Sound Advice For President Obama

Election 2016: Challenging Hillary From the Left

How Television News Media Fails at Its Job

A (Former) Republican Judge on His (Former) Party

Sen. Ayotte (R-NH): Defunding Obamacare Didn't Work

What GOP Senators Think of Ted Cruz

Virginia: McAuliffe (D) Takes 8 Point Lead Over Cuccinelli (R)

From the Washington Post: 

The shift in the race has come almost exclusively from female voters, who prefer McAuliffe by a 24-point margin over Cuccinelli. The candidates were effectively tied among women in a Washington Post poll in May.

McAuliffe’s strength among women is likely due in part to an intense campaign to portray Cuccinelli as a threat to women and the issues they care about most deeply. A new McAuliffe ad, for instance, features a Norfolk OB-GYN speaking directly to the camera about how she is “offended” by Cuccinelli’s position on abortion.

The challenge for Cuccinelli is stark: Nearly half of all voters view him unfavorably, and they trust his opponent as much as or more than the Republican on every major issue in the race, according to the poll. On trust to handle issues of special concern to women, McAuliffe leads Cuccinelli by 23 points. 

Both candidates have very deep flaws (both have favourability numbers that are upside down) and they both have challenges which the article goes into more deeply, but it seems that Cuccenilli's negatives outweigh McAuliffe's.

Sen McCain: Chasing Obamacare Is Not Rational

Meghan McCain: Extremists Run the Party

From Huffington Post: 

In a recent interview with Politico, McCain discussed her show "Raising McCain" on Pivot, a new channel targeting millenials. She also spoke out about being a socially liberal Republican. "We're not all crazy rednecks," she said about the GOP.

McCain told Politico's Patrick Gavin that she was "frustrated" that "nobody seems to be listening to reason," and continued:

"People within the Republican Party don’t have to listen to me. But, at some point, they will have to listen to facts, to trends in this country. We’re losing young voters, women voters and minority voters. … I just think it’s a recipe for failure. … The extreme right wing of the party is still running everything." 

Read the full interview at Politico. 

Ken Cuccinelli Turns on Bob McDonnell

Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA)

From the New Civil Rights Movement: 

A new Quinnipiac poll that has Cuccinelli down 6 points to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, seems to have spooked The Cooch. After weeks of hitting McAuliffe with one brutal attack ad after another, McDonnell and the Virginia Republican party seemed to have decided Governor McDonnell’s ethics scandal has become a drag on the ticket. We all know what that means, it’s under-the-bus time.

Late last week Cuccinelli released a new TV ad called “Facts”, in which he claimed credit that he “personally launched the investigation into Bob McDonnell and called for reform to strengthen ethics laws.” The ad fails to mention Cuccinelli also took $18,000 from Bob McDonnell’s sugar daddy. No doubt just an oversight.

“Cuccinelli’s actions tell me he knows he has a problem.” Chuck Todd said. He added that four months ago, Cucinelli planned on using his close relationship with Bob McDonnell to persuade moderates he was not as conservative as they might think.

Michael Steele, past chairman of the RNC, analyzed Cuccinelli’s old McDonnell problem. “The voters of Virginia know that the governor is not going to be on the ballot. They can’t show their disgust, disdain, dislike for what he’s done at the ballot box. The next best thing is to take it out on the leading candidate for the GOP.”

GOP Governors Against Holding Obamacare Hostage

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI)

From the New York Times: 

Worried about the potential impact on the fragile economies in their states, Republican governors this weekend warned their counterparts in Congress not to shut down the federal government as part of an effort to block financing for President Obama’s health care law. 

A range of Republican governors, including some who have refused to implement elements of the health initiative in their states, said in interviews that a standoff in Washington before the new fiscal year this fall could backfire on the party if it is seen as being responsible for bringing the government to a halt. 

“I have made the case that Obamacare is not good for the economy, but I have some real concerns about potentially doing something that would have a negative impact on the economy just for the short term — I think there are other ways to pursue this,” said Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who hosted about half of the country’s governors here for the summer meeting of the National Governors Association.        

~

 The Republican divide on just how far they should go to torpedo Mr. Obama’s signature domestic achievement is increasingly becoming a stand-in for the broader party dispute between purists and pragmatists. 

A group of Tea Party-aligned senators — like the potential presidential prospects Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas — are pushing their fellow Republicans in Congress to oppose a stopgap measure that would keep the federal government running after Sept. 30 if it includes financing for the Affordable Care Act. 

But many Republicans, including high-profile conservatives like Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, fear that Mr. Obama and the Democrats will only benefit in the 2014 elections from a doomed effort to block spending on the new law because Congressional Republicans would bear the blame for the subsequent shutdown of the government. 

