Last Call For Do Red State Democrats Matter?

So many of the commenters have been dancing around this particular question over the primary season.  Do Democrats in places like Kentucky, Alabama, Oklahoma, Alaska, etc matter when it comes to presidential contests?

In a brutally pragmatic sense only, no.  Electoral votes are winner take all except in Maine and Nebraska.  Looking at the 2012 electoral vote map:




Dems in red states don't matter, Republicans in blue states don't matter, but supposedly they roughly balance each other out.  So that brings us down to representation in the House and Senate.  Gerrymandering in the House and staggered six-year Senate terms again make some places very depressing for red state Dems.

KY-4 is a good example, it's where I live, it's heavily Republican and has Mitch and Rand as Senators and Thomas Massie as the Representative. Boone County has 31k plus registered Dems, Kenton County next door has 50k Dems.  Overall it's 95% white, Charlie Cook rates it as a very partisan  R+16.

I have little to no political power as a Democrat here, admittedly.  But do I matter?

I'd like to think I do at least as a primary goes.  But here's the thing: if you're going to try to convince voters like me to vote in the primary, browbeating me with "Your vote doesn't matter in November" really isn't the way to go about doing it.

Putting out a plan to get more Dems in Congress to help me at the state and local level is.

Berning Bridges With The Southern Vote

I do not understand why Bernie Sanders keeps saying stuff like this when he's supposedly trying to convince voters to join him.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — who has run off an impressive string of primary victories — dismissed actual vote totals that show former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a commanding lead, saying those votes “came from the South.”
Host George Stephanopoulos noted Clinton’s lead in delegates and asked the senator if he would take his fight for the nomination to the floor of the convention.

“Well, here’s what I think,” Sanders replied. “I think at the end of the day, what Democrats all over this country want to make sure is that somebody like a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz does not end up in the White House. And I think what more and more Democrats are seeing is that Bernie Sanders is the stronger candidate.”

“She’s getting more votes,” the host pressed.

“Well, she is getting more votes. A lot of that came from the South,” Sanders parried. “But if you look at the polling out there, we do a lot better against Trump and the other Republicans in almost every instance — not every one — than she does. And the reason is that we both get a lot of Democrats, but I get a lot more independents than she does.”

Sanders comments fall in line with statements made by his own campaign that Clinton is doing well in states that might not fall into the Democratic column in the November election despite inroads made by President Obama in 2012.

I just do not understand this constant antagonistic attitude towards red state Democrats, the vast majority of which are black voters, voters that Sanders admits he has trouble reaching.  If you know you have trouble reaching black Democrats, and you're trying to unite the party behind you, then why keep dismissing them?

Sanders also addressed the controversy from earlier in the week when he claimed Clinton is not “qualified” to be president, blaming his response on her campaign questioning his competency.

“Well, she didn’t quite say that. But her surrogates implied that,” he responded. “And all that I meant by that is that if you vote for the war in Iraq, which turned out to be the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of America, if you take, through your super PAC, tens and tens of millions of dollars from Wall Street and other special interests, if you support almost every disastrous trade agreement in this last 30 years…”

“Well, President Obama supported that,” the host interrupted. “Is he not qualified?”

“No, he is very qualified. But my point is, it is a question of judgment. It is a question of judgment,” Sanders replied.

That is also a cop out, and really, really bothers me.

Trump Cards, Con't

The behind-the-scenes fight for delegates on the GOP side is getting ugly.  Ted Cruz may have won Colorado yesterday while nobody was looking:

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has swept the Colorado GOP convention, winning all 13 of the state’s at-large delegates. 

And after also winning all 21 delegates awarded at the congressional district conventions throughout the week, the Texas senator leaves Colorado with a complete shutout of his opponents.

In a statement Saturday night, Cruz said the win proves that Republicans are coming together behind him.

"Today was another resounding victory for conservatives, Republicans, and Americans who care about the future of our country," Cruz said in the statement. "Utah, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and tonight’s incredible results in Colorado have proven this: Republicans are uniting behind our campaign because they want a leader with real solutions who will bring back jobs, freedom, and security."

But meanwhile, Kasich and Trump returned the favor in the much larger Michigan:

Ted Cruz suffered a rare convention loss Saturday after delegates backing John Kasich and Donald Trump boxed him out of key positions in the Michigan delegation. 

