StupidiNews!

• Less than 24 hours after announcing an end to Operation Decisive Storm, the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is once again resuming airstrikes against Houthi targets after a brigade was attacked.
• Hundreds of protesters rallied in Baltimore to march in support of Freddie Gray, who died after being in police custody after complications from a nearly severed spinal cord.
• US Drug Enforcement Administration director Michele Leonhart will resign as Congress plans hearings into whether DEA agents spilled secrets at lavish sex parties thrown by Colombian cartels.
• European Union officials are accusing Russian natural gas giant Gazprom of market manipulation to raise natural gas prices across Europe through its near monopoly presence.
• Google is expected to announce its new wireless network service as early as today, combining and reselling Sprint, T-Mobile and WiFi service to make calls on its Nexus 6 phones.

Last Call For The Real Racists In Michigan

Just pointing out the fact this Michigan couple has a noose and Confederate flags hanging from the trees in their yard makes me a racist, or something.

A suburban Detroit business owner and his wife who hung Confederate flags and nooses on their property insist that anyone who sees the actions as racist is “stupid.” 

“I am not a racist,” Robert Tomanovich, owner of Robert’s Discount Tree Service in Livonia, Mich., told the Daily News Monday night. 

“I know black guys, I have black friends. We’re all laughing at this stupidity. Do you know how many white guys were hung back in the day? This isn’t racist. But all of a sudden it’s out of control.” 

Tomanovich , 55,made local headlines when WXYZ reported last Friday that Confederate flags and a noose were hanging outside two of his properties, one of which he uses for his tree-cutting business. The noose hung from a tree small enough for a child to scale. 

The decorations have no connection to the racist history of the Confederacy, said his wife Lindy, rushing to his defense.

Boy, sure is a terrible time we live in when people get upset over stuff like a noose hanging from a tree.  Besides, all those slave lynchings and hangings? White guys died too or something, so what's the big deal?

It's not racist cause he said so, guys.  CASE CLOSED.

Johnny Volcano's Revenge

Sen. John McCain has finally reached the stage in his life where he completely blames his failure to win the White House in 2008 on Barack Obama, and that he's just out of damns to give when it comes to making up niceties and excuses for his foul behavior towards the man who beat him.

Sen. John McCain has an explanation for Obama administration appointees whose confirmation votes are languishing in the GOP-led Senate: It’s payback for Democrats using the so-called nuclear option to push through scores of nominations in the previous Congress.

“I told ’em: ‘You jam them through, it’s going to be a long time before I approve of them,’” McCain said, recounting what he told Democrats after they changed the rules in 2013 and confirmed dozens of lifetime judicial appointments and several high-profile Cabinet nominees. “It’s affected me as chairman of the Armed Services Committee.”

McCain did help shepherd Defense Secretary Ash Carter through confirmation — the only Cabinet nominee approved by the GOP Senate. Since then, the Arizona Republican has refused to move 10 civilian nominations that have landed in his committee.

And none of them are going anywhere, either.  It's just petty revenge now, that's all he lives for.

McCain is far from the only one, however.

There are 18 nominations waiting for a vote on the Senate floor — including Loretta Lynch’s nomination to be attorney general — and more than 130 idling in committees. So far, though, only McCain has admitted to deliberately stymieing President Barack Obama’s picks. But even as the GOP Senate Judiciary Committee moves at a pace similar to that of last year’s Democratic Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has done little to bring up nominations for a vote by the full Senate. 

That has Democrats accusing Republicans of slow-walking the nominations amid lingering anger over the nuclear option. 

“It’s appalling,” groused Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democrat. “I mean, how many times are they just going to throw logs on the process of government? I mean, even district court judges, for lord’s sake.” 

The pace of action on confirmations stands in contrast to legislative action, where Republicans have considered more than 100 amendments this year and passed a budget, and are hoping to soon push through major trade and foreign policy bills.

And voters won't punish the GOP at all.  They haven't in the past.  Why would they now?  Even if a Democrat wins the White House, at best the Dems will have a small Senate majority, and the GOP will still have a huge House majority.  In 2018, the Dems will have to defend the Senate again, and unless the GOP makes the same mistakes as they did in 2012, they'll get the Senate back too.

