Tag Archives: elections

Scientists: Ted Cruz’s Climate Theories Are a "Load of Claptrap"

by IngridNHZT Posted on March 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last night, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a probable candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, shared his thoughts about climate change with late-night host Seth Meyers (video above). Here’s what he said:

CRUZ: I just came back from New Hampshire where there’s snow and ice everywhere. And my view actually is simple. Debates on this should follow science and should follow data. And many of the alarmists on global warming, they’ve got a problem because the science doesn’t back them up. And in particular, satellite data demonstrate for the last 17 years there’s been zero warming, none whatsoever. It’s why, you remember how it used to be called global warming, and then magically the theory changed to climate change?

MEYERS: Sure.

CRUZ: The reason is it wasn’t warming. But the computer models still say it is, except the satellites show it’s not.

We totally agree with his point that debates about climate “should follow science and should follow data.” Right on! But according to Kevin Trenberth, a leading climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, everything else in Cruz’s quote is “a load of claptrap…absolute bunk.”

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Scientists: Ted Cruz’s Climate Theories Are a “Load of Claptrap”


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Attention GOP Candidates: Winter Does Not Disprove Global Warming

Trenberth wasn’t alone in his criticism. Several prominent climate scientists contacted by Climate Desk dismissed Cruz’s analysis. “It is disturbing that some of our most prominent elected officials have decided to engage in distortions of and cynical attacks against the science,” said Michael Mann of Penn State.

“Lawmakers have a responsibility to understand the science, and not to embrace ignorance with open arms, as Senator Cruz is doing here,” added Ben Santer, a researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab.

So what’s wrong with what Cruz said? For starters, the satellite record does, in fact, show warming. Here’s a view of temperature anomalies (that is, the deviation from the long-term average) reported by Remote Sensing Systems, a NASA-backed private satellite lab. It shows warming of about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1980, the beginning of the satellite record:

Remote Sensing Systems

Even still, there are a couple important caveats with satellite temperature data that Cruz would do well to make note of. One, Santer said, is that it has a “huge” degree of uncertainty (compared to land-based thermometers), so it should be approached with caution. That’s because satellites don’t make direct measurements of temperature but instead pick up microwaves from oxygen molecules in the atmosphere that vary with temperature. Fluctuations in a satellite’s orbit and altitude and calibrations to its microwave-sensing equipment can all drastically affect its temperature readings.

More importantly, satellites measure temperatures in the atmosphere, high above the surface. The chart above shows the lower troposphere, about six miles above the surface. This data is an important piece of the climate and weather system, but it’s only one piece. There are plenty of other signs that are far less equivocal, and perhaps even more relevant to those of us who live on the Earth’s surface: Land and ocean surface temperatures are increasing, sea ice is declining, glaciers are shrinking, oceans are rising, the list goes on. In other words, the satellites-vs-computers dichotomy described by Cruz ignores most of the full picture.

For example, here’s the most recent land and ocean-surface temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, showing how temperatures this winter deviated from the long-term average (dating all the way back to 1880). Much of the globe is warmer than average, some parts are the hottest on record, and the overall global temperature was the warmest on record:

NOAA

There’s also a big underlying flaw with Cruz’s cherry-picked timespan of 17 years, which almost any climate scientist would agree is far too short to observe any meaningful trend. 1998, the year Cruz starts with, was itself exceptionally warm thanks to the biggest El Nino event of the 20th century. If that’s your starting place, the warming trend does indeed look weak. But look over a longer time period, and it’s obvious that very warm years are more common now than before.

NOAA

And in any case, even the modest “slow-down” in warming that has occurred since 2000 isn’t inconsistent with what scientists have always expected man-made climate change will look like. Even the earliest climate models predicted the possibility of occasional leveling-off periods in upward-bound global temperature, like a landing on a staircase.

In fact, one reason why many scientists “magically” (as Cruz put it) have begun to prefer the term “climate change” to “global warming” is because they think the latter can misleadingly imply that every year will be incrementally warmer than the last. In reality, climate change is all about odds: Man-made greenhouse gas emissions substantially increase the chances of an exceptionally warm year, but they don’t eliminate the possibility for average or even cold years to happen.

