my daughter, diagnosed with MS at age 22, can have insurance. What do you plan to do with her?
Obama Care saved us when my husband was unemployed and we couldn’t afford coverage. We might have been ruined without it. My husband could not have had the eye surgery needed after an accident. So grateful.
The Republican solution to the Affordable Care Act? Let people drown in debt, clutter our emergency rooms, and die from lack of coverage due to pre-existing conditions. No thanks, “Congresswoman”. Some of us care more about our fellow Americans than trying to bash the President. Keep trying to scare your followers with phony horror stories, though

Hey, maybe Rep McMorris Rodgers could get Sen. Ted Cruz to submit something.

Re the ruling by a federal judge in Texas against President Obama’s executive order shielding immigrants from deportation, Greg Sargent notes “nothing significant has changed. Republican leaders still need to decide whether they are going to agree to fund the Department of Homeland Security cleanly, while dropping their effort to use DHS funding as leverage to roll back Obama’s actions. And if they do decide to do that, they will still need Democratic support to get it through the House, which would enrage conservatives.” Republicans hope that their shutdown threat will help persuade a half-dozen moderate Democratic Senators to support them. Sargent adds, “Today’s CNN poll finding that a majority would blame Republicans over Obama for any such shutdown — by 53-30 — once again shows that shutdown fights institutionally favor presidents over Congresses.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s post, “Can the GOP superego win the day?” has several insightful nuggets on the topic, including this one: “Most Republicans realize that one of the biggest obstacles to their building a majority in presidential elections is the fact that Latino Americans have come to feel that the GOP just doesn’t like them very much. As the party’s now much neglected “Growth and Opportunity Project” autopsy after the 2012 election put it, “if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies.”…In any event, Republicans hold the patent on government shutdowns, so they can forget about shifting responsibility for any interruption in services at the Department of Homeland Security to the president or the Democrats.”
Stephen A. Nuno reports at NBC News, “The Latino National Survey is considered one of the most reputable academic studies of Latinos and includes over 8,600 completed interviews on a wide range of political topics. When it comes to party identification, the LNS reports that among Latino registered voters, 61 percent say they are Democrats while 22 percent identify as Republican and 17 percent as Independent.”
“The fact that vast sums of money were being spent by liberal and conservative groups along with the national parties on the same small set of Senate races probably limited the impact of such spending. Not only was one side’s spending generally matched by the other side’s spending, but the sheer volume of spending probably exceeded the point of diminishing returns in many of these states.” from Alan I. Abramowitz’s Crystal Ball post “Why Outside Spending is Overrated.” Abramowitz conducts a regression analysis to measure the impact of spending and other variables and concludes, “Republicans made major gains in the 2014 Senate elections but the findings reported here indicate that outside spending by conservative groups had little or nothing to do with those gains. The main reason why Republicans did very well in 2014 was that Democrats were defending far more seats than Republicans and many of those seats were in states that normally favor Republicans based on recent presidential voting patterns.”
Chris Kent of The Breeze, James Madison University’s newspaper, reports on a student-led initiative to get a polling site on campus, like Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, George Mason University and Liberty University all have. No doubt less enlightened states than VA lack such on-campus polling sites. Meanwhile, what is needed is a national law that facilitates on-line voting for out-of-state students and could be accessed anywhere. A young friend at the University of Georgia tells me that he is certain many of his friends who skipped the midterm elections would gladly use such a site. Maybe a nation-wide student movement could help get such a law.
Apropos of our recent staff post, “2016 A banner Year for Democratic Women?“,” do read Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s New York Times article, “Proof That Women Are the Better Dealmakers in the Senate,” citing a Quorum study, reported by Mariel Klein, which found, “Over all, women were far more likely than men to work across the aisle. Quorum found the average female senator co-sponsored 171.08 bills with a member of the opposite party; for the average male senator, that figure was 129.87.”
At The Hill, Jesse Byrnes reports, “Six in 10 Americans want a higher minimum wage while one-fifth are opposed to such a plan, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll released Thursday…Sixty percent also favor requiring employers to offer paid sick leave, including about half of Republicans polled.”
According to Crowdpac, which provides numerical scores for candidates on the basis of the political contributions they received, their speeches and votes, the Democratic presidential candidate field for 2016 thus far ranges across a more narrow ideological spectrum than was the case in 2008, reports Derek Willis at The Upshot.
Well this is rich, wingnuts bashing Jeb Bush for, gasp, honoring Hillary Clinton for her public service. As Tim Alberta reports at National Journal: “ForAmerica, a conservative grassroots group with a Facebook following of more than 7 million members, released the video Thursday morning. It shows footage of Bush awarding Clinton, the former secretary of state, with the Liberty Medal at a ceremony hosted by the National Constitution Center.” Of course they work in a Benghazi reference to try to shame JB.