But all this?  Of course it's mean ol' Obama's fault.

West Of The Abyss

You may have heard about this scathing deconstruction of Cornel West in TNR by Michael Eric Dyson over the weekend, but really everything you need to know about Dyson, West, and the entire black academic cottage industry of OBAMA FAILED BLACK PEOPLE can be summed up in the piece's second paragraph:

Cornel West’s rage against President Barack Obama evokes that kind of venom. He has accused Obama of political minstrelsy, calling him a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface”; taunted him as a “brown-faced Clinton”; and derided him as a “neoliberal opportunist.” In 2011, West and I were both speakers at a black newspaper conference in Chicago. During a private conversation, West asked how I escaped being dubbed an “Obama hater” when I was just as critical of the president as he was. I shared my three-part formula for discussing Obama before black audiences: Start with love for the man and pride in his epic achievement; focus on the unprecedented acrimony he faces as the nation’s first black executive; and target his missteps and failures. No matter how vehemently I disagree with Obama, I respect him as a man wrestling with an incredibly difficult opportunity to shape history. West looked into my eyes, sighed, and said: “Well, I guess that’s the difference between me and you. I don’t respect the brother at all.”

And that's where the game of black political academia is right now in 2015, the "I hate Obama but I respect him" crowd versus the I hate Obama and don't respect him" crowd.  No group has turned on Obama faster than these puffed-up pinheads, and no group is more aware of the complete expiration of their mild at best relevance to current politics on January 20, 2017.

Both of these men, along with Tavis Smiley and Melissa Harris-Perry and a whole host of other black thought leaders on campuses across the country, have made a fortune on "If only President Obama would listen to me, black America wouldn't be in this mess."

But the grifters, man they have to grift, and West has gone so far down the Obama Derangement Syndrome rabbit hole that he's even an embarrassment to the rest of the grifters, enough so that instead of making the fight always about Obama and his failures, Dyson breaks that cardinal rule and makes it about West.

The rest of the piece is Dyson just absolutely wrecking West, and deservedly so.  It's been a long time coming as well, a 10,000 word disassembly of the last ten years of West's numerous academic sins that only could be delivered by the man he once mentored, and not just the sins against President Obama.

But the whole time Dyson has one foot in the same abyss that claimed West's career and Dyson can't see it. in a very real way it kind of proves the point that the rest of us have figured out: we're really going to miss Barack Obama as President when he's gone.

West and Dyson will too, of course, but for a whole other batch of reasons.

StupidiNews!

• Ousted former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the deaths of dozens of protesters in 2012.
• A Chicago judge on Monday found police officer Dante Servin not guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Rekia Boyd in 2012.
• Iranian officials are optimistic that a cease fire in Yemen will be reached today between Houthi rebels and a coalition of Arab forces led by Saudi Arabia.
• The European Central Bank may be considering slowing down emergency liquidity support to Greek banks if a bailout deal cannot be reached soon.
• Norway plans to become the first country to entirely transition away from FM radio to digital radio starting in 2017.

Last Call For 20 Years Later

Some 20 years after Timothy McVeigh attacked the Alfred P, Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, America has clearly forgotten that our domestic terrorism problem remains, and has forgotten at our peril.

Officers Brandon Paudert and Bill Evans never saw it coming. 

The white minivan pulled over on Interstate 40 near West Memphis, Ark., in 2010 came back registered to a church in Ohio. Inside the vehicle were a Bible and some documents quoting Scripture. 

Minutes later, Evans lay dying in the ditch and Paudert was sprawled on the roadway, their bodies tattered by two dozen bullets from an AK-47. 

The killers: members of the sovereign citizen movement, which the officers had never heard of. 

“They didn’t realize that there are people at war with this country who are not international terrorists,” said Bob Paudert, then West Memphis police chief and father of one of the slain officers. 

“These people are willing to kill and be killed for their beliefs. And they are more dangerous to us in law enforcement than international terrorists.”

But today, Republicans will attack you for even mentioning right-wing terrorist groups. All domestic terrorists are somehow radical 60's liberals. Cliven Bundy?  Who's that?  Sovereign citizen movement? White supremacist groups?  All liberals, you see.  Or they don't exist at all.  We certainly don't need to spend taxpayer money harassing these kind people.

