Bernie Sanders' - and Democrats' - Conundrum

Bernie Sanders has promised a political revolution and claimed that he will bring out massive numbers of new and younger voters.  Yesterday, the majority of Democrats said while they want change, especially in terms of health care - and to see Trump defeated - they do not want Sanders' revolution.  Likewise, while voter turn out was seemingly up, Sanders did not have the major turn out of new/young voters that his campaign has promised.  To be honest, I have qualms about both Sanders and Joe Biden and wish there was a strong moderate/progressive to be the Democrat standard bearer.  At this point, that person doesn't exist and alas as is too often the case in politics, one has to choose the better of two lack luster candidates.  Not voting is not an option as the 2016 stay-at-home vote showed by in effect electing Donald Trump. I do not see Biden engendering high levels of enthusiasm - he can only hope hatred of Trump (which is very real) will be enough to supercharge turnout in November.  If things continue as seemingly now headed, Sanders voters will have to decide whether they want to stay home and reelect Trump - whose agenda is the antithesis of what they claim to support - or hold their nose and vote for Biden if that is what the choice comes down to.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the situation.  A second in the New York Times looks at the failure of the new/youth vote to materialize at the level Sanders needed.  First, excerpts from the Post: 

On Super Tuesday, voters across 14 states collectively delivered an emphatic message on the single biggest day of the primary season. They don’t want a revolution. They just want to oust Donald Trump.

In all 12 states where exit polls were conducted, early results showed that majorities said finding a candidate who can beat Trump is more important than having one who agrees with them on major issues. And overwhelmingly they said that man is Biden — by 2 to 1 in some cases.

This hunger to beat Trump led to a remarkable night for Biden and for what Sanders derides as the Democratic “establishment” — and an unexpected reality check for the Sanders revolution.

Democrats on Tuesday rescued themselves from a repeat of what happened to Republicans in 2016, when a populist outsider vanquished a cluttered field and no “establishment” candidate had a clean shot at Trump.

But now they have a different predicament. Democrats find themselves in a bit of a rerun of the Sanders-Clinton race of 2016. Whatever happens in the rest of the primary season, Sanders will have substantial support — and a large number of delegates. If he loses to Biden and doesn’t embrace the Democratic ticket, his supporters might stay home in November, handing victory to Trump.

But while Sanders retains enough power to bring down the party, it’s a lot less clear after Tuesday that he has enough power to lead it. Far from bringing new blood into the Democratic primaries, it appeared that in some places turnout was particularly high in places where he did poorly. As usual, Sanders did well among the very liberal, Biden among moderates. The young voted by a lopsided margin for Sanders, while older voters turned out for Biden.

Those divisions won’t disappear anytime soon, which is all the more reason for Democrats to focus on the one thing they all agree on: beating Trump. The voters just made clear they believe Biden is the one to do that.

As for the younger vote surge that seemingly did not happen, here are highlights from a column in the Times:

[T]he demographics of people who actually vote are almost always different from the demographics of people who can vote. That’s where their analysis raises concerns about Sanders’s chances. According to Broockman and Kalla’s figures, Sanders loses a significant number of swing votes to Trump, but he makes up for them in support from young people who say they won’t vote, or will vote third party, unless Sanders is the nominee. On the surface, these Bernie-or-bust voters might seem like an argument for Sanders. After all, Sanders partisans sometimes insist that Democrats have no choice but to nominate their candidate because they’ll stay home otherwise, a sneering imitation of traditional centrist demands for progressive compromise. But if Broockman and Kalla are right, by nominating Sanders, Democrats would be trading some of the electorate’s most reliable voters for some of its least. To prevail, Democrats would need unheard-of rates of youth turnout. That doesn’t necessarily mean Sanders would be a worse candidate than Joe Biden, given all of Biden’s baggage. It does mean polls might be underestimating how hard it will be for Sanders to beat Trump. About 37 percent of Democrats and independents under 35 voted in 2016. According to Broockman and Kalla’s figures, Sanders would need to get that figure up to 48 percent. By comparison, Broockman told me, in 2008, Barack Obama raised black turnout by about five percentage points. Broockman said that if either Warren or Sanders is on the ballot, more Republicans will likely be motivated to go to the polls in response. “When parties nominate candidates further from the center, it actually inspires the other party to turn out,” he told me.

[T]he 2018 elections saw the highest midterm turnout in over a century, yet most of Democrats’ improved performance “came not from fresh turnout of left-of-center voters, who typically skip midterms, but rather from people who cast votes” in the last two national elections and “switched from Republican in 2016 to Democratic in 2018.”

The primaries have yet to demonstrate that Sanders can generate the hugely expanded turnout his campaign is promising.