Even accounting for the apparent stability of the last few years, Santer said, “everything tells us that what’s going on isn’t natural.”

As for Cruz’s reference to snowy weather in New Hampshire…give us a break.

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Scientists: Ted Cruz’s Climate Theories Are a "Load of Claptrap"

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The Return of the Clinton Media Persecution Complex

by ShoshanBeavers Posted on March 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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It is, unfortunately, an old and all-too familiar story. A Clinton, meaning Bill or Hillary, does something wrong (or possibly wrong). The media pounces; the Clinton antagonists of the right hit the warpath. Immediately, the Clinton camp and its supporters accuse the media and the conservative Clinton Hate Machine of trumping up a story to thwart the noble Clintons. Clinton spokespeople go into war-room mode. Resentful reporters grouse (privately and publicly) about the heavy-handed operators and obfuscators of Clintonland. And the right claims this latest fuss is a scandal that surpasses Watergate. Rinse, repeat.

The latest iteration of this Clinton-media dysfunctional spin cycle was triggered by the Hillary Clinton email kerfuffle that exploded last week. The Clinton camp’s handling of the controversy was a sign that Hillary and her gang are stuck in the Whitewaterish 1990s when it comes to communications strategy, relying on always-be-combating tactics predicated on self-perceived persecution. It’s bad news for anyone hoping that Hillary 2016 has learned from the miscalculations of the past.

Clinton’s use of a private email account to conduct secretary of state business and, just as important, her failure to preserve her messages in real-time within the department’s own record-keeping system were not, as Clintonites claimed, no biggie. Yes, Scott Walker had his own secret email scandal. And Jeb Bush, who tried to score political points by slamming Clinton, vetted his gubernatorial emails before releasing them to the public, while congratulating himself on his supposed devotion to transparency. (I’ve combed the Bush email archive for names and topics that ought to be there—and found obvious subjects absent.) So the Clinton defenders have a point when they gripe that the media is only obsessed with her email problem. But it is a small point. She was a Cabinet official. She had a duty to ensure that her records—which belong to the public, not her—would be controlled by the department, not by her private aides who operate her private server.

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The Return of the Clinton Media Persecution Complex

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Washington’s Biggest Hawk Wants to Be Secretary of Defense—So He’s Running for President

by AraceliDominiqu Posted on March 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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As 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls have kick-started their pre-primary, not-yet-official campaigns, a burning question has arisen: Why is Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina with little national following and no hope of securing the nomination, saying that he may toss his hat in the ring? At the end of January, Graham announced his exploratory committee, but he has told reporters that an official announcement won’t come until he knows that he has enough financial backing to run.

Graham doesn’t seem a natural contender. The tea party scoffs at his bipartisan bona fides. His hawkish war rhetoric and interest in foreign policy endears him to Republican senators like close pal John McCain, as well as Kelly Ayotte and the neocon crowd, but this doesn’t offer him much of a launchpad. His fundraising prospects don’t seem strong, though the pro-Israel casino magnate Sheldon Adelson co-chaired a fundraising lunch for Graham at the Capitol Hill Club last week. Graham introduced a bipartisan bill that would ban online gambling, Adelson’s pet cause. Most political analysts, including Clemson University political scientist Dave Woodard, have ruled Graham out of the running already. And MSNBC’s Benjy Sarlin posits that Graham is just trying to undercut Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul regarding his skepticism toward military intervention overseas.

Yet some political strategists suggest that Graham has a target other than the White House.

“He’s running for secretary of defense,” says Rick Wilson, a GOP strategist in Florida with experience in South Carolina politics. “He’ll never say it, but if you know him well enough, it’s the only logical reason. He’ll make sure foreign policy is a central focus” of his campaign.

“If the Republicans win the White House, Lindsey Graham will have his choice of being secretary of defense or secretary of state, if he does it right,” Katon Dawson, Graham’s longtime friend and the former chair of the South Carolina Republican party, told National Review.

So what would doing “it right” mean?