Domestic terrorism used to be a major focus for police and federal agents, especially after the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people 20 years ago Sunday. 

But the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, led to a dramatic change: Law enforcement shifted its focus from domestic to foreign terrorism. 

And today, while the number of violent incidents committed by domestic extremists is actually increasing, the holes in the net to catch them are growing larger, The Kansas City Star found in a one-year investigation. 

A network of centers set up to detect and deter terrorism has done little of either, while at the same time federal funding to train law enforcement officers has been slashed. 

Authorities and others are beginning to raise the alarm — the same one raised after Oklahoma City. 

“Domestic terrorism was the focus after the Oklahoma City bombing,” said Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst with the Department of Homeland Security. “Then when 9/11 happened, it became way too focused on al-Qaida and its affiliates.” 

Now, in a period of increasing extremism, the domestic danger is greater than ever, Johnson said. 

“Our leaders don’t seem too concerned about the threat from within,” he said. “My fear is that there will be some kind of mass-casualty attack, with more people dying needlessly at the hands of domestic extremists. That’s what keeps me awake at night.”

Nope, these guys are all patriots who hate Obama and the federal government, just like the God-fearing, rock-ribbed salt of the earth Republican voters in the heartland.  The ties these movements have to hate groups, both old and new?  Slander, lies, fantasy.  Obama's your only real enemy.

And 20 years later, very little has changed other than these groups have gotten worse, and we've done nothing to stop them.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Here in Cincy the talk over the weekend involved a "victory over those evil Mooslem types" up in John Boehner country as students at a high school up in Mason were bullied out of an exercise in religious tolerance, mainly because the religion in question wasn't Christianity.

A group of Muslim students organized a one day challenge to their fellow students to wear a hijab to school for a day in order to promote religious understanding of Muslim culture, and if you know anything about the northern suburbs of Cincinnati (which is John Boehner's district up all the way up to Dayton), you know damn well "religious understanding of Muslim anything" sure as hell doesn't exist there.

What started out as a cultural awareness effort by Mason High School Muslim students this week morphed into a fierce 48-hour debate about prejudice, freedom and religion in public schools.

By the end, Mason High School canceled the "Covered Girl Challenge," and principal Mindy McCarty-Stewart sent an apology to district families. The challenge was student-sponsored and voluntary, meant to combat stereotypes students may face when wearing head coverings, McCarty-Stewart wrote.

"As word spread beyond our school community ... we received many strong messages that made me reconsider the event's ability to meet its objectives," she wrote. "I now realize that as adults we should have given our students better guidance."

Even afterward, though, the episode and arguments illustrate the fault lines in Greater Cincinnati - and the U.S. - over where cultural awareness ends and promoting a religion begins. And where avoiding controversy ends and turns into bigotry.

When the right-wing hatemongers got wind of this, the students found themselves as targets, with the blogs claiming that the school was "forcing all female students to wear hijabs" and attacking the student group for perpetuating human rights violations against Muslim women. By Thursday, the principal had canceled the April planned event completely.

Intense criticism has prompted an Ohio high school's principal to cancel a student event in which girls would celebrate diversity by spending a day wearing a Muslim headscarf.

Mason High School Mindy McCarty-Stewart also issued an apology in an email Thursday to district families, saying the intent of the April 23 student-led event was meant to be positive, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

"I now realize that as adults we should have given our students better guidance. After much consideration and after talking with the student event organizers, we have canceled the event," she said.

The reality is that this event happened  without too much trouble at other schools and universities in the US, and again it wasn't a problem even when it happened at high schools in the Midwest.

Somehow, Mason, Ohio became a firestorm.

I wonder why.

Reminder: The Voting Rights Act Is Still Dead

The NY Times editorial board rips into Chief Justice John Roberts over the 2013 decision that destroyed the Voting Rights Act's "preclearance" formula because the racism of voter suppression simply didn't exist anymore.  The truth is far more insidious.

A comprehensive new study by a historian of the Voting Rights Act provides a fresh trove of empirical evidence to refute that assertion. The study by J. Morgan Kousser, a professor of history and social science at the California Institute of Technology, examines more than 4,100 voting-rights cases, Justice Department inquiries, settlements and changes to laws in response to the threat of lawsuits around the country where the final result favored minority voters.

