Feelin' More Stressed These Days? Gallup Says You're Not The Only One

Gallup just released their 2019 Global Emoitions Report. It should probably come as no surprise that most people in Greece, the Philippines, Tanzania, Albania, Iran and Sri Lanka are stressed out. Sri Lanka just went through years and years of bloody civil war. The Philippines have a fascist tyrant as president who's a lot like Trump; Iran is isolated and in existential danger from nuclear powers. Greeks, Tanzanians and Albanians are suffering from extreme economic anxiety due to unemployment. What's counter-intuitive, though, is that Americans, the wealthiest country on earth, is tied with Albanians, Iranians and Sri Lankans as the 4th most stressed out people (55%)-- more stressed out than even Venezuelans (52%)!

Gallup barely touched on the subject, but the levels of stress among Americans seemed to correlate directly with Trump, reporting "there was "a strong relationship between stress, worry and disapproval of the job that President Donald Trump is doing. Those who disapprove of Trump's job performance are significantly more likely to experience each of these negative emotions than those who do... Younger Americans between the ages of 15 and 49 are among the most stressed, worried and angry in the U.S. Roughly two in three of those younger than 50 said they experienced stress a lot, about half said they felt worried a lot and at least one in four or more felt anger a lot... The disconnect between a strong economy and Americans' increasing negative emotions illustrates how GDP and other hard economic data only tell part of the story. In fact, the levels of negative emotions in the past several years are even higher than during the U.S. recession years. Given the ties that researchers are starting to find between negative affects like these and physical health and longevity, leaders need the whole story.

Gallup found that Americans who disapprove of Trump are far more stressed than those who approve (62% to 45%) and also worry more (51% to 35%).

Who do you think would be most stressed out watching the Thursday evening Lawrence O'Donnell video up top?

Is Lesser Of Two Evils Politics All We Can Hope For-- Or Will A Bernie v Trump 2020 Election Break The Cycle?

Both parties suck and one of the themes of DWT for the past decade has been that the Democrats are simply the lesser of two evils-- sometimes not even that. The 2018 elections were not a "blue wave." Few people were excited about what the Democrats were offering. 2018 was simply an anti-Trump wave or an anti-red wave. Self-identified Democratic voters tended to vote for Democratic candidates and self-indetified Republican voters tended to vote for Republican candidates. There were some Democrats who voted for the GOP-- fewer than usual-- and there were some Republicans that voted for Democratic voters-- more than usual-- but that did not equate to the Democrats flipping 43 Republican-held seats. What did was that independent voters went in far greater numbers to Democrats than they did to Republicans.

In deep red districts with few independents, Republican incumbents and candidates had no problem at all. Quite the contrary, in fact. Let's look at the incumbents in the reddest districts in the country, 18 of them with R+25 or above PVIs. We're comparing Trump's vote in 2016 with the 2018 GOP congressional vote:

Mac Thornberry- TX-13 (R+33): 79.9% vs 81.5%
Michael Conaway- TX-11 (R+32): 77.8% vs 80.1%
Doug Collins- GA-09 (R+31): 77.8% vs 79.5%
Hal Rogers- KY-05 (R+31): 79.6% vs 78.9%
Rob Aderholt- AL-04 (R+30): 80.4% vs 79.9%
Phil Roe- TN-01 (R+28): 76.7% vs 77.1%
John Ratcliffe- TX-04 (R+28): 75.4% vs 75.7%
Kevin Brady- TX-08 (R+28): 72.7% vs 73.4%
Tom Graves- GA-14 (R+27): 75.0% vs 76.5%
Adrian Smith- NE-03 (R+27): 74.9% vs 76.7%
Frank Lucas- OK-03 (R+27): 73.6% vs 73.9%
Jody Arrington- TX-19 (R+27): 72.5% vs 75.2%
Gary Palmer- AL-06 (R+26): 70.8% vs 69.2%
Brian Babin- TX-36 (R+26): 72.0% vs 72.6%
Rob Bishop- UT-01 (R+26): 49.7% vs 61.6%
Louie Gohmert- TX-01 (R+25): 72.2% vs 72.3%
John Curts- UT-03 (R+25): 47.2% vs 67.5%
Liz Cheney- WY-al (R+25): 70.1% vs 63.7%

No blue waves/anti-red waves in any of these mostly rural, backward places where religionist bigotry reigns supreme and where minds completeley taken over by Hate Talk Radio and white evangelicalism define the hive. In fact, in 14 of the 18 districts the 2018 wins for the congressional candidates were greater than the Trump margin in 2016 and only one district saw a significant decline in 2018-- Wyoming's at-large district where a controversial candidate ran, goosing Democratic and independent turnout.

Monday morning a new Gallup release indicated that more and more Americans are registering as independents rather than as Democrats or Republicans. Look at that chart just above. What is shows is that "significantly more U.S. adults continued to identify as political independents (42%) in 2018 than as either Democrats (30%) or Republicans (26%). At least four in 10 Americans have been political independents in seven of the past eight years... [S]ince 2011, the percentage of independents has exceeded the percentage identifying with the Democratic Party by 11 points on average, and the percentage identifying as Republicans by 14 points... The recent rise in independent identification has come at the expense of both parties about equally. Compared with 30 years ago, when 33% of Americans identified as independents, the percentage of Republicans has fallen five points and the percentage of Democrats has fallen six points."

