I think it’s a consensus judgment that former Sen. Jim Webb didn’t turn in a particularly good performance in the first Democratic presidential debate, showing himself on issue after issue as being out of step with his party, and a bit grouchy to boot. But some efforts to make Webb out as a symbol of a whole generation of superannuated Democrat went too far, in my judgment, as I discussed at Washington Monthly:

At TNR Elspeth Reeve reminded us that Webb was in some circles touted as the “It Guy” in 2007 after his boffo response to Bush’s State of the Union Address. I think she overstates it a bit; I was on a liberal list-serve back then in which the idea of Webb being Obama’s or Clinton’s running-mate was regularly discussed, and generally found lacking.
But it’s Reeve’s argument that Webb represents the entire pre-Obama Democratic preoccupation with white working-class and/or southern white voters–including the political strategy of both Clintons–that really gives me pause. After cataloguing, rather over-generally, post-2004 Democratic angst about their inability to connect with “rednecks,” Reeve makes this retroactive judgment:

Today, it’s clear that liberals did not have to change. They had to wait. It wasn’t new ideas that fixed Democrats’ problems. It was demographics, and a cultural shift in their direction. In between the era of Nascar angst and this election is the Obama administration. But the bridge between the old view and the new one is Hillary Clinton
.
In Tuesday’s debate, though, Hillary Clinton highlighted her proposals that would undo some of her husband’s signature legislation, including his draconian 1994 crime bill. She talked about “reforming criminal justice,” saying “we need to tackle mass incarceration.”
In 2008, Hillary was downing shots of whiskey with voters. Compared to Obama, she boasted, “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.” Now Clinton seeks to hold on to Obama’s coalition. This August, she met with Black Lives Matter activists and tried to explain her husband’s record. “I do think that there was a different set of concerns back in the ’80s and the early ’90s,” Clinton said. “And now I believe that we have to look at the world as it is today, and try and figure out what will work now.”

If this is all you had to go by, you wouldn’t know that Bill Clinton showed remarkable and sustained strength among African-American voters, despite Ricky Ray Rector and welfare reform and the 1994 Crime Bill (which was not, BTW, “signature” Clinton legislation; it was signature Biden legislation that contained some benign signature Clinton priorities like 100,000 cops deployed in community policing strategies and an Assault Weapons Ban and the Violence Against Women Act). Remember his reputation as “the first black president?” That didn’t come out of nowhere.
I also have to express some reservations about the underlying suggestion that an interest in appealing to white working class voters is inherently disreputable or involves a morally dubious choice. These voters were obviously central to the progressive coalition from the 1920s through the 1970s; Since then, and even now, Democrats have had reason to believe a segment of this part of the electorate is open to their appeals without any sacrifice whatsoever of the party’s commitments to nonwhite voters. And while HRC is indeed trying to “hold onto Obama’s coalition,” if she slips at all the votes necessary to win have to come from somewhere. Maybe they will come from professional women. But she might want to stay in practice downing a shot and a beer.

I’d add to that last observation the equally important point that it would be nice if Democrats could make a comeback in downballot contests which determine control of the U.S. House and of state governments. Doing that while happily writing off white working class voters will not be easy.