Dave Wasserman, an editor at The Cook Political Report, tweeted that most of the Democrats’ turnout bump was attributable to moderate Republicans “crossing over from ’16 G.O.P. primary — not heightened progressive/Sanders base enthusiasm.” South Carolina saw record turnout, but it benefited Biden, not Sanders. College-educated white women, for example, helped flip the House in 2018. They favor Biden over Trump by double digits, but Sanders by only two points. Sanders, however, seems to see little need to reach out to them. Speaking to The Los Angeles Times editorial board in December, Sanders said he didn’t believe the way to win against Trump “is to just speak to Republican women in the suburbs.” Instead, he said, “The key to this election is, can we get millions of young people who have never voted before into the political process, many working people who understand that Trump is a fraud, can we get them voting?” Even if the answer is yes, it probably won’t be enough. If he’s going to be the nominee, the rest of us can only hope his campaign has a Plan B.

Younger voters have the most to gain or lose based on who is elected - Trump is a nightmare for improvement on the issues they care about most - yet the reality is that for reasons I do not comprehend, they continue to fail to vote in the strength needed if they want to further the policies they claim to support. So far, Sanders seems to not have found the magic needed to change their habit of voting in tepid numbers. 

Will Democrats Retake the House of Representatives?

GOP's Barbara Comstock - VA 10th District - She needs to be sent into retirement. 

With election day 2018 a little more than three (3) months away, despite the daily distractions of Trump's deranged and/or lie filled tweets, the Manafort trial and the ongoing Russiagate investigation, more and more focus is on the political prize of the control of the  House of Representatives.  If Democrats win control, some of Trump's most egregious efforts can be blunted, hearings and subpoenas can be held and issued, and spending and budget bills will originate under Democrat control.   Moreover, oversight of federal agencies - which Republicans have failed to do - can perhaps rein in the Trump/GOP effort to create a new Gilded Age.  A lengthy piece in the Washington Post looks at the coming election - where many believe the Democrats are favored to win control - and analyzes the hurdles the Democrats must overcome.  Here are excerpts:

Democrats are likely to win back control of the House of Representatives. That's the conventional wisdom in Washington about November's midterm elections.

“Democrats remain substantial favorites for House control,” wrote David Wasserman, a nonpartisan election analyst for the Cook Political Report, last week.

We explained why here. The short version is: Voter energy on the left is palpable, Republicans are defending vulnerable seats, and their historic level of retirements is only making their exposure worse. Plus, Republicans are in power, which history suggests voters will try to counterbalance this November.

Not surprisingly, Republican operatives working to keep control of the House disagree with some of that reasoning.

Here's why Republicans are hopeful they can hang onto their majority:

1. Special elections are just that, special. There's no denying Democrats have had extraordinary success in special elections in the Trump era.

Democrats have picked up more than 40 state legislative seats across the nation since President Trump was elected, some deep in Trump country. They won a Senate seat in Alabama last fall. This spring they flipped a congressional district in Pennsylvania — again, deep in Trump country. On Tuesday, they could take a deep-red Ohio congressional seat. That could trim the target number of seats Democrats need to take back the House this November from 23 to 22. Republicans argue that each one of those scenarios was unique.  . . . . Democrats will have to decide how to spread their resources across some 60 potentially competitive races. (Though so will Republicans, for that matter.)

2. Republicans feel good about their most vulnerable incumbents. If Democrats are going to win a wave election, they need to start with the lowest-hanging fruit. And Republicans don't think that will be so easy.

There are a couple open seats that are gimmies for Democrats to pick up, notably two in Pennsylvania and one in New Jersey. . . . Other top races to topple Republicans will play out in the New York City, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles and Seattle media markets.In other words, Republicans calculate that a wave is going to cost Democrats significant money and energy to build up. That being said, the Cook Political Report is out Friday with one stat that underscores just how exposed House Republicans are this election in defending those seats: It ranks 60 Republican-held seats as vulnerable, compared to just five for Democrats.

3. There are structural barriers for Democrats to overcome.Gerrymandering is a big one. Republicans swept into control of state legislatures in 2010 in time to take charge of drawing electoral districts after the 2010 Census. Democrats have been locked out of power in the House ever since.

Voters are also increasingly self-sorting into congressional districts in a way that gives Republicans an advantage to control Congress. Democratic-leaning voters cluster in cities, while conservative voters spread out in rural areas across the rest of the state. The result is that Democrats' votes are essentially diluted by living in areas that would vote for a Democrat for Congress anyway.

Some independent analysts think Democrats will need to win the popular vote by seven to 11 percentage points just to get a bare majority. While seven points is firmly in doable territory — for a wave election at least — 11 points is a historically large margin.

