Tag Archives: elections

Obama Announces Policy Change, Hill Dems Complain. Film At 11.

by CeciliaPud Posted on September 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s a Twitter conversation between me and Ezra Klein on Saturday:

Klein: What I’m hearing from Hill Dems is that they’re happy the immigration order is delayed, but angry at how poorly the issue has been handled

Drum: Of course they are. That’s the eternal complaint when they can’t think of anything substantive to gripe about.

Klein: I think that’s too pat a response: sometimes issues are poorly handled.

Drum: Sure. But lately, Ds complain about *every* issue being badly handled. (Or having “bad optics.”)

Klein provides more detail here, and Andrew Sullivan rounds up the liberal reaction here. But is there really any serious political malpractice going on? There is to this extent: the White House apparently didn’t read the tea leaves properly earlier this summer when it announced that Obama would take executive action on immigration after it became clear that Republicans in the House were unwilling to act. Following that, though, Obama’s only choice was either to stick to his guns or announce a delay. The former would have irked congressional Democrats, so he chose to announce a delay.

It’s hard for me to see anything poorly handled here. The truth is that anytime a president changes course, a bit of awkwardness is baked into the cake. It’s inevitable, and if you can’t accept that you shouldn’t urge a chance of course. What’s more, I don’t see anything in Obama’s actions that made this any better or worse than usual. It was pretty routine, and will be forgotten by all but political junkies within days. Democrats are probably doing themselves more damage with another round of their all-too-routine whinging than Obama did by announcing the delay in the first place.

That does leave one question, though: Did Obama consult sufficiently with congressional Dems before he initially announced that he planned to take executive action on immigration? Frankly, the political implications of that announcement were so obvious that it beggars the imagination to suppose that he didn’t. Everyone in the world immediately knew that (a) it would help drive Latino turnout and (b) it might pose problems for Democrats running close races in red states. Obama’s political team might not be Olympic caliber, but there’s no way they failed to talk to “Hill Dems” about immigration back in June, is there? I’d be very interested in reading a neutrally-reported deep dive about this.

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Obama Announces Policy Change, Hill Dems Complain. Film At 11.

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Will Democrats Keep Control of the Senate This Year?

by AugustTCKaxuwc Posted on August 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium thinks that Democrats currently have a 72 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate this year. Most other forecasting outfits think Republicans have a 60-70 percent chance of winning control. Why the difference?

In most cases, added assumptions (i.e. special sauce) have led the media organizations to different win probabilities — which I currently believe are wrong….The major media organizations (NYT, WaPo, 538)…all use prior conditions like incumbency, candidate experience, funding, and the generic Congressional ballot to influence their win probabilities — and opinion polls.

….Longtime readers of PEC will not be surprised to know that I think the media organizations are making a mistake. It is nearly Labor Day. By now, we have tons of polling data. Even the stalest poll is a more direct measurement of opinion than an indirect fundamentals-based measure. I demonstrated this point in 2012, when I used polls only to forecast the Presidency and all close Senate races. That year I made no errors in Senate seats, including Montana (Jon Tester) and North Dakota (Heidi Heitkamp), which FiveThirtyEight got wrong.

I’d sure like to believe this. PEC is my go-to political polling site, after all. But it sure doesn’t feel like Democrats are in the driver’s seat right now, does it? All of my political instincts scream that Wang’s forecast is wrong.

That’s probably because I’m a pessimist by nature. But you either believe in poll aggregation or you don’t. I do, and PEC has performed well in every election for the past decade. So just as I wouldn’t “deskew” bad poll results I didn’t like, I guess I won’t try to second guess good poll results that don’t seem quite right. If Wang thinks Democrats are currently favored to keep control of the Senate, then so do I.

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Will Democrats Keep Control of the Senate This Year?

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GOP Congressional Candidate Apologizes for Calling Female Senators "Undeserving Bimbos"

by Cristin7160 Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Friday, we reported on Minnesota Republican congressional candidate Jim Hagedorn’s history of incendiary comments about women, American Indians, gays, people he suspected of being gay, and President Obama’s family. Two days later, Hagedorn took to Facebook to issue an apology…of sorts:

Over the years I have written political satire and commentary, most of which defended conservative ideals and took aim at national politicians I felt were failing the American people and hurting our country.

