Growing Evidence Against a Republican Wave

By Nate Cohn via New York Times

 Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a G.O.P. advantage.

At the beginning of this year’s midterm campaign, analysts and political operatives had every reason to expect a strong Republican showing this November. President Biden’s approval rating was in the low 40s, and the president’s party has a long history of struggling in midterm elections.

But as the start of the general election campaign nears, it’s becoming increasingly hard to find any concrete signs of Republican strength.

Tuesday’s strong Democratic showing in a special congressional election in New York’s 19th District is only the latest example. On paper, this classic battleground district in the Hudson Valley and Catskills is exactly where the Republicans would be expected to flip a seat in a so-called wave election. But the Democrat Pat Ryan prevailed over a strong Republican nominee, Marc Molinaro, by around two percentage points, outperforming Mr. Biden’s narrow win in the district two years ago.

The result adds to a growing pile of evidence suggesting that Democrats have rebounded in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in late June to overturn Roe v. Wade. No matter the indicator, it’s hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage.

One special election would be easy to dismiss. But it’s not alone.

There have been five special congressional elections since the court’s Dobbs ruling overturned Roe, and Democrats have outperformed Mr. Biden’s 2020 showing in four of them. In the fifth district, Alaska’s at-large House special, the ranked-choice voting count is not complete, but they appear poised to outperform him there as well.

On average, Republicans carried the four completed districts by 3.7 percentage points, compared with Donald J. Trump’s 7.7-point edge in the same districts two years ago. The results aren’t merely worse than expected for Republicans; they’re straightforwardly poor. Republicans need to fare better than Mr. Trump, who lost the national vote by 4.5 points in 2020, to retake the House — let alone contemplate winning the Senate.

But strength among high-turnout white voters can get a party pretty far in low-turnout midterm elections, which tend to have a relatively whiter electorate. Perhaps in part for that reason, there is a decent historical relationship between special election results and midterm outcomes. And before Dobbs, Republicans were outrunning Mr. Trump in special congressional elections. Since then, the pattern has reversed.

While there’s plenty of room for debate about exactly what the special election results mean for November, there’s no dispute that the results are plainly positive for Democrats.

Democrats have made steady gains on the generic congressional ballot, a poll question asking voters whether they prefer Democrats or Republicans for Congress.

Overall, Democrats now have the slightest advantage on this measure, according to FiveThirtyEight’s tracker. That represents about a three-point swing toward the Democrats since mid-June, when Republicans led before the Dobbs ruling.

A tight generic ballot represents a real improvement for Democrats. If the polls are right — a big “if” after the last few cycles — it suggests a fairly competitive district-by-district battle for control of the House, rather than the expected Republican rout.

Realistically, Republicans would remain clearly favored — the House map is still modestly tilted in their favor, and Democrats would have to win an outsize share of the competitive races to hold the chamber. But the notion that Democrats can even dream about House control is a remarkable turn from earlier in the cycle, when the House was all but penciled into the Republican column.

It’s still a little early to look at polls pitting Democratic candidates against Republican ones in specific races. Many candidates remain unknown, and the general election campaign is just getting underway.

But the early state and district polls do look relatively promising for Democrats. That’s especially true in the Senate, where a simple polling average might even show Democrats poised to make gains.

The House polls are consistent with the generic ballot results. On average, Democrats are running about 4.7 points behind Mr. Biden’s performance across 40 nonpartisan House polls taken since the Dobbs decision. That would be consistent with a close national vote.

After the last few cycles of polling misfires, there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical of state surveys — especially in the relatively white working-class battleground states where the polls seem to have consistently underestimated Republicans.

But here again, the long-awaited “red wave” is nowhere to be found.

This is a bit of an odd one, but it’s a surprisingly useful measure and it doesn’t show much of a red wave either.

Washington State has a top-two primary in which all of the candidates from both parties appear on the same primary ballot; the top two candidates advance to the general election.

As a result, the Washington primary is a lot more like a general election than the typical primary — not only is every voter eligible, but voters can also select the Democrat or Republican of their choosing in every race. For good measure, Washington has universal vote-by-mail, which tends to keep the turnout pretty high. It’s more like the typical midterm electorate than some of the recent special elections.

The results of the Washington primary usually do a decent job of predicting the outcome of the fall election. In some years, Democrats do a bit better in November than in the primary; in other years, Republicans do. But it’s not usually hugely different. In retrospect, the solid Republican showing in the 2020 Washington primary was one of the better reasons to doubt the polls heading into November 2020.

This cycle, the Democratic candidates for House ran two points behind Mr. Biden’s performance in 2020 (excluding the two districts where pro-impeachment Republicans in safely Republican districts clearly benefited from considerable levels of strategic crossover support from Democrats).

Yet again, it’s a result that’s consistent with a fairly evenly divided national vote for the House.

Of all the indicators, primary elections are probably the single messiest measure of the national political environment. From state to state and cycle to cycle, voters may either have a very compelling reason to show up — or no reason to vote whatsoever. A strong or weak Democratic or Republican primary turnout can mean absolutely nothing.

But if all the states are added together, the vagaries of individual state primary elections more or less cancel out. Over the last few decades, partisan primary turnout does correlate relatively well with the results of midterm elections.

In 15 primaries since the court’s ruling, 52.5 percent of primary voters have cast Republican primary ballots compared with 48 percent in the same states in 2018, according to data compiled by the pollster John Couvillon. The last midterm is used as the point of comparison because of the one-party presidential primary in 2020.