4. The economy is chugging along, and there are no major international disasters. Republicans openly acknowledge that they're at a disadvantage this election because they control all major levers of government. That means they've been able to pass a tax-cut bill, but it also means voters who aren't happy with their health care or the impact that tariffs are having on their industry can reason it's Republicans' fault. . . . wage growth remains sluggish — and everything is below Trump's vocalized expectations, as The Post's Philip Bump notes.

Progressives Are Energized, Now They Must Turn Out to Vote

If nothing else, Donald Trump has energized progressives and decent people - which I am sorry, does not include evangelical Christians - appalled by Trump's corruption, vulgarity and endless dishonesty.  Add to that the Trump/Pence regime's attack on the rule of law and political and societal norms and there's plenty to be energized against.  The one problem, however, is that progressives have a bad track record in getting themselves to the polls on election day. This is especially true with younger voters who have the most to lose long term under GOP policies.  The same is true for minority voters facing a GOP which is increasingly openly racist and discriminatory.  The Virginia 2017 elections underscored that when progressives do mobilize, progressives can win big.  Danica Roem's defeat of the foul Bob Marshall by roughly 10 points is an exclamation point to this reality.  A piece in the New York Times looks at progressives' need to mobilize their turn out effort and to make sure young voters and minorities turn out on election day this coming November.  Indeed, they need to turn out in every election cycle and vote out Republicans be they on city councils and school boards or running for Congress.  Here are article highlights:

The Trump presidency [nightmare] has brought a political awakening for American progressives. It began even before he took office, with the organizing for the Women’s March. Then came the citizen activists who protested at airports and later helped save health insurance for millions of people. Now high school students are trying to transform the gun debate.

In a new article in the journal Democracy, two academic researchers tell the story of the energized progressive movement. The leaders are most often suburban women alarmed by President Trump’s assaults on decency and the rule of law. The movement is more bottom-up than top-down, more face-to-face than virtual, more Middle American than coastal. It does not always identify itself with the Democratic Party, even if it supports almost exclusively Democrats.

It spans “the broad ideological range from center to left” and (despite media coverage to the contrary, they argue) spends little time on Bernie-versus-Hillary fights. Above all, it is trying to elect progressives, including to oft-ignored local offices — and it’s now focused on the 2018 midterms.

That’s smart. Elections are precisely what progressives should be emphasizing. Protests can have an effect, as happened with Obamacare repeal and is happening on guns. But major progress on almost every issue — climate change, immigration, middle-class living standards and gun deaths — depends on electing people who want to make progress. Trump and the current leaders of Congress plainly do not.

Political movements have two main ways to win elections: persuasion and turnout. On persuasion, I think progressives’ best hope is an economic message that focuses the white working class on the working-class part of its identity, rather than the white part. But today I want to concentrate on turnout, because it has an even greater potential to change American politics.

Voter turnout is the biggest opportunity — and biggest challenge — for the new progressive movement. The problem is easy enough to describe: Progressives don’t vote as often as conservatives do.

Americans under age 30, for example, lean notably left. They are socially liberal, worried about climate change and in favor of higher taxes on the rich. But most of them don’t vote, especially outside of presidential elections. In the 2014 midterms — when Republicans took control of the Senate and held the House — only one of every six citizens between 18 and 29 voted. One in six! The same year, more than half of people aged 60 or older voted.

The pattern also holds among Latinos and Asian-Americans. They’re mostly liberal and vote at lower rates than whites.

The new progressive movement has made some early headway on turnout. In both the recent Virginia and Alabama elections, national groups ran huge get-of-the-vote operations, with vital help from the grass roots. The results were impressive. Turnout was surprisingly high, including among younger voters, and Democrats won some shocking upsets. The same has happened elsewhere in special elections for state legislature seats.

But lifting turnout in a one-off election, where activists can focus their energies, is easier than doing so in a nationwide midterm.

The crucial point is that the Trump presidency has created an opportunity to jump-start progress — an opportunity that doesn’t come along often. People who don’t normally pay much attention to politics are doing so. For some, it could become habit. So could voting.

The entire progressive movement — from the top of the Democratic Party to the new neighborhood groups — should be thinking about how to lift turnout. . . . . They should be spending time and money to register voters. They should be asking progressive entrepreneurs how the iPhone, Alexa, social media, podcasts and yet-to-be-built apps can inspire (and nag) people to vote. They should be ruthlessly evaluating what works and what does not.

The mechanics of voter turnout aren’t exciting. But the results can be: Fewer gun deaths. Less climate damage. Less inequality. Higher living standards. And a government that better reflects the views of all its citizens.

Bad things happen when good people fail to act.  Voting is easy and costs nothing.  Nowadays, voting is a way to actively confront and defeat evil.  Each of us needs to work from now through November to turn out progressive friends and family members and get the to the polls when it counts.