Since 1991, Gallup has consistently asked independents whether they lean toward either of the two major political parties. Most independents do express a party leaning when probed, and when those leanings are taken into account, 47% of Americans on average in 2018 were Democratic identifiers or Democratic-leaning independents, and 41% were Republicans or Republican-leaning independents.

The Democrats' six-point edge on this measure of party affiliation is in line with their five-point advantages in both 2016 and 2017.

Democrats have led on this combined party ID measure in most years since 1991, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats only in that first year, when George H.W. Bush had especially high job approval ratings after the Gulf War.

The Democratic lead has been as large as 12 points. This occurred in 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected president to replace George W. Bush, who had approval ratings in the high 20s or low 30s. By 2010, Republicans had essentially drawn even with Democrats after the passage of the Obamacare health legislation, but the Democrats have regained and maintained a consistent edge since then.

...The contraction of the party bases has occurred about equally among both parties and has allowed the Democratic Party to maintain its usual advantage over the Republican Party in terms of its share of the adult population. As such, Republicans' ability to remain competitive in national elections continues to depend on having higher turnout among its supporters, something it was able to do in the 2010 and 2014 midterm election years but not in 2018.

A policy-heavy 2020 Bernie presidential campaign versus Trump's psychotic rambling and increasingly preposterous lying would frame a perfect break with the whole lesser-of-two evils direction of American politics. But so could the developing theme of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vs a hapless, Trump-owned Kevin McCarthy. That's already begun and AOC is just kicking McCarthy's ass from Washington all the way back to Bakersfield. Let's keep watching. It's a lot more thrilling-- not to mention stimulating-- than yawning through largely meaningless McCarthy and Steny Hoyer matches!

People Like Oprah-- But Not As A Presidential Candidate... Although Better Her Than Trumpanzee

Last Friday we looked at how sick voters have become of celebrities and CEOs and celebrity CEOs running for office-- and not just of Trumpanzee. One utterly clueless foreign betting firm was giving odds that Oprah Winfrey would win the Democratic presidential nomination. I should have bet! Democrats aren't going to be nominating the likes of Oprah, Mark Zuckenberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Cuban, Tom Steyer, Carly Fiorina or Mike Bloomberg anytime soon. And that was confirmed by a new Morning Consult poll that found that "most voters do not think Oprah Winfrey should run for president in 2020" even though she'd "hold a narrow lead over President Donald Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head 2020 matchup." After her Golden Globe moment of grandeur, Morning Consult found that just 24% of respondents thought she should run-- as opposed to 59% who said she shouldn't. Although Democratic voters would prefer her over the odious Kirsten Gillibrand-- 44-23%-- most voters would prefer Bernie or Biden to Oprah.

Quinnipiac also released a new poll that may have some relevance for the 2020 election. [They also asked who they would vote for between Trumpanzee and Oprah and found Oprah ahead 52-39%-- "But American voters say 66 - 14 percent that electing a celebrity to the office of president is a bad idea."] But mostly Quinnipiac was trying to figure out how many voters have figured out that Señor Trumpanzee is batshitcrazy. The nation is split. Crazy people (45%) think Trump is just fine. Sane people (47%) recognize we have an insane "president." Most men think he's sane; most women have figured out that he's not. Regardless of his mental state, most voters, by a wide margin (57-38%) disapprove of how he's handling his job.

Trump is doing more to divide the nation than to unite the nation, voters say 64 - 31 percent. Every listed party, gender, education, age and racial group says the president is dividing the nation except Republicans, who say 70 - 24 percent that he is doing more to unite the nation, and white voters with no college degree, who are divided 48 - 46 percent.

Trump does not respect people of color as much as he respects white people, voters say 59 - 38 percent. Republicans, white voters with no college degree and white men are the only listed groups who say he respects people of color as much as white people.

"President Donald Trump can't seem to improve his approval rating, perhaps because of the troubling fact that half of the voters we spoke to think he is mentally unstable," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

"The president is a divider, not a uniter, say an overwhelming number of voters, an assessment made even more disturbing by his perceived lack of respect for people of color."

American voters say 58 - 35 percent the comments President Trump allegedly made about immigrants from certain countries are racist.

Of course, people of color aren't the only targets of Trump's vicious bigotry and grotesque ignorance. The Committee to Protect Journalists released a list of the world’s worst press oppressors. Señor Trumpanzee took home the top honor, beating out, for example outright fascists like:

• Vladimir Putin
• Tayyip Erdoğan
• Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

John McCain: "Reagan recognized that as leader of the free world, his words carried enormous weight, and he used it to inspire the unprecedented spread of democracy around the world. President Donald Trump does not seem to understand that his rhetoric and actions reverberate in the same way. He has threatened to continue his attempt to discredit the free press by bestowing 'fake news awards' upon reporters and news outlets whose coverage he disagrees with. Whether Trump knows it or not, these efforts are being closely watched by foreign leaders who are already using his words as cover as they silence and shutter one of the key pillars of democracy... The phrase 'fake news'-- granted legitimacy by an American president-- is being used by autocrats to silence reporters, undermine political opponents, stave off media scrutiny and mislead citizens...We become better, stronger and more effective societies by having an informed and engaged public that pushes policymakers to best represent not only our interests but also our values. Journalists play a major role in the promotion and protection of democracy and our unalienable rights, and they must be able to do their jobs freely. Only truth and transparency can guarantee freedom."