NPR’s Pam Fessler has an update on the counter-offensive against voter suppression: “There are many such proposals among the 1,200 voting bills already introduced in state legislatures this year…There are also proposals in Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, New York and Oregon to do something completely new — automatically register eligible citizens to vote, unless they opt out…Underhill says there are also many measures that would expand early and absentee voting…”Right now, there are 37 states that offer such an opportunity for their voters,” she says. “But that leaves another 13 states that don’t have one of those options. And it looks like there is legislation in nine of those.”
So how important is same-day registration? At The Daily Pennsylvanian Dan Spinelli reports, “A study conducted by the public policy organization Demos concluded that states with same-day voter registration average a 10 percent greater turnout than states without the policy. According to the study, same-day registration especially increased voter turnout among blacks. In North Carolina, which recently eliminated its same-day registration program, 41 percent of voters who registered on the 2012 Election Day were black, compared to just 20 percent of the population.”
In not-absolutely-all-Republicans-are-into-voter suppression news, here we have a, gasp, Republican, OK state Sen. David Holt, pushing for expanding early voting hours, online registration (20 states now have it) and, get this — all mail elections by 2020 (3 states now have it, CO, OR and WA). Interestingly, the conservative Oklahoman editorial board supports his proposals.
Legislative obstruction is not such a bad thing — when it prevents harassment of immigrants under the cover of “homeland security.”
Yes, it’s early and it’s only one poll. But even in the wake of Jeb Bush’s big media offensive, Jim Saunders of the News Service of Florida reports that “A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday shows former Gov. Jeb Bush and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a virtual tie in a hypothetical 2016 presidential race in Florida. The poll gave 44 percent to Clinton and 43 percent to Bush…the poll also shows the Democrat Clinton leading another native son, Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, by a margin of 49 percent to 39 percent in Florida.”
Heady days for Koch brothers’ fav WI Gov. Scott Walker, who now leads in IA, NH and Drudge polls in quest for GOP presidential nomination. But he lags in FL, OH and PA polls.
But Walker’s “boots on the ground” “anywhere and everywhere” interview with Martha Raddatz is likely to bring some blistering heat from opponents in his own party, as well as progressives. Conor Friedersdorf adds at The Atlantic, “the GOP consensus on foreign policy remains sufficiently ill-considered that even thoughtless comments often go unchallenged within the party…This shortcoming may well hand Election 2016 to Democrats.”
Just in time for 2016, here comes a new era of political video ads, custom-tailored for facebook.
Greg Sargent puts the latest GOP noise about repealing Obamacare into the context of the upcoming Supreme Court decision King v. Burwell. “The repeal vote is a reminder that the only consensus GOP position on health reform is to blow up Obamacare and replace it with nothing. That could have important implications for King v. Burwell…today’s repeal vote — symbolic or not — confirms, doing away with Obamacare subsidies for everyone in the country who is receiving them is the actual consensus GOP position.” Could be a very tough sell in 2016.