Even though most of my writings were composed more than 10 years ago, national and DFL liberals are determined to attack me personally, mostly by exhibiting snippets of out-dated, misunderstood or out-of-context material and calling me derogatory names.

In this case, the rather worn and tired Democrat tactic of personal destruction and demonization is designed to deflect attention from the serious problems confronting our nation and the failed big government record of President Barack Obama and devoted liberal followers like incumbent DFL Congressman Tim Walz.

Of course, these same politically correct liberals remain undeterred by the offensive writings authored in the past by Al Franken. In spite of this hypocrisy, I do acknowledge that some of my hard-hitting and tongue-in-cheek commentary was less than artfully constructed or included language that could lead to hurt feelings. I offer a sincere and heartfelt apology.

Rather than dwell in the rigged game of political correctness, my campaign will forge ahead and continue to engage with the people of southern Minnesota and address the issues that will decide our country’s future during these critical times.

A better way to avoid the “rigged game of political correctness,” would be to not disparage all American Indians as “thankless” welfare recipients. You can read more about Hagedorn’s past comments here.

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GOP Congressional Candidate Apologizes for Calling Female Senators "Undeserving Bimbos"

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Obamacare May Not Be Popular, But Its Provisions Sure Are

by TamaraAshcraft Posted on August 22, 2014

Mother Jones

Brian Beutler on the way health care reform is playing out in the Arkansas Senate race:

The most interesting thing about Senator Mark Pryor’s decision to tout his support for the Affordable Care Act in a well-financed, statewide television ad isn’t that he stands apart from other embattled Democrats this election cycle. It’s that Republicans scrambled to spin the story, insisting to reporters that Pryor couldn’t possibly be running on Obamacare if he won’t refer to the law by name.

….Instead, Pryor says, “I helped pass a law that prevents insurance companies from canceling your policy if you get sick or deny sic coverage based on pre-existing conditions.” Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything about “a law” at all, but that’s a niggling, semantic critique. That Republicans working to defeat Pryor are asking reporters to squeeze the word “Obamacare” into this sentence is an admission that they’ve lost the policy fight. They criticize Pryor for eschewing the label, because the label’s just about the only thing they’re comfortable assailing.

I suppose this isn’t the biggest thing in the world, and as Beutler says, Republicans did manage to talk several reporters into mentioning this. So from their point of view, it’s just savvy media strategy. Besides, the truth is that Republicans have always focused on only a few things in their critique of Obamacare. That’s because polls have shown for years that most of the provisions of the law are popular even though support for the law itself is pretty shaky. This causes Republicans endless grief, since Democrats get to harass them relentlessly about whether they oppose closing the donut hole; whether they oppose subsidy assistance; whether they oppose guaranteed issue; and so on. Republicans can hem and haw about how they’d keep all this stuff and only get rid of the nasty taxes and mandates, but even the dimmer bulbs in the GOP caucus know perfectly well that this is untrue.

In any case, other Democratic politicians have touted their support for specific provisions of Obamacare, so Pryor isn’t really doing anything new. He’s just being smart. He knows that denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions is extremely unpopular, even among conservative voters, and he’d love to draw his opponent into a debate about exactly that. Tom Cotton has so far refused to take the bait, pretending that he’d somehow keep that provision while repealing everything else. This is a bald-faced lie, of course, but if he sticks to that story like glue he can probably avoid any serious damage from Pryor’s attacks.

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Obamacare May Not Be Popular, But Its Provisions Sure Are

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House Candidate Called Female Senators "Undeserving Bimbos in Tennis Shoes"

by BoyceMcElhaney Posted on August 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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Republican congressional candidate Jim Hagedorn could face a major obstacle in his race to unseat Minnesota Democrat Tim Walz: conservative blogger Jim Hagedorn.

Hagedorn, the son of retired congressman Tom Hagedorn, was a surprise victor in last Tuesday’s GOP primary. But he brings some serious baggage to his race against Walz, a four-term incumbent. In posts from his old blog, Mr. Conservative, unearthed by the Minnesota politics blog Bluestem Prairie*, Hagedorn made light of American Indians, President Obama’s Kenyan ancestry, and female Supreme Court justices, among others, in ways many voters won’t appreciate.