Graham is popular in his home state of South Carolina, which is one of the three pivotal early states in the primary race. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, another 2016 wannabe, is just 1 percent ahead of Graham in early polls of the state. But if Graham does poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire and drops out of the race, he could use his influence in the Palmetto State to benefit another candidate during the primary there. Should that candidate win, Graham’s wealth of foreign policy, military, and national security expertise could lead to his campaign work being rewarded, Wilson says.

Graham says he’s focusing on his “vision for the country and national security,” rather than on defeating other candidates. His PAC is called Security Through Strength, and it is largely dedicated to the fight against radical Islam and ISIS. Whenever a Republican leader is needed to talk about defense or foreign policy on the Sunday morning political programs, Graham is one of the top choices. He routinely appears on Meet the Press, Fox News, and CNN.

Political strategists say that they would be surprised if Graham campaigned negatively against other candidates. “The last thing Marco Rubio and Rand Paul worry about is Lindsey Graham,” Wilson says. Rob Wislinkski, a strategist from Graham’s home state, agrees: “I’d be very surprised if he throws a lot of rocks at the other candidates in the GOP,” he says. And Graham told MSNBC that Rand Paul’s potential bid has “zero” to do with his decisions, hesitating to bad-mouth the Kentucky senator.

Then again, maybe Graham thinks lightning will strike. Larry Sabato, managing editor of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics’ Crystal Ball blog, suggests that Graham may be catching the presidential fever that afflicts many long-time senators: deciding you can do the job better after having watched several presidents in action. “They start whistling ‘Hail to the Chief’ while shaving,” Sabato says.

Graham’s camp is adamant that he actually wants the top job. “If he decided to formally enter the race, he is running to win,” says Christian Ferry, a Virginia GOP strategist who is advising Graham.

Maybe. But if Graham is merely trying to gain an edge in the postelection Pentagon sweepstakes, the experience of retiring Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel might be a cautionary tale, Sabato notes. For all the power of the position, the top Pentagon job involves losing the independence that senators enjoy. But for Graham, being named secretary of defense could be a powerful career capper, and a way to lay out his vision of a hardline national defense—something he probably won’t be doing from the Oval Office.

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Washington’s Biggest Hawk Wants to Be Secretary of Defense—So He’s Running for President

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On the Selma Anniversary, These North Carolina Activists Will March Backward

by AimeeLawless Posted on March 7, 2015

Mother Jones

Activists, politicians, and luminaries from across the nation will flock to Selma, Alabama, this weekend to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the nonviolent voting-rights march that was undermined by police-sanctioned attacks, presaging the passage, six months later, of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But this year’s events, which include a reenactment of the fateful march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, are shaping up to have a more activist edge than past commemorations.

Some black leaders, such as North Carolina NAACP president Rev. Doctor William Barber II, will use the day to highlight the assault on black voting rights in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that rolled back a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Rather than make it across the bridge, Barber and his delegation plan to turn around and march back toward Selma.

“For the last fifty years we’ve been walking across that bridge to celebrate how the civil rights leaders pushed us forward. This year, we have to turn around,” he told me. This change in routine, he says, is a response to the politicians who “will come down to Selma and give all these platitudes and talk about how they love the people of the past, but won’t ensure a Voting Rights Act that meets the test of history today.” And that “is a step backward.”

Prior to the Supreme Court ruling, the VRA required nine historically racist states, including North Carolina, along with several counties, to get permission from the Department of Justice before modifying their voting laws. It paid off. In 2012, for instance, North Carolina ranked 11th out of 50 states in voter turnout, with 65 percent of registered voters casting a ballot.

But the gains, ironically enough, helped influence the court’s decision in the case of Shelby County v. Holder. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. held that it was unconstitutional to single out just a few states for these voting requirements, especially after all this time—”nearly 50 years later,” he wrote, “things have changed dramatically.”

They can change back, too. In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg likened the majority’s reasoning to throwing away an umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.

