Some Democrats think the party hasn't done enough to pep up the groups that form its main pillars of support. Veteran Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told The Hill last week that Hispanic voters would largely be unmotivated to vote in this year's elections due to President Obama's decision to delay an executive action on immigration.
“I think if we'd done something, it would have energized the Latino vote and drawn a clear distinction with the Republicans," Lake said.In Arkansas, Republican Cotton is leading Sen. Mark Pryor by 3.
Democrats, going back to those happy Roosevelt days, have made their living as the party that lifts up the many and not just the privileged few. Republicans have traditionally said that growth is everything and if the rich get richer, their success will eventually work its way down to everyone else.
Democrats can’t (and shouldn’t) echo conservative bromides. They are right to point to all that still needs to be done to end income stagnation in the middle class and among the poor. In his Northwestern speech, Obama advanced his proposals on education, job training, college loans, a minimum wage increase, infrastructure investment, equal pay and work-family balance. All would help matters, if only they could get by Republicans in Congress.Having a Republican Senate with the Koch brothers and Wall Street pulling their strings will only make the "rest of this parade" (as Toles puts it) more difficult to clean up later.
The [Republican] candidates may be plausible, but they’re running on the wrong issues. Rather, the wrong issue: the Affordable Care Act.
“Repeal Obamacare” remains a rallying cry for the GOP’s activist base — perhaps less for the law itself than the president for whom it is named. But for independent voters, undoing health-care reform is not the sure-fire issue Republicans hoped it would be.
The program is in effect. Some people who previously could not obtain health insurance now have it. Most people are unaffected. Despite all the dire GOP predictions, the sky has not fallen.
Yet Republican candidates say otherwise, describing a dystopian breakdown of the nation’s health-care system that simply has not occurred. And they go all tongue-tied when asked how they could manage to repeal Obamacare in the face of a certain veto by Obama — or, more tellingly, just what they would put in place if they somehow succeeded.But forget wave, or even ripple, election. Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium sees a much different outcome at this time:
Long-term forecasting is based on methods that worked nearly perfectly in 2010-2012. We will soon install code to display the long-term forecast, which is also based purely on polls. Currently, the long-term forecast for Democratic control on Election Day is 65%, about 2-1 odds in favor.Now, the usual caveats apply (i.e., "It's two months until the election!!"), and Wang is swimming against the tide of conventional wisdom and most, if not all, of the polling community. Not to mention Wang is putting his probabilities in the realm of a "work in progress." But, given that he was dead on in earlier projections (we recall him picking all of the 2012 Senate winners and nailing the Presidential results), one would be stupid to dismiss his analysis even at this relatively early stage in the midterm election cycle.
I’m no campaign strategist, but it seems to me Democrats could probably put together some kind of “Four for 2014” platform, telling voters they’ll pass four popular bills – immigration, minimum-wage increase, infrastructure jobs, and veterans benefits, all of which failed due to GOP opposition – if the electorate takes power away from Republicans.
If the goal is to create an incentive for Dems to show up, maybe the party should give them a reason? (our emphasis)Dammit, stop always reacting from a defensive crouch and go on offense. Don't apologize for Obamacare, hail its successes. Stress the economic and justice issues Benen lists above. Get yourselves together and stay on message.
