Last Call To Mind That Gap Again

The good news for Democrats:  the enthusiasm gap among Republicans is the worst recorded.  The bad news:  Democrats are even less enthusiastic about voting in 2014.

Among registered voters, 42% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents currently say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting, while 50% are less enthusiastic, resulting in an eight-point enthusiasm deficit. But Democrats are even less enthusiastic, with a 23-point deficit (32% more enthusiastic vs. 55% less enthusiastic).

Typically, the party whose supporters have an advantage in enthusiasm has done better in midterm elections. Republicans had decided advantages in enthusiasm in 1994, 2002, and especially 2010 -- years in which they won control of the House of Representatives or expanded on their existing majority. Democrats had the advantage in 2006, the year they won control of the House. Neither party had a decided advantage in 1998, a year Democrats posted minimal gains in House seats.

At this point, neither party could give a damn, but the GOP still has a 15 point edge.  They had a 34 point edge in 2010 and the GOP picked up 60 plus seats in the House, where Democrats had a 13 point edge in 2006 and won the House there.

With all the gerrymandering and the power of incumbency, it's looking like there's not going to be too much of a shift in either the House or Senate.  That's at least something in the "Dems will keep the Senate out of inertia" column.

The thought and enthusiasm measures together suggest a mixed picture for Republicans. On one hand, it seems clear that 2014 will not be a repeat of 2010, when record Republican enthusiasm presaged major gains for the party in Congress. This year, Republicans' reported enthusiasm not only pales in comparison to 2010, but also to every other midterm election year.

However, Republicans still maintain advantages in thought given to the election and in voter enthusiasm compared with Democrats, and these advantages normally point to a better year for Republicans than Democrats. There is some uncertainty about how that will play out this year given that both Republicans and Democrats say they are less enthusiastic than usual about voting -- something that has occasionally occurred in past midterm election years but never over the course of an entire midterm campaign.

The danger of course remains that Democrats don't care what happens in 2014 and won't vote.  It just means there will be closer races that we could have won and didn't rather than 2010 style blowouts, but to see the Democratic numbers this bad (even in 2010 it was 44% a piece for enthusiastic versus non) it means that we're still going to lose.

Unless we vote.

What The Democrats Are Up Against in 2014

They are up against people who have been convinced to destroy their own self-interest in the name of greed and power, people like 33-year-old New Hampshire auto mechanic Derek Gagnon.

He has no health insurance, but he also says he has no intention of signing up for the private insurance offered through the government-run website, HealthCare.gov.

"I shouldn't be forced to do something like that in a free country," said Gagnon, referring to the law's requirement, known as the "individual mandate," that almost all legal U.S. residents buy health insurance or pay a fine.

"I'll pay the fine this year and next year," Gagnon said at a frozen yogurt store outside New Hampshire's state capital, Concord. "Maybe I won't have to pay it the third year, because by then Obama will be out of office."

Gagnon's distaste for the individual mandate dovetails with a principal line of conservative attacks nationally on the law.

Obamacare is meant to extend subsidized health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans through new online private insurance markets and an expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor. But conservative critics portray it as a government intrusion in a major sector of the economy that will hurt job growth and erode freedoms.

Darek Gagnon is exactly the type of person the Affordable Care Act is supposed to be helping: uninsured, working class Americans who if they ever got truly sick or hurt would be in a world of financial pain.

But the Right Wing Noise Machine has made sure of two things:  that Derek Gagnon is acting against his own self-interest and will continue to do so, and that he will vote in order to perpetuate this situation.  The first is Derek's problem.  The second problem affects all of us, because he will vote to put someone like Scott Brown in the Senate rather than Democrat Jeanne Shaheen to make laws for all 315 million of us.

Derek Gagnon will vote.  For whatever reasons he has for voting, his vote counts the same as yours.

Will you vote?  People like Derek will.  And if you don't vote, he'll get to choose who runs this country.

Think about it.

Climate Of Distrust

Hey folks it's Marco Rubio, "Moderate Republican" and "Savior" of the GOP!

"I don't agree with the notion that some are putting out there, including scientists, that somehow there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what's happening in our climate," he said on ABC's "This Week." "Our climate is always changing. And what they have chosen to do is take a handful of decades of research and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend that's directly and almost solely attributable to manmade activity, I do not agree with that."

ABC's Jonathan Karl pressed Rubio on his belief that humans don't have anything to do with global warming.

"But let me get this straight, you do not think that human activity, its production of CO2, has caused warming to our planet?" Karl asked.

"I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. That's what I do not -- and I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it. Except it will destroy our economy," Rubio responded.

And remember, this will make it more likely that Marco Rubio will be the GOP nominee in 2016, not less.   We have a major political party in America in 2014 that has tens of millions of adherents and that party believes modern science is nothing more than a massive liberal con game designed to destroy our freedom.  They actively fear science and replace it with propaganda and faith.  Trust must be destroyed in science so they can take it over, just like they've done with the very idea of a federal government in this country.

There's no doubt in my mind that the person running in 2016 for the GOP will not believe in climate change and will be virulently anti-science, anti-knowleges, anti-education, and anti-learning.  Republicans, this is what you represent to America.  Do something about your party before you kill us all.

Or better yet...vote Democrat.

StupidiNews!

• Pro-Russian separatist militants in Ukraine are claiming snap elections in eastern Ukraine show a decisive victory for declared independence from the Kiev government.
• The Washington Monument will reopen to the public today after being under repairs for nearly three years following a rare DC-area earthquake in August 2011.
• Norway's energy boom is ending and with it could go many of the country's government-based programs.
• Diplomats in the US, Europe and Asia will begin the final preparations for drafting a peace accord with Iran over ending its nuclear weapons ambitions.
• A Massachusetts woman faces wiretapping charges after allegedly secretly recording audio of her own disorderly conduct arrest.