The Problem With the GOP's "Hastert Rule"

Former Speaker Dennis Hastert

The so-called Hastert Rule is an informal rule that House Republicans have where the speaker will not bring up something for a floor vote unless it is supported by a majority of the majority. To my knowledge, House Democrats do not have a similar rule.

From Salon:

Today, Boehner's violations of the Hastert rule have angered conservatives who see themselves as the ones marginalized by his ability to get around their demands. Under pressure, Boehner has repeatedly reassured them that he won't break the rule again when it comes to immigration reform. Something resembling the bill that has passed the Senate would likely pass the House if it came to a floor vote, with a majority of Democrats and a minority of Republicans in support. But Boehner has made clear he won't allow that to happen. 

Back when the Hastert rule first became a thing, a Hastert spokesman named John Feehery defended it to the Washington Post. "If you pass major bills without the majority of the majority, then you tend not to be a long-term speaker," Feehery said, adding, "I think [Hastert] was prudent to listen to his members." 

That's what the Hastert rule is really about, Feehery, now a lobbyist and consultant, told me recently -- political survival. It's just common sense: The speaker is elected by a majority vote of his caucus; if he does things a majority of his caucus doesn't like, they can vote him out. 

Feehery actually wrote the speech in which Hastert laid out the rule that bears his name. He coined the catchy phrase "majority of the majority." And now he thinks Boehner ought to ditch the Hastert rule. 

Feehery outlined his thinking in a blog post in January. In a recent interview, he elaborated: Given the current "ungovernable" state of the House GOP caucus, he told me, Boehner must balance the risk to his own standing with the "larger reputational risk" to the Republican Party of things like, say, blocking the Violence Against Women Act -- which would have happened had Boehner not violated the Hastert rule to get it through with the votes of just 38 percent of his members. 

Any time a Republican House member talks about majority rule and democracy, they should have the Hastert Rule thrown in their face. It seems that when the GOP is in power in the House of Representatives, they forget it is the people's House and not the GOP's House. If a piece of legislation has the support of a majority of all the duly elected members of the House, it should come up for a vote. Otherwise, it appears that the House has its own version of the Senate's filibuster, and both are destructive abuses of power that demonstrate how against democracy the GOP - in actuality - is.

The Not-So-Solid South

From The American Prospect:

...Over the next two decades, it will become clear to even the most clueless Yankee that the Solid South is long gone. The politics of the region’s five most populous states—Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Texas—will be defined by the emerging majority that gave Obama his winning margins. The under-30 voters in these states are ethnically diverse, they lean heavily Democratic, and they are just beginning to vote. The white population percentage is steadily declining; in Georgia, just 52 percent of those under 18 are white, a number so low it would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. 

By the 2020s, more than two-thirds of the South’s electoral votes could be up for grabs. (The South is defined here as the 11 states of the former Confederacy.) If all five big states went blue, with their 111 electoral votes, only 49 votes would be left for Republicans. (That’s based on the current electoral-vote count; after the next census, the fast-growing states will have more.) Win or lose, simply making Southern states competitive is a boon to Democrats. If Republicans are forced to spend time and resources to defend Texas and Georgia, they’ll have less for traditional battlegrounds like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Even if Democrats aren’t competitive in those states for another decade, they will benefit from connecting with millions of nonvoters who haven’t heard their message. They are building for a demographic future that Republicans dread: the time when overwhelming white support will no longer be enough to win a statewide election in Texas and Georgia...

~

...The demographic big bang didn’t begin in earnest, however, until the 1990s. Large numbers of African Americans had begun moving South in what would become known as the “great remigration.” From the early 20th century until the 1960s, more than seven million blacks fled the Jim Crow South in the Great Migration to pursue a better life, mostly in the industrial North. It was the largest domestic migration in American history. Now hundreds of thousands are returning. Last decade, 75 percent of the growth in America’s black population was in the South. Atlanta and its endless suburbs gained 491,000 African Americans in the past decade, more than any other city. Some are middle-class blacks whose families once relied on government jobs up North that are now disappearing. Some are caring for older relatives left behind in the Great Migration. Some are simply coming home to reunite with their families, finding a region that has undergone seismic changes since the South’s segregated “way of life” finally came to a merciful end. 

While blacks were remigrating, Latino populations were expanding rapidly. Birth statistics tell the story: By 2010, 49 percent of newborns in Texas were Latino. Among the big five Southern states, Virginia has the lowest rate at 12 percent. Hundreds of thousands of young Latinos become eligible to vote in the South every year, and that number will be climbing for decades. At least for now, this strongly favors Democrats, who win Latino votes by large margins. Florida used to be the exception, because first-generation (and often second-generation) Cuban Americans were staunch, anti-communist Republicans. But younger Cuban Americans have joined a new immigrant population in Central Florida to help flip the state in the Democrats’ favor...