Virginia 94th District Race to Drag Out Further

The continuing saga of the 94th District race appears to be headed for further delays as Democrat Shelly Simonds has petitioned the Newport News Circuit Court to reconsider its decision to award a vote to her Republican opponent even though the ballot had BOTH candidates marked.  One would think that the ballot should have been thrown out completely rather than awarded on a subjective analysis of what the voter might have intended.   In truth, the individual casting the vote should have asked for a new ballot.  The larger lesson is that voters need to get to the polls, especially those in the Democrat base.  The Virginian Pilot looks at the continuing saga.  Here are excerpts:

Democrat Shelly Simonds says elections officials didn’t follow procedure in a recount that could swing the balance of power in the House of Delegates, and she will ask a court to declare her the winner of the 94th District race, according to court documents she plans to file Wednesday.

The winner – either Simonds or Republican Del. David Yancey – was to be determined by a drawing at 11 a.m. in Richmond. After Simonds’ comments Tuesday, it was postponed.

Simonds will ask the Newport News Circuit Court to reconsider the decision to count one disputed ballot in Yancey’s favor last week and name her the winner.

Simonds’ team planned to ask that the drawing be delayed and for an expedited decision from the court.

“While our planned drawing for tomorrow was in full compliance with the Code of Virginia, neutral election administrators should not be choosing election winners — or influencing the next Speaker of the House,” State Board of Elections Chairman James Alcorn said Tuesday via Twitter. The drawing is a last resort, he said, and any concerns regarding the election or recount should be resolved before it takes place.

“This will best serve the voters of HD94 and the rest of the Commonwealth,” he said.

After the Nov. 7 election, Yancey led Simonds by 10 votes. She requested a recount, which resulted in a win by one vote for her. The morning those results were supposed to be certified, Yancey’s lawyers showed the court a ballot they thought should be counted.
On it, the voter filled in both candidates’ bubbles. Simonds’ bubble had a single diagonal slash mark through it. It originally was not counted for either candidate.

Under Virginia law, Simonds’ filing says, votes in a recount can only be redetermined once.

In all, the ballot in question has been reviewed three times, according to the filing.  “This really breaks the recount process in Virginia if this precedent stands,” said Simonds’ lawyer, Ezra Reese.

Trump Injects Lies and Sleaze into Virginia Governor's Race

Sadly, it seems that if Der Trumpenführer's lips are moving (or if he is tweeting), there is an extremely high probability that he is lying.   This certainly holds true with his effort to slander Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam who Trump and a seemingly desperate GOP candidate Ed Gillespie are falsely claiming voted to protect violent gangs.  The effort seems aimed at (i) firing up the racist GOP base, and (ii) confusing undecided independent voters.  When your policies are rightly viewed as toxic and you are losing in the polls, this has become the new standard practice of today's despicable Republican Party.  Stated another way, when all else fails, lie about your opponent - and this from the party that claims to support "Christian values."  LGBT and minority voters (as well as younger voters) need to turn out on election day and send Gillespie down to defeat.  If these voting blocks fail to do this, they will have no one to blame but themselves as they see themselves disenfranchised by GOP efforts and/or subjected to license to discriminate laws.  This election is just as important as last year's presidential election. The Washington Post looks at this shameless lying campaign on the part of Gillespie and Trump.  Here are highlights:

The Virginia gubernatorial race is shaping up as an early test of two pressing political questions: Will Trump’s unique awfulness energize Democrats enough to break their midterm voter dropoff curse? And what sort of continuing political effect or potency will “Trumpism” have, now that Donald Trump is actually in the White House?

Virginia is a particularly intriguing staging ground for this test. That’s because the state’s demographic evolution — it is becoming more diverse, educated and suburban — is both pushing it slowly into the Democratic column and (you’d think) rendering it less and less fertile soil for Trumpist arguments.

Trump himself has now pumped a gusher of Trumpist sleaze into the Virginia contest.  This attack is absurd. Ed Gillespie, the GOP candidate, has been running ads that make the similar claim that Ralph Northam, the Democratic candidate, “voted in favor of sanctuary cities that let dangerous illegal immigrants back on the street, increasing the threat of MS-13.” As lieutenant governor, Northam did cast a tiebreaking vote against a bill that would have prevented any locality from restricting the “enforcement of federal immigration laws.” But as FactCheck.org noted in debunking the attack, the vote was procedurally meaningless — the result of a tactical trick by Virginia Republicans that never would have had any impact other than creating fodder for an attack ad. Regardless, Virginia doesn’t have any sanctuary cities in this sense, a fact Gillespie himself has admitted. What’s more, this line questionably conflates undocumented immigrants with violent criminals, something that Trump himself underscored more emphatically by claiming that Northam is “fighting for the violent MS-13 killer gangs.” So Trump’s version is even sleazier and more dishonest than Gillespie’s rendition is. It appears that Gillespie probably wanted Trump to tweet this to juice up the GOP base. As James Hohmann explained in a good piece, Gillespie is increasingly leaning on culturally charged “Trumpist” issues, because he appears to have a “base problem.” Experts on Virginia politics have argued that all this is directed at the Trump wing of the GOP base in Virginia. 

