Democrats disappointed about the Kentucky elections have another off-cycle contest just ahead that is creating some unlikely optimism: the “jungle primary” runoff for governor in Louisiana. I wrote about the contest at Washington Monthly this week:

Looking at the polls (there are now three of them) showing Democrat John Bel Edwards with a double-digit lead over U.S. Sen. David Vitter in the November 21 Louisiana gubernatorial runoff, you’d figure Republicans would be focused on a unity effort to bring Vitter’s defeated GOP rivals into the tent. If so, the effort suffered a blow this morning, when Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne endorsed Edwards in the runoff. Kevin Litten of the Times-Pic has some background:

Although Dardenne originally indicated he wouldn’t offer an endorsement in the general election, the source said his thinking on the subject evolved over time. Dardenne and Edwards had been talking since election day (Oct. 24), when Dardenne and Republican candidate Scott Angelle were defeated by Edwards and U.S. Sen. David Vitter.
“He went from ‘No I won’t’ to ‘I would if…’ to ‘I might have to,’ to ‘Let’s do this now,'” the source said.
Both Dardenne and Angelle, were the subject of withering political attacks during the primary launched by U.S. Sen. David Vitter’s campaign and the super PACS supporting him. Angelle struck back hard, and Dardenne complained bitterly about the ads during the last two weeks of the campaign during debates before running an ad criticizing Vitter in the last days of the campaign.

Dardenne finished fourth in the primary with 15% of the vote.
Vitter countered with an endorsement from former Gov. Mike Foster, who left office in 2004. You’d normally figure a big target of any Republican unity campaign would be the sitting two-term Republican governor of the state. But according to the Baton Rouge Advocate, Bobby Jindal is in “not in a hurry” to endorse a successor:

Both candidates remaining in the governor’s race — Democrat John Bel Edwards and Republican David Vitter — have repeatedly criticized Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal on the campaign trail.
And it appears Jindal isn’t eager to pick which of the two he would prefer succeeds him in the Governor’s Office.
The National Review caught up with Jindal in Boulder, Colorado, on Wednesday and asked whom he prefers.
Jindal has frequently butted heads with both men.
“We haven’t made that decision yet,” Jindal, who is running for president, demurred when asked if he planned to endorse in the race, NRO reports. “That doesn’t mean we won’t. But we haven’t made that decision yet.”
It’s no secret that Jindal and Vitter have an icy relationship. And as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, Edwards has been one of Jindal’s most vocal opponents at the State Capitol.

Well, I guess bipartisanship’s not dead in Louisiana. Not only do you have a former Republican candidate for governor endorsing a Democrat, but nobody much likes Bobby Jindal.