Writing in Nation of Change, C. Robert Gibson has a post “Six Reasons Sanders Actually Won the Debate Despite What Pundits Claim,” featuring statistical evidence from: Online polls of a half-dozen news organizations, including CNN, Time and Fox News; Facebook and twitter mentions; Google searches; a fund-raising uptick; and CNN, Frank Luntz and Fusion focus group picks.
However, respected poll analyst Mark Blumenthal, along with co-authors Ariel Edwards-Levy, Natalie Jackson and Janie Valencia, cite a Clinton win in a new HuffPo/YouGov poll that indicates 55 percent of registered Democratic voters picked Clinton as the winner, with 22 percent for Sanders. However, note the authors, “The difference between candidates disappears if Democratic-leaning independents are included with Democratic voters. Among this larger group, 46 percent say their opinion of each candidate improved.” Further, an “NBC/Survey Monkey poll finds similar result – Allison Kopicki and John Lapinski: “Hillary Clinton’s performance in Tuesday night’s debate resonated strongly among members of her party, with more than half–56%–saying [Clinton] won the debate.” The authors add “Instant online polls are informal and unscientific. The results rely on a self-selecting group of respondents with no regard to political affiliation, age, country, or even whether the person doing the responding actually watched the debate. Respondents, meanwhile, don’t have even the slightest motivation to be objective…Like tracking new Twitter followers or Google searches, the online surveys provide an interesting snapshot of the mood of a particular slice of the Internet, but they’re mostly for entertainment (for the reader) and traffic (for the outlet). No one should mistake them for the scientific surveys done by professional pollsters.”
Daily Kos Elections explains why the U.S. Senate race in PA may be competitive after all.
In Charles Pierce’s Esquire post, “Ted Cruz Has the Look of a Dangerously Unhinged Charlatan,” he writes “Ed Kilgore is absolutely right about what Tailgunner Ted Cruz is up to out there on the stump, where he is sitting inside a powder magazine, playing with a blowtorch and giggling like a child.​..There’s no third alternative. Simply put, unless every other candidate on the stage in a couple of weeks loudly and forcefully distances themselves from this kind of, then the Republican Party is not worth the sneeze that at this point would blow it to hell.”
I agree.
Whatever else can be said about the Sanders campaign, generating articles like this one enriches America’s political dialogue significantly.
Blog for Our Future’s Terrence Heath makes an excellent point in his post, “Democratic Debate Proves Movements Matter.” To all of those progressive activists laboring in social change movements, your efforts to make a significant difference, and they are well-reflected in the first Democratic presidential debate.
At The Nation Joan Walsh explains why progressives should be very pleased about the quality of the Democratic debate, and she also highlights some of the differences in policies.
Keep it up guys!

The already excellent Washington Post coverage of the first Democratic presidential debate gets even better with two columns by E. J. Dionne, Jr. and Harold Meyerson.
It’s not as simplistic as the “Bernie is pushing Hillary to the left” meme, although that is also quite likely. Dionne does a particularly good job of describing the unique and historic contribution of Senator Sanders to the Democratic presidential campaign and to America’s political dialogue in general:

…For the first time in the modern political era, Americans got to watch leaders of a mainstream political party debate the relative merits of capitalism and democratic socialism. And for once, socialism was cast not as the ideology that produced a brutal dictatorship in the old Soviet Union, but as a benign and, yes, democratic outlook that has created rather attractive societies in places such as Denmark and Sweden.
Whatever happens to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) candidacy, he will deserve credit for having widened our political horizons…We now have a more realistic sense of the choices before us: Sanders’s unapologetic democratic socialism, Clinton’s progressive capitalism and the Republicans’ disdain for government altogether. Guess who occupies the real political center?

The consequences of the Sanders campaign for the Democratic Party have been enormously favorable, explains Dionne. “Democrats are far more united than Republicans, who are in a shambles. Democrats are the party of what the political consultants like to call kitchen-table issues — family leave, higher wages and kids being able to afford college — while Republicans are the party of ideology and abstractions.”
Dionne also credits Clinton with a highly skilled presentation. “She maintained her good mood and big smile in the face of repeated challenges from CNN’s questioners, deploying the classic Clinton strategy of insisting that the campaign is about what the voters need, not what the media and the GOP want to talk about.”
Even better, Clinton got a very deliberate lift from her leading Democratic adversary in the campaign. “This is where her most important victory came, with a key assist from Sanders. The sound bite played over and over was created when Sanders agreed with Clinton by asserting: “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn e-mails.” Some sleazy media tried to spin it as a diss, but anyone paying attention understood it as an impressive display of Democratic solidarity, which worked beautifully in the wake of Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s blundering admission that the email fuss is all about hammering down Clinton’s poll numbers.
Dionne notes the reference by Sanders to Denmark’s example of a thriving social democracy in which government plays a more active role in securing decent living standards for all citizens. Meyerson elaborates on the creative synergy in the dialogue between the two candidates on the advancement of such social democratic ideals in the U.S.:

…The relationship between the European social democracy that Sanders extols and the American progressivism that Hillary Clinton champions is complicated and at times symbiotic, with clear areas of overlap and difference…The European social democratic belief in citizens’ rights extends deeper into the economic realm — particularly the workplace — than American liberalism’s does.