Of course, 2018 was a good year for Democrats. In the end, they won 54 percent of the major party vote and carried the House easily. So they have room to fare quite a bit worse than they did in 2018 and still put up a respectable showing. Indeed, a 4.5-point shift from 2018 would yield a pretty close House national vote, with maybe a slight Republican edge depending on how one looks at uncontested races.

And that 4.5-point Republican overperformance is a little worse for Republicans than earlier in the year. Before Roe, Republicans were running 6.7 points better than in the 2018 primaries in the same states. It’s hard to read a lot into this shift — primaries, again, are very idiosyncratic, with the competitiveness of different races and eligibility rules making a big difference. But the shift, however unreliable, is nonetheless consistent with the broader national story.

There’s still one measure that’s positive for Republicans: President Biden’s approval rating.

It’s stuck in the low 40s, according to FiveThirtyEight, though it seems to have risen along with Democratic fortunes over the last few months.

It’s hard to think of any precedent for the president’s party to fare even half decently with such an unpopular president. The closest recent analogue might be Jimmy Carter in 1978. He held control of Congress despite an approval rating around 50 percent. (His approval rating was similar to Mr. Biden’s in August, but it increased after the Camp David Accords in September.)

Perhaps someone could construe the Democratic hold in the House in the 1950 midterms as somewhat analogous, though Democrats lost 28 seats and saw a net seven-point shift toward Republicans.

Ultimately, it’s possible that Mr. Biden’s approval rating will drag down the Democrats. It may even begin to drag them down by the other measures even before the fall election.

But for now, his approval rating stands apart as the only hard measurement that argues for a decisive Republican victory this fall.

How 2016 Could Be An Even Bigger Democratic Blowout Than 2008

BY RUY TEIXEIRA/Think Progress

It’s widely acknowledged that the Democrats have a heavy lift going into the 2014 election, despite the continued decline in Republican Party favorability brought on by the shutdown, their extreme rhetoric and their single-minded devotion to undermining effective governance. However, regardless of the outcome in 2014, it seems likely that the GOP will be increasingly burdened by warfare between its totally intransigent Tea Party faction and “establishment”, business-oriented Republicans in and around Washington.

That’s a recipe for increased unpopularity going into the 2016 Presidential cycle. But a new poll suggests it might be more significant than that: an opportunity for the Democrats to make historic, devastating inroads into the Republican base.

How bad could 2016 be for Republicans? Pretty bad. Start with the likelihoodthat minorities, who voted 80 percent for Obama, will increase by 2 points to 30 percent of voters. Add to that the continued growth of heavily Democratic Millennial generation voters within the electorate, whose numbers will increase by about 4 million a year. By the 2016 election, Millennials should be about 36 percent of eligible voters and roughly a third of actual voters. That’s quite a tail wind for whomever the Democratic nominee may be.

But what about white voters? That’s where Obama was weakest, especially among white working class voters, whom he lost by 25 points. Won’t those kind of margins prevent a truly crushing defeat for the GOP in 2016?

Not necessarily.

The increasingly extreme and factionalized Republican party is suffering image erosion across the board, including among white voters. It’s also scaring white seniors and white working class voters, in particular, with its aggressive calls for cutting entitlements. This will likely lead a considerable number of white voters who backed Romney in 2012 to consider switching sides in 2016.

Will the Democrats be able to take advantage of this opening? We can’t say for sure, but consider that Hillary Clinton, the most likely nominee at this point, has a track record of appealing to white working class voters and in early pollshas been cutting Obama’s deficit among whites nationally and in key states. That raises the possibility that Democrats could make progress in 2016 toward a decades-long aspiration: a Bobby Kennedy-style coalition that unites minorities, young people, and educated liberals with working class whites.

That progress would not have to be large-scale to create a lop-sided loss for the GOP. If Hillary Clinton simply matched Obama’s modest performance among working class whites (an 18 point deficit) that, combined with expected levels of demographic change, would be enough for her to exceed Obama’s overall victory margin in 2008. And if Clinton could match Obama’s 2008 performance among college-educated white women (a 5 point advantage), for whom her candidacy should have special appeal, she would triumph by 10 points, a huge gap in Presidential elections and the largest margin since Ronald Reagan’s re-election in 1984.

One reaction to this scenario might be: college-educated white women, sure, but how can a Democrat, even Hillary Clinton, reach a white working class split from the increasingly diverse Democratic party by ethnic and class divisions? As it turns out, most of the white working class is much more open-minded than many think.

Take a look at the results from a new survey by CAP and PolicyLink on Americans’ reactions to rising diversity. The poll found that, by and large, positive sentiments about opportunities from rising diversity tended to outweigh negative concerns about rising diversity — even among working class whites.

As the table below shows, Americans overall expressed majority agreement with six of eight statements about these opportunities, though there was considerable demographic variation in level of agreement. But despite this variation, it is nevertheless striking that white working class (non-college) respondents also agreed with every one of those six statements:

Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of the white working class agreed that “Americans will learn more from one another and be enriched by exposure to many different cultures.” The same number agreed that “Aabigger, more diverse workforce will lead to more economic growth.” 62 percent agreed that “diverse workplaces and schools will help make American businesses more innovative and competitive.” 58 percent agreed that “people will become more accepting of their differences and more willing to find common ground.” 57 percent agreed that “with more diverse people working and living together, discrimination will decrease.” Finally, 52 percent agreed that “the entry of new people into the American workforce will increase our tax base and help support our retiree population”.

