A federal appeals court on Wednesday cleared the way for voters in Ohio to begin casting in-person ballots as early as Tuesday, 35 days before the November midterm election. A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Peter Economus earlier this month that…
Category: Election 2014
Right vs. Left in the Midwest
MINNESOTA and Wisconsin share much more than bone-chilling winters: German and Northern European roots; farming; and, until recently, a populist progressive tradition stretching back a century to Wisconsin’s Fighting Bob La Follette and the birth of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. But in 2010 these cousin states diverged. By doing so they began a natural experiment that…
14 GOP Congressmen Who Think Government Shouldn’t Borrow Have Big Debts Of Their Own
Government is nothing like a business and cannot be run as one — its aim is to protect its citizens, not to turn a profit. Businesses and individuals often borrow in the short term to make investments for the long term — mortgages, lines of credits, and other sorts of loans are facts of…
With new group, Obama team seeks answer to Karl Rove
On Wednesday, some of President Barack Obama’s most dedicated donors will fly to Washington and pony up $50,000 to attend a fundraiser for Organizing for Action, a progressive new kid on the block trying to counter the likes of Karl Rove and the Koch brothers. Obama will give a speech to the group, an independent…
Democrats Racially Diverse; Republicans Mostly White
Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 89% of Republican self-identifiers nationwide in 2012, while accounting for 70% of independents and 60% of Democrats. Over one-fifth of Democrats (22%) were black, while 16% of independents were Hispanic. These results are based on more than 338,000 interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking in 2012, and…
Scott plans $100M campaign vs. Crist
Rick Scott is preparing to defend his Florida governorship with the most expensive reelection campaign in state history, drawing up plans for a battleship-sized political operation aimed at overcoming the Republican’s deep personal unpopularity. The anticipated price tag, according to sources familiar with Scott’s plans: $100 million. Scott is no stranger to heavy spending; the…
Gerrymandering is not what’s wrong with American politics
In a recent interview in The New Republic, President Obama said this about the politics surrounding gun control: That does not mean that you don’t have some real big differences. The House Republican majority is made up mostly of members who are in sharply gerrymandered districts that are very safely Republican and may not feel…
Grand Theft Election
President Barack Obama won a commanding victory in this November’s elections, defeating Republican candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by nearly 4 percentage points in the popular vote. In doing so, President Obama became the first president to twice win more than 51 percent of the popular vote since President Dwight D. Eisenhower did so…
How Republicans Plan To Rig The Next Presidential Election, In Six Pictures
Yesterday, Virginia Republicans took the first step to move a GOP plan to rig the Electoral College forward in that state. Similar plans are under consideration in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The Republican election rigging plan targets blue states that President Obama won in 2008 and 2012, and changes the way they allocate electoral votes…
McDonnell Doesn’t Rule Out Signing GOP’s Secret Redistricting Plan
Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) expressed displeasure Monday with the Republican Senate’s sneaky maneuver to subvert majority rule and gerrymander the Senate in such a way that could give themselves a super-majority — but has not yet said whether he would veto the bill. But to live up to his previous promises, he will have to…
Republicans Brag They Won House Majority Because Of Gerrymandering
In a classic Kinsley gaffe, the Republican State Leadership Committee released a report boasting that the only reason the GOP controls the House of Representatives is because they gerrymandered congressional districts in blue states. The RSLC’s admission came in a shockingly candid report entitled, “How a Strategy of Targeting State Legislative Races in 2010 Led…
Republicans worry they’ll lose House if they botch debt talks
There’s growing angst among Republicans that the party’s House majority could be at risk in 2014 if the deep GOP divisions that emerged during the recent “fiscal cliff” negotiations persist in looming negotiations over a slew of budgetary issues. Even as Republican officials maintain the GOP majority is safe, several lawmakers and longtime activists warn…
Scott in a very bad position
40% of Republicans would prefer someone else Scott’s approval rating is just 33%, with 57% of voters disapproving of him. Scott’s numbers had gradually improved over the course of 2012, but these numbers represent a regression from early November when he was at a 37/48 spread. Scott meets with near universal disapproval from Democrats (21/71)…
GOP congressman: Akin’s rape comments were ‘partly right’
A Georgia Republican congressman said that former Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, R, was “partly right” in asserting that victims of “legitimate rape” rarely become pregnant. Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., a former obstetrician-gynecologist, said at a town hall meeting that Akin was “partly right” in his controversial suggestion, which was widely cited as a factor…
How to Save the Democratic Party
A new party—not a third party, but a real second party representing authentic alternatives, as befits a democracy—is therefore urgently needed. Fortunately, the nucleus of such a party already exists, however captive-like and timid, inside today’s Democratic Party. (The late Senator Paul Wellstone called it “the democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”) For this nucleus…