Former Mayor of Denver Wellington Webb weighs in on where Dems went wrong in the midterm elections: “Unfortunately, we Democrats had little to no respect for, and therefore almost invisible identification with, the accomplishments of President Obama, who had accumulated a litany of successes. We, as Democrats, should have been proud of and owned up to our record of sterling accomplishments from 2008 to 2014: Gasoline prices are down, unemployment is down, health care accessibility is available to all, and, we even justifiably assassinated Osama Bin Laden. Not once, did we mention one Democratic success. This omission was the most shameful outcome of this 2014 election…We ran away from our successes – and Republicans fought against them, even though our efforts improved the lives of Americans. We should have been talking about everything from increasing the minimum wage across the nation, to fighting to protect Medicare and Social Security and providing a national security plan to protect America. But we didn’t. Shame on us Democrats for not amplifying our improvements to the country.”
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has a point here. But a big tent party is going to have its public spats, and right after an election is better than before one.
E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s “How Obama and the Democrats Can Save Their Agenda” cuts through the GOP’s triumphalist fog with a salient overview: “Now, it will be a Republican Congress vs. a Democratic president. Voters will have a much easier time seeing who stands for what…Obama and progressives should spend the next two years accomplishing as many useful things as they can, blocking regressive actions by Congress, and clarifying the choices facing the nation’s voters. And they’ll get much further by doing all three at once.”
Politico’s Alex Isenstadt takes a look at “The Obama Republicans,” who hold congressional seats in 26 districts President Obama won in 2012, and concludes that the thinning of the vulnerables in the Democratic herd may free up resources to win back a healthy portion of those seats in 2016.
At The Hill Tim Devaney and Lydia Wheeler report on “The GOP’s Strategy to block Obama’s Regs.”
The National Journal’s Alex Roarty probes a much-buzzed question, “Can Clinton Win Back the White Working Class?” and quotes TDS Founding Editor Ruy Teixeira: “Democrats, to win regularly, not just the presidency but other levels of government, they need to do better among … noncollege whites than they’ve been doing,” said Ruy Teixeira, a demographer who has written extensively about the electoral advantages inherent in the nation’s changing demographics. “You can’t … just rely on the coalition of the ascendant…Are they going to convince the majority of these voters that they have a plan and it’ll definitely work?” Teixeira asked. “Well, that’s probably not going to happen. You don’t have to convince most of these voters. You just have to convince a persuadable part of them.”
At The Plum Line Paul Waldman makes a good point, that the future makeup of the Supreme Court is a hugely consequential and substantive issue. Making it a pivotal issue with swing voters will require some creative messaging.
From Paul Rosenberg’s wonky Salon.com post, “Why are these clowns winning? Secrets of the right-wing brain“: “There are things going on in our social and political world that we don’t have names for–and because we don’t have names for them, we can’t think and talk about them coherently. So, we have conservatives on the one hand acting on their mythos, mistakenly believing it’s true as a matter of logos–which is one kind of incompetence–and yet, nonetheless reshaping reality through the power of reflexivity. (Think of how invading Iraq in response to 9/11 helped bring ISIS into existence, for example.) On the other hand, we have liberals seeing things only in terms of logos, who can’t understand how wildly mistaken conservatives can nonetheless reshape the world to reflect their paranoid fantasies, because they’re missing the crucial concept of reflexivity (and even the very concept of missing concepts, the concept of hypocognition)–which is another, very different, but very real form of incompetence.”
What took him so long?

The blogger Spocko at Hullabaloo has an informative read for those who were glad to see Google dump the Koch Brother’s wing nut wrecking ball, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). As Spocko explains:

This is a big deal. It comes on the heels of a number of other corporations like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo! having left ALEC. These things don’t just happen magically. There are a lot of people who have worked very hard to make that happen.
… I think it’s important to acknowledge this success and see what we can learn from it. Like the actions used to get advertisers to leave Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other RW radio hosts, part of this is educating sponsors and advertisers about the person or entity’s comments and actions so people can decide they don’t want to taint their brand with the association.
We often think that if we just give people the facts they will make the right decision. That does apply in some cases, especially when dealing with Vulcans. Other times we think people only make decisions to maximize revenue, and that’s true when dealing with Ferengi. But humans are more complex, and we need to look at and combine multiple methods to persuade, convince or pressure.

Spocko links to a list of organizations which were instrumental in persuading Google to bail from ALEC’s funding. Spocko goes on to reveal that ALEC’s opposition addressing climate change rubbed Google’s execs the wrong way and was probably hurting their image among socially-conscious young people who are concerned about the environment. In addition,

CEOs aren’t always the final decider, but when you can line up multiple reasons ranging from financial through emotional and into brand image they can be convinced to take a different course of action.
ALEC and Rush appeal to people’s most selfish impulses. They use greed, fear and ignorance to get what they want. They want us to believe that everyone thinks like they do, when in fact it is a self-selected minority that holds these beliefs. They say if you only believe them, you will be among society’s winners.
But when we go to the interested third parties and educate them, many of those real winners are disgusted with what they hear. Combining that education with appeals to both personal and stated corporate values systems and you have a solid package to help them decide to walk away.
If you want to convince people within the corporate form to walk away from a right wing media personality or a right wing legislation bill mill, learn who they are, what they say their company is about and ALL the things that they care about. We have lots of ways to find that out now, just Google them.