This does not sound like a demographic whose future lies with the lily-white Tea Party. The point becomes especially clear when you look at younger whites; white working class Millennials are significantly more open to rising diversity than the white working class as a whole. For example, 75 percent of white working class Millennials think Americans will be enriched by exposure to many cultures and 73 percent believe a bigger, more diverse workforce will lead to more economic growth.

These data indicate that there is real potential for a breakthrough among the white working class in 2016. Whether Hillary Clinton (or any other Democrat) can realize that potential remains to be seen. But if they can do so, the GOP could suffer an historic defeat.

Democrats embrace Obamacare

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Rep. Van Hollen on the tea party: Voters have buyer’s remorse

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said Wednesday that Democrats “had the momentum” going into the 2012 elections in November.

“People absolutely do have buyer’s remorse,” he said on MSNBC. “They did not know what they were getting themselves into with this tea party dominated House, which has focused on providing tax breaks to special interests and trying to help millionaires at the expense of everyone and everything else.”

“It is very clear that the House Republican priorities are way out of touch with the country, and that is why momentum is growing,” he added.

Van Hollen said that Democrats were unlikely to have a fundraising disadvantage against Republicans, and could actually have an advantage. However, he decried the “outside money” that was “flowing into campaigns” thanks to Super PACs.

“The Democrats support an end to the secret money in campaigns, we believe voters have a right to know who is bankrolling these campaigns,” he commented.

In January, Van Hollen introduced legislation called the DISCLOSE Act that would require Super PACS to publicly take responsibility for their ads.

Watch video, courtesy of MSNBC, below:

POLL: Democrats Have Advantage In Medicare, Contraception Debates

By Amanda Peterson Beadle/Think Progress

More people agree with Democrats that the U.S. needs to maintain a defined set of benefits in traditional Medicare, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Seventy percent of respondents, including 53 percent of Republicans, said they want to keep Medicareas it is. This come ahead of the introduction of the Republicans’ proposed budget later this spring, which is likely to include Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan to transform the program into a “defined contribution” structure that would provide seniors with a voucher to purchase insurance from an exchange of private plans.

On contraception coverage, 63 percent of people agree with President Obama’s position that employer-provided insurance plans should cover it at no cost. Most people also agreed with the Democrats’ agrument that the contraception debate is about women’s rights, and 49 percent said they most trusted Democrats on the issue, with 33 percent saying they trusted Republicans.

The Senate will vote on the Blunt amendment, which would undermine the contraception mandate by allowing any employer to deny coverage of health services to their employees on the basis of their personal moral objections.

The Democrats' self-defeating crybaby chorus

By Robert Shrum


After a special election loss in New York City, many on the Left are boneheadedly fleeing Obama — just when they should be rallying to his side


Before the month came thumping in on elephant feet, I wrote that each August since 2007 had marked a cruel passage for Barack Obama and suggested how he might turn the ides this year. It was not to be, and maybe never will be. The month actually culminated — and confirmed its unhappy course — on September 13, when a machine-ordained Democratic candidate lost the New York City congressional seat of the deflated Anthony Weiner to a Republican tea merchant.
The GOP reaction was predictable: This was a referendum on Obama and a portent of doom in 2012. After all, here was the first Republican elected from this district since 1923. (Actually, that's a sloppy factoid, echoed in the media, to make it easy to blame Obama first; it's a fact in the Brooklyn rump of the district, but not in Queens, the district's predominant swath, where Forest Hills and other neighborhoods sent Republican Seymour Halpern to Congress in the 1960s and 1970s.)
Al Smith, the master of the sidewalks of New York, in a characteristic phrase, might have called the Democrat in this special election "a bum." At the least, David Weprin was a bumbler. He confidently offered up a figure on the national debt; he was off by 10 trillion (with a 'T') dollars. He skipped out of a debate, citing the threat of Hurricane Irene; the storm had already passed. He didn't go on the attack until it was too late; he never brought Gov. Andrew Cuomo into a district where he is overwhelmingly popular.
James Carville would have the president play a hasty game of musical chairs that would turn Obama's ship of state into the Titanic.
Weprin fled any identification with the president after former New York Mayor Ed Koch urged voters to retaliate against Obama's Mideast policy by rallying to the Right. Koch, whom I was proud to help defeat for re-election in 1989, has a record of exploiting ethnic tensions and turning on his own party. He race-baited Jesse Jackson in the 1988 presidential primary — and in the past, he's endorsed Rudolph Giuliani, the state's last Republican senator (Alfonse D'Amato), and George W. Bush.
Never mind that Weprin is an Orthodox Jew, an undeviating rubber stamp for Israeli policies, with relatives living in that country. And never mind that Obama's position is the same as Bush's, Bill Clinton's, and the peace deal Israel offered in 2000 and 2001 — a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with agreed land swaps. And never mind that as Israel's self-ordained champion, Koch in reality endangers the increasingly isolated Jewish state with his knee-jerk support of a Netanyahu regime that subordinates the strategic imperatives of national survival to the political survival of his own extremist-infested coalition. To cite Abba Eban's famous phrase, it's now Netanyahu who "never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity" — say, to avert a dangerous break with Turkey — and there are "friends" of Israel like Koch who are there with him every lurch of the way.
Koch undoubtedly hurt Weprin; but there's little doubt that other, stronger Democrats — including former District Attorney and Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman — would have won anyway. But Democratic bosses outsmarted, or more accurately, out-dumbed themselves by ruling out a primary in favor of picking a patsy who would compliantly disappear after redistricting eliminated one of New York City's congressional seats. They got the patsy they wanted, only he inconveniently disappeared 14 months early.
As Democratic pollster Mark Mellman showed on the eve of Weprin's defeat, we may think "[special] elections foretell the future, and they don't." (In 2009-2010, Democrats took a majority of the specials; look what happened in November 2010.) As for the president's actual standing in New York, at the nadir of the post-debt-ceiling debacle, he led Mitt Romney in the state by 18 points and Rick Perry by 27. In the Reuters-Ipsos poll, he's ahead of Romney nationally by 6, and Perry by 8.
It's natural for the GOP to dismiss the facts in favor of misreading the entrails of a temporary congressional gain which will be reversed in 2012. But it's stupid, a sign of panic, and a pathetic and depressing picture to see Democrats joining in. Politico assembled the crybaby chorus, but you can't blame the messenger for replaying the dirges.