But, by tweeting on the race, Trump also creates risks for Gillespie. Trump’s approval rating in Virginia among those likely to vote in November is at an abysmal 33-59, and 60 percent say their opinion of him has gotten more negative.

[S]ome Democrats are worried that Gillespie could pull off a surprise win, because Democratic voters are not motivated enough by the race (some have argued that Northam is to blame for this problem). If so, the moral might end up being that Trumpism continues to energize the GOP base bigly, yet Trump’s presidency is in and of itself not motivating Democratic voters enough to overcome their insufficient attention to state-level contests and their tendency to turn out at lower levels in off-year and midterm elections.

Get out and vote on November 7, 2017, and vote for Ralph Northam, Mark Herring and Justin Fairfax! 

David Frum: Trump is Fueling Democrat Turnout

In past presidential elections, most of the conservative pundit class and conservative thinkers - to the extent that term isn't an oxymoron - rallied to the support of the Republican Party nominee, despite disagreement on many issues.  This year has been remarkable because of the number of conservatives either outright attacking Donald Trump or announcing that they will be voting for Hillary Clinton (the former head of General Motors and a life-long Republican has an op-ed in today's Washington Post).  What is driving this and the likely surge in Democrat turn out?  Conservative columnist David Frum sums it up in one word/name: Trump.  Here are highlights from a piece in The Atlantic:

Donald Trump today just solved Hillary Clinton’s biggest strategic problem: how to ensure that minority voters show up for her in 2016 as they showed up for Barack Obama in 2012.

Post-Obama Democrats face a quandary: Their coalition is bigger than the Republican coalition, but also less committed to political participation. When voter turnout drops, as it does in off-year elections like 2010 and 2014, Democrats lose.

In 2012, Democrats mobilized a truly heroic turnout effort to re-elect President Obama. Black voter turnout in particular excelled: For the first time in American history, it surpassed white turnout. The extraordinary organizing effort of the Obama re-election team certainly deserves much of the credit. But organization can only ever do so much. Black voters turned out in huge numbers, exceeding even 2008 turnout, because they believed they had an important personal stake in the vote.

Earlier in the cycle, many wondered whether Hillary Clinton could generate anything like that kind of response from the Democratic base. “Will Black Folks Deliver for Hillary Clinton?” asked The Root in the spring of 2015. Charles D. Ellison, a keen student of African American voting, deployed an impressive mass of statistics and history to answer, in effect: “We’ll see.”

Instead—as with so much else this cycle—the black vote, like the women’s vote, like the Latino vote, like the divisions in the Republican Party, is being decided by Donald Trump.

Reportedly frustrated by Paul Manafort’s attempts to impose message discipline upon him—apparently determined to win or lose speaking his own thoughts in his own words—Donald Trump has done two astonishing things in the past 24 hours. The first was to replace his former campaign CEO with the head of the provocative Breitbart website, Steve Bannon. The second was to travel to West Bend, Wisconsin, a city almost 95 percent white and 40 miles from Milwaukee, to “reach out” to black America by defending the police of Milwaukee against their critics.

Trump is surrounded by people who think it’s 1968 all over again, with white Americans ready to respond to a message of firm suppression of nonwhite disorder. But even after the crime uptick since 2014, the United States remains a very safe society—with crime a distant worry for the voters a normal Republican presidential candidate should now be seeking. The police-violence issue, however, does matter overwhelmingly to the black Americans whose turnout Hillary Clinton so desperately needs. Trump just cranked up the volume of the issue that helps her most—and his new team is made up of people likelier to crank it up louder still.

The defense of violent police force within and against troubled black communities looks likely to be elevated by the Breitbartized Trump campaign to the top of its agenda. Hillary Clinton could not wish for more. Down ballot Republicans could not fear worse.

Can Democrats Retake the Senate in 2016?

While most political pundits are busy focusing on the 2016 presidential election, another serious issue has gained less attention: whether the Democrats can retake the U.S. Senate and provide a bulwark against the worse case scenario of a Republican in the White House.   The House of Representatives with its gerrymandered districts is likely a lost cause until after the 2020 census and further redistricting thereafter.  A piece in Politico Magazine by my UVA class of 1974 classmate, Larry Sabato, looks at the 2016 Senate races.  Here are highlights:

It’s still too early to predict the Senate’s makeup in 2016, but it’s not too early to start thinking about who could land on the list of endangered senators. And in the 2016 cycle, it’s more likely to be a Republican than a Democrat.