The Texas senator's campaign ran eight delegates for eight committee spots and lost every one, alleging it was "double-crossed" by Kasich supporters. 

The Michigan delegation picked one Trump supporter, Matt Hall, and one Kasich supporter, Judi Schwalbach, for the two seats on the powerful rules committee. The Cruz campaign lost votes for both seats. 

The rules committee seats have become highly coveted prizes for their role in shaping a contested convention in Cleveland. After the delegates are selected in each state, they meet as a group and pick the members of four convention committees, the most important of which is the rules committee, which will ultimately decide who can be nominated president. 

Michigan Cruz leader Saul Anuzis said they were "double-crossed" by Kasich's campaign. The Kasich delegates were supposed to vote with Cruz delegates, he said, but switched sides and voted with Trump behind closed doors Saturday afternoon. 

The reality is that the GOP's contested convention in July in Cleveland is actually already being contested now at the state-level conventions following the primaries.  These battles are being fought in state GOP rules committees ahead of Cleveland.  The real race is controlling these committees ahead of a contested convention.

We'll see which Republican can play the game the best.

Sunday Long Read: The Department Of Voter Suppression

You'd be forgiven if you've never heard of the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the agency formed after Bush v Gore to help people register for federal elections.  The reason you've probably never heard of it is because since 2010, the agency has been mutated by Republicans in Congress to the point of becoming an agency that in 2016 is now actively trying to unilaterally enforce a de facto national voter ID law that doesn't exist.

The election commission is in federal court this month, essentially accused of trying to suppress voter turnout in this November’s election. The Justice Department, its nominal legal counsel, has declined to defend it. Its case instead is being pleaded by one of the nation’s leading advocates of voting restrictions. The agency’s chairman has disavowed its actions.

The quarrel exemplifies how the mere act of voting has become enmeshed in volatile partisan politics. Seventeen states will impose new voting restrictions for November’s presidential election. Many are the object of disputes between those who say they are rooting out voter fraud and those who say the real goal is to keep Democratic-leaning voters from casting ballots.

The lawsuit’s origin is straightforward. The agency’s executive director, Brian D. Newby, had been in his job less than three months in January when he unilaterally reversed a policy that the body’s commissioners, two Democrats and two Republicans, had endorsed since the agency’s creation in 2002: that people registering to vote need offer no proof, beyond swearing an oath, that they are American citizens.

That decision gave Kansas, Georgia and Alabama officials a blessing to alter the federal voter registration applications handed out in motor vehicle offices and many other state agencies, replacing the oath with something stiffer: a demand for proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate.

There was but one problem, critics say: Mr. Newby had no authority to make policy, a power reserved for the agency’s four commissioners.

Mr. Newby calls his decision an administrative matter, not policy. He has said that he did not change the registration form, but merely its instructions, although federal administrative code calls the instructions part of the form.

“It wasn’t a ruling so much as a response to a request,” he said. “I wasn’t looking at it through the lens of proof of citizenship. I was looking at it as state law that necessitated changes in the instructions.”

Critics see something different.

“It’s trench warfare in the battle of voter suppression,” said Lloyd Leonard, the advocacy director of the League of Women Voters, the leader of the lawsuit against the commission.

The agency was effectively shuttered in 2010 when House Republicans took over, holding up appointments of commissioners for more than three years.  When a GOP Senate came along in 2015, the agency suddenly got new plans going forward, resulting in Demby's hiring and his nasty little sleight of hand in January.

It's a chilling story to read.  And the name that keeps popping up again and again is Kansas GOP Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is on a national crusade to disenfranchise as many Democrats as possible.

Keep an eye on him.

Lyin' Ryan Rumors A-Flyin'

For a guy who surely isn't running for the Oval Office as Inflatable Backup in case of Contested Convention, GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan is absolutely doing a terrible job of pretending he's not interested in the job.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is scheduled to be in Cincinnati for a private GOP fundraiser next month, The Enquirer has learned.

The Miami University graduate's Downtown visit on May 4 could have extra intrigue. Ryan isbeing mentioned as the possible Republican presidential nominee if the party ends up in a brokered convention this summer.