First, there are the Democratic donors, mostly anonymous, one of whom said, "People feel betrayed, disappointed, furious, disgusted"; they might, some of them, sit out 2012. It's unclear how many of them are gathering in that dark corner — or retreating to the self-justifying comfort of those who weren't for Obama in the first place and can now indulge the natural human tendency to say "we told you so." From these precincts, too, comes a lot of the speculation that Joe Biden should be replaced on the ticket by Hillary Clinton. The secretary of state disclaims any such inclination; for some who offer it, the suggestion surely reflects the recriminating instinct of less gracious losers who've never given up on the notion that the place she really should have taken was Obama's on the ticket — in 2008, or even now.
All this is bad politics all around, the kind of instinctive or calculated consternation that we didn't see from Ronald Reagan's contributors in the dog days of his recession-ridden presidency, or from George W. Bush's "Rangers" as he fell behind John Kerry in the summer of 2004. There were no demands then to dump Dick Cheney. Switching out Biden, and misusing Hillary as a crutch, would cast an indelible imprint of presidential weakness; prop up Obama primarily where he's already secure; and in hard political terms, potentially cost him critical blue collar swing states like Pennsylvania — where Biden arguably made the difference in the last election.
Next among the disaffected are elements of the labor movement. According to Politico, the AFL-CIO might emphasize state contests — and the Service Employers are contemplating a campaign for jobs, not Obama. This would be ungrateful, given the president's record on labor issues. I know, gratitude is not plentiful in politics, but as Teamsters President Jim Hoffa announced with pungent intensity, it's time to "keep the eyes on the prize. Let's take these sons-of-bitches out and give America back to America where we belong." Good luck to any union that sits out or sloughs off in 2012; if they end up with Romney or Perry, it could mark the end of organized labor in America.
As the criticism of Obama swelled, congressional Democrats who should know better chimed in, too. An unnamed staffer attributed the Weprin loss to the "crater[ing]" of the president's approval ratings. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer's tepid support sounded like barely disguised piling on: It was "probably correct" that the outcome will be "interpreted" as a verdict on Obama.
Meanwhile, too many members of his own party in Congress who pushed the president for a jobs bill, paid for by taxes on the wealthy, are now validating Will Rogers's observation that they "don't belong to any organized party. [They're] Democrat[s]." Some of them are beginning to pick the bill apart, pursuing parochial interests or complaining about one provision or another. Sen. Sherrod Brown warns that Democrats have to "compromise to get this [jobs bill] up and running"; everybody can't have all they want. He's right, and so is Nancy Pelosi that Democrats can recapture the House — if they hold their nerve and stand with the president. But if they seek refuge in blaming him, or running away from him, well, that's a prescription for ensuring that Hoyer remains — or more decisively becomes — the minority leader.

Finally comes my friend James Carville to argue in a pyrotechnic CNN piece that yes, the White House should "panic." There is no more time for "explanations" — although it usually helps to think things through before making what Carville calls "a complete change [in] direction." And what does that change consist of? "Fire a lot of people" — which Obama won't and shouldn't do. So thus, the "geniuses" of 2008 become the scapegoats of 2011. Playing a hasty game of musical chairs would turn Obama's ship of state into the Titanic. It's a reflex, a gimmick — and it's ahistorical. As Bill Clinton's campaign chief in 1992, Carville didn't panic — he certainly didn't fire himself — in the early summer of that year, when Clinton was in last place, at 22 percent, in a three-way race with Ross Perot and the first George Bush.
Carville also wants Attorney General Eric Holder fired — boy, that will set off a popular pro-Obama groundswell. And the Ragin' Cajun recommends that the Justice Department "indict people," presumably a host of people and presumably on Wall Street — a white hot populist gesture that could cripple or crash financial markets. In any case, Obama wouldn't debase the law to score political points; we had enough of that in the last administration. In this one, indictments have been made and will be — but on the merits.
Carville is on target about one thing: Obama has to "make a case like a Democrat." But that's what this president is doing now. Day after day, he is drawing the dividing lines. He does have to keep at it — and show as well as say that he's the one fighting for ordinary, hard-working, and out-of-work Americans. That's been the right course for some time — and with Obama on course, he doesn't need to be told, "Fire. Indict. Fight." It's a catchy aphorism, but it's only one-third right.
Ever since the pains of August intensified, Republicans have increasingly hoped, and Democrats have feared, that Barack Obama is another Jimmy Carter. The GOP is doing its best to block recovery as a conscious strategy to reclaim the White House: kill jobs to get the job. But there is grave risk for Republicans in this transparent cynicism; the president has the voice, and we've learned before that he has the strength of will to set the choice and win the big battle. Indeed, that's what makes the comparison with Carter absurd; from health reform to financial reform to the salvation of the auto industry and the prevention of depression, Obama has a historic record of achievement.
The next step is to consistently push for jobs and growth. The president may not pass his bill — the odds are against it — but you can bet he won't be a prisoner of Republican intransigence. Obama is a fourth quarter player. And the fourth quarter has come. It's time for the crybaby chorus to leave the critic's row and get in the game. The president will do his part. And then his victory in the 2012 election will be remembered long after his phony defeat in a peculiar special election fades into a footnote.
The panic isn't justified — and Democrats can't afford it. Grow up. As Carville might say, there's too much at stake, stupid.

