Year: 2013

The idea of forcing Congresscritters to wear NASCAR-style coveralls with the logos of their financial backers has been bandied about before, but here it is in official White House petition form.

Molly Ball asks "Has Obama Turned a Generation of Voters Into Lifelong Democrats?," -- and answers in the affirmative.

The under-30 vote went nearly as strongly for Obama as it had before: Obama got 66 percent of the under-30 vote in 2008 and 60 percent in 2012, the best youth-vote showings for any presidential candidate since 1971, when the voting age was lowered to 18. Against the by-now-familiar backdrop of massive Obama rallies on college campuses, liberal youth might just seem like the normal order of things. But there’s nothing natural about it. Ronald Reagan came within a point of capturing the under‑30 vote in his 1980 presidential election, then won it by 19 points in 1984, giving the lie to the idea that kids are inherently liberal. Now some Democrats hope Obama’s repeat success with young voters signals the arrival of a cohort whose members will vote Democratic for the rest of their lives. “These are voters who are in their formative years, politically,” Joel Benenson, the lead pollster for the Obama campaign, told me excitedly in the days after the election. “People frequently maintain the partisan identity that shapes their entry point into politics. What’s happening now is something people will hang on to for decades to come.” Could Benenson be right? Has Obama turned an entire generation of voters into lifelong Democrats? The answer, according to political scientists who study partisanship, may well be yes.

Here is the third update to the PDD-DL Vote Tracker, to reflect the action that has taken place since the General Assembly returned from the Budget hearing recess during February and early March. One bill you will not see on the chart below is the Marriage Equality Bill. But that is only because it has not been filed yet. It has been reported that Rep. Melanie George Smith will introduce marriage equality legislation during this session. The session ends on June 30, 2013 at midnight. Interestingly, the Supreme Court will likely issue its ruling in two marriage equality cases (Hollingsworth v. Perry is about the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 and United States v. Windsor argues that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional) on or about the same day, as the Court usually holds its most important or controversial decisions for the very last day of its term, which also ends at the end of June (remember last year with the Obamacare ruling, it was on June 28). One thought I had was that Rep. Smith would wait until the ruling to introduce the legislation as the worst the Court could do is return the issue of marriage equality to the states. But I would think Smith and other advocates would not want to wait until to last minute to introduce and then vote on the bill. So we are probably looking at April, after the Easter break. Come inside for the full chart.

President Obama: Governor Markell: Come inside for the West Wing Week and for President Obama's speech to the people of Israel.

It seems that the Israeli left and center is really really pleased, even excited, but President Obama's speech yesterday. From Haaretz:

Sometimes it takes someone from the outside, like U.S. President Barack Obama, to show up and tell it like it is to the Israelis: You've got a wonderful country, you're wise and just, you suffered and you deserve a state, and as long as the United States exists you'll never stand alone – but for God's sake, enough! Stop the settlements, stop the occupation, stop the deportations, stop the ongoing abuse of the Palestinians, and stop the settlers' violence. Enough.

As Mitt Romney struggled in the weeks leading up to the Michigan primary, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum nearly agreed to form a joint “Unity Ticket” to consolidate conservative support and topple Romney. “We were close,” former Representative Bob Walker, a Gingrich ally, says. But the negotiations collapsed in acrimony because Gingrich and Santorum could not agree on who would get to be president.