Good advice, certainly. There are numerous reasons for companies that seek a measure of social cred to back away from ALEC’s Kool-Aid. But let’s not assume that even large companies that support ALEC are all driven by an ardent wingnut perspective. Some are run by execs who are merely politically, well, low-information. They have to be educated about the destruction ALEC is wreaking on America. The coalition effort lead by Common Cause to meet this challenge is a great start, which merits more support from progressives.

Molly Parker’s “Democrats roll out new strategy to motivate folks to the polls” at the Southern Illinoisian” describes the challenge Dems face in Illinois — and a template Dems can use in other states: “…5.1 million Illinoisans voted in the last presidential election, compared to 3.6 million that voted in the last midterm election. That means some 1.5 million people sit out midterm elections. Of those 1.5 million, roughly 1.2 million of those non-voters are Democrats…so-called “drop-off voters” have been identified in every county and every precinct in the state. Party leaders are going door-to-door and asking these folks to sign a card pledging to vote in November. The cards will be mailed back to them before the election as a reminder of their pledge, in addition to three separate mailers they will receive…” She quotes Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin: “”If we bring theses people out, a large portion of these people out, we’re going to win elections.”
At Daily Kos Jeff Singer’s “Want to make sure every vote counts? Get involved in these key races for secretary of state” spotlights often-overlooked, but critically-important election contests, which deserve more attention from Democratic political operatives.
At the Atlantic Molly Ball’s “Inside the Democrats’ Plan to Save Arkansas–and the Senate” notes “To beat the odds, across the country Democrats have mounted an ambitious political organizing effort–the first attempt to replicate the Obama campaign’s signature marriage of sophisticated technology and intensive on-the-ground engagement on a national scale without Obama on the ballot. The effort is particularly noticeable in states like Arkansas and Alaska, which have small electorates and which haven’t been presidential battleground states for a decade or more. (In 2004, John Kerry initially tried to compete in Arkansas, but pulled out of the state three weeks before the election and lost it by 10 points.) In Arkansas, campaigns traditionally begin after Labor Day; this year, the airwaves have already been blanketed with campaign ads, from both the candidates and deep-pocketed outside groups, for months…This year marks Democrats’ attempt to roll out the program on a national scale. Dubbed the Bannock Street Project, after the Bennet campaign’s Denver headquarters, it will, by the time the election is over, comprise a 4,000-employee, $60 million effort in 10 states. The voter-contact metrics recorded in each state are uploaded in real time to the Washington headquarters of the senatorial committee. While such efforts are commonly described as turnout operations, Matt Canter, the committee’s deputy executive director, says there’s more to it than that. “This is about much more than [get-out-the-vote],” he tells me. “This is not just identifying supporters and turning them out. This is actually building sustained voter contact programs through multiple face-to-face conversations that can persuade voters to change their minds and vote Democrat.”..Democrats believe they have a technological edge in their ability to use data to model and target voter preferences. Republicans, who have invested heavily in technology since 2012, are working to catch up. But on a basic level, turning out voters relies on the simple arithmetic of the application of resources–bodies on the ground, close to their communities, tirelessly recruiting volunteers who will work to activate their neighbors and family and friends…”
Re the recent UNH/WMUR poll showing Scott Brown down just two points from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Blumenthal, Ariel Edwards-Levy and Rachel Lienesch say “Stop Freaking Out Over The Results Of One Poll.”
At Forbes, pollster John Zogby concludes from a new Zogby Analytics poll that “In 2010, it was older, whiter, and more conservative voters who turned out, while many of the Democrats’ base voters stayed home. Thus far in 2014, it looks like Democrats may show up at the polls and independents may just stay home because they don’t like either party.”
Susan Davis illuminates why “Alaska becomes crucial frontier for Senate Democrats” at USA Today.
It appears that President Obama’s “economic patriotism” meme may have sturdy legs. Americans are at long last ready to take a stand against corporate ex-pats exploiting U.S. taxpayers, then skipping out on the bill. Anne Tucker’s “Curbing Corporate Inversions Through Public Pressure for Economic Patriotism” includes this observation: “Feared negative public reaction tipped the scales in favor of remaining a U.S. company for Walgreens, with market pressure nearly causing the opposite result. Public pressure for economic patriotism and corporate stewardship must be a part of any permanent solution. It will mitigate market-based profit maximization pressures. Brand identity and consumer loyalty are not subject to the kind of loopholes that riddle the tax code or the partisan gridlock in Washington, D.C.” It’s a great slogan for Democratic candidates looking for creative ways to call out their Republican opponents’ refusal to protect American jobs. UPDATE: This report suggests Burger King may also need to be challenged on its “economic patriotism.”
The National Journal’s Scott Bland and Adam Woolner report on the larger contributions to pro-Democratic Super-PACs to help Dems hold their senate majority.
The “voting with your wallet” app gets a lot of diss, but I’m thinking Buypartisan is a good tool for identifying companies which fund Republicans. Sure it’s maybe too much of a hassle to use for groceries and everyday purchases. But for bigger ticket items like stocks, phones, cell services services and cameras etc., why not? If Google and Facebook are supporting ALEC, or Verizon, ATT and T-Mobile support Ted Cruz, why should Dems give them any play?