Prescient words: Freed from DOJ oversight, several of those states quickly reversed course, enacting a deluge of new, restrictive voting laws. Within two months of the ruling, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed a package of legislation that was, for anyone who favors access to the ballot box, a nightmare: Same day registration? Gone. Pre-registration for for 16- and 17-year-olds? Also gone. A shorter early registration period? Check. Extended voting hours when voting demand exceeds the availability of voting machines? Nixed. The ability to vote in a precinct outside of where one resides? Nope. Then there’s the most contested provision: the requirement for voters to present a state-approved ID starting in 2016. Without a valid driver’s license, state ID card, US military ID, veteran card, or passport, North Carolina voters are out of luck.

“Voting should not difficult. It should not be something that we have to jump over hurdles to do,” says Donita Judge, a senior attorney at the Advancement Project, a civil rights nonprofit. She and her colleagues promptly sued the state over the new voting restrictions. A number of other groups, including the League of Women Voters, has joined the lawsuit, which is set for a trial in July.

A similar lawsuit filed by the DOJ not long after prompted sneers from Gov. McCrory: “I believe if showing a voter ID is good enough and fair enough for our own president in Illinois, then it’s good enough for the people in North Carolina.” The package, he said, is “common sense reform” aimed at curbing voter fraud and maintaining democratic integrity. Never mind that, between 2000 and 2010, there were 47,000 reported UFO sightings, but only 13 credible cases of someone trying to impersonate a voter. “It’s a red herring. It’s been proven time and time again that there is very minimal voting fraud,” Judge says. “What we do have is politicians manipulating elections—it’s more election fraud then voting fraud.”

Indeed, the sorts of restrictions North Carolina has put in place have been shown time and again to have a disproportionate impact on minority voters. The Advancement Project notes that black turnout leaped from 42 percent in 2000 to 69 percent in 2012 after same-day registration and early voting were implemented. (Granted, there wasn’t an electable black guy running in 2000.) But in 2013, Democracy North Carolina released a report showing that 34 percent of the state’s registered black voters lacked a state-issued ID—overall, 318,000 registered voters lack one, according to data from the state board of elections.

“When people can’t vote, they lack the ability to choose who represents them and therefore who has their best interest at heart, but they also lack the ability to weigh in on important issues, like the criminal justice system,” Judge says. “If you can’t vote, you’re not going to end up on juries, so you don’t have a voice.”

Hence the backward march. “Fifty years ago, they didn’t settle in the face of death, in the face of the Klan, in the face of accepted police brutality. And if they didn’t accept then, we can’t accept now,” Rev. Barber explains. “If they died for us to have these rights, there is no way in the world we can be afraid of the Koch Brothers, of the Tea Party, of regressive politicians.”

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On the Selma Anniversary, These North Carolina Activists Will March Backward

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What We Know About the Mysterious Suicide of Missouri Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Schweich

by VicenteSommers Posted on February 27, 2015

Mother Jones

On Thursday morning, Thomas Schweich, Missouri’s auditor and a Republican candidate for governor, died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. His death—coming moments after he had invited two reporters to his home later that day—shocked Missouri political observers, who point out that in addition to his beloved family and distinguished career in public service, Schweich, 54, had just won re-election to a second term as state auditor and was leading in early polls of the 2016 governor’s race. Why he would have taken his own life is a mystery to those who knew him. Just as strange is the predominant theory of what may have provoked his apparent suicide: rumors that he was Jewish.

In the days before his death, Schweich had been worried that the head of the Missouri Republican Party was conducting a “whisper campaign” against him by telling people that he was Jewish. Schweich was, in fact, an Episcopalian, but his grandfather was Jewish.

The police were called to Schweich’s home in Clayton, Missouri at 9:48 a.m. on Thursday. Just seven minutes earlier, Schweich had left a voicemail for Tony Messenger, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, inviting him to send a reporter to his home that afternoon. That morning, Schweich had also invited an AP reporter to attend this interview.

According to Messenger, Schweich had hoped to counter rumors that he was Jewish, which he believed were being spread by Missouri GOP chairman John Hancock in a bid to damage his candidacy. He feared misconceptions about his faith might hurt him with evangelical voters, according to a report by the New York Times. Schweich had been “agitated” discussing rumors about his faith earlier in the week, according to the AP reporter who had spoken to him minutes before his death.