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House Candidate Called Female Senators "Undeserving Bimbos in Tennis Shoes"

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Confidential Memo: Former Koch Group Insider Fears the Tea Party Is Fading

by AidanZiegler Posted on August 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Americans for Prosperity, the dark-money-funded advocacy group founded by Charles and David Koch, rose to prominence in 2009 and 2010 on the back of the white-hot tea party movement. But today, even though Republicans stand a good chance of retaking the Senate and the conservative fringe has hijacked the House’s efforts to pass immigration reform, the tea party grassroots is withering away, according to a confidential AFP memo obtained by Mother Jones.

The internal AFP memo was written in April by Jason Cline, an Arkansas political consultant who left the state’s influential AFP chapter this spring. It’s clear from the memo that Cline clashed with higher-ups in AFP’s national office, including Teresa Oelke, a former AFP-Arkansas director who now is AFP’s vice president of state operations. In the memo, Cline responds to various allegations leveled against him by Oelke and others, including that Cline was “sexist toward women,” “prejudiced against old people,” and mismanaged AFP-Arkansas.

Cline writes in response that he was not biased against elderly activists but rather sought out younger activists for AFP-Arkansas due to a dropoff in support among older tea party followers. He explains:

We have a declining tea party engagement and we need to engage new forms of activists. The comment made by Cline to a fellow activist was specifically, ‘These old people are not gonna get it done. These kids are workers.’ Not in the sense that they can’t accomplish it, but that there are too few of them.

The problem of declining support from older tea partiers, Cline continues, is a national problem:

On my very first phone call with Jen Stefano as my new AFP regional director, I asked her if declining tea party engagement was just an Arkansas problem or if everyone was experiencing that. Her comment was that it’s a problem everywhere.

At the time, Cline and Stefano were prominent figures within AFP. As the director of AFP-Arkansas, Cline led one of AFP’s strongest chapters. Stefano is a national regional director for AFP and a fixture on Fox News and Fox Business News. If they believe tea party support is drying up, the problem is probably real. AFP spokesman Levi Russell declined to comment, and Stefano did not respond to a request for comment.

This year’s primary season has borne out Cline and Stefano’s observations. Unlike 2010 and 2012, when tea party favorites Mike Lee and Ted Cruz ousted establishment Republicans, the 2014 Senate primary season has seen the defeat of every single tea-party-aligned challenger. The major surprise of this election cycle has been economics professor David Brat’s victory over then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). Yet neither AFP or FreedomWorks, the two major national tea party groups, spent money to elect Brat.

Of course, establishment Republicans won in 2014 in part because they tacked hard to the right in anticipation of a tea party challenge. Likewise, the Republican Party has become more hardline in the past five years. The tea party, then, has won an ideological victory. But as a source of manpower on the ground, the movement is no longer what it once was.

Read Cline’s 19-page memo below (some personal information has been redacted):

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Confidential Memo: Former Koch Group Insider Fears the Tea Party Is Fading

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Tea Partier Staves Off Primary Challenge in Koch Country

by Lionel4334 Posted on August 6, 2014

Mother Jones

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) withstood a challenge from his predecessor, former Rep. Todd Tiahrt, in a battle for the House district that’s home to Charles Koch, the billionaire GOP donor and industrialist, and his company, Koch Industries. Tiahrt was a close ally of Koch Industries during his House tenure in the ’90s and 2000s, taking in more than $329,000 from the company’s PAC and employees over the course of his career. But Pompeo—whom Tiahrt handpicked to replace him when he ran for US Senate (and lost) in 2010—has since become Koch’s favorite son. The company endorsed Pompeo this time around. Koch’s backing boosted the incumbent’s monetary advantage. As of July 16, Pompeo had raised a little over $2 million, while Tiahrt had only drawn $155,000 (with just $65,000 left in the bank).

Pompeo was the incumbent, but his success is actually a win for the tea party. As a congressman, Tiahrt was a founding member of the House tea party caucus. But for his comeback attempt, he ditched his prior conservative persona and ran as a moderate, even populist Republican, arguing for the reinstatement of earmarks and questioning Pompeo’s support for NSA spying. Conservative groups, including the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, and Americans for Prosperity lined up to support Pompeo, a tea party favorite since he joined the House in 2011. There won’t be a revival of moderate conservatism in Kochland anytime soon.