He puts the differences between the policies that define northern European social democracy and American progressivism into a current context:

The great irony of Northern European social democracy is that it has produced perhaps the world’s most successful capitalist economies. The Swedish full-employment policy that so intrigued Bill Clinton, for instance, made workers confident that they could get jobs with at least comparable pay if their companies failed, thereby eliminating popular resistance to shuttering moribund industries and incubating new ones. The German economy — by any measure the most successful of any advanced capitalist nation over the past decade — confers on employees considerable say in company policy by giving their representatives half the seats on corporate boards. It is also home to the world’s most successful small and medium-size businesses, the Mittelstand, the kind of small manufacturers whose numbers have diminished in the United States as Wall Street has pressured our big retailers and manufacturers to offshore their suppliers.
The crucial distinction between Europe’s social democrats and the Democratic Party in the United States is that the former have institutionalized worker power to a far greater degree than have our Democrats, who are quintessentially a party of both capital and labor. This has mattered most particularly in the post-1970 era of globalization. While the major corporations of all Western nations have gone global, those in Northern Europe have, as a result of the power that workers wield, retained the best jobs in their home nations and still identify themselves with their home countries. The vast majority of U.S. corporations, by contrast, identify themselves as global, seem content to offshore jobs and don’t invest much, if anything, in training workers for highly skilled jobs here. That’s not because U.S. corporate chief executives are less patriotic than their European counterparts, but because social democratic parties have vested workers with the power to constrain corporate conduct, and crafted policies that favor their home nations’ economies through, for instance, increased public investment. They have limited the size and sway of finance, whose demand for profits accords no special status to the notion of a “home country.”

Meyerson acknowledges that Clinton also wants to expand worker rights in the context of liberal capitalism and he credits Sanders with having the understanding that empowering workers is an essential requirement for Democratic advancement. Meyerson concludes with the powerful insight that “In the United States, liberalism advances only when radicalism is bubbling, which is why Clinton and Sanders need each other, and why the Democrats need them both.”
The Democratic coalition would lack this synergy if either Clinton or Sanders were not running for president. Their campaigns are complimentary and reinforcing to each other. Both candidates have also elevated the Democratic dialogue by treating each other with respect.
Meyerson and Dionne have done a fine job of putting the candidacies of Clinton and Sanders in clearer perspective, especially in relation to each other. Most of the other traditional media reporters and columnists will no doubt continue with the cage-match framing, which misses the larger point — that Sanders and Clinton benefit tremendously from their synergistic campaigns, as do the Democratic Party and American politics.

Amidst all the inevitable talk about who “won” and “lost” in last night’s first Democratic presidential debate, it should not be forgotten that the cause of Democratic unity had a pretty good evening despite some serious media provocation to support the ever-ready “Democrats in Disarray” meme. I wrote about this today at TPMCafe:

When the first Democratic presidential debate got underway last night, you got the immediate impression that the CNN organizers were determined to dash the expectation that it would be a less fractious event than the network’s Republican debate last month. Moderator Anderson Cooper, normally the most irenic of talking heads, got in touch with his inner Jake Tapper and began barking harsh criticisms at the candidates. But with few exceptions during the long contest, the five donkeys on the stage did not rise to the bait, and as a result the event often turned into Democrats versus CNN.
That was made most obvious by the signature moment of the debate: Bernie Sanders shouting at Cooper that the American people are “tired of hearing about [HRC’s] damn emails.” As a stand-in for the media hounds insisting on maximum coverage of the damn emails, Cooper gamely tried to press the issue, to no avail.
For their own part, the candidates did not go after each other much at all (HRC challenging Sanders’ gun record was an exception, as was Chafee calling HRC unqualified by her poor judgment on Iraq–his campaign’s one attention-grabbing talking point)….
[T]here just wasn’t the sense of a party in crisis that Republicans have projected again and again in the two debates, the two “undercard” events, and many exchanges on the campaign trail. Virtually no GOP presidential candidates have a kind word to say about their party’s leadership in Washington. Even challenged directly to distinguish themselves from Barack Obama, the five candidates were careful not to criticize him. In the Republican field, one candidate has called another a “egomaniacal madman”; another routinely calls several of his rivals “losers”; and the candidate most beloved of party elites is disliked by a majority of rank-and-file voters. There’s nothing like that on the Democratic side at present.

We’ll see how long it lasts, but without question, Democrats are for the most part minding their manners, and remembering the big picture.

At WaPo’s The Daily 202 James Hohman and Elise Vlebeck present a persuasive round-up arguing that Clinton won the first Democratic Debate. An Excerpt:

..This morning’s clips are, by far, the best Clinton has enjoyed all year. From nonpartisan reporters to thought leaders across the spectrum, there was a near consensus that Hillary won.
The Post’s Karen Tumulty, in an A1 analysis, says that Hillary’s self-assured performance “showed that she remains the person to beat.”
…Liberal activist Van Jones on CNN: “Hillary Clinton was Beyoncé. She was flawless.”
Conservative Post columnist Charles Krauthammer on Fox News: “She was competent. She wasn’t afraid. She was aggressive.”
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni: “I never doubted that Hillary Clinton had many talents. I just didn’t know that seamstress was among them. There were moments … when she threaded the needle as delicately and perfectly as a politician could.”
New Republic senior editor Brian Beutler: “Clinton staked out the sweet spot between aspirational and pragmatic politics, when she dubbed herself ‘a progressive, but … a progressive who likes to get things done.'”
Vox.com editor-in-chief Ezra Klein: “Clinton reminded a lot of Democrats that they want her debating the GOP nominee next year.”
Mother Jones Washington editor David Corn: “HRC folks should hope for a Clinton-Bush general. Compare her performance to his.”
The Atlantic’s James Fallows: “HRC had her best two hours of the past two years.”
The Boston Globe’s Annie Linskey highlights Clinton’s disarming sense of humor: “During a commercial break, it took her longer to return to the stage from the bathroom, a fact she attributed to her gender. ‘It takes me longer,’ she said. When asked late in the debate what would distinguish a Clinton presidency from the current administration, she answered simply: She’s a woman.”
Post columnist Dana Milbank: “Clinton was a head shorter than her rivals when they lined up on stage for Sheryl Crow’s version of the National Anthem. … But after that moment, she towered over them.”
The Fix’s Chris Cillizza: “Clinton was confident, relaxed and good-natured. … She also smartly turned at least three questions into broad-scale attacks on Republicans, effectively playing the uniter role for the party — and winning a ton of applause in the process.”
New York Times political correspondent Jonathan Martin: “Strong night for Hillary – will calm Dem nerves & tamp down Biden buzz. She helped herself a good deal, was elevated by comparison.”
“Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd: “Clinton was easily the most polished and prepped candidate on stage. Wasn’t even close. But Sanders isn’t going anywhere.”

Hohman and Vlebeck did an impressive amount of work in putting together their case for a big Clinton win and show why the post still rules the MSM when it comes to political coverage. They have other insights to share in their Daily 202 post, which is likely to be the most widely-read take on the first Democratic presidential debate.