It's believed the visit will be Ryan's first to Cincinnati since he replaced John Boehner in October.

The fundraiser, to be held at the Queen City Club, will be for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

That's right, Ryan is fundraising here in Cincy, the swing state spot in swing state Ohio, next month.

But let's keep pretending he's not the guy the GOP establishment wants to come out of a contested convention between Cruz and Trump.

The Bruce Is Loose

The only music sweeter to my ears than the news that Bruce Springsteen cancelled his upcoming concert in Greensboro, NC over the state's anti-trans law is the plaintive whining of Republicans who think the Boss is a meany-head.

A U.S. congressman who represents portions of Greensboro, N.C., is accusing Bruce Springsteen of being a "bully," after the rock star canceled a concert there to protest a new law that's being described as anti-gay.

"It's disappointing he's not following through on his commitments," said Rep. Mark Walker, a Republican freshman congressman.

"We've got other artists coming soon — Def Leppard, Justin Bieber," the congressman told The Hollywood Reporter.

"I've never been a Bieber fan, but I might have to go. Maybe artists who weren't 'born to run' deserve a little bit more support," he said, referencing one Springsteen's most famous song titles.

"Bruce is known to be on the radical left," continued Walker, "and he's got every right to be so, but I consider this a bully tactic. It's like when a kid gets upset and says he's going to take his ball and go home."

Gosh, that's weird, Mr. Walker.  It seems to me that Mr. Springsteen is choosing to refuse service to the Tarheel State because doing so would violate his strongly held moral beliefs.

Might want to look into that.  While you're at it, listen to some of his lyrics and try to understand their message.  A lot of them are directed at assholes like yourself.

Your "free speech" law does not protect you from the consequences of exercising that "free speech".

Have a nice day.

The Privilege Of Learning

I've talked a lot about Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin, but not so much about his Lt. Governor, Jenean Hampton.  She's the first African-American to be elected to statewide office, and that's a massive accomplishment.  The problem is her politics are just as awful as Bevin's, if not actually worse on the subject of education in the Bluegrass State.

After the luncheon, Hampton met with The Eastern Progress’ editorial staff and fielded questions about Bevin’s recent executive decision to impose immediate 4.5 percent budget cuts to higher education. 

When asked about the potential for rising tuition costs, some of which could stem from Bevin’s decision to cut university funding, Hampton said students who wish to attend college in Kentucky can find the resources to pay for school if they are prepared and work toward it. 

“It’s not a right, it’s a privilege,” Hampton said. “Those of us who go to work must give part of their earnings to put you through college, and I disagree with that.” 

Hampton pointed to her experiences as a student, adding that she worked while in college and paid her own way. Rising tuition costs wouldn’t necessarily serve as a deterrent to students who wish to attend college, but rather would teach students to plan ahead and work for what they want, Hampton said.

By Hampton's logic, why should Kentucky's public universities even exist?  Jesus hell.

EKU officials say they have already made moves to account for Bevin’s immediate 4.5 percent reduction to the current budget. Officials said the $3.1 million loss in funds would not affect any current programs. Instead, officials said the university would make up for the funding shortfall by tapping reserves and non-recurring funds. 

Hampton mentioned that budget cuts could push universities to innovate and make difficult decisions. Saying state institutions should focus on programs that are more likely to lead to student employment after graduation. 

“I would be looking for degrees that would land a job,” Hampton said. “I would not be studying history.” 

Hampton compared state universities to private businesses, saying they will make necessary changes to continue to attract customers. She said competition between universities should drive down costs overall. 

“Let’s inject some competition in there,” Hampton said.

Would someone please explain to me when the sole point of public education became "Get a good enough job that you repay your debt to the state that educated you"?    Republicans are bound and determined to get rid of public education in this country, and that should scare all of us.

Last Call For The "Moderate" John Kasich

You can tell John Kasich's presidential primary bid is on its deathbed as he's now trying to prove just how much he can punish Ohio's poor and sick.

Gov. John Kasich's administration projects tens of thousands of poor Ohioans will lose Medicaid coverage while taxpayers save nearly $1 billion under a plan to charge new fees for the government health coverage and impose penalties on those who miss payments. 