We Must Organize Not Capitulate

by TiMT/The People's view

I stumbled on this article at the TPM where a TPM Reader made this absolutely great point, a little dose of sanity Dailykos and the screaming angry mob of the Professional left could use to hear:

Let me get this straight. The President kept revenues on the table, did not touch the sunset provisions in the Bush tax cuts, ensured that military cuts keep the GOP honest, protected Medicare by adding in only provider cuts in the trigger, made the reduction apparently enough to stave off a debt downgrade, got the debt ceiling raised, wounded Boehner by demonstrating to the world that he is controlled by the Tea Party caucus, took out the requirement that a BBA[Balanced Budget Amendment] be passed and sent to the states and got the extension through 2012? What exactly is wrong with this deal?

Well, what exactly is wrong with this deal that ensured the United States Governments' treasury won't be forced to default on its legal obligation and avoid catastrophic damage to the economy? What is wrong with this deal that avoids a discontinuance of payments to Medicaid payments to states, U.S. Military salaries and retirement benefits, Social Security and Medicare benefits, payments to Veterans' benefits, Civil Service Salaries and Retirement benefits, and Unemployment benefits? These are just to mention some of the disruption that would have been caused had there been no deal?

So again, what exactly is wrong with this deal?

The fact that there are cuts? If people don't like that, why in God's name didn't they turn out to vote and bring back our Congressional majority? Once these nut jobs were in there, it was inevitable that this crap was going to happen. Whether or not it is advisable to cut spending, what exactly was going to stop this from happening? My experience is that the primary factor in all negotiations are the facts on the ground. The complaints center on a ridiculous notion that if the President had only said "no" harder, that these guys would have caved in. This isn't negotiating over who gets the side of the bed near the A/C. This is a complex matter involving 3,000 members and staffers. Negotiations in these situations don't work like this. That's why I'm irked by the constant parade of people comparing the negotiations to movies and card games. These comparisons obscure more than they reveal.

But again, the same people capitulating do know that we live in an era of bigotry and unprecedented partisanship that is dedicated to make President Obama a one term Black President throwing every kind of curve ball there is to throw at him whatever the cost may be, even if it destroy the country so that Republicans can own the White House and blame the first Black President for the sins of all the President before him.

The GOP's game plan from day one has been to demonizing and shaming this President by doing everything possible to make him a failure. It has always has been about racial and class politics. End goal is sending a message to the large block of religious right and low information white voters that they should never elect a Black President or any potential Hispanic President or a Gay President or a Jew President or a minority class President ever again. It is rather shameful, racist and cowardly act of terror the GOP is willing to inflect holding the American people hostage for which everyone of them should be prosecuted and jailed for not fulfilling the oath of office they hold that states - "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States."

If there is anything Americans have learned from the debt ceiling negotiation, it is the fact that the GOP does not care nor do they have any soul and humility left in them to protect the national security of the United States as they are willing to wage economic war that would have caused a catastrophic economic failure and potentially the worst recession. If there is any good that came out of all this is that the GOP has truly shown who they really are if anyone thought they were remotely sane in the past.

The TPM Readers notes:

The GOP came out of this looking unreasonable--I've been getting E-mail messages from friends saying they are back with the Democrats because the Tea Party is "destroying this country." Nate Silver tweeted last week that local conservative talk radio in Kansas was filled with callers attacking the Tea Party! The Wall Street Journal ran two editorials which called the GOP delusional and "childish." The vaunted GOP message discipline broke down--I read stories all over the "inside baseball" papers here in DC where GOP House members went on the record after the Friday vote wondering out loud if the party had been damaged! I don't know if you noticed, but John Boehner spent last week negotiating with himself. No new proposals came out from the Dem side, but he produced two proposals, one of which he had to pull after he didn't have votes. A congressional Dem staffer told me his dad, an urban Catholic who voted for Nixon over Kennedy and has always voted Republican suddenly thinks the GOP is out to lunch and supports the President.

The tides will turn as things settle down but as Democrats what we must focus on is indeed electing more and better Democrats and getting involved to make sure that the GOP never sees the light of day in power. We must organize to get ride of these nutcases and push for more progress that we can build and keep on building. I hope you will join the campaign by signing-in for house meetings that will take place tomorrow across the country. Hold your nose if you have to but get involved. We all must wake up and smell the coffee. The campaign to enslave and deprive Americans from the basic needs we all claim to be proud of and enjoy is hanging by a thread and we much not be complacent.

Peace.