In 2016, the Republicans seem to have their backs to the wall, defending 24 seats to the Democrats’ 10. Just two Democratic seats—Harry Reid’s in Nevada and Michael Bennet’s in Colorado—are not solid, both in states where the GOP surged in 2014. In the Silver State, Republican Brian Sandoval would start as the frontrunner if he decided to challenge Reid, though the recently-reelected governor appears unlikely to run. It’s also not impossible that Reid, who says he will seek re-election, ultimately decides to retire. There are several potential Bennet opponents, such as Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, but no one that immediately suggests the incumbent is doomed. Moreover, both Reid and Bennet have an ace to play: Presidential level turnout will draw out a much larger group of Democratic voters, especially Hispanics and the young, than we saw in 2014.

Meanwhile, Republicans must defend seven incumbents that represent states carried by President Obama in 2008 and 2012: Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Rob Portman of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. An eighth state Obama carried in 2008 but narrowly lost in 2012—North Carolina, home to two-term Republican Richard Burr—also merits mention with these other states.

But under the right conditions—i.e., strong Democratic Senate candidates combined with a solid national lead for the Democratic presidential nominee—all seven of the other seats are vulnerable. Three of the states (Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) are more Democratic than the nation as a whole and have a history of voting Democratic for president even when the party loses a close race nationally, as in 2000 and 2004. This reality has placed Kirk, Toomey and Johnson at the top of the endangered senators list.

All Democrats have to do to re-take the Senate is to win the three yellow toss-up states where they have a natural advantage, plus a couple of the current “lean Republican” states that have voted for Obama. And Democrats will need only one “lean R” state if the party wins the White House, guaranteeing that a Democratic vice president would break a 50-50 Senate tie.

[A]nother Senate flip in 2016, this time to the Democrats, isn’t difficult to imagine, but it’s far from a sure thing.

The Worst Voter Turnout in 72 Years

The 2014 midterm elections were a disaster for Democrats largely because their base stayed home and did not vote.  The pundits have all kinds of reasons for the low turn out.  In the end, however, much of it has to do with a lazy and uninformed populace.  There, I've said it.  It takes little time to go vote, yet demographic groups most likely to be harmed by GOP policies sat home on their asses or drove on by the polling stations without stopping.  It's maddening and also frightening that so many care so little for democracy.  It's also disturbing that Republicans were able to successfully harness the racism of the GOP base and ignorance of whites who are too stupid to realize that while, yes, the Affordable Health Care Act has shifted funding sources for health care, they have already been paying for the uninsured through sky high health care costs compared to the rest of the world under a system that is also the least financially efficient in the world.  The New York Times laments the situation in a main page editorial. Here are highlights:

The abysmally low turnout in last week’s midterm elections — the lowest in more than seven decades — was bad for Democrats, but it was even worse for democracy. In 43 states, less than half the eligible population bothered to vote, and no state broke 60 percent.

In the three largest states — California, Texas and New York — less than a third of the eligible population voted. New York’s turnout was a shameful 28.8 percent, the fourth-lowest in the country, despite three statewide races (including the governor) and 27 House races.

Over all, the national turnout was 36.3 percent; only the 1942 federal election had a lower participation rate at 33.9 percent. The reasons are apathy, anger and frustration at the relentlessly negative tone of the campaigns.

Republicans ran a single-theme campaign of pure opposition to President Obama, and Democrats were too afraid of the backlash to put forward plans to revive the economy or to point out significant achievements of the last six years. Neither party gave voters an affirmative reason to show up at the polls.

The turnout among young and minority voters was slightly higher than it was in the 2010 midterms, perhaps reflecting new organizing efforts, but the number remained far too low. (Republicans have continued their effort to suppress the turnout of young, poor and minority voters, although it was hard to make a definitive link between those laws and Democratic losses this year.)

There was one useful lesson: When voting is made easier, more people vote. Colorado switched to a mail ballot system this year, and it had the fourth-highest turnout in the nation, substantially larger than in 2010. (It had a highly competitive Senate race, but did much better than many states with equally hot races.) Oregon, which also votes by mail, had the fifth-highest turnout, and Washington State, with a similar system, did better than the national average, though it had no major statewide races.

Early voting — which tends to be more popular among Democratic voters than mail balloting — also did well this year, despite Republican efforts to curb it. In North Carolina, early voting increased by 35 percent from 2010, even though Republican legislators cut the number of early-voting days to 10 from 17.

Showing up at the polls is the best way to counter the oversized influence of wealthy special interests, who dominate politics as never before. But to encourage participation, politicians need to stop suppressing the vote, make the process of voting as easy as possible, and run campaigns that stand for something.