Hancock responded on Friday to allegations that he was spreading misinformation about Schweich’s faith: “It’s plausible that I would have told somebody that Tom was Jewish because I thought he was, but I wouldn’t have said it in a derogatory or demeaning fashion.”

But would rumors about Schweich’s religion really have hurt him politically? A Jewish background doesn’t appear to be impeding another prospective GOP gubernatorial candidate. Eric Greitens, a Jewish former Navy Seal, launched an exploratory committee for a statewide campaign in Missouri this week. The Washington Free Beacon described him as “the great Jewish hope” in a recent profile about his entry into politics. Reports note that he might enter into the gubernatorial race, though he yet to announce which office he has his eye on.

On Friday, Messenger, who had a close source relationship with Schweich, revealed that in the days leading up to Schweich’s apparent suicide, the Republican candidate had discussed a desire to go public with accusations against Hancock. He had told Messenger that “his grandfather taught him to never allow any anti­-Semitism go unpunished, no matter how slight.” Messenger noted that anti-Semitisim is a factor in Missouri, the state that “gave us Frazier Glenn Miller, the raging racist who killed three people at a Jewish community center in Kansas City.” And he wrote, “Division over race and creed is real in Missouri Republican politics, particularly in some rural areas. Schweich knew it. It’s why all week long his anger burned.”

Kevin Murphy, the Clayton police chief, told reporters that there is no evidence that Schweich was under political attack or suffering from mental illness. Murphy also said it did not appear that Schweich’s death was accidental. He noted that the ongoing investigation would include interviews with Schweich’s friends and family, which has yet make a statement to the media about Schweich’s death.

The Missouri legislature gathered on Friday to mourn Schweich, who, before becoming Missouri state auditor in 2010, had served as chief of staff to three different US Ambassadors to the United Nations, as well as working on anti-drug trafficking initiatives in Afghanistan under during the George W. Bush administration.

There remain more questions than answers about Schweizer’s apparent suicide. “I have no idea why Schweich killed himself,” Messenger wrote in the Post-Dispatch on Friday. The only thing that seems clear is that there’s much more to the story behind his death.

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What We Know About the Mysterious Suicide of Missouri Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Schweich

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Why the Media Focuses So Much on the Koch Brothers—Explained in 5 Tweets

by CandidaEasterbr Posted on January 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Any time news breaks about the billionaire Koch brothers and their shadowy network of donors and advocacy groups, conservatives grumble that the media singles out the Kochs, that we reporters are unfair toward and obsessed with them while giving a pass to wealthy liberals like George Soros and Tom Steyer and the progressive donor club the Democracy Alliance. Koch Industries, the international conglomerate run by Charles and David Koch, keeps a ticker tracking the number of Koch mentions in the New York Times. The response to Monday’s revelation—the Kochs and a few hundred of their donor allies plan to spend an eye-popping $889 million on 2016 elections and policy fights—was no different.

But there’s a very good reason the media covers the Kochs so closely: Increasingly, the data shows, they’re the biggest outside money players in town. By a long shot.

Robert Maguire, a cracker-jack researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks the flow of cash (disclosed and dark money) in American elections, lays out, in just five tweets, why exactly the media report on the Kochs so much—and why it makes perfect sense to do so.

In the 2012 campaign, Maguire shows, the Kochs and their network already ranked as one of the biggest outside entities:

The bulk of that cash was dark money—meaning the true source of the contributions was hidden. And the Koch network’s dark money spending made up a notable chunk of all reported dark money spending in the 2012 elections:

Yes, the progressive movement has its own donor club, the Democracy Alliance, whose members are secret and whose giving is anonymous. But the DA, as it’s called, pales in comparison to Kochworld:

Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, Koch-linked dark-money spending has outpaced liberal dark-money spending:

And as you can see, the Kochs’ $889 million goal for 2016 more than doubles its 2012 budget. The figure exceeds the Republican Party’s campaign committee spending in 2012 and isn’t far off from what the Obama and Romney campaigns each spent in the last presidential race.