The horse race analysts got plenty to talk about from the first Democratic presidential debate and they will be spinning it in all directions for the next few of days. For now, take a step back for a moment and try to think about how the more attentive swing voters perceived the Democratic debate in comparison to the Republicans versions.
What was missing last night was any trace of the bullying, name-calling, internecine acrimony, snarling ridicule, bigotry, misogyny, rudeness and general chaos, which characterized the GOP presidential campaign. What alert viewers saw last night was a debate which was remarkable for its civility, sobriety and even cordiality.
Sure the candidates cast a few zingers toward their opponents during the evening, but all of it was in the ballpark of grown-ups respectfully airing their differences, while affirming their common ground. The false equivalency journalists will have a tough time of trying to link the Democratic and Republican debates as similar.
And all of that is just the tone part.
In terms of substance, credit the Democrats with the mettle to address critical issues all but ignored by the Republicans in their debates. In their Huffpo article “9 Issues Democrats Just Debated That Have Been Almost Completely Ignored By Republicans,” Nick Wing and Ruby Mellen note that Democrats discussed in significant detail racial injustice, campaign finance reform, domestic surveillance, Wall St. reform, income inequality, college affordability and diplomacy. Try to find a salient quote about any of those topics from a Republican presidential candidate in their two debates. Tammy Luhby reports at CNN Money that “Democrats said ‘middle class’ 11 times; the Republicans just three.” Luhby adds, “the Democrats mentioned “income inequality” six times, while the Republicans never uttered it.”
As for the “who won” discussion, so far NYT and WaPo pundits give the nod to Clinton for her polished presentation and well-crafted answers. But Sanders held his own and projected an image of a candidate with genuine principles and real concern for struggling Americans. Gov. O’Malley’s closing statement was startlingly good — where has this guy been hiding?
As of this writing, it’s unclear whether Vice President Biden will join the fray. The strong performances of Clinton, Sanders and O’Malley don’t leave a lot of daylight for Biden to squeeze in, although he also would bring debating skills and gravitas to the Democratic campaign, which the current stable of Republican candidates lack.
There can’t be much doubt, however, that the Democratic Party had a very good night and will buzz well at water coolers across the nation today. What swing voters who watched the Democratic debate last night saw was a party with three strong, credible and exceptionally well-informed leaders, any two of whom would provide an impressive presidential ticket — especially compared to the “leaders” of today’s GOP.

The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner has an insightful take on “What to Watch for in Tuesday’s Debate” in terms of Clinton’s strategy:

Clinton needs to get out of a self-infecting cycle of bad publicity, in which everything she does is dismissed as calculating and contrived, even when it represents creative movement on issues. Sanders merely needs to take care to come across as fighting for the forgotten American on the issues, as he nearly always does, but not too radical in his personal style.
In the past few weeks, Clinton has made several dramatic moves in Sanders’s direction. She has broken with the administration on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, on the Keystone Pipeline, and on the so-called Cadillac Tax on high quality health plans (she is for repeal; the White House is not). She is out-flanking Sanders to the left on gun control, and she is at least as comfortable talking about race.
…In the inside game, Clinton needs to persuade the activists associated with the Democratic Party, especially the labor movement, that she can be as much their champion as Sanders can. She needs to reassure her own core supporters (who might be tempted to defect to Biden) that her candidacy is not fatally damaged by recent missteps.
..Clinton, in short, is necessarily playing a much more complex game than Sanders. Much of her posture is directed at a potential candidate who will not be on stage–Joe Biden. A great deal of her positioning is aimed not just at Sanders, but at dissuading Biden from getting into the race.