 

What to Watch in Virginia Today

The polls are now open in Virginia and hopefully the day will prove to be a catastrophe for the Republican Party of Virginia.  And, if such turns out to be the case, it will be critical that the religious extremists and Neanderthals of the Tea Party not escape responsibility for the lunatics that were nominated by the GOP due to these elements.  Meanwhile, it will be a fretful day for political junkies as efforts are made to try to get a sense for what is happening throughout the day.  One big indicator will be turnout.  If turn out is higher than predicted, it will likely bode ill for the GOP ticket of crazies.  Likewise, how the vote in Southwest Virginia splits will also be telling.  A piece in Politico looks at some of the things to watch for.  Here are excerpts:

Turnout.  If turnout drops substantially below the 40 percent mark – if all the nasty attack ads about legitimately flawed candidates leave a chunk of voters so depressed they decide to stay home or vote for the libertarian – we could be in for a more suspenseful election night than most are expecting.

With that in mind, here are the key things to watch as exit polling and returns come in.

Does McAuliffe have coattails?   Cuccinelli’s weakness at the top of the ticket has heightened GOP fears of a Democratic sweep.

Republican attorney general candidate Mark Obenshain is outperforming his running mates by a few points—trailing slightly but still in the hunt. But strategists agree he will almost certainly get wiped out if Cuccinelli loses by six points or more. Democrats say it’s even possible that they could oust Del. Bob Marshall, the social conservative responsible for many of the legislative controversies that have dogged Cuccinelli in Northern Virginia.

The outer exurbs of Northern Virginia are a good place to see if a tidal wave is in the making. Cuccinelli will get crushed in the inner D.C. suburbs of Fairfax, Arlington and Alexandria, but he thinks he can hold his own in the outer suburbs of Loudoun and Prince William County.

Loudoun was long Republican, but it’s become much more competitive. McDonnell won the county, which includes Leesburg, by 22 points in 2009, but Obama carried it by 4.5 percent last year. The Democratic nominee for attorney general, Mark Herring, happens to represent the county in the state legislature.

Also watch Republican-leaning Chesapeake, a suburb of Norfolk on the coast. Obama got exactly 50 percent of the vote there last year after McDonnell won by 20 points. If Cuccinelli loses there, it’s going to be a blow out.

Will black voters show up without Obama on the ballot?  Some African-American leaders have expressed concern that black voters will stay home. If they do, the race will be much closer than the polls suggest.

The McAuliffe campaign has built a huge portion of its field program around mobilizing black voters. Former President Bill Clinton went into an overwhelmingly black section of Richmond to make an explicit pitch for the community to turn out, and Obama was only a little more subtle Sunday.

Is Sarvis a spoiler?  Libertarian Robert Sarvis, who ran for state Senate as a Republican in 2011, has pulled double digits in some polls largely by attacking Cuccinelli over his views on social issues like gay marriage.

A lot of people who tell pollsters they back Sarvis will probably stay home rather than vote for a candidate who has no shot of winning. But Cuccinelli hopes a bulk of them break his way out of a desire to beat McAuliffe.

Internal McAuliffe forecasts show the first 5 percent for Sarvis probably comes evenly from McAuliffe and Cuccinelli, but anything above that threshold comes two-to-one from the Republicans.

How big is the gender gap? McAuliffe is outspending Cuccinelli 10-to-1 on TV in the final days. His ads have suggested the Republican would outlaw common forms of birth control, toughen the requirements to get divorced and make it nearly impossible to get an abortion. Cuccinelli says these claims are ridiculous, but he chose not to spend what precious resources he had on defense.

An unmarried woman shopping recently at Trader Joe’s in Centreville, part of Cuccinelli’s old state Senate district, revealed the extent of his problems. Stevie McCauley, a high school guidance counselor, voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney, but she supports McAuliffe. “It’s choice, it’s gay rights, it’s birth control,” she said. “In general, I try to stay away from people who tell me what to do.” Other women interviewed outside the store said they don’t normally vote in off-year elections, but they will this year to vote against Cuccinelli.

Will McAuliffe make inroads in Southwest Virginia?  Cuccinelli will win this conservative swath of the state, but will he get anywhere close to the 69 percent of the vote that McDonnell received four years ago?  Democrats have invested heavily on television to try to sap Cuccinelli’s strength.

It will be a long day of wondering and waiting for result.

Election Day Turn Out in Virginia - Will Turnout Sink Romney?

I voted this morning and traffic at my precinct in Hampton was high but not extraordinary since we typically have a fairly high turnout.  My daughter on the other hand - who lives in my house in Norfolk near Old Dominion University - experienced a huge turn out of college students and African-American voters.  Indeed, she and her husband were in line well over two (2) hours waiting to vote.  Having voted in that same Norfolk precinct myself in 2008, it would seem that the turn out is much larger than four years ago.  Blue Virginia reports that anecdotal reports suggest that what my daughter experienced was not a typical:

UPDATE 10:53 am: Long lines in deep-blue Arlington, I just got back from voting after about a 40 minute wait, couple hundred people ahead of me in line.

