“One Silver Lining For Liberals”: As Democrats Fall, Minimum Wage Thrives On Election Night
Democrats suffered a series of disastrous defeats on election night, decisively losing their Senate majority and falling short in several gubernatorial races in which they hoped to defeat Republican incumbents. But there was one silver lining for liberals: Tuesday’s elections proved, once again, that the minimum wage is a winning issue.
Initiatives to raise the minimum wage appeared on the ballot in four reliably Republican states. In all four, they passed easily.
Even as Alaskans appeared to boot Democratic senator Mark Begich out of office — he has declined to concede the race — they still overwhelmingly voted to raise their state’s minimum wage to $9.75 per hour. Tellingly, although his future colleagues in the Senate have steadfastly opposed any efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, Republican senator-elect Dan Sullivan announced in September that he would support the state initiative. This was a flip-flop from his position in the Republican primaries, and probably had something to do with polls showing the measure’s overwhelming popularity in the Last Frontier.
Similarly, Republican Tom Cotton’s easy victory over Democratic senator Mark Pryor didn’t stop Arkansans from boosting their minimum wage to $8.50 per hour. Like Sullivan, Cotton decided not to oppose the overwhelmingly popular measure. Although he voted against raising the federal minimum wage as a congressman, he announced in September that he would support the state hike “as a citizen.”
In South Dakota, Republican Mike Rounds easily defeated Democrat Rick Weiland and Independent Larry Pressler. But voters still raised their state’s minimum wage to $8.50 per hour. Rounds opposed the measure, while his opponents supported it.
And in Nebraska, Republican Ben Sasse defeated Democrat Dave Domina in a landslide, even as voters raised the state’s minimum wage to $9 per hour. Although Sasse opposed the measure, he avoided discussing the issue on the campaign trail.
More than half of the states in the nation now have minimum wages higher than the federal level.
Clearly, even in red states, there is broad support for one of the key planks of the Democratic economic agenda. But, just as obviously, it was not a determining factor in how midterm voters cast their ballots. This presents an opportunity for congressional Republicans.
The next round of Senate campaigns will take place in a far more liberal battleground than Tuesday’s elections did — and, if history is a guide, they will feature a more liberal electorate. This will put blue-state Republicans like Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Mark Kirk (R-IL), and Pat Toomey (R-PA) in jeopardy. One easy way for them to blunt the economic attacks sure to come their way on the campaign trail would be joining with Democrats to raise the federal minimum wage.
While the House of Representatives has refused to consider a minimum-wage hike in the past, they may have a different attitude when the bill is coming from a Republican-controlled Senate. After all, they supposedly want to prove that they can govern. And, as Tuesday’s elections prove, conservative voters are unlikely to punish them for giving working families a boost.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, November 5, 2014
“The Right Makes The Case Against Governing”: The Goal Isn’t To Advance The Nation’s Interests
Rush Limbaugh told listeners today that congressional Republicans may have a popular mandate after their midterm successes, but they “were not elected to govern.”
That’s not a typo. One of the nation’s most prominent Republican media voices wants to make one thing clear, right now, in the wake of a GOP triumph: there are those within the party who are eager to prove that Republicans can govern. And those people are wrong.
National Review, a leading conservative outlet, fleshed out a very similar argument this morning, warning their GOP allies of “the governing trap.”
The desire to prove Republicans can govern also makes them hostage to their opponents in the Democratic party and the media. It empowers Senator Harry Reid, whose dethroning was in large measure the point of the election. […]
A prove-you-can-govern strategy will inevitably divide the party on the same tea-party-vs.-establishment lines that Republicans have just succeeded in overcoming…. Even if Republicans passed this foolish test, it would do little for them. If voters come to believe that a Republican Congress and a Democratic president are doing a fine job of governing together, why wouldn’t they vote to continue the arrangement in 2016?
It’s a fascinating perspective.
1. Governing would require some compromise.
2. Compromising makes you a “hostage,” which is unacceptable.
3. Ergo, don’t try to govern.
The goal of this attitude isn’t to advance the nation’s interests, even incrementally. Rather, the argument – reaching levels of public cynicism that are truly awe-inspiring – is that the sole focus of a political party is to do nothing until that party has absolute power over all branches of government.
Danny Vinik had a good take on the piece, describing it as “indicative of how dysfunctional Washington has become.”
When most legislation could pass by majority vote and policymakers frequently crossed party lines, divided government could still enact new laws and programs. That is no longer the case. We’re rapidly entering an era where a party must control the White House, House and Senate – the latter with a filibuster proof majority – to move legislation. If you don’t control all three, then your best political and legislative strategy is not to compromise, but to play politics so that you can control all three in the future. The National Review editors have figured this out.