The proposal, subject to federal approval, would require those being treated for breast and cervical cancer, teens coming out of foster care and other working-age, nondisabled adults on Medicaid to make monthly payments into a health-savings account to help cover their expenses beginning Jan. 1, 2018. 

Nearly 3 million Ohioans are enrolled in Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled. About half would be subject to the new requirements which must be approved by federal regulators. Medicaid officials project an average of 130,000 beneficiaries would lose coverage each year of the five-year pilot. The number is not cumulative over five years because numbers may be duplicative, they say. 

The projections and plan details were included in a six-page summary released Tuesday night by the Ohio Department of Medicaid. A full draft of the state's request will be unveiled April 15, initiating a one-month public comment period which will include two public hearings, April 21 in Columbus and May 3 at a location to be announced. State Medicaid Director John McCarthy intends to submit the request to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in June. 

Advocates for the poor say the plan will cause many to be lose Medicaid. 

John Corlett, president and executive director of the Center for Community Solutions and former state Medicaid director, said he believes the state is underestimating the number of beneficiaries who will lose coverage. 

"It would undo a lot of the progress of Medicaid expansion," he said. 

More than 650,000 adults with annual incomes under 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or $16,394 a year, have signed up for benefits since Jan. 1, 2014, when Ohio expanded Medicaid through Obamacare. 

State Medicaid spokesman Sam Rossi said feedback will be included in the request, but cautioned "we can't change the proposal because the language was prescriptive."

This is where Mike Pence in Indiana has gone with Medicaid expansion there, and where Matt Bevin here in Kentucky eventually wants to go: cough up the cash for "medical savings accounts" which you will lose whether or not you actually use it, or lose your Medicaid coverage.

The problem of course is that Ohio has a much larger population than Indiana, so we're talking about hundreds of thousands losing their Medicaid for not being able to come up with the $99 per year.

When that happens, it'll be the fault of those lazy people for not paying into the system...as system many of them already pay into thanks to sales taxes, payroll taxes, and state income taxes.

But of course kicking half a million plus off Medicaid is the entire point.  Kasich's plan is to do that all over the country and make it tens of millions instead.

Between A Rock And A School Of Hard Knocks

I'm torn over this BuzzFeed News story about a massive class-action lawsuit being leveled against NYC public schools for failing students of color across the board.

A New York City mother knew something was seriously wrong when the school called to say her eight-year old son had stabbed himself in the ear with a pencil. He had been bullied relentlessly for months, she said, and when she came to pick him up that day, he told her he had only wanted to make the insults stop. His leg was marked with visible bruises from a bully’s foot.

New York City public schools are bound by law to protect children from bullying by investigating and remediating acts of violence. But the mother said that never happened for her special-needs son. He lost sleep because of stress and anxiety for a half a year until he was finally moved to another class, away from the bully who had repeatedly hit, harassed, and chased him.

The boy and his mother are part of a new class-action lawsuit against the New York City Department of Education, alleging a systemic and unaddressed problem with violence in New York City public schools. Repeatedly, the parents allege, the country’s largest school district has failed to follow its own policies in dealing with an “epidemic” of violence against children. In a violation of state law and its own policies, it has failed to report and investigate incidents, failed to punish teachers who abuse students, and, at times, retaliated against students were themselves bullied.

The suit will be filed late Wednesday night in the Eastern District Court of New York, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said. It is the first time a class-action lawsuit has been filed over school violence in New York.

The suit alleges that New York City students are being deprived of their right to a public education because of the city’s “ineffective and inadequate” response to school violence. Those students are disproportionately black and Latino — meaning, the suit says, the city is violating students’ Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection.

“I want the DOE to be held accountable for how they handle violence,” the bullied boy’s mother said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “They should have had to report and investigate what happened to my son.”

And yes, unequal resources, unequal schools, de facto segregation and the mass abandonment of public schools is very much a gigantic issue of racial and social justice.

Having said that, here's the part that horrifies me.

Backing the lawsuit is one of the most powerful forces in New York politics: Families for Excellent Schools, an advocacy group that spent $10 million on state lobbying in 2014, more than any other lobby group. Until recently, FES’s efforts have been focused on promoting charter schools, in part by skewering the academic failures of the city’s public schools through biting ad campaigns.