Clinton will have to provide clear answers — and good soundbites — in response to the badgering she will receive about her emails, discrediting the accusations as baseless, politicized complaints, without seeming arrogantly dismissive. A challenge for her, and for all of the candidates, is not to bristle when under attack.
As for Sanders, Joan Walsh notes at The Nation:

…Sanders has improved his rhetoric and his outreach since those early clashes. He hired Symone Sanders, a young African-American activist on issues of mass incarceration and racial justice, away from Public Citizen to be his communications director. And where he once sounded as though he believed the achievement of genuine economic justice would lead automatically to racial justice, he now routinely talks about dismantling the incarceration state and other measures specifically designed to reverse black disadvantage.
On guns, Sanders has riled activists with a handful of votes against gun regulation. He voted against the 1993 Brady Bill, to allow weapons in national parks and checked baggage on Amtrak, and to offer gun manufacturers immunity against suits by gun victims. In condolence remarks after the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina last summer, Sanders didn’t mention the issue of guns.
But Sanders has improved his rhetoric and his outreach since those early clashes. He hired Symone Sanders, a young African-American activist on issues of mass incarceration and racial justice, away from Public Citizen to be his communications director. And where he once sounded as though he believed the achievement of genuine economic justice would lead automatically to racial justice, he now routinely talks about dismantling the incarceration state and other measures specifically designed to reverse black disadvantage.
…The big question for Sanders is whether he can put together an electoral coalition to get the nomination, and win next November. On that score, the debate can’t help but help him. Sanders still polls dismally among African-Americans; in a recent YouGov poll he got 8 percent of their votes; in a South Carolina poll released Monday (that’s the first primary state in which the black vote will be significant), he was at 4 percent. But a lot of that has to do with his being much less known to black voters than Clinton or Vice President Joe Biden. The first debate gives him a chance to bring his appeal to a mass audience.

Many political observers have expressed skepticism about Biden’s chances, should he eventually decide to run. A new Reuters poll indicates, however, that a Biden candidacy would have substantial support, even though he won’t be in the first Democratic debate:

Biden will not be there, but 48 percent of Democrats surveyed in the Reuters poll wish he were a candidate, compared with 30 percent who said he should stay out. Independents were split on the question, with 36 percent saying Biden should stay in and an equal share believing otherwise.
But support for Biden’s entry into the race does not translate into equal passion for his candidacy. Just 17 percent of those surveyed said Biden would be their first choice, while 46 percent would back Clinton. Biden would also run behind Sanders, who remains the favorite of one fourth of Democrats surveyed.

Lawrence Lessig, the crowd-funded academic who is focused on one issue — campaign finance reform, also will not be at the debate, since he has been polling below one percent.
Regarding the longer-shot candidates, who will all be looking for a possible “Fiorini moment,” Catherine Lucey and Ken Thomas of the AP quote former MD Governor Martin O’Malley on the challenge he faces tonight:

“This will really be the first time that nationally voters see that there’s more than one alternative to this year’s inevitable front-runner, Secretary Clinton,” O’Malley said.
“It’s a very, very important opportunity for me to not only present my vision for where the country should head, but also 15 years of executive experience, actually accomplishing the progressive things some of the other candidates can only talk about,” he said.

Ed Kilgore adds at The Washington Monthly, “If there’s any justice, though, Martin O’Malley probably deserves a post-debate bump. The guy did things the way you’re supposed to, spending many obscure days and weeks in Iowa before anyone was even thinking about the presidential race.”
Rachel Weiner writes at the Washington Post that “If there’s a chance for a wild card on the stage at Tuesday’s lead-off Democratic debate, the smart money’s on former senator Jim Webb of Virginia.” Weiner quotes Webb campaign spokesman , who provides a clue as to the persona Webb will try to project: “We have the best candidate to deliver economic fairness, social justice and common sense foreign policy, unbought and unbossed by anyone.”
With respect to Lincoln Chafee, Lucey and Thomas write, “Expect Chafee, the former senator and governor from Rhode Island, to go after Clinton for her 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq. Chafee, at the time a Republican, opposed the invasion and he’s said Clinton’s support for the war, which she has more recently called a “mistake,” is at the center of his decision to run.”
Much to the relief of many Democrats, regardless of their candidate preferences, there will certainly be a vigorous debate, instead of a ‘coronation,’ which would surely be frowned upon by swing voters. The hope is that tonight’s forum will generate light, as well as heat — a big distinction from what has been going on in the GOP debates.