“MIcrosoft Ditches ALEC In Latest Blow To Conservative Group,” reports Dylan Scott at Talking Points Memo Live Wire. Scott adds: “Microsoft joins Coca-Cola, General Motors, Bank of America, and Proctor & Gamble as some of the major corporations that have severed their relationship with ALEC, according to CNET. Others — like Google, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, and Yelp — remain involved with the group.”
Via Plum Liner Greg Sargent’s “From a vulnerable red state Democrat, a strong pro-Obamacare ad“:

Nate Cohn explores several reasons why “Alaska Might Be More Friendly to Democrats Than It Appears” at The Upshot.
Also at The Upshot, however, Josh Katz argues that “Georgia Is the Reason the G.O.P. Is Edging Up in the Overall Senate Race.”
New Suffolk University/USA Today poll has Democratic U.S. Sen. Hagan up 2 percent with LVs in NC, a stat tie.
The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin is not so dismissive as others of the likelihood that Texas Governor Rick Perry may lose a ruling on the two-count indictment (“abuse of official capacity” and “coercion of a public servant”) that has been filed against him, as Toobin explains in his article “Why Rick Perry May Be Out of Luck.”
At Fox News Latino Elizabeth Llorente explains why “Despite Expected Low Turnout, Latino Voters Could Prove Crucial In Some Midterm Races.” She quotes Fernand Amandi, a managing partner at polling company Bendixen & Amandi International: “The question for the midterm elections is, given the extra emphasis on immigration, and the economy and the impact of the healthcare program,…will that cause a Hispanic spike in voting, like we saw in 2006, or will Hispanics revert to the historical pattern of less than a regular turnout?”
A paragraph from Al Hunt’s latest Bloomberg View column suggests an important messaging point that might bear some repetition: “The U.S. economy has turned around with the unemployment rate dropping from as high as 10 percent in the first year of the Barack Obama presidency to a little over 6 percent now. That hasn’t registered with many voters. In the most recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, the public was dissatisfied with the economy by an almost two to one ratio. Almost half of Americans thought the U.S. still was in a recession; the deep downturn caused by the financial crisis actually ended five years ago.”
Maybe not. But the gender gap suggests she will more likely vote Democratic.

Embedded in the furor over the MS GOP SEN runoff is an argument by conservatives about the legitimacy of pursuing African-American votes that could prove toxic the more it is articulated. I discussed it at some length today at TPMCafe:

[F]or the immediate future, we’re going to hear ever-more-shrill arguments from the right in Mississippi and elsewhere that by appealing to African-Americans on the positive grounds of potency in securing federal dollars, and the negative grounds that the challenger is a bit of a neo-Confederate, Cochran’s campaign replicated the Democratic “race card” appeals that conservatives so violently resent.
Since state Sen. McDaniel’s campaign cannot repudiate the very idea of outreach to African-Americans (particularly in a state where black folks make up well over a third of the population), it’s forced into an argument that outreach can only be pursued via the right kind of message to the right kind of African-Americans. McDaniel’s campaign manager, state Sen. Melanie Sojourner, exposed the perils of that argument in a Facebook post wherein she pledged never to endorse Cochran no matter what the party decides:

Throughout my campaign and since I’ve repeatedly made comments about how I felt the Republican Party was doing itself a disservice by not reaching out to conservative African-Americans. Where I’m from, in rural Mississippi, I grew up knowing lots a [sic] God-fearing, hard-working, independent conservative minded African-American family’s [sic]. On the McDaniel campaign we had two young men from just such family’s on our staff.