Today Gallup released some new findings: World's Approval of U.S. Leadership Drops to New Low. "One year into Donald Trump's presidency, the image of U.S. leadership is weaker worldwide than it was under his two predecessors. Median approval of U.S. leadership across 134 countries and areas stands at a new low of 30%, according to a new Gallup report. Obama left office with a 48% worldwide U.S. approval rating. After a year of Trump, that's fallen to 30%-- an 18% collapse.

The relatively fragile image of U.S. leadership in 2017 reflects large and widespread losses in approval and relatively few gains. Out of 134 countries, U.S. leadership approval ratings declined substantially-- by 10 percentage points or more-- in 65 countries that include many longtime U.S. allies and partners.

Portugal, Belgium, Norway and Canada led the declines worldwide, with approval ratings of U.S. leadership dropping 40 points or more in each country. While majorities in each of these countries approved of U.S. leadership in 2016, majorities disapproved in 2017.

In contrast, U.S. leadership approval increased 10 points or more in just four countries: Liberia (+17), Macedonia (+15), Israel (+14), and Belarus (+11). The 67% of Israelis who approve of U.S. leadership is on par with the ratings Israelis gave the U.S. during the Bush administration. Notably, interviewing in Israel took place before Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, but he had repeatedly promised to do so during his campaign for president.

...The losses in U.S. leadership approval may have implications on U.S. influence abroad. With its stable approval rating of 41%, Germany has replaced the U.S. as the top-rated global power in the world. The U.S. is now on nearly even footing with China (31%) and barely more popular than Russia (27%) -- two countries that Trump sees as rivals seeking to "challenge American influence, values and wealth."

One of the sharpest declines in confidence in US leadership in the new Gallup poll was in the UK, where it dropped by 26 percentage points. A third of Britons questioned in the new poll expressed approval, with 63% voicing disapproval.

Bernie And Morning Joe-- A Meeting Of The Minds?

On Thursday morning, Bernie was a guest of the newly not-Republican-anymore Joe Scarborough on MSNBC. "It's not just his temperament and it's not just his stupid tweets," he told Joe and Mika. "Do not forget for a second that the policies that the policies that he is proposing are the most destructive policies being proposed in our lifetimes. This legislation that he is urging Congress to pass would throw 23 million Americans off of health insurance. How many of those people will die, we don't know-- but thousands of them will."

Scarborough was an ultra-conservative congressman from a backward, red district around Ft. Meyers in southwest Florida before he resigned in the midst of the very suspicious 2001 death of a 28 year staffer in his office, Lori Klausutis. On Wednesday he went public with his decision to leave the Republican Party and re-register as an independent. At an event sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics at the National Archives in DC, Scarborough told the crowd that "the last straw for me actually wasn’t Russia, it was the healthcare bill. That kicks 25 million people off of their health insurance, and then they turn around and give tax cuts to the richest one percent of America. I think the healthcare bill is heartless, I think the way they did it is shameful, and they did it without any transparency, and at the end of the day I just couldn’t defend them anymore, after 20, 25 years."

And that wasn't all Joe wanted to get off his chest: "What bothered me the most was that the Republican Party and its leaders came up with so many reasons why they didn’t support Donald Trump, but I never heard that it was because he was a racist. That he was basically a political bottom-feeder, that he was trying to appeal to the worst instincts in the Republican Party... I’m a small government-- uh, I guess conservative. I’m afraid to even use that word now. There is nothing conservative about this party. I think the Republican Party is in for some very, very tough years ahead. I don’t know if they survive Donald Trump. I think George W. Bush, when he privately told people that he might be the last Republican president elected, I think he may have been right. Donald Trump is a lifelong Democrat who became a Republican when he discovered birtherism."

Who's more toxic to Republicans, Trump, McConnell or Ryan?

What a shame he wasn't as clear about that before last November. But, despite what you hear from the White House and from the pundits, more and more Trump voters are starting to wise to the disaster they were misled into voting for. Thursday, Gallup released some very interesting new polling showing Trump slipping significantly among some of his core backer demographics.

As you can see from the chart above, Trump's approval rating is down pretty strongly in every single democraphic they measured, including even evangelicals. Now, as we saw yesterday, some evangelicals are no longer even Americans-- just traitors and Putin ass-lickers-- but while Trump had a very strong +32 approval for his first 100 days among evangelicals, that has now sunk precipitously to +20, still strong, but a far cry from +32. Senior have actually turned against him, having gone from a +10 for his first 100 days to a -2 now. Gallup's analysis makes it clear that Señor Trumpanzee's "base of support is currently centered in the evangelical South and rural counties scattered throughout Appalachia and the Midwest."

In most other types of counties across the U.S., Trump's job approval is net negative, with the strongest pockets of disapproval coming from the nation's biggest cities and the dense urban suburbs around them.

While poll data consistently show the president earning well-short of majority job approval nationally, the community-level picture is more nuanced. Trump faces stiff opposition in some places, but in others he continues to be evaluated more positively than negatively.

The list has a fairly clear demographic underpinning.

The counties that support Trump are numerically extensive, but tend to be much more rural. Taken together, the 1,349 counties that make up his strongest base of support-- Rural Middle America, Evangelical Hubs, Working Class Country and LDS Enclaves-- are home to about 35 million potential voters. By themselves, the 47 Big Cities counties hold about 59 million.