The question now becomes whether congressional Republicans find the argument persuasive.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 5, 2014
“Third Time’s The Charm?”: New Hampshire Says ‘No’ To Interloper Scott Brown
In New Hampshire, the Massachusetts invasion has been staved off—for now.
Incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen has been declared the victor in the closely-fought race against Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator who slid across the border to the state where he keeps a family vacation home, declaring residency and announcing his candidacy in one fell swoop.
Brown had achieved national fame in 2009 when he crisscrossed Massachusetts in his pickup truck, going on to defeat attorney general Martha Coakley in a special election for the Senate seat formerly held by the late Ted Kennedy. That race presaged the Tea Party wave that was to come in 2010. Brown’s victory was short-lived however; in 2012, he was defeated by liberal favorite Elizabeth Warren.
Brown was a favorite of Wall Street and of moderate Republicans cheered by the possibility that a type of Rockefeller Republicanism was returning to the northeast. In the run-up to the midterms, he publicly flirted with running for president, before eventually being lured into the Senate race in neighboring New Hampshire.
It was a long shot to say the least. New Hampshire remains one of the most conservative states in the Northeast, with Republicans regularly competing in the presidential elections, but it is also fiercely independent, and resentful of the encroachment of the Boston suburbs.
Shaheen often played up her local roots. Brown did himself no favors when, in the campaign’s final debate, he seemed to flub a question about basic Granite State geography, calling Sullivan County north of Concord, when it is in fact west of Concord. The Shaheen campaign pounced, spending part of the next day hitting the hustings in Sullivan County.
“The key is that Brown said what he—and probably a lot of other people—think,” wrote a columnist for the Boston Globe. “That ‘anyplace past Concord’ faces the exact same set of issues.”
Brown tried to counter this narrative by focusing on national issues, describing a nation and hence a state that was left insecure and unstable thanks to President Obama’s leadership, and of course, by Shaheen’s support of that leadership. He combined a number of crises facing the president, including the threats of Ebola and ISIS, mismanagement in the Secret Service and child migrants coming over the border, to argue for a change in direction.
Those attacks though fell flat among charges that Brown was an interloper who would vote to limit the reproductive choices of women in the U.S. Senate.
Things took an especially awkward turn for Brown in the race’s final hours, when the former senator was asked by an MSNBC reporter if he planned to move back to Massachusetts if he lost.
Brown did not answer.
By: David Freedlander, The Daily Beast, November 4, 2014
“Obamacare Is Here To Stay”: Kentucky Is Emblematic Of The States That Have Received Substantial Assists From Obamacare
You’ve heard of Obamacare, right?
It’s that disastrous, costly and intrusive policy that President Obama and his fellow Democrats rammed down the throats of Congress back in 2010 — a failed plan that conservative Republicans have pledged to “repeal and replace.” According to its critics, it is un-American; it destroys the health care system; it burdens businesses; it hollows out Medicare. Right?
Ah, wrong. Despite what you may have heard and despite the caprice of electoral campaigns, the changes wrought by the Affordable Care Act are here to stay. That’s because it accomplishes much of what it set out to do — and its beneficiaries mostly like it.
Don’t expect Republicans to try to turn back the clock. Oh, some of them will continue to bash Obamacare and to blame it for any negative effects on the country’s dysfunctional health care “system” — including rising costs. And some will even go so far as to continue to insist that it ought to be repealed.
Take Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who expects to lead the upper chamber if Republicans claim a majority. In a debate last month with his Democratic rival, Alison Grimes, McConnell suggested that he would repeal the Affordable Care Act but leave in place Kentucky’s popular state exchange program.
“… The best interest of the country would be achieved by pulling out Obamacare, root and branch,” he said. “Now, with regard to Kynect, it’s a state exchange. They can continue it if they’d like to.”
McConnell’s pronouncement was a tour de force of dissembling, a virtuoso performance of fabrications and disinformation. The Washington Post’s fact checker awarded him three Pinocchios.
That’s because the state’s health care exchange, Kynect, is a part of Obamacare, made possible by the 2010 law. If Obamacare is ripped out “root and branch,” the state exchanges could not continue to exist. (The GOP has continually pledged to find a mechanism to replace Obamacare, but its warring factions have failed to agree on any plan that would leave state exchanges in place.)
Here’s the rub: Kynect is very popular with Kentucky’s residents, many of whom are enjoying health insurance for the first time in their lives. They have been primed by Republican politicians to hate the president and any policy he endorses — including his signature health care plan — but they don’t want to give up Obamacare’s benefits.