“It’s time to call out the recent flurry of new state law restrictions for what they are: an all-out campaign by Republicans to take away the right to vote from poor and black and Latino American citizens who probably won’t vote for them. The push to restrict voting is nothing more than a naked grab to win elections that they can’t win if every citizen votes…Now it is time for Republicans to step up to support a restoration of the Voting Rights Act–or to stand before the American people and explain why they have abandoned America’s most cherished liberty, the right to vote.” — from Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s recent speech to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute.

Will the Democratic presidential nominee have coattails in 2016? Alex Roarty probes the possibilities at the National Journal, and notes “The link between Sen­ate cam­paigns and the pres­id­en­tial race will be es­pe­cially strong in 2016, when many of the mar­quee Sen­ate con­tests–Flor­ida, Pennsylvania, Wis­con­sin, New Hamp­shire, and Ohio–double as pres­id­en­tial battle­grounds.”

At The Upshot Brendan Nyhan cautions Democrats not to get overly optimistic about the effects of Republican disarray in the House of Reps.

Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik also remains skeptical about Democratic chances to take back a House of Reps majority in 2016, but he nonetheless sketches out three ways it could happen — none of which seem all that implausible. Same for some combination of all three paths to GOP defeat.

According to the New York Times editorial board: “With the 2016 presidential election just a year away, the vast majority of states are still getting by with old machines that are increasingly likely to fail, crash or produce unreliable results. The software in them, mostly from the 1990s, doesn’t have the capabilities or security measures available today…A study released last month by the Brennan Center for Justice found that nearly every state uses some machines that are no longer manufactured. And 43 states are using machines that will be at least 10 years old next year, close to the end of their useful lives. A member of the federal Election Assistance Commission told the report’s authors, “We’re getting by with Band-Aids.”
On the eve of the first Democratic presidential debate, WaPo’s Rachel Weiner discusses Jim Webb’s opportunity and strategy.

Some interesting stats on the growing influence of the Asian American vote in CA and the U.S. from Stephen Magagnini’s report at the Sacramento Bee: “Despite making up 14 percent of California’s population, Asian and Pacific Islander Americans comprise about 8 percent of legislators, or nine members…Only 37 percent of eligible Asian American voters turned out in November 2014, which may have contributed to the low representation…Asian American numbers are predicted to surpass Latinos’ in the U.S. by 2055, according to the Pew Research Center…”

For the definitive, all-encompassing mother of all round-ups featuring what everyone thinks about Gallup ditching horse-race polling, all you have to do is click here.
Might make a good bumper sticker: “Chaos — the GOP’s New Normal.”

Re all of the yada-yada about “authenticity” of political candidates, Michael Tomasky calls it out: “I hate authenticity. Authenticity sucks. It’s a substitute for critical thought and actual argument, and the political media harp far too much on it…I can’t tell you the number of straight-news reporters who’ve said to me over the years something like: Yes, okay, Ted Cruz or Lindsey Graham or whoever may be a little out there, but you know what? At least he really means it. What you see with him is what you get. To which I would rejoin, well, that’s fine, but so what; all that means to me is that when he starts World War III or resegregates our school system via his court appointments or gives the 1 percent another whopping-big tax cut, he’ll be doing so sincerely…I’d much rather have a president who inauthentically raises the minimum wage and passes paid family leave than one who authentically eliminates the federal minimum wage and does what the Chamber of Commerce tells him to do on all such matters.”

From “We All Get ‘Free Stuff’ From the Government,” a NYT op-ed by Bryce Covert: “In a 2008 poll, 57 percent of people said they had never availed themselves of a government program, yet 94 percent of those same people had in fact benefited from at least one — mostly through what the Cornell professor Suzanne Mettler has called the “submerged state,” or the huge but often invisible network of money spent through the tax code…Jeb Bush, however, is almost certainly aware of the freebies available through taxes. (According to one analysis of his federal income tax returns, he himself has saved at least $241,000 since 1981 through the mortgage interest deduction.) Just days before he vowed not to promise voters more free stuff, he put out a tax plan that would give out a whole lot more of it.”