Trump's base counties also tend to have median household incomes below the national figure of about $56,000.

The counties in which Trump faces his strongest opposition are generally the most densely populated places in the country, including the Big Cities and Urban Suburbs. These counties, along with the College Towns, also have proportionately more college graduates.

Overall, Trump has seen support slide slightly since the 100-day mark, with his national approval rating falling from an average 41% in the first 100 days to 38% in the month of June. However that data from the first 100 days of his presidency-- from Jan. 20 through April 23-- showed him earning net-positive reviews in eight county types in the ACP: the four types in the June poll, plus the Exurbs, Middle Suburbs, Military Posts and Graying America.

Trump's slip in those four county types may prove to be significant. They hold distinct parts of the Republican base.

• The Exurbs have higher incomes and more college degrees than the national average and than other GOP communities. They are somewhat representative of the Republicans' establishment core.
• The Middle Suburbs are a set of blue-collar counties based primarily in the Industrial Midwest that swung heavily to Trump in November. The president won them by more than 13 percentage points after Republican Mitt Romney won them by two points in 2012.
• The Military Posts, based primarily near armed forces installations, are reliably Republican and tend to be home to "national security" voters.
• Graying America, counties with lower incomes and large 50-years-or-older populations, consistently vote Republican and are scattered in rural areas across the country.

Trump won the vote in all those county types in November by double digits and, because they are home to 58 million adults, they would likely be key to his re-election hopes.

Gallup's June numbers filtered through the ACP county types also suggest that Trump has lost at least some ground in nearly every type of community since May. Most of these changes were small, however, given the two-point decline in his approval rating among all Americans between May (40%) and June (38%).

Bottom Line: The June numbers indicate that the negative turn in Trump's monthly job approval averages since his inauguration are broad-based, affecting all ACP county types. As a result, he has now fallen below majority approval in some areas that were key to his election. This could affect his viability in 2020 as well as his ability to govern, particularly if it intensifies.

Yes it can... and one other thing, beautifully illustrated in this graphic about the 2018 midterms:

Are Americans Losing Faith In The Republican Party As A Legitimate Institution?

Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Kansas Republicans, so sick of far right extremist lunatic Sam Brownback, once their senator and now their governor, that they're going to help a Democrat beat him! Over 100 prominent Republicans endorsed Paul Davis, including 2 former lieutenant governors, a former congresswoman and the state insurance commissioner.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report in recent days shifted its prediction of the race from "leaning Republican'' to tossup.

The pushback against Mr. Brownback from some in the GOP is due in part to his effort two years ago to rid the state Senate of its more centrist Republican members. In 2012, he backed several challengers in GOP statehouse primaries, arguing that the incumbents weren't conservative enough. The campaign was successful, with voters ousting several veteran Republican senators, including the chamber's president.

Publicly available polling in the governor's race is scant. The most recent poll, by SurveyUSA, had Mr. Davis leading Mr. Brownback by 6 percentage points among likely voters. Mr. Brownback captured only 62% of those who identified themselves as Republicans, while Mr. Davis won support from 89% of Democrats.

In a poll this week, 37% of Mississippi Republicans said they would back the Confederate side if there was another Civil War. These people have two senators and 3 House Members making decisions for normal Americans in Washington. (Mississippi's 4th congressman, Bennie Thompson, has a carefully drawn district encompassing the African-American neighborhoods of Jackson plus virtually the whole heavily black Mississippi Delta counties, from just north of Natchez all the way up past Vicksburg, Greenville and Clarksdale and Tunica's "Sugar Ditch Alley" to the casino town of Robinsonville/Tunica Resorts. Mississippi is 37.4% African-American, MS-02, Thompson's district is 65.2% African-American.) It's just another story of coordinated Republican gerrymandering undermining American democracy.

Everything the Republicans do undermines American democracy. Right-wing parties exist to undermine democracy… and they always have, all through history. They exist to protect the interests of the rich and powerful and to make sure majorities of common folk don't intrude where they're not welcome.

Republicans are tied in knots-- and have the Congress tied in knots-- even over something as simple and uncontroversial as fixing the country's highways and bridges. As Wisconsin Democrat Mark Pocan said this week, "Speaker Boehner’s lawsuit against the president is frivolous and purely political." And most Americans agree with him that it's just another Republican stunt that keeps them from doing anything substantive for the American people, while pleasing their Hate Talk Radio base.

Gallup also released a poll this week and the results were inevitable: "Fifteen percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job… Congress's low approval ratings for the past several years underscore the idea that Americans think their representative bodies need dramatic changes. Gallup in the current poll asked respondents in an open-ended format what their most important recommendation to fix Congress would be. More than one in five Americans (22%) are ready to start over entirely, saying all members should be fired or replaced."

How Corporate Democrats Are Wrecking The Party Brand-- From Michigan's Senate Race To California's Secretary Of State Campaign

Gary Peters, the Democratic candidate for the Michigan Senate seat Carl Levin is giving up, is a careerist and a New Dem with a mediocre and distinctly uncourageous record. Look as hard as you want at the Blue America Senate page but you will never find Gary Peters or anyone like him. That said, his likely GOP opponent, Koch puppet candidate Terri Lynn Land, is far worse. He's a nothing; she's a negative. She represents the Kochs and the selfish, greedy, venal interests of the plutocrats. He's... not as bad. The Democrats' Senate Majority PAC new ad (just below) is all about how bad she and how bad the Kochs are-- not a word, one way or the other, about their own feeble candidate.