So there you have it. The Kochs and their allies—again, just a few hundred people hoping to raise and spend nearly $900 million in 2016—are in a different league than their liberal counterparts. Make no mistake: The Democracy Alliance and its state-level counterpart, the Committee on States, are absolutely deserving of tough reporting and serious scrutiny. But at this point, Kochworld is essentially its own political party, on par with the Democratic and Republican parties, and it should be covered just as rigorously.

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Why the Media Focuses So Much on the Koch Brothers—Explained in 5 Tweets

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The Koch Brothers’ Network Aims to Spend $889 Million on the 2016 Elections

by WendiU62wzrbajc Posted on January 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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$889 million.

That’s how much Charles and David Koch’s political network hopes to spend on the presidential race, House and Senate contests, and other elections and policy fights in 2016. That figure is not far off from how much President Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s presidential efforts each spent in 2012. It is well over what John Kerry and George W. Bush together spent during the 2004 campaign. This fundraising target was announced Monday morning at the Koch brothers’ winter retreat for members of their elite donor network.

And there’s a good chance that much of the money the Kochs and their allies plan to unleash will be spent in the dark—that is, with little disclosure of the true source of those millions. (Key parts of the Koch network are nonprofit advocacy groups that engage in political work without revealing their donors.)

If the Koch network—which included 450 or so attendees at this weekend’s donor confab—meets it $889-million goal for 2016, it would more than double its outlay from the last presidential election season. During the 2012 campaign, the Kochs’ collection of nonprofit groups spent over $400 million, with a sizable chunk of that aimed at defeating President Obama.

The Kochs and their donor-allies are now essentially their own political party. As the New York Times‘ Nick Confessore points out, the Koch network’s $889 million exceeds the spending power of the Republican Party:

Here’s some context from the Washington Post about how that money—it’s unclear how much of it will come from the Koch family itself—could be spent:

The $889 million goal reflects the budget goals of all the allied groups that the network funds. Those resources will go into field operations, new technology and policy work, among other projects.

The group—which is supported by hundreds of wealthy donors on the right, along with the Kochs—is still debating whether it will spend some of that money in the GOP primaries. Such a move could have a major impact in winnowing the field of contenders but could also undercut the network’s standing if it engaged in intraparty politics and was not successful.

Marc Short, the president of Freedom Partners, which hosts the Kochs’ donor enclaves, told the Post that “2014 was nice, but there’s a long way to go.” He said that putting free-market ideals at the center of American life is the goal of the Kochs and their allies, adding, “Politics is a necessary means to that end, but not the only one.”

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The Koch Brothers’ Network Aims to Spend $889 Million on the 2016 Elections

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Mitt Romney Has a Koch Problem

by ZitaBazley Posted on January 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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This weekend, a select group of Republican presidential hopefuls will arrive in southern California to attend one of Charles and David Koch’s biannual donor retreats, a coveted invite for GOP politicians seeking the backing of the billionaire brothers and their elite club of conservative and libertarian mega-donors. Featured guests at the conclave will include Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was also invited to the confab but is unlikely to attend.

Notably absent from the guest list for the Koch winter seminar: Mitt Romney.

Romney recently barged his way back into the political fray, suggesting he might launch a third presidential bid. He told a group of donors earlier this month, “Everybody in here can go tell your friends that I’m considering a run.” In a presentation over the weekend at a resort near Palm Springs, California—as it happens, the same venue that has played host to previous Koch seminars—Romney delivered what sounded an awful lot like a presidential stump speech, talking about poverty (“I believe that the principles of conservatism are the best to help people get out of poverty”), education (“We have great teachers. I’d pay them more”), and even climate change.

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Mitt Romney Has a Koch Problem

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Martin O’Malley Is A Longshot Presidential Candidate, and a Real Climate Hawk

by DoyleHeidenreic Posted on December 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) is nothing like any pop culture stereotype of a politician. He’s not a boyishly charming airhead like George W. Bush or The Simpsons‘ Mayor Quimby, or a blunt, lovable grandpa like Joe Biden or The West Wing‘s Jed Bartlet. He’s not even that much like the fictional politician based partly on him, The Wire‘s Tommy Carcetti, who like O’Malley became the unlikely white mayor of majority-black Baltimore. O’Malley has none of Carcetti’s sleazy slickness. O’Malley comes across more like the sort of engaged administrator you would hire to turn around a moribund government agency.