HuffPo’s senior polling editor Natalie Jackson explains “Here’s Why The Kentucky Polls Were Wrong” in reporting that Democratic candidate for Governor Jack Conway was leading (with one exception) in the late polling. In one key graph, Jackson notes, “It’s not a disaster for pollsters, but the industry did miss the mark.”turnout in the race was only around 31 percent. That means the polls probably overshot turnout projections in trying to identify likely voters. This is the same problem that we see in primary polling — when turnout is low, it’s very difficult to predict who will vote. And lower turnout often favors Republicans.”
At FiveThirtyEight.com Harry Enten opines, “It’s not yet clear whether pollsters simply projected that more Democratic voters would show up than actually did or whether undecided voters broke overwhelmingly for the Republican candidates. The former suggests an electorate modeling problem that could be a big problem during the presidential primaries, when turnout is low. On the other hand, trouble modeling the electorate would be less of an issue in the 2016 general election, when turnout is at its highest…Yet, I would be careful of making too much of the Kentucky results. Only three polls not sponsored by a candidate came out during the final three weeks of the campaign. That’s far less polling than was conducted in other recent polling mishaps…”
In Chicken Little reportage, Josh Kraushaar makes a case at National Journal that “Matt Bevin’s Kentucky Win Is the End of an Era–and That Should Scare Democrats Everywhere.” Overstated though it may be, Kraushaar’s post does offer an interesting observation: “The GOP’s out­reach to Afric­an-Amer­ic­an voters is con­sequen­tial–even if it isn’t provid­ing im­me­di­ate di­vidends. Bev­in wasn’t just a Re­pub­lic­an out­sider be­cause of his apolit­ic­al bio­graphy. His cam­paign also looked a lot dif­fer­ent than pre­vi­ous can­did­ates, and he traveled to parts of the state that Re­pub­lic­ans rarely ven­tured. At his vic­tory speech Tues­day night, he was ac­com­pan­ied by his nine chil­dren–four ad­op­ted from Ethiopia–and his Afric­an-Amer­ic­an run­ning mate Jenean Hamp­ton, who be­comes the first black statewide of­fice­hold­er in the state’s 223-year his­tory.”
Robert McCartney addresses an important question about Tuesday’s election at The Washington Post, “Did gun control cost McAuliffe and Democrats the Virginia election?” McCartney reports, “In a race that proved decisive in enabling Republicans to retain control of the Senate, Republican Glen H. Sturtevant won the 10th District seat after benefiting from a huge turnout in conservative Powhatan County, which analysts attributed in part to the gun issue.” McCartney’s article also notes another interesting possibility: “”Donald Trump probably gets some of the credit” for the Republicans’ success, said Christopher Newport University political scientist Quentin Kidd. “The primary has raised awareness. Republicans are just more tuned in right now.”
Estelle Erasmus argues at Newsweek that Hillary Clinton should emphasize more forcefully “her dedication to advocating for women and children at home and abroad, a topic that has yet to be as boldly embraced by any prior presidential candidate.” Erasmus says that child development and education are priorities that enjoy enormous public support, and should become a central focus of her campaign.
Bush 41 distances himself from the neocon lunacy of Dick Cheney and “arrogance of Donald Rumsfeld,” both architects of the Iraq mess. Along with the global financial meltdown, the Iraq quagmire helped Bush 43 earn the designation of “worst president ever” in the opinions of millions, as well as 61 percent of a poll of 109 historians. Wonder what 41 thinks of the current crop of GOP presidential aspirants.
“Then there are the lesser crimes,” adds M.W. Jacobs at Huffpo, “theft of the 2000 election, multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts for cronies, pandering to anti-gay bigotry during his reelection campaign, withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol lowering greenhouse gas emissions, withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, invalidation of the Geneva Convention protocols against torture, and here are 300 anti-environmental actions listed by the Sierra Club.” All of which should make voters more than a little concerned about the presidential ambitions of Bush 43’s stoutest defender, brother Jeb.
A reported half million petitioners want Saturday Night Live to disinvite Donald Trump as guest host in their upcoming show. Latino voters are not amused by the prospect of Trump’s immigration bigotry becoming fodder for public merriment. There is also grumbling among other presidential campaigns about giving choice media exposure to humanize an already over-exposed presidential contender to the detriment of his competition.
It appears that Ohio’s reefer referendum may have increased voter turnout a smidgen or two, according to the Associated Press. “Unofficial results show more Ohioans voted in Tuesday’s off-year election that included a marijuana legalization issue than in last year’s midterm election highlighted by the race for governor…Nearly 3.2 million people, or about 42.4 percent of Ohio’s registered voters, cast ballots for this general election…The turnout topped the roughly 40.7 percent reported last November, when Gov. John Kasich was re-elected. The number of ballots cast also is higher this year.”

So whatever you think is happening to support levels for Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, there’s not much doubt Dr. Ben Carson is enjoying a significant boom in support. At TPMCafe today, I examined the varying sources of his support, and warned Democrats not to dismiss his campaign too readily:

The conventional wisdom is that Carson is beloved for being a genial, soft-spoken figure and a non-politician with a distinguished biography. That may be true, though this does not necessarily distinguish him from many thousands of his fellow Americans. An equally obvious factor is that he is African American, and Republicans frustrated with being accused of white identity politics if not outright racism love being able to support a black candidate who is as conservative as they are.
Less obvious — and finally being recognized by political reporters spending time in Iowa — is that Carson is a familiar, beloved figure to conservative evangelicals, who have been reading his books for years.
Another factor, and one that I emphasized in my own take here two months ago, is that Carson is a devoted believer in a number of surprisingly resonant right-wing conspiracy theories, which he articulates via dog whistles that excite fellow devotees (particularly fans of Glenn Beck, who shares much of Carson’s world-view) without alarming regular GOP voters or alerting the MSM.
As David Corn of Mother Jones has patiently explained, the real key for understanding Carson (like Beck) is via the works of Cold War-era John Birch Society member and prolific pseudo-historian W. Cleon Skousen, who stipulated that America was under siege from the secret domestic agents of global Marxism who masqueraded as liberals. Carson has also clearly bought into the idea that these crypto-commies are systematically applying the deceptive tactics of Saul Alinsky in order to destroy the country from within–a theme to which he alluded in the famous National Prayer Breakfast speech that launched his political career and in the first Republican presidential candidates’ debate.
It’s not clear how many Carson supporters hear the dog whistles and understand what his constant references to “political correctness” connote (it’s his all-purpose term for the efforts of America’s secret enemies to mock or silence cognoscenti like himself, Beck and Skousen), but added with his other advantages, it fills out his coalition with depth as well as breadth.
And that is why the broadly held assumption that Carson will, like 2012 candidate Herman Cain, quickly fade from contention as voting nears is worth rethinking. For one thing, Carson’s race is just one source of his appeal, so identifying him with the last black conservative to run for president is highly questionable.
Cain was not a revered figure before running in 2012, beyond those who listened when he sat in for an Atlanta-based radio host. He also was not exactly a non-politician, having run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate. But the most important reason to stop identifying Carson with Cain is simple: Cain’s loss of his once-high poll ratings were not caused by a voters getting tired with a “flavor of the month” or realizing his slim qualifications; he was brought down by a series of sexual allegations that escalated from multiple claims of sexual harassment to a long-term extramarital affair. Cain never admitted any wrong-doing, but he also never convincingly rebutted the allegations, and all the smoke convinced many observers there might be fire. He left the race on his own terms, but after losing most of his altitude.
There’s zero reason to think Carson has any such skeletons in his closet. The one thing we know about his background that is politically dangerous is his testimonial work for a subsequently fined nutritional supplement company. But unless it turns out he was paid a lot more than seems to be the case, he’s only in hot water if he cannot soon keep his story straight. Being a straight shooter is extremely important to his image.
He seems to have successfully back-pedaled on his one easy-to-understand policy heresy, a proposal to replace Medicare and Medicaid with heavily subsidized health savings accounts, which he now describes as an “option” for beneficiaries (that, too, is problematic, but not as much as his original “idea”).
So there remains what should actually disqualify Carson: his extremist, paranoid “world-view” which treats regular boring old center-left liberals as conscious and systematically deceitful would-be destroyers of this country bent on imposing a Marxist tyranny via “politically correct” suppression of free speech and confiscation of guns.
There’s unquestionably a constituency for this point of view, but we may never know whether it would outnumber the Republicans baffled or horrified by it until such time as one of his rivals or the heretofore clueless media start talking about it. If they don’t pretty soon, then one theory of the 2016 GOP nominating process could come true: conservatives want to rerun the 1964 elections, and they’ve finally found their Barry Goldwater.

This is simply not a good year to assume anything conventional from Republican voters.

Republicans won a couple of significant electoral victories yesterday, including the governorship of Kentucky and holding on to their edge in the Virginia state senate. The Republican businessman, Matt Bevin beat Democratic Attorney-General Jack Conway in Kentucky by an impressive 53 to 44 percent (county results map here.).
Bevin almost certainly benefitted from KY’s red state demographics, along with coal industry support, ‘outsider’ (not a career politician) status and a late onslaught of attack ads linking Conway to President Obama’s energy policies. There is also speculation that Bevin may have been boosted by having an African-American running-mate Jenean Hampton. The vote tally compared with October polls suggests either a weak turnout effort on Conway’s behalf, a strong ground game in support of Bevin, or some combination of both.
Yesterday’s elections weren’t all bad news for Democrats. In Mississippi, Attorney General Jim Hood, the last Democrat to hold a statewide office, was re-elected to a fourth term by an impressive 56 percent-44 percent vote. But also in Mississippi, Republican Governor Phil Bryant was re-elected in a 2-1 landslide.
National Democratic leaders were probably more disappointed, however, by the results in the Virginia legislative elections than by Conway’s loss in KY. As Patrick Wilson reports at the Virginia Pilot,