GOP projected to win House, 237 to 198

Local update: Virg Bernero loses to Made in China. Jocelyn Benson loses to Ruth Johnson. David Leyton loses to whoever the douche he was running against.

Support For Veterans Shows Sharp Partisan Divide

By Brad Johnson

According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America Action Fund, Republicans in Congress have dramatically failed to support our troops after they come home. IAVA’s 2010 Veteran Report Card, based on the key veterans’ legislation that came to a vote during the 111th Congress, exposed a sharp partisan divide on the level of support for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow tabulated yesterday. Of the 94 elected officials that earned an A or A+ rating from IAVA, 91 were Democrats. Of the 154 officials who received a D or F, 142 were Republicans:

Maddow also noted that U.S. Senate candidates Sharron Angle (R-NV) and Ken Buck (R-CO) have called for the privatization of the Veterans Affairs hospital system, even though it provides the best quality of care in America, as our veterans deserve. Watch the segment:

It’s Witch-Hunt Season

By PAUL KRUGMAN The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment — at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.

Now it’s happening again — except that this time it’s even worse. Let’s turn the floor over to Rush Limbaugh: “Imam Hussein Obama,” he recently declared, is “probably the best anti-American president we’ve ever had.”

To get a sense of how much it matters when people like Mr. Limbaugh talk like this, bear in mind that he’s an utterly mainstream figure within the Republican Party; bear in mind, too, that unless something changes the political dynamics, Republicans will soon control at least one house of Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly.

So where is this rage coming from? Why is it flourishing? What will it do to America?

Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals — even very moderate liberals — legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage.

By the way, I’m not talking about the rage of the excluded and the dispossessed: Tea Partiers are relatively affluent, and nobody is angrier these days than the very, very rich. Wall Street has turned on Mr. Obama with a vengeance: last month Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant, compared proposals to end tax loopholes for hedge fund managers with the Nazi invasion of Poland.

And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage. Jane Mayer’s new article in The New Yorker about the superrich Koch brothers and their war against Mr. Obama has generated much-justified attention, but as Ms. Mayer herself points out, only the scale of their effort is new: billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife waged a similar war against Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, the right-wing media are replaying their greatest hits. In the 1990s, Mr. Limbaugh used innuendo to feed anti-Clinton mythology, notably the insinuation that Hillary Clinton was complicit in the death of Vince Foster. Now, as we’ve just seen, he’s doing his best to insinuate that Mr. Obama is a Muslim. Again, though, there’s an extra level of craziness this time around: Mr. Limbaugh is the same as he always was, but now seems tame compared with Glenn Beck.

And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found.

To take a prime example: the hysteria over the proposed Islamic center in lower Manhattan almost makes one long for the days when former President George W. Bush tried to soothe religious hatred, declaring Islam a religion of peace. There were good reasons for his position: there are a billion Muslims in the world, and America can’t afford to make all of them its enemies.

But here’s the thing: Mr. Bush is still around, as are many of his former officials. Where are the statements, from the former president or those in his inner circle, preaching tolerance and denouncing anti-Islam hysteria? On this issue, as on many others, the G.O.P. establishment is offering a nearly uniform profile in cowardice.

So what will happen if, as expected, Republicans win control of the House? We already know part of the answer: Politico reports that they’re gearing up for a repeat performance of the 1990s, with a “wave of committee investigations” — several of them over supposed scandals that we already know are completely phony. We can expect the G.O.P. to play chicken over the federal budget, too; I’d put even odds on a 1995-type government shutdown sometime over the next couple of years.

It will be an ugly scene, and it will be dangerous, too. The 1990s were a time of peace and prosperity; this is a time of neither. In particular, we’re still suffering the after-effects of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, and we can’t afford to have a federal government paralyzed by an opposition with no interest in helping the president govern. But that’s what we’re likely to get.

If I were President Obama, I’d be doing all I could to head off this prospect, offering some major new initiatives on the economic front in particular, if only to shake up the political dynamic. But my guess is that the president will continue to play it safe, all the way into catastrophe.

A guide to debunking Republican talking points at the health care summit.

By Zaid Jilani I know it's late but here ya go Today, the White House kicks off the Bipartisan Health Care Summit, which “may be the end of the beginning for health care reform.” Republicans have already declared that they would not bring new ideas to the table. They plan to reiterate their criticism of the existing Democratic legislation and speak in generalities about how the private market can lower health care costs and achieve “universal access.” Today, former Bush strategist Karl Rove instructs Republicans that it is “necessary” for them to criticize the president, because they have “facts, ideas, and most of the American people on their side.” While their poll-tested talking points may sound convincing, the ideas the Republicans are proposing actually shift the costs and risks of insurance onto individuals and divide the market into low-cost plans for the healthy and high-cost insurance for the sick. In response to these talking points, the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky has published a Viewers Guide to the Bipartisan Health Care Summit. Here is what the GOP will say and why they’re wrong.

Howard Dean: Democrats ‘need a spinal transplant’

By David Edwards and Sahil Kapur WASHINGTON -- One year after being swept into the White House and bestowed huge majorities in Congress, Democrats have seen their towering lead over Republicans evaporate. Why? According to previous DNC chairman Howard Dean, they're just not tough enough.

Dean declared Thursday that Democrats "need a spinal transplant" as the party is too quick to succumb to Republican intimidation rather than stand by their convictions and bring their ideas to fruition.

"Republicans are so irresponsible," Dean said. "They put the good of their party ahead of the good of the country, and when that happens they don't deserve to serve in office anymore."