“We think the Department of Education is not following the law, and in doing so, they’re jeopardizing the academic and physical livelihoods of kids across the city,” said Jeremiah Kittredge, the organization’s executive director, in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “Students aren’t being protected, and the DOE isn’t following their obligations under the law to remedy it.”

It's that last sentence that should be ringing alarm bells across the nation.  We know full well what the "remedy" of the multipl billion dollar charter school indistry is: turning America's public education system into for-profit centers where the same students they claim to be protecting are victimized in the name of making money off taxpayers.  We know charter schools have failed in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, California, DC and elsewhere.  Now the largest city in the US is about to fall for a scam as big as they come, and the grifters are using poor black families in terrible schools in order to do it.

And this is again an area where the Obama administration shoulders a lot of the blame.  Arne Duncan was a disaster as an Education Secretary, and his Race to the Top program and Common Core standards turned into just another way to push charter schools and endless testing quotas, micromanagement of teachers, and more racial inequality in education.

As a direct result, the charter school industry is sweeping in to pick up the pieces, and more and more states are willing to give them a foot in the door.  Republicans are gleefully helping them along with massive austerity cuts to schools and universities, leaving districts begging for private money.

I'm afraid this lawsuit, while correct, is going to be what the charter school corporate goons need to break the largest school district in the country.

Yes, racial disparities in public schools must be addressed.  But charter school funded lawsuits may make things worse in the long run.

Big Dog Craps On The Porch Again

Former President Bill Clinton is a great guy, but I still have major issues with his policies from the 90's, including (and especially) the 1994 crime bill that he cooked up along with Joe Biden.  When Black Lives Matter activists showed up to challenge him as a campaign event for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania yesterday, the Big Dog fully went off his chain.

In a prolonged exchange Thursday afternoon, former President Bill Clinton forcefully defended his 1994 crime bill to Black Lives Matter protesters in the crowd at a Hillary Clinton campaign event.

He said the bill lowered the country's crime rate, which benefited African-Americans, achieved bipartisan support, and diversified the police force. He then addressed a protester's sign, saying:

"I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African-American children," Clinton said, addressing a protester who appeared to interrupt him repeatedly. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens .... You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter. Tell the truth. You are defending the people who cause young people to go out and take guns."

The Clintons have faced criticism from BLM activists and younger black voters for months now over that bill, which they say put an unfairly high number of black Americans in prison for nonviolent offenses.

After a protester interrupted him repeatedly, Bill Clinton began to take on that critique directly, making the claim that his crime bill was being given a bad rap.

"Here's what happened," Clinton said. "Let's just tell the whole story."

"I had an assault weapons ban in it [the crime bill]. I had money for inner-city kids, for out of school activities. We had 110,000 police officers so we could keep people on the street, not in these military vehicles, and the police would look like the people they were policing. We did all that. And [Joe] Biden [then senator and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee] said, you can't pass this bill, the Republicans will kill it, if you don't put more sentencing in it."

"I talked to a lot of African-American groups," Clinton continued. "They thought black lives matter. They said take this bill, because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs. We have 13-year-old kids planning their own funerals."

Throughout the spirited defense of his policy, Clinton continued to be interrupted, and he repeatedly seemed to single out one protester.

"She doesn't wanna hear any of that," Clinton said to the protester. "You know what else she doesn't want to hear? Because of that bill, we have a 25-year low in crime, a 33-year low in murder rate. And because of that and the background check law, we had a 46-year low in the deaths of people by gun violence, and who do you think those lives were? That mattered? Whose lives were saved that mattered?" 

Now, I understand that it wasn't Hillary who passed that bill in 1994.  I understand also that black leaders and Democrats were some of the loudest voices in calling for police help for crime problems in the 90's. The crack epidemic in black neighborhoods was very, very real and very, very deadly, and it was only the crime component -- something that could affect white people -- that motivated any action at all.

But this is the worst defense of Bill Clinton's policies I think I've ever seen Bill Clinton give.  He certainly did no favors to Hillary with this performance, he came across as a tone-deaf jackass, and he made it all about himself.  There are very legitimate concerns that the bill went too far, and that what Republicans wanted in the bill was a way to punish black neighborhoods and the people who lived there while Democratic leaders looked the other way.  The bill absolutely created the mass incarceration state we have today, and the sentencing laws that Clinton wants to shove off on the GOP in a bill he signed still ended up in a bill he signed.