Virginia Republicans handed Gov. Terry McAuliffe a defeat in Tuesday’s General Assembly election, holding their Senate majority in a year when the Democratic governor had predicted his party would take control of the chamber. The House of Delegates retained its strong Republican majority, and the Senate remains in GOP control, 21-19…The GOP kept its Senate majority by holding onto a Richmond-area seat. Republican Glen Sturtevant will replace retiring GOP Sen. John Watkins in the 10th District…Democrats all year expressed confidence they’d win the Senate, and they had star power behind them. They hold all five statewide elected offices in Virginia, and their party leader has touted himself as a job-creating governor.

Democrats did well in Pennsylvania, reports Roll Call’s Eli Yokley:

Democrats swept the three seats up for election on the state’s Supreme Court, and control of the seven-member panel, which could have a broad implication on redistricting in 2020…With the court often tasked with picking the fifth member of the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, Democrats will have a leg-up on redrawing the 18 congressional seats in the Keystone State, of which Democrats currently control just five, despite carrying presidential, governor and Senate races.

So yesterday’s elections were not a total disaster for Democrats, as GOP spin will undoubtedly play it. All in all, however, it was surely a better day for Republicans. There is just no point in putting lipstick on the pig of losing yet another governorship and the dashed hopes in swing state Virginia. Dems simply have to do better in statewide races to create enough room to be competitive in congressional races. Perhaps more effort in recruitment, training and funding of potential candidates.
Democratic hopes are now focused on November 21st, when the party’s candidate for Governor, John Bel Edwards hopes to beat the prostitution scandal-tainted Sen. David Vitter in a race for the Governorship. This one is winnable, despite, Louisiana’s GOP tilt in recent years. But it will require an exceptionally well-organized turnout effort focused on both the pro-Democratic base and creative outreach to persuadable voters who are creeped-out by Vitter.

Whatever else GOP leaders have to say about their proposed ground rules for future televised debates, they can’t say they didn’t ask for the growing ridicule they are receiving coast to coast. It’s not just the political cartoons and late night comedians that are having a field day; the merriment is erupting at watercoolers nationwide, and now the empire strikes back in the form of journalists having their say. Some samples:
At The Washington Post, Catherine Rampell likens the candidates’ whinefest to Seinfeld’s “airing of grievances” at “Festivus” and adds.

Both the Republican National Committee and its mutinying candidates have explicitly expressed an aim to eliminate “gotcha” questions, with RNC Chairman Reince Priebus complaining that these “mean-spirited” questions have been “designed to embarrass our candidates.” As opposed to those kindly, softball questions designed to flatter them, as a more obedient press would presumably supply.
Don’t be surprised if next we hear of demands for soft-focus cameras, bowls of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed and requirements that questions begin with “if you please, your excellency…I can’t imagine this collective hissy fit and any resulting concessions from the networks boding well for the candidates.”
And while it’s easy to mock some of these demands as petty and prima-donnish, many of them suggest a more insidious strategy: a concerted effort to extricate as much independent journalistic influence from the democratic process as possible and essentially turn the Fourth Estate into a bunch of stenographers.

Also at The Post, Dana Milbank frames his column in the form of an ‘application’ to serve as the groveling moderator of the next GOP debate:

I feel passionately that a debate is neither the time nor the place for hard questions, and as debate moderator I will rigorously adhere to gentle and affectionate questioning…I will pipe in artificial applause of precisely the same pre-agreed length and decibel level for all candidates after all answers.
I will submit my questions in advance for pre-approval by the campaigns. No questions will be asked about women, racial minorities or any other issue that might cast the Republican Party in an unfavorable light. There will be no questions about any candidate’s past statements or actions, including but not limited to: bankruptcies, financial difficulties, missed votes and inconsistencies. Candidates will not be required to perform math or to provide supporting evidence for claims. Candidates will be seated in Barcaloungers. If candidates feel overheated, the moderator will fan them while they answer and provide them with their choice of lemon or cucumber ice water. I will begin each question with the phrase “Mother, may I,” and I will address candidates as “Your Excellency,” “Your Eminence” or another honorific approved by the campaigns.