It found that from 1957 until 2013, more than 90 percent of these legal “events” occurred in jurisdictions that were required to preclear their voting changes. The study also provides evidence that the number of successful voting-rights suits has gone down in recent years, not because there is less discrimination, but because several Supreme Court decisions have made them harder to win.

Mr. Kousser acknowledges that the law’s formula, created without the benefit of years of data, was a “blunt tool” that focused on voter turnout and clearly discriminatory practices like literacy tests. Still, he says, the statistics show that for almost a half century it “succeeded in accurately homing in on the counties where the vast majority of violations would take place.”

Members of Congress had seen some of this data in 2006 when, by a near-unanimous vote, they reauthorized the Voting Rights Act for 25 years. In fact, the legislative record contained more than 15,000 pages of evidence documenting the continuation of ever-evolving racially discriminatory voting practices, particularly in the areas covered by the preclearance requirement.

But the Roberts opinion showed no interest in actual data. Nor did it seem to matter that the law was already adapting to current conditions: Every one of the more than 200 jurisdictions that asked to be removed from the preclearance list was successful, because each showed it was not discriminating.

Instead, the court said the coverage formula had to be struck down because it failed to target precisely all areas with voting rights violations in the country.

Quite literally Roberts struck down the formula because it was "antiquated" to the point of reverse discrimination, even though Congress had approved the formula just seven years before.  The same Republicans who had no problem with it in 2007 of course would never vote to fix the formula in 2015.

I can't imagine what's different now about America than 1957 to 2007, can you?

StupidiNews!

• In Somalia, Al-Shabaab militants are claiming responsibility for killing seven near the city of Garowe, including four UNICEF aid workers.
• Australian officials have announced an end to accepting religious-based exemptions for vaccinations, saying the public health risk outweighs the benefits.
• EU foreign ministers are meeting in Luxembourg to discuss the mounting refugee crisis after this weekend's deadly boat capsize that killed as many as 700 migrants fleeing Libya.
• Finland's Center Party, led by millionaire engineer Juha Sipila, has triumphed in national elections and will attempt to form a government to rescue Helsinki's moribund economy.
• The US Justice Department is expected to file an anti-trust lawsuit to block the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger.

Last Call For Riding Dirty

I guess it's time to add "riding a bicycle" to the long, long list of things that will get you pulled over by a cop for doing when you're black. The Tampa Bay Times:

The Times analyzed more than 10,000 bicycle tickets Tampa police issued in the past dozen years. The newspaper found that even though blacks make up about a quarter of the city's population, they received 79 percent of the bike tickets.

Some riders have been stopped more than a dozen times through the years, and issued as many as 17 tickets. Some have been ticketed three times in one day.

It's possible blacks in some areas use bicycles more than whites. But that's not what's driving the disparity.

Police are targeting certain high-crime neighborhoods and nitpicking cyclists as a way to curb crime. They hope they will catch someone with a stolen bike or with drugs or that they will scare thieves away.

"This is not a coincidence," said Police Chief Jane Castor. "Many individuals receiving bike citations are involved in criminal activity."

She said her department has done such a good job curbing auto theft that bikes have "become the most common mode of transportation for criminals."

Many of the tickets did go to convicted criminals, including some people interviewed for this story. And there are cases where police stopped someone under suspicious circumstances and found a gun or caught a burglar.

But most bike stops that led to a ticket turned up no illegal activity; only 20 percent of adults ticketed last year were arrested.

When police did arrest someone, it was almost always for a small amount of drugs or a misdemeanor like trespassing.

Ordinances that mysteriously don't get enforced for bicycle riders in the nicer neighborhoods of Tampa Bay, only the black ones. 

Weird how that works.

Burning Up The Charts

Another month, another global temperature record, as 2015 is proving to be even hotter across Earth than record-setting 2014 was.

Last month the average global temperature was the highest recorded for March since record keeping began in 1880, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Friday.

Average global temperature, including both land and ocean surfaces, was 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit (0.85 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average.