Kentucky is emblematic of the states that have received substantial assists from Obamacare. It is largely rural and is among the poorest states. It has also long ranked near the bottom in several health indicators, including obesity and smoking rates and cancer deaths. Obamacare has been a boon for its residents, cutting the rate of uninsured in half.
According to The New York Times, people who live in rural areas are among the biggest winners from the Affordable Care Act. Other groups who have reaped substantial benefits are blacks, Latinos, women and younger Americans between 18 and 34.
Here’s another reason that Obamacare is here to stay: Its expansion of Medicaid is a boon to the states that have taken advantage of it. After the Supreme Court ruled that Medicaid expansion was optional, most Republican governors vowed to resist it — even though the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost for the first three years and 90 percent thereafter.
But some of those GOP governors are now having second thoughts as rural hospitals are forced to close down for lack of funds and poor people are sidelined by preventable illnesses. Several GOP governors have already expanded Medicaid — which provides health insurance for the poor — and others are considering doing so.
Last month, Ohio’s Republican governor, John Kasich, advised his GOP colleagues to stop fighting the Medicaid expansion. The opposition, he said, “was really either political or ideological. I don’t think that holds water against real flesh and blood, and real improvements in people’s lives.”
Some Republicans have trouble admitting that on the campaign trail, but they all know it’s true.
By: Cynthia Tucker, The National Memo, November 1, 2014
“Modern-Day Voter Suppression”: A Poll Tax By Another Name Is Still A Poll Tax
For supporters of voting restrictions, opposition to voter-ID laws seems practically inexplicable. After all, they argue, having an ID is a common part of modern American life, and if these laws prevent fraud, the requirements deserve broad support.
We know, of course, that the fraud argument is baseless, but it’s often overlooked how difficult getting proper identification – never before necessary to cast a ballot in the United States – can be in practice. To that end the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU published a report this week on “stories from actual voters” in Texas who are facing disenfranchisement for no good reason. Emily Badger flagged one especially striking example:
Olester McGriff, an African-American man, lives in Dallas. He has voted in several Texas elections. This year when he went to the polls he was unable to vote due to the new photo ID law. Mr. McGriff had a kidney transplant and can no longer drive; his driver’s license expired in 2008. He tried to get an ID twice prior to voting. In May, he visited an office in Grand Prairie and was told he could not get an ID because he was outside of Dallas County. In July, he visited an office in Irving and was told they were out of IDs and would have to come back another day.
He is unable to get around easily. Mr. McGriff got to the polls during early voting because Susan McMinn, an experienced election volunteer, gave him a ride. He brought with him his expired driver’s license, his birth certificate, his voter registration card, and other documentation, but none were sufficient under Texas’s new photo ID requirement.
One person was prohibited from voting because his driver’s license ”was taken away from him in connection with a DUI.” Another Texan discovered he’d need a replacement birth certificate and a new ID, which required a series of procedural steps and a $30 fee he’d struggle to afford.
To hear opponents of voting rights tell it, voter-ID laws sound simple and easy. The practical reality is obviously far different – and in all likelihood, the laws’ proponents know this and don’t care. Indeed, a federal district court recently concluded that Texas’ law was designed specifically to discriminate against minority communities.
Under the circumstances, it seems hard to deny that we’re talking about a policy of modern-day poll taxes.
Jonathan Chait’s recent take of the larger dynamic summarized the issue perfectly.
During the Obama era … [Republicans] have passed laws requiring photo identification, forcing prospective voters who lack them, who are disproportionately Democratic and nonwhite, to undergo the extra time and inconvenience of acquiring them. They have likewise fought to reduce early voting hours on nights and weekends, thereby making it harder for wage workers and single parents, who have less flexibility at work and in their child care, to cast a ballot.
The effect of all these policies is identical to a poll tax…. It imposes burdens of money and time upon prospective voters, which are more easily borne by the rich and middle-class, thereby weeding out less motivated voters. Voting restrictions are usually enacted by Republican-controlled states with close political balances, where the small reduction in turnout it produces among Democratic-leaning constituencies is potentially decisive in a close race.
The simple logic of supply and demand suggests that if you raise the cost of a good, the demand for it will fall. Requiring voters to spend time and money obtaining new papers and cards as a condition of voting will axiomatically lead to fewer of them voting.
There is ample reason to believe that for Republican opponents of voting rights, this is a feature, not a bug. For all the rhetoric about “voting integrity” and imaginary claims about the scourge of systemic “voter fraud,” the underlying goal is to discourage participation, and in the process, improve GOP candidates’ odds of success.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 30, 2014
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