In January, O’Malley will leave office after eight years because term limits prevented him from running for a third term. He will likely run for president in 2016, despite low name recognition and a lack of classic charisma. But whatever his seeming political deficits, he has won a steady stream of elections, made tangible progress in governing, and earned respect from progressives, including climate hawks.

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Martin O’Malley Is A Longshot Presidential Candidate, and a Real Climate Hawk

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Dems Have a Clever New Plan to Turn Florida’s Governor’s Mansion Blue

by FMTTillyxk Posted on December 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Over the past few years, Republicans across the country have adopted a novel strategy for winning elections: Change the rules to make it harder to vote against them. In seven states, Republicans passed new laws requiring voters to show photo ID before getting a ballot. They pared down early voting. In some states, they even contemplated changing how Electoral College votes are awarded in order to give the GOP candidate an advantage.

Now some Florida Democrats want to change election rules to benefit their own side—by holding big elections in the years that people actually vote. Over the past few election cycles, Democrats have thrived in presidential years, when more voters—especially young and minority voters, who tend to be Democratic—turn out to vote. But the party has floundered in off-year elections, which feature higher percentages of older, more conservative voters. Florida, like 35 other states, elects its governors in midterm years, when there is no presidential race on the ballot. Now a small group of political consultants is mulling a campaign to change that.

The Dems’ problem with midterm turnout has been particularly troublesome in Florida. Despite its purple tinge in presidential elections, Florida hasn’t elected a Democratic governor in more than 20 years. In an op-ed last month, Kevin Cate, an adviser for Charlie Crist’s failed attempt to unseat Republican Gov. Rick Scott, proposed a simple solution: Dems could change the state constitution so that Florida voters pick their governors the same years they vote for president.

In his op-ed, Cate explained why the elections are held during midterm years at all: Old-school, segregationist conservative Democrats were worried that they’d lose their control of the state party to more liberal Dems. So in 1961, they rewrote the rules to make sure state officials faced a more conservative electorate. “Today, because of this change, about 2.5 million presidential cycle voters entirely ignore the governor and the Florida Cabinet,” Cate wrote. “They could vote, or care, but they just don’t.”

Democrats have latched onto Cate’s idea. Sen. Ben Nelson—the only statewide Democrat left standing—endorsed the plan when a 20-person Democratic task force met last week.

Ben Pollara, a consultant who managed a marijuana legalization ballot initiative campaign earlier this year, has signed onto Cate’s cause and been talking with lawyers, activists, and pollsters about the viability of a waging a campaign to change the rules. “It’s a gigantic financial undertaking to put something on the ballot, much less pass it,” he explains. “It costs $2-4 million just to get something on the ballot.” Even then, 60 percent of the state’s voters must approve a measure before it changes the law.

This ballot initiative wouldn’t be an immediate fix for Florida Dems’ problems. Even if they passed the measure in 2016, it wouldn’t cut into Rick Scott’s current term. The next gubernatorial election would still happen as currently scheduled in 2018. But if Cate and Pollara’s brainchild becomes reality, Scott’s successor would only have two years in office before the new schedule kicked in for 2020.

I asked Pollara whether he was worried that Republicans would spin this idea as a desperate move, sour grapes from a bunch of political losers with no other options. “The argument for it is pretty simple, and the argument against it is cynical and partisan,” he said. “The argument for it is should our governor be elected by the most number of voters. The argument against it turns it into something partisan.” And as he noted, although such a change to the rules may help Democrats in the near term, no one can predict the ramifications decades down the line. After all, switching to midterm years was initially proposed by the state’s Democrats. “Politics is cyclical,” Pollara says. “What may help the Democrats in the short term may ultimately come back to bite them in the ass in the long term, but it remains that it is the right thing to do.”

Continued here: 

Dems Have a Clever New Plan to Turn Florida’s Governor’s Mansion Blue

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