Dean, also former governor of Vermont, staunchly defended the efforts of Democratic Sens. Tom Harkin (IA) and Jeanne Shaheen (NH) to reform the minority party's ability to block legislation using the filibuster.

Harkin said "the abuse of the filibuster by Republicans is unprecedented" and called it "reckless.

Dean said "Republicans have decided to wreck the system in order to get their way" and taming the filibuster has become necessary in order for Democrats to effectively govern.

Republican leaders Sens. Bill Frist and Mitch McConnell threatened to abolish the filibuster just years ago in 2005 when they controlled the majority in Congress. Now, the shoe is on the other foot, and they have no intention of letting it go.

"Our problem is we're not tough enough," Dean said, alleging that Republicans would have passed their legislation using reconciliation if they faced a similar degree of opposition from Democrats.

"Republicans are obstructionists," Dean said. "They have nothing to offer. They haven't offered anything."

During December's health care deliberations, Dean grew so frustrated with his party's willingness to dilute the legislation that after the public option and Medicare buy-in provisions were removed he declared, "kill the Senate bill."

After publicly sniping with the White House on the matter, he eventually tempered his stance and reluctantly agreed the Senate bill was an improvement, if a pyrrhic victory.

This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Feb. 11, 2010.

Download video via RawReplay.com

Rachel Maddow's complete segment explaining why the filibuster should be eliminated follows:

M.C.L comment: I believe the problem extend to people who call themselves Democrats, I've always said we got three kinds of voters in America the inform but lazy, the misinform and the outright dumb. The inform but lazy knows the deal but don't want to go for the extra mile they think hey I listen to every progressive program out there, I post comments on progressive sites, I call in progressive talk shows and I voted in more than one election why aren't the Democrats more progressive? Progressives should look at the example the right wing has given us from the last 40 years, The Republican party didn't go from a corporate party to a far christian right corporate party over night it took the nuts time to take over that party.. Democrats we gotta start off local i.e. getting good progressive dems elected to school boards and other local and state offices, fight to protect the Democratic majority I rather have douchebags like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln than actually Republicans and finally Alan Grayson, Howard Dean or whomever your favorite progressive don't grow on trees we gotta find them, support them and most importantly get them elected.

Back-stabbing Dems

From a letter posted on Bartcop.com

I am so seriously fed up.

WTF! Seriously! Obama has accomplished so much in his first year, yet because he didn't come in and magically *blink* everything perfect like I Dream of Jeannie, everyone has turned against him.

Does anyone actually know or pay attention to how government works? He must work WITH Congress, which unfortunately is so dysfunctional at this point it's a wonder that he's accomplished as much as he has. If we lose the seat in MA on Tuesday and get the scary Cosmo-posing -naked rightwing nutter of a teabag-handjob because dems are whiny and mad they didn't get their perfect Obama Dream Pony™, I fear we're far more ignorant as a nation than I ever thought possible.

The dismantling of this nation began long ago with the Reagan era deregulations, and Bush & Co spent another eight years destroying it even more, while putting poison pills in place that are plaguing Obama now, and everyone actually thought they could wake up and he'd have Harry Potter's magical wand and make everyone's life perfect?

Where are all those people who knocked on doors for his election? I guess most of them thought they'd done their job just getting him in office. One guy. You think one guy can destroy the behemoth insurance and bank industries by himself overnight? Perhaps it is Obama's fault that he actually had the audacity to not just hope, but believe we all had his back, including congress and all the people who voted him into office.

But no - everyone insisted he play hardball and play just like Bush, instead of playing chess and attaining lasting change in the long run that the crazies couldn't overturn after he's gone, but no - we need instant gratification and if he doesn't play like we want to we demonize him and take our toys and not only refuse to participate, but stab him in the back and shit all over our own best interests in the process.

"Why doesn't Obama come to work?" "Why doesn't he put out these conservative fires?" I keep hearing and reading that shit every day. Well, I'll tell you why I think he's doing what he's doing the way he's doing it......

So isn't Bush 2.0, and he doesn't look like the hysterical media that we all get our information filtered thru. Prime example is the new book GAME CHANGE - with everything in that book, what is the ONE THING everyone is beating into the ground? Harry Reid speaking the truth and using the word "negro." REALLY???

When there is so much other stuff in their about how beyond stupid Sarah Palin is and why everyone should be running McCain out of the country on a rail for picking someone that stupid to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, we've collectively allowed the right to control this talking point and change our focus. And the worst part of it is, we bought it, were too stupid to see the Right orchestrated it, and we not only bought it, but we HELPED THEM. The teabaggers are stupid. I never thought we were close, but I'm changing my mind.

Why can't we get behind our guy? Why can't we, just for once, realize it's never going to be exactly the way we want, and think for a minute, hey.... he's the smartest guy in the room - MAYBE HE'S GOT A LONG-TERM PLAN and just SEE if he doesn't make it all work out in the long run? He's not only a hell of a lot better than the alternative, and I honestly believe he's one of the best we've ever had in my lifetime. He's certainly a hero to the rest of the world - where, I'd like to point out - they're all better educated, and don't have the US MEDIA Poison Machine™ ramming insanity down their throats 24/7.