The New York Times editorial board called the GOP debate proposals a “daffy document drafted by hotheads” and adds, “Doesn’t this list leave too much to chance? What about hiding dangerous extension cords beneath the carpeting? And shouldn’t those vying to lead the free world be protected from word association games or geography bee questions?”
Digby suggests at Hullabaloo that ‘Morning Joe’ co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski serve as the next moderators for the GOP debates, having recently verified their softball credentials with a fawning interview of the Koch brothers. Digby notes further, “See? Those Kochs are just nice middle of the road billionaires who are worried about income inequality. Their lifetime of libertarian law-of-the-jungle economics has always been in service of helping the poor…But seriously, I think Mika and Joe could do a terrific job with the debates. If they’re good enough for the Kochs, they should be good enough for Donald Trump and Ben Carson.”
Calling the GOP debate demands “hilarious,” New York Magazine media critic Frank Rich notes “if you look at their demands in this letter which they’re not even all agreeing to, they seem to have been drafted by Stalin” and “so tedious, it’s so fascistic really, no one will watch.”
Esquire’s Charles Pierce responds to Ted Cruz’s suggestion that right-wing commentator Mark Levin co-host the next GOP debate: “But Mark Levin? Abso-freaking-lutely. Mark Levin thinks Paul Ryan is a squish. Mark Levin wants the Constitution rewritten to eliminate the popular election of senators and so that states can nullify federal laws. Let Levin moderate a debate and he’ll push these clowns so far to the right that they’ll end up in Kazakhstan. I would buy a ticket to that debate. Hell, I’d rent a luxury suite. Do it, folks. A grateful nation will applaud you.”
At The Nation Joan Walsh agrees, and adds: “Let’s be clear: The Republican whining about debate moderation to date is pathetic. They smacked CNBC moderators like piñatas Wednesday night, and they’ve continued battering them through the week. You’ll recall that Donald Trump savaged Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly in the most sexist way after the first debate. These guys are first-rate cry babies, working the refs by crying “liberal media bias!” like conservatives have for going on 50 years.”
The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent tweeted, “Oh for God’s sake. Do they really think their voters are this moronic?” and a commenter, ydnas639 responds, “Batter up for nerf ball.”
Republican leaders have placed a risky bet that the ridicule they are receiving will be overshadowed by the benefit they will get if big media is intimidated and caves to their arrogant demands. My guess is that the “liberal media” whine won’t resonate with many new voters– they already had the votes of nearly everyone who believes it. Indeed, if the next GOP debate plays like a lapdog show, the ridicule will amplify and this silly gambit will produce a net loss of GOP supporters.

Harold Meyerson’s Washington Post column, “Can Bernie Sanders’s followers create a true leftist movement?” puts his campaign in perspective and outlines the challenge that awaits his followers:

Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign is different. He has refused to establish a super PAC. He shuns personal attacks. And, not incidentally, he proclaims himself a democratic socialist.
But there’s one further way in which his campaign fundamentally differs not just from those of the other candidates but also from any in many years: While striving to win votes, it also has to morph into an enduring left-wing movement.
..Every period of progressive reform in U.S. history has come as a result of massive street heat, of energized movements that push policymaking elites to the left. Abolitionists pressured the Lincoln Republicans toward a policy of emancipation. Militant workers and a socialist left, whose general strikes shut down several major cities in 1934, prompted Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Democrats to legalize collective bargaining and create Social Security in 1935. The civil rights movement enabled the Kennedy-Johnson Democrats to pass the landmark legislation of the ’60s. Progressive reform doesn’t happen absent a large and vibrant left.

Regarding the Sanders campaign’s longer-term prospects, Meyerson writes:

…Precisely because Sanders has staked out the most distinctly leftist terrain of any major candidate in decades, and because so many Americans (young Americans in particular) have rallied to his cause, his campaign holds the promise of recreating that missing left…Well, maybe.
…The question that looms before the campaign is less whether it can win Sanders the Democratic nomination, much less the presidency — goals that look, to put it mildly, daunting. Rather, it is whether its volunteers can help form an enduring left movement without which a future Democratic president and Congress won’t be able to enact even minor changes to income distribution or minor reforms to a capitalism that erodes the middle class.