Luckily for the Democrats, the "but the Republicans are worse" message still works for many voters. It's way garbage, cowardly candidates like Peters are plausible. The new Gallup poll, released yesterday, shows that young voters are still aligning themselves with Democratic Party messaging, in fact, more so than ever before-- or at least that they are more repulsed than every before by Republican Party messaging. Gallup found that "While young adults have generally been more likely to align themselves with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, they are now much more solidly Democratic than prior generations of young adults."

From 1993 to 2003, 47% of 18- to 29-year-olds, on average, identified as Democrats or said they were independents but leaned to the Democratic Party, while 42% were Republicans or Republican leaners. That time span included two years in which young adults tilted Republican, 1994 and 1995, when Republicans won control of Congress. Since 2006, the average gap in favor of the Democratic Party among young adults has been 18 percentage points, 54% to 36%.

This Democratic movement among the young has come at a time when senior citizens have become more Republican. The broader U.S. population has shown more variability in its party preferences in recent years, shifting Democratic from 2005 to 2008, moving back toward the Republican Party from 2009 to 2011, and showing modest Democratic preferences in the last two years.

…In recent years, young white adults, who previously aligned more with the Republican Party, have shifted Democratic. From 1995 to 2005, young whites consistently identified as or leaned Republican rather than Democratic, by an average of eight points. Since 2006, whites aged 18 to 29 have shown at least a slight Democratic preference in all but one year, with an average advantage of three points.

Young whites first shifted to a pro-Democratic position in 2006, perhaps because of frustration with George W. Bush and his policies. Barack Obama's presidential campaign also may have attracted younger whites, given the candidate's relative youth, particularly since Republicans nominated the much older John McCain as their presidential candidate. Young whites are not as high on the Democratic Party now as they were in 2008, but they remain more likely to prefer it to the Republican Party.

Earlier in the week, Bill Boyarsky penned a post forTruthDig that shows how easily the Democrats could blow this advantage. His theme is "the irrelevancy of party and ideological labels when it comes to helping big corporations," an Achilles heel for the Democratic party that we talked about this afternoon in regard to Wall Street Dems and the Senate race in South Carolina. And he isn't messing around with red or purple states, but goes right to the heart of one of the crucial blue bastions: California, where the politicians are every bit as corrupt and slimy as they are in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and even New Jersey. How do you think young voters will feel about this kind of thing?

A recent California law freeing much of the telephone business from state regulation-- and potentially depriving millions of phone users of long-standing consumer protections-- illustrates the irrelevancy of party and ideological labels when it comes to helping big corporations.

Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, described the measure as “the most anti-consumer bill ever introduced in California.”

Just how this bill became law points up the importance of state legislatures and local lawmaking bodies, those governmental entities that although increasingly ignored by the media, influence much of the quality of our lives.

That’s where American politics are really at work. If the loud political debate and much of the punditry is to be believed, deregulation is the domain of Republicans and other conservatives. Regulation and consumer protection are Democratic and liberal. But in many crucial cases, that’s not the way it is. Take, for example, mundane but all-important phone calls.

…The new California law, SB 1161, takes away the power of the California Public Utilities Commission to impose these and other regulations on companies that use the Internet for delivering phone service. A CPUC analysis said, “Because virtually all communications service providers use (the Internet) at some point in their networks, SB1161 could … strip the CPUC of jurisdiction over services it now actively regulates.”

Party and ideology didn’t mean a thing when it came to this measure.

It was introduced and steered through the legislature by state Sen. Alex Padilla, a liberal Democrat who represents a working-class area of the San Fernando Valley. Liberal, but business oriented, Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law. …The law is similar to “model” legislation that emerged from the American Legislative Exchange Council, best known as ALEC, a conservative, industry-backed organization that sponsors anti-regulatory legislation in statehouses around the country. ALEC also produced the “stand your ground” law that protected the killer of Trayvon Martin in Florida, according to the Center for Media & Democracy. The center said stand your ground was a “model bill” pushed by ALEC in “dozens of other states. ... The bill was brought to ALEC by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and was unanimously approved by an ALEC task force co-chaired by Wal-Mart.”

California’s phone legislation was strongly supported by Silicon Valley powers who are part of TechNet, an organization of technology CEOs, including top officials of Oracle, Cisco, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft.

“I have never met with ALEC, been to their conferences or anything,” Padilla said.

Padilla is well connected to the club of lobbyists and influential lawmakers who run the California Legislature. The telecom industry is a major part of it, having donated $1,986,976 to legislators’ political campaigns from January 2011 through December 2012, according to political data firm MapLight. The industry gave Padilla $39,364 of his total $1,329,743 in campaign contributions from January 2009 through December 2012.

In addition, Padilla was the beneficiary of a fundraiser held by Kevin Sloat, a lobbyist whose clientele included telecom firms. Sloat was fined $133,500 for that fundraiser by the state Fair Political Practices Commission, which said the liquor and cigars he gave the guests went beyond what the law allows a lobbyist to give. Derek Cressman, who is running against Padilla for secretary of state, called on Padilla to return money from the event. Rose Kapolczynski, a campaign consultant to Padilla, told the Los Angeles Times, “We take campaign finance laws very seriously and make it a practice to comply fully with both the letter and the spirit of the law. There is no indication from the FPPC that any of the contributions were improper and therefore we do not intend to return them.”