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Tea Partier Staves Off Primary Challenge in Koch Country

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Michigan GOP Primary Results: “Foreclosure King” Beats Santa Impersonator

by cursvalutarotpbank Posted on August 6, 2014

Mother Jones

The War on Christmas seems to comes earlier every year: Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.), a Santa impersonator who was elected to Congress by accident in 2012, was defeated in a 30-point landslide on Tuesday, becoming this year’s first (and probably only) victim of the Republican establishment’s dissatisfaction with congressional tea partiers.

Bentivolio won his party’s nomination two years ago in a fluke after the incumbent, Rep. Thad McCotter, failed to qualify for the ballot and abruptly resigned. (A high school teacher and reindeer rancher, Bentivolio was the only Republican left on the ballot.) Bentivolio never fully sold himself as a serious congressman—he once promised to hold a hearing on chemtrails, the conspiracy theory that airplanes are brainwashing Americans with poison—making him an obvious target, despite winning the backing of Speaker of the House John Boehner.

More interesting than Bentivolio, who always had a placeholder feel to him, is the man who trounced him the primary—David Trott, a high-powered Republican donor whose law firm happens to process most of Michigan’s foreclosures. As one registrar of deeds in southeast Michigan put it in December, Trott & Trott “made a living off of monetizing human misery.” A big donor to the pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future, and a member of the 2012 GOP presidential nominee’s Michigan finance committee, Trott is an archetypal establishment Republican.

But he’ll still have his work cut out for him: Romney won the 11th district by just four points in 2012. He’ll take on the winner of the Democratic race between former CIA analyst Bobby McKenzie (backed by national Democrats) and urologist Anil Kumar.

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Michigan GOP Primary Results: “Foreclosure King” Beats Santa Impersonator

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Glenn Beck Tells Common Core Activists They Shouldn’t Mention His Name

by Luz67Wegjv Posted on July 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, 40 minutes into Glenn Beck’s nationally broadcast “night of action” targeting the Common Core education standards being implemented in schools across the nation, a North Carolina activist named Andrea Dillon announced live that her state’s governor had just signed a law directing the board of education to rewrite its standards—a step shy of jettisoning North Carolina from the initiative outright. A murmur went through the audience of two dozen or so parents and kids at the cinema in Ballston, Virginia where I was watching, one of hundreds of theaters around the country that was broadcasting the interactive event, dubbed “I Will Not Conform” (a nod to Beck’s new book on the standards, Conform). Beck offered a few words of congratulation, and Dillon patted her allies on the back: “North Carolina’s got a lot of gumption.”

It wasn’t the biggest political story of the night—that would be either David Perdue’s victory in the Georgia Republican Senate primary, or President Barack Obama’s consumption of multiple cheeseburgers, depending on your point of view. But Tuesday was a big day for opponents of the Common Core State Standards, a set of math and language-arts guidelines adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia in 2010, and, of late, an object of obsession for Beck and his army of parent activists. North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCrory became the latest once-supportive governor to hop the fence in opposition to the standards. Last week, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called on his state to repeal Common Core, echoing an earlier move by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to extricate his state from the standards. (That effort has turned the state board of education and Louisiana’s lieutenant governor against Jindal, and is now mired in litigation.) Meanwhile, in Georgia, where Republican officials in the state have previously been staunch supporters of the standards, an anti-Core teacher holds a narrow lead in the Republican primary for state superintendent—a position with broad powers for Core implementation.

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Glenn Beck Tells Common Core Activists They Shouldn’t Mention His Name

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ScienceTake | Navigating Air and Water

by Myrna Posted on June 30, 2014

For flying and swimming creatures obstructions can be something to avoid, or reference points to keep nearby. Excerpt from:  ScienceTake | Navigating Air and Water ; ;Related ArticlesOur Inability To Deal With Climate Change Is Going to Kill the PenguinsThese Maps Show How Many Brutally Hot Days You Will Suffer When You’re OldHardcore Capitalists Warn That Climate Change Is A Big Deal For American Businesses ;

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ScienceTake | Navigating Air and Water

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