“Record warm temperatures continued to dominate in the northeast Pacific Ocean and were also notable in the southwest Pacific and parts of the Arctic Seas to the north and northwest of Scandinavia,” NOAA said in its report. “Overall, every major ocean basin had at least some areas with record warmth and large areas with much warmer-than-average temperatures.”

The first quarter of this year, from January to March, had already broken records. It was the hottest such period in the administration’s 136-year archive.

But remember, global warming is a myth, all the world's climate scientists are involved in a massive conspiracy to deceive you, it's really a major hoax to impose a new world order and destroy the world's economies, and only the Republican Party can save you from it.

Or, you know, we could lower carbon emissions. One of these two paths is the truth.  So far, America has overwhelmingly decided on path number one.

Sunday Long Read: Disappeared Like Magic

Your Sunday long read this week is Jonathan Abrams and his essential piece at Grantland on the mid-90's era Orlando Magic.  The team, led by the duo of Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway, should have won three, maybe four NBA titles.  Instead they imploded and ended one of the biggest duds in NBA history.

They were destined for greatness. Back in the mid-1990s, you couldn’t imagine a more promising basketball pairing than the Orlando Magic’s Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway. O’Neal was powerful and agile, plus swift and skillful in a way that hadn’t been seen in a 7-footer since Wilt Chamberlain (and hasn’t been seen since O’Neal retired). Hardaway was seen as the rightful heir to Magic Johnson — a tall, transcendent point guard who would headline the new generation of NBA superstars. If you wanted to build an ideal basketball team, you would start with a center and a point guard. If you wanted to build the perfect team, you would start with O’Neal and Hardaway. The Magic, only a few years removed from their lowly expansion-team origins, skyrocketed to fame with their abundant talent and black-and-white pinstripes. O’Neal and Hardaway were surrounded by capable role players like Dennis Scott, Brian Shaw, Nick Anderson, and Horace Grant. Together, they seemed poised to become the NBA’s next dynasty. 

Perhaps no NBA team has ever featured two players more marketable than O’Neal and Hardaway. The two filmed Blue Chips together and became dueling campaign faces for Nike and Reebok. O’Neal had his wide smile and an outsize personality to match his towering physique. Hardaway was more reserved, but possessed that unforgettable nickname and a Chris Rock–voiced alter ego to talk trash for him. The possibilities seemed endless, as if the championship rings and parades would be a formality.

And then it ended. The Magic’s competitive window slammed shut faster than anyone imagined, thanks to O’Neal’s unexpected departure to Los Angeles, the firing of Magic coach Brian Hill, and the decline of Hardaway’s game thanks to knee injuries. It took years for the franchise to build another competitive team, and even though the Dwight Howard–led Magic reached the NBA Finals in 2009, the pride mixed with disappointment from 1995 and ’96 remained strong. 

The Shaq and Penny Magic are in an unfortunate class similar to the ’70s Blazers,’80s Rockets, or 2000s Kings — a story of unfulfilled potential and a dynasty that never was. “We were just having so much fun playing the game,” Scott said. “We weren’t really thinking about making history or understanding how good we really could be. All that stuff was happening so fast.”

Penny and Shaq. Shaq and Penny. For a brief time — they played only three seasons together — most of the NBA believed no one could stop them.

I remember the Shaq and Penny-era Magic pretty fondly throughout college. They were the next coming of Jordan and Pippen Bulls or the Rodman and Thomas "Bad Boys" Pistons and then everything melted down.  They were exciting and cool and awesome, and then they were gone.

Give the story a read, it's a good one, even by Grantland standards.

Last Call For Working The Refs

Peeking over the fence at what conservatives are up to is something of a necessary occupational hazard in this gig, but every now and then you catch something informative, disturbing, and flagrant.  This time around it's our old friend Cap'n Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, reviewing of all things, NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd appearing as a guest on the internet-based talk show of conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt.

The transcript falls into that informative, disturbing, and flagrant pile.

HH: The former Secretary of State installed a homebrew server. What was your reaction upon learning of that, as a technology executive aware of the security challenges of maintaining privacy and security?

CF: Well, I had two reactions. One was that clearly, she had a plan to shield her communications.

HH: Chuck Todd, Trey Gowdy came on the show as well and said he’s going to subpoena her if she doesn’t show up. And then he’s going to subpoena Huma Abedin and Sidney Blumenthal and Cheryl Mills. How big of an issue, we’ve got 45 seconds, is this server going to be?