So yes, I blame Clinton, and to an extent Joe Biden, for that.  Neither one of them have given a good answer to black communities about this legislation, and whenever Bill Clinton especially is given the chance to respond, he acts like a sullen goddamn teenager caught taking Mom's car keys to go on a joyride.

"Maybe you should be a bit more grateful to me" is 100% the wrong attitude to be packing when it comes to the Big Bog and Black Live Matter, and it's not like this hasn't happened before.  Hillary's best campaign surrogate is also clearly her worst at times, and it's way past time the Big Dog goes in the doghouse for a while and starts thinking about what he needs to say to the rest of us.

People talk about how the Clintons have learned since their defeat in 2008, but this issue existed then as well, and Bill Clinton at least hasn't learned a goddamn thing.

StupidiNews!

• Pope Francis's latest encyclical calls on the Catholic clergy to be more accepting of people living in "irregular" family situations, but stops well short of blessing same-sex relationships.
• A federal judge has ruled that the County Seal of Los Angeles violates both California and the US Constitution by depicting a cross atop a Christian mission in one corner.
• As Syrian peace talks resume next week, Syrian President Bashar al-Asaad says he has far more leverage now than in 2015 thanks to Russian air strikes targeting rebel forces.
• Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, remains the favorite in Sunday's elections for her father's old office, but a runoff in June may be necessary.
• Commercial spaceflight company SpaceX will launch its Dragon spacecraft Friday to deliver cargo to the International Space Station and will hopefully land it on a drone ship at sea.

Last Call For Sense Of The Senate

The latest call on US Senate races from Larry Sabato's team at the University of Virginia definitely puts control of the upper chamber in play in November.

When you look at the big picture of presidential elections, and you try to discern the connection between the White House contest and the 34 Senate elections on the same ballot, it becomes obvious there are two types of years. 

The first type we might call “disjointed.” Voters seem to be separating their judgments about these very distinct offices in most competitive races. The presidential candidate who wins adds only a handful — or fewer — additional Senate seats to his party’s total. The presidential coattails are short. 

The second type could be termed “intertwined.” The candidates for the White House are very polarizing and distinct, and one or both major-party contenders color the voters’ perceptions of all officeholders on the same partisan label. The party whose letter (D or R) becomes toxic loses a substantial number of Senate seats; thus, the presidential coattails are long. 

The second type is somewhat rarer, to judge by the elections for president since World War II, as shown in Table 1. However, the six-year cycles of the three different Senate classes and the current party makeup of each class obviously matter. For instance, the Democrats only gained two net Senate seats in 1964, a seemingly small increase considering Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory. But six years earlier the Democrats netted 15 Senate seats in the 1958 midterm election, meaning they already controlled a large majority of seats in Class 1, the group of states up in 1964. Conversely, the Republicans won 12 net seats in 1980 when the Democrats entered the cycle controlling 24 of the 34 seats up in Class 3 (which is the same class up in 2016). 

No one can say for sure to which category 2016 will belong, but our early expectation is “intertwined.” Considering the rise of Donald Trump, the polarization in U.S. politics, and a higher rate of straight-ticket voting, this could be bad news for the GOP. We have already sketched out a “Trumpmare” doomsday presidential scenario for the Republicans, who control the Senate now by a margin of 54 to 46. Assuming the GOP nominee for the White House is either Trump or Ted Cruz, we think the Democrats will fare reasonably well down-ballot (more so with Trump than Cruz, though Cruz will also have a difficult time carrying many swing states). As shown in Chart 1, in recent presidential cycles, about 80% of states with Senate elections have backed the same party for the presidency and the Senate. In light of the fact that Republicans control 24 of the 34 seats up in 2016, including many in states that President Obama won in 2008 and/or 2012, straight-ticket voting could bode poorly for the GOP.

Indeed, the latest map is good news for the Donks.



Giving the Dems a shot at six seats with two pick-ups likely in Wisconsin and Illinois, is definitely an improvement.  That means the Dems would have to keep Harry Reid's seat, and get two more (if Clinton/Sanders wins) or three more (if Trump/Cruz wins).