An opponent of the phone law, Sean McLaughlin, executive director of Access Humboldt, told me about attending legislative hearings on the bill.

“It was very interesting to me,” he said. “There were more than 50 well-heeled lobbyists [for the measure] and our ragtag group of public interest people.” Padilla and the other legislators greeted the telecom advocates as friends, McLaughlin said. “It was shocking how that played out,” he said. “To be in that room and see it was incredible. It was shocking to me, how much influence there was and how hard it was to even raise an issue.” He said the telecom lobbyists were not just witnesses for the bill, but “part of the presentation of the bill.” Speaking time for him and other opponents was limited, McLaughlin said.

“The thing that was discouraging to me was there was no media covering it,” he recalled. “There was this overflow crowd, the packed room was uncomfortable. Another dozen lobbyists in the hall. And they celebrated when the bill passed. I took out my little camera and they scattered.”

Will California Democratic voters even have the knowledge of Padilla's and the corporate Democrats' betrayal to nominate good government reformer Derek Cressman Secretary of State instead of Padilla? My bet is "no," although I'll be voting for him.

The 20 Democratic House Incumbents Leading Their Party To Ruin In November

Gallup was out with some interesting findings this morning: Record-High 42% of Americans Identify as Independents. Look at that chart! It should be sending waves of fear through the hearts of the worthless careerists who run the Beltway establishments of the two corrupt political parties.

Forty-two percent of Americans, on average, identified as political independents in 2013, the highest Gallup has measured since it began conducting interviews by telephone 25 years ago. Meanwhile, Republican identification fell to 25%, the lowest over that time span. At 31%, Democratic identification is unchanged from the last four years but down from 36% in 2008.

...Americans' increasing shift to independent status has come more at the expense of the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. Republican identification peaked at 34% in 2004, the year George W. Bush won a second term in office. Since then, it has fallen nine percentage points, with most of that decline coming during Bush's troubled second term. When he left office, Republican identification was down to 28%. It has declined or stagnated since then, improving only slightly to 29% in 2010, the year Republicans "shellacked" Democrats in the midterm elections.

Not since 1983, when Gallup was still conducting interviews face to face, has a lower percentage of Americans, 24%, identified as Republicans than is the case now. That year, President Ronald Reagan remained unpopular as the economy struggled to emerge from recession. By the following year, amid an improving economy and re-election for the increasingly popular incumbent president, Republican identification jumped to 30%, a level generally maintained until 2007.

Democratic identification has also declined in recent years, falling five points from its recent high of 36% in 2008, the year President Barack Obama was elected. The current 31% of Americans identifying as Democrats matches the lowest annual average in the last 25 years.

…Americans are increasingly declaring independence from the political parties. It is not uncommon for the percentage of independents to rise in a non-election year, as 2013 was. Still, the general trend in recent years, including the 2012 election year, has been toward greater percentages of Americans identifying with neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party, although most still admit to leaning toward one of the parties.

The rise in political independence is likely an outgrowth of Americans' record or near-record negative views of the two major U.S. parties, of Congress, and their low level of trust in government more generally.

The increased independence adds a greater level of unpredictability to this year's congressional midterm elections. Because U.S. voters are less anchored to the parties than ever before, it's not clear what kind of appeals may be most effective to winning votes. But with Americans increasingly eschewing party labels for themselves, candidates who are less closely aligned to their party or its prevailing doctrine may benefit.

This year there is not a single candidate on the Blue America House endorsement page-- all progressive, independent-minded, anti-corruption Democrats-- who has yet to be backed by the anti-independent/pro-corruption DCCC. Grassroots voters are sick of the DCCC Republican-lite strategy, both in Congress and on the hustings. 2014 is likely to be another disastrous year for Steve Israel and the DCCC. Their wrong-headed strategy will keep Democrats and progressive-independents away from the polls in droves, just like it did in 2010 (the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse). There are 20 Democratic incumbents who, on crucial roll calls, have voted over 50% of the time against the progressive side and made common cause with Boehner and Cantor. WHy should grassroots voters even bother going to the polls to support them? Them… these (along with their 2013 ProgressivePunch crucial vote score):

• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL- 49.61)
• Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY- 49.24)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA- 48.48)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA- 46.92)
• Nick Rahall (WV- 45.86)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL- 45.80)
• Cheri Bustos (IL- 44.96)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN- 42.11)
• Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL- 42.06)
• Raul Ruiz (CA- 40.91)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX- 39.10)
• Carolyn McCarthy (New Dem-NY- 35.42)- retiring
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ 33.60)
• Bill Owens (New Dem-NY- 33.08)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY 31.58)
• Pete Gallego (New Dem-TX- 31.54)
• Mike McIntyre (New Dem-NC- 30.00)- retiring
• Ron Barber (New Dem-AZ- 25.40)
• John Barrow (New Dem-GA- 23.31)
• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT- 22.56)- retiring

Matheson, who would have had no chance to be reelected this year, is retiring "voluntarily." None of these incumbents deserve to be reelected. The only worry I haves is that the antipathy they have created towards Democrats could spill over to regular Dems the way it did in 2010. Looking for Democratic candidates from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party? Check here.