~

...In the South’s new battlegrounds, 2020 shapes up as a pivotal year. If Democrats have gathered enough strength by then to send majorities to Richmond, Raleigh, Atlanta, Tallahassee, and/or Austin, they can tear up the Republican maps from 2011 and make it dauntingly difficult for the GOP to regain its majorities. That’s likeliest to happen in Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina; Democratic majorities could take longer in Texas and Georgia, where Republicans are more deeply entrenched...

The Politics of the Supreme Court Rulings

Republican Judicial Obstructionism

Has the GOP Given Up on Hispanic Outreach?

Fleischer: Bachmann Was "Not My Cup Of Tea"

GOP Aides Lament Benghazi Witch-Hunt

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)

From Roll Call: 

The inquiry led by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee into the slaying of four Americans at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last year has been attention-grabbing, but some senior GOP aides are worried that the partisan overtones are diverting Congress from identifying and addressing the real lessons learned from the attack. 

In particular, these aides say key staffers have been overly consumed with chasing down or addressing inaccurate or unfounded accusations emerging from the inquiry. 

“We have got to get past that and figure out what are we going to do going forward,” a GOP aide stressed. “Some of the accusations, I mean you wouldn’t believe some of this stuff. It’s just — I mean, you’ve got to be on Mars to come up with some of this stuff...”           

Texas A.G.: Democrats More Dangerous Than N. Korea

From Huffington Post: 

“One thing that requires ongoing vigilance is the reality that the state of Texas is coming under a new 
assault, an assault far more dangerous than what the leader of North Korea threatened when he said he was going to add Austin, Texas, as one of the recipients of his nuclear weapons,” [Texas Attorney General Greg] Abbott told the McLennan County Republican Club on Monday, according to the Waco Tribune. “The threat that we’re getting is the threat from the Obama administration and his political machine.” 

Abbott drew the contrast while offering a warning to local Republicans about the newly formed Democratic group, Battleground Texas. The group, helmed by former Obama campaign operatives, is seeking to turn Texas blue, or at least make it competitive in 2014 and beyond. While reliably red Texas hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976, officials with Battleground Texas have tapped into support from key Democratic backers, seeing hope for the future in demographic trends. Their effort has been bolstered by early polling that showed Hillary Clinton could win Texas if she ran in 2016.

First, saying that Democrats are more dangerous than a nuclear bomb is another example of a Republican making the party look like the “stupid party.” I know, he was just using colourful language as I have done on numerous occasions, but it is an infantile comparison. It also makes light of a nation whose leader is seeking to acquire nuclear arms and has no love of the United States.

Second, if Texas - a reliably GOP state for the last several decades - does become competitive in the next few elections, it is further evidence of the failure of the GOP to adapt to changing demographics. The main driving force behind Texas potentially becoming a swing state would be the state’s growing Latino population, and Republican politicians have a way driving Latino voters towards the Democratic party. If the GOP wants to hold on to Texas, the national party must change how they approach many policies, namely immigration and race relations. Just recently, a Republican politician (though not one from Texas) nonchalantly referred to Latinos as “wetbacks.” One GOP representative used the Boston Marathon bombing as an excuse to oppose comprehensive immigration reform even though there was then no proof of any connection to an immigrant. The GOP supports voter identification laws which would disproportionately affect, among other groups, Latinos. By supporting the policies they support - and not just the ones affecting Latinos specifically - the GOP is steadily taking once reliably red states and putting them in play. It happened in Virginia before, it may be happening now In Texas.

If a political shift were to happen in the Lone Star state, it would be yet another symptom of a larger systemic problem which has been well documented: the GOP is driving voters away in droves. American attitudes towards many issues are changing very quickly, whereas conservatives are adjusting to these changes very slowly, if at all. Most people think equal pay for equal work is a no-brainer, but Republicans routinely vote against it. Most Americans think big oil companies do not need multi-billion dollar subsidies, but Republicans (and some Democrats, to be fair) keep voting for them. Most Americans believe you should not be fired for being gay, but Republicans keep voting against employment non-discrimination policies at all levels of government. And yet again, it is not just the policies, but also the messages coming from members of the party. The phrase "legitimate rape" comes to mind. The governor of Georgia is calling an effort to desegregate the prom of a Georgia county’s school a “publicity stunt.” Democrats tend to have more inclusive policies like the Lily Ledbetter Act (i.e. equal pay), employment non-discrimination policies, and the Dream Act for children of undocumented immigrants because those children did not come to America of their own volition. Even some voters who may agree with the GOP on economic policies are kept away by many of the controversial policies and statements coming from the party.

Assuming Republicans want to stay in the proverbial game, they have to adjust to a new American reality. The voting bloc that they are accustomed to relying on no longer exists. They will either adapt and overcome, or they will hold on to the past and become politically irrelevant. The choice is theirs.

Letterman Calls Anti-Gay Policies "Nonsense"