Pennsylvania and Florida are definitely winnable, as are Ohio and New Hampshire.  It's even possible that Roy Blount, Richard Burr, and yes, even John McCain's seats are possible pickups for the Democrats if Trump or Cruz wrecks the place as much as I think they will.

But there are a dozen governor's seats up for grabs in November too, and the biggest ones are Mike Pence in Indiana and Pat McCrory in North Carolina.  Sabato's call:

Indiana: One of the surprising margins on Election Night 2012 was now-Gov. Mike Pence’s (R) closer-than-expected win over former state House Speaker John Gregg (D). Pence won by just three percentage points and ran about 4.5 points behind Mitt Romney, who easily carried the state in the presidential race after Barack Obama very narrowly won it in 2008. Gregg is running again. Since winning, Pence has had some shaky moments, most notably a controversy over a 2015 bill that some believed would legitimize discrimination against gays and lesbians. More recently, Pence signed a bill that made Indiana just the second state (along with North Dakota) to outlaw abortions that parents seek because the fetus has been diagnosed with a disability. Gregg, who opposes abortion rights, argues that the bill goes too far. While Indiana is the most conservative state in the Midwest, it’s fair to wonder whether social issues could hurt Pence in his reelection bid. But the bigger problem for Pence is one he shares in common with the other incumbents discussed here: The GOP’s problems at the top of the ticket could potentially trim the Republican presidential nominee’s margins in Indiana, or even allow the Democratic nominee to carry the state, as Obama did once. Obama’s 2008 victory didn’t prevent Pence’s predecessor, Mitch Daniels (R), from easily winning reelection with 58% of the vote, but Pence isn’t Daniels, and he has not yet displayed the kind of crossover appeal that his predecessor enjoyed. Pence remains a favorite in his rematch with Gregg, but we’re moving the race from Likely Republican to Leans Republican. 

North Carolina: The Tar Heel State’s statehouse race has always been the marquee gubernatorial contest this cycle. Not only is North Carolina the most populous state holding a gubernatorial race this year, but it’s also one of only two gubernatorial states (the much-smaller New Hampshire is the other) that are likely to be presidential swing states in the event of a close national race. Gov. Pat McCrory (R) has generally had fairly weak approval numbers throughout his time in office, and he is now dealing with a challenge similar to the one Pence faced last year: McCrory just signed a bill that bans cities from creating local policies dealing with gender-identity discrimination and forces transgender students in public schools to use the bathroom that corresponds with their birth gender. There’s been a backlash over the law, and it has so far led PayPal to cancel plans to create 400 jobs in the state. Republicans have long recognized the threat that Attorney General Roy Cooper (D) presents to McCrory, and both sides are gearing up for an expensive, nasty race. Because of incumbency, we were giving McCrory the benefit of the doubt. But no longer: A Donald Trump or Ted Cruz nomination could very well allow the Democratic nominee to win North Carolina, and even if the GOP nominee does carry North Carolina in the fall there’s no guarantee that McCrory will run ahead of the presidential ticket. McCrory’s reelection bid moves from Leans Republican to Toss-up.

I'd love to see Pence and McCrory gone in a Trump/Cruz meltdown that wipes the GOP out in this election cycle, and I'm sure most of you would love it too.  Equality issues doing both of them in? Sign me up.

It's Not Working Out

So, good news and bad news about the Obama Economy: yes, we've seen six years of private sector job growth (a new record) and a net job growth overall of 9 million jobs since 2005.  The bad news? Basically all of those new jobs are contract positions.

If you believe the Silicon Valley sloganeers, we are in a “gig economy,” where work consists of a series of short-term jobs coordinated through a mobile app. That, anyway, is both the prediction of tech executivesand futurists and the great fear of labor activists.
But anyone who cares about the future of work in the United States shouldn’t focus too narrowly on the novelty of people making extra money using their mobile phones. 

There’s a bigger shift underway. That’s a key implication of new research that indicates the proportion of American workers who don’t have traditional jobs — who instead work as independent contractors, through temporary services or on-call — has soared in the last decade. They account for vastly more American workers than the likes of Uber alone. 