UPDATE 12:53 pm: Anecdotal, but a good sign if true: " just voted in Northern Virginia area [in Prince William County] & the same place/area that Ive voted at for years and can report that turnout is up in general and far more Latinos than Ive ever seen voting" 

UPDATE 12:55 pm: Also, just saw this by @ThePlumLineGS. "Dems report long voting lines in Richmond, Newport News, East Henrico, and Arlington--all Dem strongholds in Virginia"

UPDATE 3:03 pm: Mo Elleithee writes, "Seeing VERY high turnout across Virginia. On par with or maybe even HIGHER than 2008 levels. Long lines in many places. Please be patient and stay in line!"

Update in Charlottesville (0.00 / 0)

Turnout of about 38% by 1 PM, which the Registrar says will likely equate to 70%.  Turnout in 2008 was 70%.  The good news is that the base number of registered voters is 5,000 higher this year, so that should mean 3,500 more voters.  If everything else remains constant, that should mean that the Democrats' margin should be about 1,700 more than in 2008.  Oh, and more than 3,000 voted early.

Let's hope that the young voters, blacks and Hispanics turn out in force and send a very strong message to Romney, Ryan, Allen, et. al, and put Obama back in the White House.  Nothing would be sweeter than seeing the bigots and white supremacists of the GOP get their just deserves.

The Danger of Democrat Complacency

With the campaign of Mitt Romney seemingly in self-destruction mode,  I and others have a real fear that too many Obama supporters - including the Obama staffer living with the boyfriend and me through election day - are fearful that some may feel that they can be less vigilant and may even stay home on election day.  As a piece in Politico under scores, this is a a dangerous self-deception.  The anti-Obama super PAC's still have huge sums that will be expended and in many states the race remains very close.  Thus the need to mobilize every anti-Romney and anti-GOP voter to get to the polls.  There is a second reason to push for the largest turn out possible: Romney and the GOP need to be defeated by the largest margin possible in order to send a message that their vision for America and their contemptuous view on half the population or more is not acceptable and will be DOA in the future as well.  Only then will the GOP perhaps begin the journey back to rationality.  Here are some story highlights:

Mitt Romney’s campaign might appear to be collapsing like a cheap card table, but one top Democrat close to President Barack Obama had a curt warning for allies who were declaring the election all but over on Tuesday.  It ain’t over, he said, until Karl Rove sings.

That litmus test of when George W. Bush’s former impresario gives up on the race reflects the unprecedented strength of the powerful money machine supporting the GOP. It also shows why even a wounded Republican standard-bearer could limp to victory in November.

Caution is not the message emanating from the Washington echo chamber or from giddy Democrats — and depressed Republicans — who are drafting Romney’s political obituary with nearly 50 news cycles before Election Day.

But Romney, however humbled, has nearly 50 more chances to change the narrative. Despite his stunning missteps, his failure to articulate an attractive rationale for his candidacy, a growing GOP pessimism and tales of corrosive internal dissent, he remains within easy striking distance of Obama in most polls and is showing no signs of imminent collapse.  His support isn’t likely to dip much below 45 percent to 47 percent largely because nine in 10 Republicans are backing him.

“President Obama may make major strategic decisions in response to two tough days in the fishbowl — but that’s not how Crossroads rolls,” said Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for the Rove-linked groups American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS.

“Democrats should just remember Florida 2000 before they get cocky,” veteran Democratic strategist Karen Finney said. “It’s the stuff you don’t see that goes under the radar — the robocalls … fliers and mailings. … That’s the kind of stuff you can’t detect. Karl Rove knows how to win,” she said.

[S]upport among white men is one key aspect of the tape that’s been overlooked: A lot of voters, especially white, working-class men, basically agree with Romney’s portrait of a country overrun by tax deadbeats and spongers.

As of Tuesday morning, Obama’s post-convention bump was starting to fade, and RealClearPolitics’s summary of polls had him up, on average, by only 3 points nationally. Its average of state-by-state polls showed growing but still modest Obama leads in the critical battlegrounds — up 3 in Nevada, 4 in Ohio, ahead by barely a point each in Florida and Virginia, although a Washington Post/NBC poll released Tuesday showed Obama with a widening lead of 8 points in Virginia.

The bottom line is that nothing can be taken for granted and all of us who cringe at Mitt Romney's view of and vision for America need to keep working to convince our friends and family members that they MUST go out and voted against Romney and the GOP on election day.  LGBT Americans in particular should be terrified of the prospect of Romney taking the White House and undoing all of Obama's pro-LGBT executive orders.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81369_Page2.html#ixzz26uaWtxKk