Meyerson cautions, “Problem is, progressive presidential candidacies seldom have consequential afterlives,” and offers the examples of presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson in the 1980s and Robert LaFollette in 1924. Ditto, to some extent, for Henry Wallace in 1948. Nor did President Obama’s followers create much of a post-campaign movement of consequence. Looking toward the future, Meyerson adds:

…This formidable task requires, first, that Sanders’s legions understand the unique historic opportunity that their coming together presents: That their victory in all probability won’t be putting Bernie in the White House, but creating a surging and enduring left. That, in turn, requires them to give as much thought to forming or joining autonomous post-campaign organizations, and envisioning post-campaign mobilizations, as they now do to advancing Sanders’s candidacy..signing on for Sanders, if his volunteers are serious, isn’t like signing on for any other candidate. It should mean they’re signing on for rebuilding the long-gone American left.

Meyerson concludes, “Is this difficult? And how. Is this necessary? Totally.”
The impressive accomplishments of the Sanders campaign include taking the boogeyman out of the term “democratic socialism,” at least for a while, and forcing the MSM to report on some of the extraordinary achievements of democratic socialism in north European countries. What has been interesting about this, is how utterly limp the conservative response has been — pretty much reduced to leaden neo-Mccarthyist one-liners. I guess it’s hard to put down popular reforms like free college education and universal health care.
Along with Elizabeth Warren, Sanders’s fearless advocacy of economic justice reforms has pushed Hillary Clinton to the left, which may prove to be his most enduring contribution. If she wins, Sanders campaign supporters will have the responsibility of providing the leadership needed to secure her follow-through commitment.
Win or lose, Sanders has done a great thing. But Meyerson is right about the cause that beckons his followers and all progressive Democrats to an even more exciting future — a vibrant, well-rooted movement for democratic socialist reforms.

This Salon.com headline says it well: “The GOP’s media warfare goes nuclear: How the RNC is trying to hold journalism hostage.”
“How the Right Trounced Liberals in the States: Conservatives have mastered the art of cross-state policy advocacy, while liberal efforts have fizzled. Here’s what has to change” by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez & Theda Skocpol should be required reading for Democrats concerned with political strategy. The authors argue that “Network builders have to get out of their comfort zones in the worlds of liberal advocacy groups mostly headquartered in New York, Washington, California, and a few other blue enclaves to find and activate network connections across the vast heartland. And if progressives want to gain credibility and clout in the states, they will need to become far more strategic about engaging in widespread policy fights with the greatest potential to reshape the political landscape in conservative as well as liberal states across America.”
George Stephanopoulos interviews Stanley Greenberg and Republican pollster Kristin Soltis Anderson on “The 2016 Election Through the Eyes of the Polling Pros.”
NYT columnist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate Paul Krugman weighs in on the differences between GOP and Democratic presidents’ management of the economy: …”Historically, the economy has indeed done better under Democrats….The arithmetic on partisan differences is actually stunning. Last year the economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson circulated a paper comparing economic performance under Democratic and Republican presidents since 1947. Under Democrats, the economy grew, on average, 4.35 percent per year; under Republicans, only 2.54 percent. Over the whole period, the economy was in recession for 49 quarters; Democrats held the White House during only eight of those quarters…The Obama record compares favorably on a number of indicators with that of George W. Bush. In particular, despite all the talk about job-killing policies, private-sector employment is eight million higher than it was when Barack Obama took office, twice the job gains achieved under his predecessor before the recession struck…Democrats can afford to be cautious in their economic promises precisely because their policies can be sold on their merits. Republicans must sell an essentially unpopular agenda by confidently declaring that they have the ultimate recipe for prosperity — and hope that nobody points out their historically poor track record. And if someone does point to that record, you know what they’ll do: Start yelling about media bias.”
For Republican elected officials who are thinking that it’s time to bail, here’s a good template:

Jessica Taylor’s post, “Can Democrats Find Their Southern Charm?” explores the Dems’ improving prospects for taking the governorships of Kentucky and Louisiana.
In his AlJezeera post, “GOP and Democrats slow to woo booming Asian American electorate,” Bobby Calvan writes: “In the 2014 midterm elections, some exit polls suggested that Asian Americans were about evenly split between Democratic and Republican candidates — a dramatic turn from the 2012 presidential election, when 73 percent of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) aligned with the Democrats…Far from monolithic, Asian Americans hail from dozens of countries — three-quarters of Asian Americans are foreign born — and arrived in the United States from a multitude of cultures, religions and political histories. They have different worldviews…Democrats and Republicans are more invested in chasing after the 25.2 million eligible Latino voters — a much bigger prize than the 9 million eligible voters of Asian descent.”
WaPo syndicated columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes about the downer tone that pervades the GOP and it’s supporters in their view of the future. “The pessimism within significant sectors of the GOP is more than the unhappiness partisans typically feel when the other side is in power. It’s rooted in a belief that things have fundamentally changed in America, and there is an ominous possibility they just can’t be put right again…Democrats are more bullish on the future.”
Cartoonist Mike Luckovitch shares his vision of the coming GOP presidential debates.

There’s a general assumption in the air in Washington that the two-year budget deal and the advent of Paul Ryan as Speaker means we can all stop worrying about conservative-generated chaos in Congress until after next year’s elections. That could be premature, as I discussed today at Washington Monthly:

For all the “cleaning the barn” talk about the two-year “budget deal” that cleared the Senate in the wee hours this morning, it does not actually resolve all the troublesome spending issues or eliminate the possibility of conservative mischief. As David Dayen notes at the Prospect, while the deal set overall spending levels, is does not obviate the need for actual appropriations bills.

That means we’re not finished with opportunities for hostage-taking, as conservatives can still hijack the budget process to earn long-sought victories. Attached to all of the existing appropriations bills are riders unrelated to the budget, affecting everything from social to environmental to financial regulatory policy.
In September, Public Citizen and hundreds of other organizations outlined just a sample of those riders. For example, the appropriations bills on offer would cancel all federal funding for Planned Parenthood. They would prevent enforcement of a proposed Labor Department regulation to mandate investment advisers to operate in their clients’ best interest. They would cancel the Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality rules. They would stop environmental regulations on clean water, endangered species, and air-quality standards for ozone, and block an Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule on toxic silica dust in the workplace. They would exempt flavored cigarettes currently on the market from regulation. They would halt the Securities and Exchange Commission from completing rules requiring publicly traded companies to disclose political spending. They would block rules limiting the hours long-haul truckers can spend on the road without rest. And they would change hundreds of other rules, regulations, and funding priorities….
The White House, in its statement on the budget deal, said that it would work with Congress “to enact responsible, full-year FY 2016 appropriations–without ideological riders–based on this agreement.” But there is nothing in the deal that prevents Congress from sending appropriations with these riders and daring the president to veto them. Everybody, therefore, has the same choices in front of them that existed before John Boehner announced his resignation.

Well, not all the same choices are available, since the use of the debt limit to extort policy changes is indeed off the table. But David’s right: the specter of a government shutdown over conservative demands to “defund” Planned Parenthood hasn’t been defused, and if as expected there’s another omnibus appropriations bill covering multiple federal agencies it will represent quite the hostage for such demands.
You can make the argument that the dynamics which made the budget deal possible–you know, the bipartisan desire to get to the elections without fresh crises in Congress–will inevitably prevent a big collision over appropriations, much less a shutdown. But keep in mind the only way out of an impasse will be the same Hastert-Rule-violating coalition of House Democrats and a minority of Republicans, and one of the prices Paul Ryan paid for that spanking new gavel he wields was a pledge to take the Hastert Rule more seriously.

Anyone assuming the furies lashing conservatives towards a strategy of maximum confrontation have been quelled may be mistaking a tactical quiet-before-the-storm for genuinely good weather.