So it seems anything other than appealing to self-consciously conservative African-Americans is forbidden.
Aside from the implied suggestion that the vast majority of African-Americans are not God-fearing or hard-working, and may actually be selling their votes for government benefits (a charge at the rotten heart of the many extant GOP versions of Mitt Romney’s “47 percent video”), how likely is it that the kind of minority outreach deemed kosher by this and other conservative activists could actually succeed? Not very.
Despite the many rationalizations and revisionist takes we hear about the GOP and race during the 1960s, the truth is Republican support among African-Americans collapsed dramatically at the moment of the first conservative movement conquest of the GOP, in 1964, and has never recovered.
From the New Deal through 1960, the GOP share of the African-American vote in presidential elections averaged about 30 percent; it was 32 percent in 1960, in part because a lot of African-American clergy shared their white Protestants’ antipathy to the Catholic John F. Kennedy (who also, of course, was supported by many southern segregationists). But in 1964, even as Barry Goldwater was sweeping the white vote in much of the deep south after he voted against the Civil Rights Act, the GOP share of the black vote plunged to 6 percent. (That didn’t much matter in Mississippi, as it happens, since African-Americans outside a few cities were largely barred from voting; Goldwater took 87 percent of the vote in the Magnolia State).
African-American support for GOP presidential candidates has since peaked at 15 percent twice in years the party promoted a “centrist” image (1968 and 1976). The Great Communicator of the conservative message, Ronald Reagan, pulled 12 percent and 9 percent of the black vote in his two general elections. There was great excitement in 2004 when George W. Bush, deploying both “compassionate conservatism” and hostility to same-sex marriage, won 11 percent of the African-American vote. And now, as of 2012, the vote share is back down to 6 percent, right where it was in 1964.
The idea that becoming more conservative is going to lift the prospects of Republicans among African-Americans is a complete hallucination. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say, reflecting Sojourner’s comments, that conservatives want African-Americans to change before they are worthy of outreach.

So do Republicans really want to be a Big Tent party that’s not mainly limited to older white folks? Not, it seems, if that means they have to change.

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:
This first week of June is a big one politically and policy-wise. Today the EPA issued incredibly important new rules about carbon pollution at power plants — arguably the most significant executive action ever, and one that will certainly drive the Koch party (i.e. the Republicans) absolutely bonkers. A big debate about student loans is getting going in the Senate (sign on to support Elizabeth Warren’s bill to allow refinancing of student loans). And going into the summer vacation season in July and August, June will be the last month before the fall campaign season end game to define the terms of the 2014 election debate.
Big things are shaking, but one thing is very important to understand in this highly charged political environment: The 0.1 percent wealthy elites and their supporters in the media are going to continue to insist that any attempt to rein in their power and wealth is outrageous and immoral. In true Ayn Rand-Social Darwinist fashion, this philosophy says that the wealthier you are, the more morally upright you are, and any suggestion that you pay more in taxes or pay higher wages is evil.
My organization, American Family Voices, wants to remind everyone of the underlying philosophy of these millionaires and their friends. It is a serious subject, because this is what the 2014 election, and in fact every election in this era, is about. But you know what? This philosophy is also so extreme it is also funny. Outrageous, yes. Revolting, sure. But these folks are so arrogant, it’s laughable… Shark Tank host and investor Kevin O’Leary thinks that “it’s fantastic” that the wealth of the world’s 85 richest people is equal to that of the 3.5 billion poorest people; Nicole Miller CEO Bud Konheim compares Americans making $35,000 a year to the rich in India; and “Money Honey” finance anchor Maria Bartiromo claims the rich are being held hostage (!!!).
Watch this video to hear what the plutocats (yes, you read that right) are saying. This video is actually the second in a series about finance fat cats, because there are too many of these kinds of comments to stop at just one video. Here’s the first one we did. And the comments will keep coming, so we expect we will keep doing more of these videos.
The plutocat philosophy would be pure comedy, if its implications weren’t so tragic. If our society is built along the lines these Rand-acolytes want, it will be a disaster economically, but even more importantly, it will be a nightmare in terms of morality. As the most recent decade just proved most conclusively, letting billionaire investors on Wall Street do whatever they want without much regulation will result in a poorer, weaker society. But as Bobby Kennedy once said:

“Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.
It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.
It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.
It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

The plutocats who judge our national morality by the notion that whatever is best for the wealthiest among us are both dangerous and laughable. Check out our video, have fun with it, and then get down to the business of making sure their philosophy is defeated.