Most remarkably, the number of Americans using these alternate work arrangements rose 9.4 million from 2005 to 2015. That was greater than the rise in overall employment, meaning there was a small net decline in the number of workers with conventional jobs. 

That, in turn, raises still bigger questions about how employers have succeeded at shifting much the burden of providing social insurance onto workers, and what technological and economic forces are driving the shift. 

The labor economists Lawrence F. Katz of Harvard and Alan B. Kruegerof Princeton found that the percentage of workers in “alternative work arrangements” — including working for temporary help agencies, as independent contractors, for contract firms or on-call — was 15.8 percent in the fall of 2015, up from 10.1 percent a decade earlier. (Only 0.5 percent of all workers did so through “online intermediaries,” and most of those appear to have been Uber drivers.) 

And the shift away from conventional jobs and into these more distant employer-employee relationships accelerated in the last decade. By contrast, from 1995 to 2005, the proportion had edged up only slightly, to 10.1 percent from 9.3 percent. (The data are based on a person’s main job, so someone with a full-time position who does freelance work on the side would count as a conventional employee.) 

This change in behavior has profound implications on social insurance. More so than in many advanced countries, employers in the United States carry a lot of the burden of protecting their workers from the things that can go wrong in life. They frequently provide health insurance, and paid medical leave for employees who become ill. 

They pay for workers’ compensation insurance for people who are injured on the job, and unemployment insurance benefits for those who are laid off. They help fund their workers’ existence after retirement, at one time through pensions, now more commonly through 401(k) plans.

The good news again is that the Affordable Care Act anticipated providing insurance in the "gig economy" job market and put in place protections.  The bad news again is that Republicans have done everything they can to weaken those protections in many states where they have control.

That's one major reason why the 2016 elections are so important for state and federal races.  Here in Kentucky we're already seeing the results of what happens when Republicans try to dismantle accessibility to benefits of the safety net, and Gov. Matt Bevin has only been in office for four months.

But there's still a lot of things to work out in the post-2008 labor market.  Automation and globalization are changing a lot of things and doing so very quickly.  Republicans want to make sure that America can't change with it.

Republicans Cheesing The Vote

The real political story out of Wisconsin this week wasn't Tuesday's primary results, it's what Republican voter suppression in the state will achieve in November.

In comments made to TODAY'S TMJ4's Charles Benson on election night, U.S. congressman Glenn Grothman (R-Campbellsport) said he thinks Wisconsin's new voter ID law will help the eventual GOP nominee win in the state. 

Grothman's response came as Benson asked him about the GOP's poor performance across recent presidential contests in the state. 

"You know that a lot of Republicans, since 1984 in the presidential races, have not been able to win in Wisconsin," Benson said. "Why would it be any different for Ted Cruz, or a Donald Trump?" 

After explaining he thought Hillary Clinton would be a weak nominee for the Democrats, Grothman said "now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is gonna make a little bit of a difference as well." 

Republicans aren't supposed to admit that voter ID laws favor them at the ballot box, not because of stopping mythical Democratic voter fraud, but because of stopping Democratic voters, period.  Yes, elderly, more conservative voters are affected by voter ID laws too, but far higher numbers of college students, people of color, and poor voters are disenfranchised in the process and it's a win the GOP will take in every state they can get away with it in.

That was always the point in November. 2016 is the first year that we will see widespread use of voter ID laws in a presidential race, and that could cost the Democratic candidates thousands, if not millions of votes.

That's the story out of Wisconsin, and Ohio, and North Carolina, and Texas, and the list goes on.

StupidiNews!

• Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship has received a year in prison and a $250,000 fine for his role in the death of 29 miners at the Upper Big Branch mine collapse in 2010.
• Lawmakers in Puerto Rico have passed an emergency debt bill giving Gov. Alejandro Padilla broad latitude to deal with the island's debt payments in order to stave off default.
• The US Treasury Department is speeding up plans for new shell corporation rules in the wake of this week's "Panama Papers" leaks alleging global offshore tax fraud by a Panama law firm.
• A new study indicates that closing the gender pay and employment gap in the US would increase the country's GDP by more than $2 trillion yearly by 2025.
• The "Olympics of online sports" could be coming to Rio this summer as UK organizers want to put together an international e-sports competition for medals and glory.