The Health Reform Bill isn't DONE YET. SHUT THE FUCK UP until it IS. I'm all for single payer, (my day job is in an insurance agency), but the control these companies have is beyond anyone's realm of comprehension. Single Payer is the goal, but we can't start at the finish line with this kind of an opponent. TRUST ME. The "Public Option" was twisted and poisoned by the Insurance Lobby Monster (with the help of The Stupid Party™ to the point of the Harry Reid "negro" drama.

The Senate dems have no SPINE. HOWEVER, they did manage to slip in what a baby-starting out Single Payer might be like with the Non-Profit Company Option - which is what insurance companies used to be when they had regulations - (that the media is thankfully not talking about, lest the Right poison that as well.)

My point is, the biggest tragedy is that WE ARE HELPING the Right destroy us, and we're too damn blind to even see it. M.C.L comments: Couldn't say it better myself...

The conservative media's increasingly lame attacks

By Jamison Foser/Media Matters for America

For all the hype about energized Republicans and independents abandoning the Democrats and town-hall outrage over President Obama's agenda and tea-party protests, if you look closely, it seems the conservative media are getting a little timid.

Just a few months ago, they were convinced they had Obama and the Democrats on the run. They had suckered (or intimidated) the rest of the media into endlessly reporting the temper-tantrums thrown by a few town hall attendees, treating those tantrum-throwers as representative of the nation as a whole, and ignoring the obvious falsity of the tantrum-throwers' claims. They spread lies about "death panels" and went on and on about rationing and the horrors of government bureaucrats (who needn't worry about profits) replacing insurance company bureaucrats (who are quite concerned with profit) in the health care decision-making process. And they had suckered (or intimidated) the rest of the media into taking seriously their fantasies that millions of people had descended on Washington, D.C., to express their disapproval of President Obama.

They did such a good job of convincing the Beltway media that Barack Obama was on the ropes, they seemed to have bought into it themselves, and went for the political knockout punch. Led by the deeply disturbed Glenn Beck (who announced that his goal was to "take the administration down"), they launched some of the harshest attacks imaginable.

Barack Obama, they told us, was a racist and a socialist. A Stalinist. A Marxist and a Maoist. They claimed he reminded them of Mussolini and of Nixon (even getting a bunch of legitimate reporters to buy into that one). Not only that: He is just like Hitler.

But Godwin's Law is not to be trifled with. Comparisons to Hitler tend to blow up in the speaker's face, and this was no different. The constant barrage of off-the-wall claims -- like the suggestion that Barack Obama was history's greatest monster for urging kids to stay in school -- began to drive home a basic truth about the conservative media who were behind them: These people aren't right in the head.

So some on the right seem to be trying to dial things down, to dissociate themselves from the foaming-at-the-mouth fringes who have come to define their movement. And their criticisms of Barack Obama have become increasingly, well, lame.

Take, for example, the effort by The Washington Times, Fox News, and Matt Drudge to stir outrage over the White House's alleged failure to invite any Republicans to last month's state dinner. In fact, several Republicans had been invited, including the House and Senate minority leaders. But the whining over not being invited over for dinner would have been pathetic even if it were true. This isn't seventh grade. Surely there are more important things to worry about than who hangs out with whom after school. In the meantime, if Republicans want to eat in the White House, they should elect a Republican president.

Then there's the recent complaint that the Senate was going to vote on health care reform after only 10 hours of debate. Or, the right-wing blogger Gateway Pundit put it, "Senate Dems Will Only Deliberate 10 Hours Before Vote to Nationalize Health Care."

What's wrong with that criticism?

Well, for one thing, it isn't true. The vote in question was not on passage of health care reform (which, in any case, would not "nationalize health care"). No, the vote was to begin debate on the bill. In other words: the Senate was debating for 10 hours about whether to debate health care reform. Under the guise of supporting debate on health care reform, Gateway Pundit was actually complaining about the Senate voting to debate health care reform.

Finally, it isn't like the Senate -- and the country -- hasn't been debating health care reform for almost a year. (Or, depending on your point of view, for several decades.) And it isn't like the Senate "debate" over the bill is actually a deliberative process, as Gateway Pundit claims. Floor "debates" tend to be more explanatory than deliberative, with members explaining their votes rather than determining them. The Senate could schedule one hour of "debate" prior to voting on passage, or 30 hours, and it wouldn't have much impact on how thoroughly members have considered the issue at this point.

Then there's Fox's let's-throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-hope-something-sticks effort to raise a fuss over President Obama's use of the word "unprecedented." The less said about that one, the better. Even Glenn Beck suddenly feels the need to announce that he isn't crazy enough to believe the nonsense he's spewing.

Finally, take a look at conservative reaction to President Obama's Afghanistan speech this week. Here's Charles Krauthammer: "It's not exactly the kind of speech that you would have heard from Henry V or Churchill."

Ooooh ... burn.

But the right-wingers apparently thought this really was a deeply damaging assessment, for they quickly piled on:

• Bill O'Reilly: "I did not see a Winston Churchill-type performance. ... [it was] OK, but not exactly the Gettysburg Address."

• Sean Hannity: "I didn't hear Winston Churchill."

• Victor Davis Hanson: "[N]ot Winston Churchill."

• Nile Gardiner: "Barack Obama badly needed to display some Churchillian grit, but there was none on offer."

Coming after so many months of comparisons of Barack Obama to Hitler and Mao and Stalin, a bunch of conservatives saying that he's no Winston Churchill can only be viewed as praising with faint damnation.

Or maybe Pat Buchanan finally convinced his friends on the Right that comparing someone to Hitler is a compliment.