Will The GOP Wander Back Onto A Mainstream Path? Not Likely

RNC... yesterday, today and tomorrow

Now that the Autopsy report ordered by Reince Priebus for the Republican Party has been studied by the media, Priebus is probably wishing he had never broken the first rule of rebranding-- never tell the public you're "re-branding." Even the Beltway's ultimate symbol of contentless, mealy-mouthed pabulum, Charlie Cook, is telling the GOP they now have 2 choices: change or extinction.

It may not be too melodramatic to say that over the next couple of years, the Republican Party faces a fork in the road. Following one path, the GOP can seek to address what has gone wrong, the narrowness of the party’s appeal, and the intolerance that has alienated so many minority, female, young, and moderate voters that Republicans have a hard time prevailing in federal races outside of carefully drawn conservative enclaves. Taking the other road could lead the party over a cliff in 2016, in much the same way Barry Goldwater led Republicans to disaster in 1964.

Meanwhile, the last RNC chairman to preside over a set of successful elections, Michael Steele, has been belittling Priebus' approach-- especially the superficial approach to minority outreach-- as a very pale imitation of what he did when he was chairman. He also referred to Priebus as numb nuts. The public feud between former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and current RNC Chairman Reince Priebus took on a new dimension on Tuesday when Steele suggested he could win in a physical fight with Priebus. Appearing on Andrea Tantaros’ radio program, Steele said that he “would clean his clock” if forced to fight Priebus with “just one knock to the head... I was laughing at some of these numb nuts after the election talking about, ‘oh, we need a 50 state strategy.’ Dude, where were you for 2009 and 2010? That’s exactly what we did.” They did? I thought that was Howard Dean who did that (before Rahm Emanuel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz came along and killed the idea and gave us a Republican state legislatures, gerrymandering galore and a GOP Congress. Anyway, "The bottom line," asserted Steele, who has publicly blamed Priebus for the GOP defeats in November, "is you've got to be focused on what the purpose and the role of the party is. The national party is too big for its own britches right now. It's centered around itself."




Priebus and his party might want to look closely at the new Gallup poll released yesterday. It doesn't just show that Democrats and independents support the progressive approach to job creation through government spending-- it shows that most Republicans do as well! "Job creation proposals enjoy widespread public support, including majority backing among all party groups, even when the issue of government spending is raised in an era when deficit reduction is one of the major priorities for the federal government. Despite the high levels of support for the job creation proposals, the political realities in Washington are such that Congress has not passed any of the proposals since President Obama first advocated many of these more than a year ago."

The public waking up to the treacherous nature of concerted GOP congressional obstructionism is what Priebus and his cronies should be looking at seriously. If that happens, not even gerrymandering is going to save the Republican Party.

Fiscal Cliff/Grand Bargain... Americans Are Wary Of Our Corrupted Political Elites

The now completely discredited Gallup poll-- which consistently botched the election predictions this cycle-- is out with another survey: Americans Urge Congress, the President to Avoid Fiscal Cliff: Most Americans want both sides to compromise. Maybe it was the inherently deceptive and ominously threatening way Gallup asked the question about the ginned up "fiscal cliff," but their survey comes to slightly different conclusions than less biased, less hyperbolic, more accurate polls.

Pew's poll was far more useful and looking at the problem instead of the fantasy. First of all, most Americans predict (51-38%) Obama and the Republicans will fail to reach a compromise-- and they know just who to blame.

The public is sharpening its focus on the issue, but Republicans are paying more attention than others and are more worried about the fallout of failed negotiations. Nearly half of Republicans are following the issue “very closely,” and more than seven in 10 Republicans anticipate negative consequences for their finances and the overall economy.

Only about half of Democrats see a mostly negative outcome for either the economy or their finances, and 31 percent say passing the cliff will actually help the economy. Economists predict inaction will throw the economy into recession.

But Republicans in Congress may face more public pressure to make concessions. Should negotiations break down to avoid the $500 billion rash of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts, 53 percent are inclined to blame Republicans in Congress while 29 percent single out Obama. 

Yesterday we heard what progressive congressional leaders Raúl Grijalva and Bernie Sanders had to say about the rational position to protect working families from the deprecations of predatory Wall Street and corporate forces and the politicians they've bought. Today's we're turning to a former Blue America candidate from Florida, Nick Ruiz, for a look at this from the perspective of someone able to look at the problems and solutions with a head unclouded by corrupted Inside-the-Beltway mores.



The Secret World of Modern Democrats
-by Nick Ruiz

Now that the lesser evil has been done, shall we take pride in the bipartisan destruction of the Great Society? Perhaps it never was. Maybe Social Security is a bad idea, after all. So few people truly vote to protect it. Minimum wages, I suspect, just a historical fluke. Progressive taxation, where the rich contribute to society according to their means, not extract wealth according to their greed-- a quaint provincial flash in the pan of past Americana? Probably so.

These are the days of the Modern Democrats, and their gilded secret world. What can we say of them? Once there were great Democrats, that did great things. But the Moderns, these tiny Democrats, how small they've become. Oh, but they boom, and bellow so; they orate, they fancy deals as 'ideal.' The tiny Modern Democrats speak grandiosely, in bogus terms of 'messaging.' Oh, they shine it in 1970s liberal populist gloss, so they and liberal boomers feel good about themselves, and the lesser evil. Yes, spectacular grandstanding, presiding over grotesquely corporate 'Grand' Bargains, rather than gigantic progressive actions predicated on a 'big, big love' for American brothers and sisters, marks the moment.