Three recent polls show a stat tie in NC Governor’s race, despite low name recognition for Democratic challenger, state Attorney General Roy Cooper.

Michelle Everhart of the Columbus Dispatch reports that a new Quinnipiac poll pegs Ohio voters support for medical marijuana at 90 percent and for recreational use at 53 percent. “What’s unclear is whether those people will vote for Issue 3, ResponsibleOhio’s plan to legalize both types of marijuana use. The issue is on the ballot statewide.”

At JSpace News, Erica Terry’s “Godwin’s Law Has Brought Us Ben Carson’s Hitler Gun Control Theory,” explains “Nevermind that Germany’s strict gun laws date to 1919, were the result of the Treaty of Versailles, predated the rise of Hitler, and were actually loosened under Hitler’s reign,” writes Terry. “Nevermind that the largest known example of Nazi resistance, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, saw armed Jews try and ultimately fail to defend themselves and their families due to the unmatched numbers of the SS. Nevermind that Israel, the globe’s largest single population of Holocaust survivors, is a place where it is incredibly difficult to purchase a gun. Nevermind that the fate of European Jewry in the 1930s was arguably decided not by bullets, but by a largely silent civilian public.”

If you’ve been wondering about what’s going on with the Webb presidential campaign, try Max J. Rosenthal’s Mother Jones post, “Is Jim Webb Really Running for President? An Investigation. He’s maintaining a suprisingly low profile.”

At The New York Times Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer Marin Cogan reports that, in the wake of the Kevin McCarthy debacle, “Republicans Are Calling Their Party a ‘Banana Republic.’ It’s More Like a Failed State.”

Also at The Daily Intelligencer Jonah Shep addresses the mess in his round-up “How the Right Is Reacting to the House Leadership Crisis.” The most chuckle-worthy nugget comes from Ed Rogers, who tries to smear a little lipstick on the pig, calling it “an opportunity to have a good debate and a good contest for this vital leadership position within the Republican Party.”

Ed Kilgore notes at the Washington Monthly that the Speaker of the House doesn’t have to be a member, flags some humorous and frightening possibilities and invites his readers to offer suggestions in a similar spirit. They come up with the Kims – Davis and Kardashian, “Heckuva Job Brownie,” and a Reagan hologram, among other outsiders.

Perhaps it was overshadowed by the growing chaos in the House Republican Conference, but this has been a week also marred by back-and-forth media wars between journalists claiming inside knowledge that Vice President Joe Biden did or didn’t personally promote the “story” that his late son made a deathbed request that he run for president. This caps months of mostly unsourced media speculation on the subject, much of it expanded on by Republicans and conservative media always happy to push a “Democrats-in-disarray” narrative.
I finally made an exasperated plea at the Washington Monthly:

[I]t’s time for the vice president to publicly say “Yes,” “No” or “Maybe” to a presidential run instead of letting this bizarre speculation continue perpetually. “Maybe’s” fine with me; I’d personally be fine with him admitting he’s offering himself as a fallback option if something terrible happens to the field. But sorta kinda running for president via media hints that are turned into attacks on Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and the Democratic Party itself should no longer be an option. I have no direct evidence on the question of whether or not Biden is personally fanning the speculation, but have no doubt he’s the one person who can resolve it.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post echoed this sentiment today:

It was right and good that Democrats gave Biden plenty of space to make his decision. But at this point, every additional day that goes by makes his own viability that much less realistic. He’d have to ramp up a campaign organization and raise a huge amount of money in a ridiculously short amount of time. At what point do we get to say that a Biden candidacy is no longer plausible?
If Biden wants to tell us that he’s prepared to enter the race down the line, but only if it really looks like Sanders is going to win the nomination, that’s fine — at that point, all bets would be off anyway. We just need him to say something more concrete.