As many have already observed, one of the big questions that will help decide whether Hillary Clinton wins the White House next year is this: Can Clinton turn out the coalition that helped power Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 wins at the same levels that the president did?
A new poll by veteran Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, to be released later this morning, illustrates the challenge Clinton faces.
Unmarried women, minorities, and particularly millennials are less interested in next year's voting than seniors, conservatives, and white non-college men are. Non-college women — a group the Clinton camp is reportedly eyeing as a way to expand on the Obama coalition — are also less interested.
But Greenberg's pollsters are sounding the alarm now, warning that Democrats need to take more steps to tailor their message towards boosting the interest level among these voters. As Stan Greenberg outlines in his new book, America Ascendant, the key to engaging these voters is two-fold. It isn't enough to simply outline bold economic policies to deal with college affordability, child care (universal pre-K), workplace flexibility (paid family and sick leave), and so forth, though those things are crucial. What's also required to engage these groups, Greenberg argues, is a reform agenda geared to reducing the influence of the wealthy, the lobbyists, and the special interests over our politics. Today's new poll suggests the same.
Thus, it's not an accident that Clinton, in addition to embracing a robust economic agenda, has also stressed campaign finance and voting access reform. Her campaign knows engaging these voter groups on Obama-like levels is crucial to her White House hopes, and seems to share in Greenberg's analysis.
Rubio has scored a rating of 90 percent from Heritage Action, 93 percent from the Club For Growth, and 98 percent from the American Conservative Union, three conservative groups that grade Republicans on purity. By contrast, Cruz's ratings are 98 percent, 96 percent, and 100 percent — not a huge difference. Both are far above the GOP average and rank among the most ideologically conservative senators.
Democrats have five incumbents at the top of their target list — GOP Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rob Portman of Ohio, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire — as well as open seats in Nevada and Florida….In Arkansas, they believe they have a strong candidate in former U.S. Attorney Conner Eldridge to take on Republican Sen. John Boozman. In Arizona, they're optimistic that Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick can give Republican Sen. John McCain a tough challenge.
But Dem chances of winning in places like North Carolina and Indiana may not be as great as expected. Still, Dems only have to flip four seats out of the above seven if they win the White House.
With both houses of Congress in Republican hands, the push for automatic voter registration is starting in the states. Oregon enacted the first such law this spring, and California passed a similar measure last month….legislation to enact automatic voter registration [is] pending in 17 states….The group also plans to begin a petition drive in Ohio to put automatic registration on the ballot next November. And it is exploring the possibility of ballot measures in Colorado, Florida and Nevada.
It's another reminder of the long-term importance for Democrats of regaining ground on the level of the states.
* A DEEP DIVE INTO HILLARY'S EMAILS: Hillary Clinton has claimed that "90 to 95 percent" of her work related emails are "in the State Department system." Glenn Kessler does a very deep dive into the controversy over this statement and what is really true and what isn't, concluding that it is "not unreasonable" for her to claim that most those emails might be in the State Department's system, but that it is wrong for her to definitively declare this to be so.
The upshot is that these emails were sent over State Department servers, because they were sent to other State employees with .gov accounts, but the department has not made any official determination of how many of them have been captured.
For one thing, rising mortality is a uniquely American phenomenon – yet America has both a much weaker welfare state and a much stronger role for traditional religion and values than any other advanced country….Life expectancy is high and rising in the Northeast and California, where social benefits are highest and traditional values weakest. Meanwhile, low and stagnant or declining life expectancy is concentrated in the Bible Belt.
Krugman also suggests that many of these Americans may be feeling betrayed by the American dream, though he concedes economic explanations may not account for what's happening.
Greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere reached another grim milestone earlier this year as carbon dioxide levels surpassed the symbolic threshold of 400 parts per million across much of the planet, the premier global meteorological association confirmed in a report to be released Monday….The report is likely to add to concerns about global warming in a year that climate experts say is almost certain to surpass 2014 as the hottest year in recorded history.
Which gives me another excuse to link to my new feature on the current state of GOP climate skepticism.