If I were there now, in Washington, DC representing my district in Congress, instead of the Republican King Midas named John Mica, that curious chamber maiden for those that wish to pay to play 'deal-maker'-- I would shut down the whole complicity circus with a thud.

Critique cannot be complicit-- or it's not critique; it's cheerleading. Like Susan Sontag in Somalia, or Barack Obama's 'peace' prize. They all mean well, the vanden Heuvels say. It's not enough.

Yes, it's the idolatry of the lesser evil that brings us to this place. A Grand Bargain of a higher retirement age, since we're all so much healthier than the rest of the world, a weakened cost-of-living formula, so the payout upon retirement is less, 'cause we're all so well off and a reduction of benefits for “higher-income” people, so we can erode widespread support of the Social Security system? What next? Free labor, in the name of 'freedom?'

Since the King Midas of my district voted against the minimum wage, not once, but twice; we can only imagine what great things, he and they all have in store for the children of the lesser evil.

Progressives too, want to join the secret world of the Modern Democrats. And that's just too bad for America. Because complicity cannot critique, let alone repair, or reform. Take it as an axiom. You know the type, and that almost surgically safe critique they offer around the policy edges, like a child pushing yucky food around on a dinner plate.

Of course, we challenge King Midas's everywhere. But that's only part of the reform equation. Don't forget those Modern Democrats at our backs, the salesmen and women foxes in the hen house. They should all be primaried-- every last one of them. And from that position in Congress, that is exactly what I would help to achieve. True reform, by categorical replacement therapy. Because if they won't do the job they were hired (elected) to do, but lied their way into-- they should be removed from office, and replaced with people who truly possess the will to progressive politics, rather than King Midas' will to power.

I don't belong to the secret world of the Modern Democrats. I belong to a community of people that know the difference, and are willing to do the work of progressive reformation.

That difference is the fuel that drives us.

You heard about "that poll," the one that shows Hillary trailing the GOP pygmies? But did you hear about the SERIOUS poll that shows the opposite?

"The Zogby poll was considered big news because many in the political press are heavily invested in the Hillary-is-unelectable narrative for all kinds of reasons that have little to do with a desire to, you know, practice journalism."
--Greg Sargent, in a post today on his media-centric blog, The Horse's Mouth

These days it doesn't matter what the subject is, from global warming to political polling, there seems to be a "conventional wisdom" that is (a) promoted by the demons of Wingnuttia and (b) utterly randomly linked to reality. And of course the press--with its famous "liberal bias"--now functions 24/7 as a service provider for Wingnut International.

I'm sure you've heard about the Zogby poll that purports to show Hillary Clinton losing to all of the major Republican candidates, in wish fulfillment of the Clinton-hating psychosis of Wingnuttia. Greg Sargent disposes of this nonsense neatly, with emphasis on the slavish adherence of the lickspittle media to the Tales of Wingnuttia:

Media Lavishes Attention On Bogus Internet Poll Showing Hillary Losing To Repubs -- And Ignores Reputable Poll Finding Opposite

Ladies and gentlemen, a tale of two polls.

Yesterday two polling firms -- Zogby and Gallup -- released surveys of the presidential race that offered strikingly different conclusions. The Zogby poll found that Hillary is trailing five leading GOP candidates in general election matchups. The Gallup Poll, by contrast, found that Hillary, and to a lesser degree Obama, has a slight to sizable lead over the top GOP contenders.

A couple of other things that distinguish these two polls: The Zogby one is an online poll, a notoriously unreliable method, while the Gallup one is a telephone poll. And, as Charles Franklin of Pollster.com observed yesterday, the Zogby poll is completely out of sync with multiple other national polls finding Hillary with a lead over the GOP candidates. The Zogby poll actually found that Mike Huckabee is leading Hillary in a national matchup. The Gallup findings were in line with most other surveys.

I don't need to tell you which poll got all the media attention. Do I?

The Zogby survey was covered repeatedly on CNN, earned coverage from MSNBC, Fox News, and Reuters and was covered by multiple other smaller outlets.

By contrast, I can't find a single example of any reporter or commentator on the major networks or news outlets referring to the Gallup poll at all, with the lone exception of UPI. While the Zogby poll was mentioned by multiple reporters and pundits, the only mentions the Gallup poll got on TV were from Hillary advisers who had to bring it up themselves on the air in order to inject it into the conversation.

You could argue that the Zogby poll got all the coverage it did precisely because it is out of sync with multiple other polls, and thus is news. But the truth is that the reporters and editors at the major nets know full well that the Zogby poll is bunk -- yet they breathlessly covered it anyway.

Worse, the Zogby poll was covered with few mentions either of its dubious methodology or of the degree to which its findings don't jibe with other surveys. Bottom line: The Zogby poll was considered big news because many in the political press are heavily invested in the Hillary-is-unelectable narrative for all kinds of reasons that have little to do with a desire to, you know, practice journalism.

There's really nothing to add, except to wonder: Why? How much longer, o Lord?

[Provisional answers: (1) Because so many people, for one reason or another, truly don't get that "reality" is not the same thing as "what I wish was true," and in fact the two often bear no resemblance to one another. (2) Until either (1) changes or some way is found to undo the chokehold of the anti-realityites.]

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