CT: Look, I think it’s a huge issue. I’m sorry. I think it’s why those trust, those honest and trustworthy numbers were the way they were. We talked about this last week. I used those numbers on the show on Sunday.

HH: Yeah.

CT: I think this is, it brought back all of the Clinton demons that swing voters are uncomfortable with.

HH: And she doesn’t, she didn’t take any questions this week to dispel those, did she?

CT: No, and all, and can I just say this week, she had a golden opportunity to come across unscripted and truly out of her bubble. She created opportunities for herself, and then didn’t take them. I just say this was a perplexing week.

HH: Very.

CT: …watching her. They did very well on day one, and then sort of swung and missed every other day.

Now, this is the supposedly neutral (if not FLAMING EVIL LIBERAL if you ask most conservatives) Chuck Todd just trashing Hillary Clinton here.  Todd clearly seems to believe that if he's a guest on someone else's political roundup show, he's a pundit and not the host of Meet The Press.  That's one thing.

The other is Chuck Todd clearly does not like Hillary Clinton, and believes she's in a lot of trouble, sounding very much like, well, Hugh Hewitt.

Keep that in mind next time you hear Chuck Todd proclaim that he can't ask tough questions on his show because otherwise newsmakers won't come on.

Selling Evitability

When's the last time you can remember a party chair going out of their way to promise that a clear front runner would face not only multiple primary challengers but debates as well?

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) says she's still planning for primary debates, in expectation of a challenge to presidential contender Hillary Clinton.

“I expect the voters who believe we should have a Democratic primary will get their wish,” Wasserman Schultz told C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” during a video interview from Manchester, N.H.

Party officials were thus mapping out a “series of sanctioned debates that we expect our presidential candidates to participate in,” she added.Wasserman Schultz said she had already spoken with Clinton, the clear Democratic frontrunner, and other likely candidates about a possible primary down the road.

Clinton, who announced her run last Sunday, remains the only official Democratic candidate. A number of others though have said they are weighing a run.

The DNC chairwoman mentioned Vice President Biden, former Gov. Martin O’Malley (Md.), former Sen. Jim Webb (Va.) and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chaffee as other likely contenders.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), she added, would be a welcome entrant provided he switched party affiliations for the primary.

Wasserman Schultz was in New Hampshire scouting the GOP’s field of 2016 candidates. Most of the likely Republican contenders are visiting the Granite State this weekend.

If I didn't know better, I'd say Wasserman Schultz was selling a fight card.

And maybe that's not such a terrible idea.

It's Still The Economy, Stupid

Ed Kilgore notes that Americans are feeling a lot better about President Obama's performance when it comes to the economy, and if that keeps up it could help Dems across the board in November 2016.

This new finding from Bloomberg Politics’ polling (as reported by Margaret Talev) is a pretty big deal, assuming it holds up as a trend: 

Americans are becoming more optimistic about the country’s economic prospects by several different measures. President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy is being seen more positively than negatively for the first time in more than five years, 49 percent to 46 percent—his best number in this poll since September 2009.

Here’s the under-side of that optimism, though: 

[T]he national survey of 1,008 adults, conducted April 6-8, also reveals that about three-fourths of Democrats and independents, along with a majority of Republicans, say the gap is growing between the rich and everyone else—and a majority of women want the government to intervene to shrink it. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

So it may well be that Hillary Clinton’s talk about inequality isn’t just a response to progressives unhappy with Obama’s “centrism,” but a theme we’ll be hearing more of both from her and from Obama himself as the obvious thing for a left-of-center pol to talk about when the overall direction of the economy is looking better. It also probably means that we’ll hear Republicans continue their awkward efforts to suggest shrinking government will unleash upward mobility. All in all, optimism about what a Democratic president is doing plus concerns traditionally associated with Democrats is a pretty good public opinion backdrop for a Democratic non-incumbent.

Meanwhile, Republicans like Chris Christie and Rand Paul are still talking about massive cuts to programs like SNAP, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and of course eliminating the Affordable Care Act and putting millions back into the category of uninsured.

That's a fight that Democrats will win.