At HuffPo, senior polling editor Mark Blumenthal has a review article discussing Stanley Greenberg’s new book, “America Ascendant,” which calls for a new progressive era to address “revolutions that are changing America, changing politics, changing culture, changing economics.” Blumenthal interviews Greenberg (audio of full interview here), and shares some of his observations, including:

Greenberg argues in the book that these revolutionary changes, including a population that is growing younger and more racially and culturally diverse, will lead to a period in which America will be “exceptional again.” But he believes that renewal will require a period of sustained political reform, comparable to the Progressive Era at the turn of the 20th century, and the defeat of the “counter-revolution” being waged by the modern Republican Party.
The book, based in part on years of Greenberg’s polling and focus groups, also looks at the profound “downside” to this time of change: stagnating wages, an endemic cost-of-living crisis, a perceived end to “middle class dreams.” These “deep contradictions,” as Greenberg describes them, have produced pessimism about the future and great skepticism about leaders in Washington, including President Barack Obama.

As for the Republican party and its future, Blumenthal notes:

While Greenberg counsels Democrats to advocate “very bold policy changes,” he also believes that a Republican “implosion” is now underway in the GOP presidential primary.
The Republican Party, as Greenberg describes it, is “a rural, white, married, evangelical, religious party in a country that’s becoming less married, more secular, more urban.” The “furious counter-revolution” the party has waged for a decade to keep the “new American majority” from governing, he said, has “alienated the Republican Party from the country.”
He sees the evangelical and tea party blocs as “driving the base of support” for presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson, and believes they could ultimately boost support for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Greenberg is also ready to declare former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush “gone” as a presidential aspirant. “There’s no place for Bush in the Republican Party,” he said. Bush has positioned himself as a “more electable” candidate. But Greenberg pointed out that he “presents himself as the most conservative on choice issues, which makes him unacceptable to [GOP moderates], the one group of voters that might have voted for a moderate establishment candidate.”

In the interview Greenberg acknowledges that a “shattering loss” for the GOP in 2016 could strengthen Republican moderates and make their party more competitive later on. “For now, however,” concludes Blumenthal, “Greenberg sees the GOP’s counter-revolution on a collision course with the demographic trends reshaping the American electorate.”

For all the talk of “winners” and “losers” in the CNBC Republican presidential candidates’ debate last night, there was one near no-show: the big two-year bipartisan budget deal that passed the House a few hours before the debate began. I discussed this anomaly at TPMCafe:

Wednesday the most important economic/fiscal policy development of the entire presidential cycle occurred in Washington: The GOP-controlled House approved a two-year budget deal that takes away every conservative point of leverage until after the elections. It confirmed for the rank-and-file conservative “base” every suspicion about the gutless and treacherous Republican Establishment.
Yet in a GOP presidential debate Wednesday evening, the budget deal barely came up. Instead, for a variety of reasons, the candidates mostly took turns attacking the big dumb abstraction of Big Government as the cause of every conceivable problem, with Hillary Clinton and the feckless CNBC debate moderators getting beaten up nearly as much as Washington.
Perhaps it is telling that the budget deal was only emphasized by Rand Paul, a desperate candidate who had already announced he was going to filibuster the deal in the Senate when it comes up for a vote Thursday. Ted Cruz mentioned it, too, but only because it fits seamlessly into his usual rap. And John Kasich denounced it in passing but only to contrast it with his own alleged fiscal accomplishments way, way back in the day. Presumably the issue didn’t “work” for anyone else, and perhaps they were relieved to retreat to the minutiae of their tax plans and the vaguest and broadest suggestions that any federal involvement in any area of domestic government is to be opposed.

Maybe the candidates were just too deep into debate prep this week to notice the ground had shifted in Washington. I just don’t know.

Suffice it to say that the biggest winner of the entire day and night was Paul Ryan, whose two-faced response to a budget deal designed to make life easy for him received a tepid rebuke from Paul but nothing more. Unless there’s a real surprise in the Senate, it appears the GOP, including its presidential candidates, is ready to find some alternative to debt limit defaults and government shutdowns in order to smite its foes. Hearing them all sound like they want to go back to the governing philosophy of the Coolidge administration made me wonder if the biggest threat of all is that they might win next November.