Posts by Delaware Dem

Democrats will miss him when he's gone, and should appreciate her while she's here, says Martin Longman:

I expected Democrats to begin expressing much higher approval numbers for Obama once they were forced to really think about Clinton or Sanders in the White House, but the trend is even stronger with independents who basically hate their choices in this election cycle:

Democrats have slowly looked at Obama more favorably since the beginning of 2015, but independents have begun to look at Obama much more favorably. After a sharp slide following his reelection, independents turned their opinions of Obama around at the beginning of 2014. Over the past year, that’s escalated. And since ratings from Democrats and Republicans are more stable, that shift by independents moves the needle a lot.

People don’t always realize that Obama’s approval numbers have been held down by the ambivalence of a lot of Democrats. The same is happening now to a much greater degree to Hillary Clinton. She won’t really have to do anything to see her negatives decline once the Democrats unite around her as the only chance of keeping Donald Trump away from the nuclear codes. If independents follow suit, which they will if they campaign is waged competently, she won’t be laboring under historically high negatives by the time people start voting.

As I said yesterday, Democrats want to fall in love with their candidates, while Republicans want to fall in line. You are seeing that now with all the Republicans falling in line behind Trump. And you will see Hillary's numbers rise when Democrats unite. The story of the Summer is set: The Resurrection of Hillary.

In this week's address, President Obama discussed one of the single most important steps to help grow middle-class wages – expanding the number of workers who are eligible for the overtime that they have earned. In his weekly message, Governor Markell highlights Delaware's commitment to ensuring students have the skills and education they need to thrive in the new economy.

Matt Taibbi asks if this is the end for Republicans: “If this isn’t the end for the Republican Party, it’ll be a shame. They dominated American political life for 50 years and were never anything but monsters. They bred in their voters the incredible attitude that Republicans were the only people within our borders who raised children, loved their country, died in battle or paid taxes. They even sullied the word ‘American’ by insisting they were the only real ones. They preferred Lubbock to Paris, and their idea of an intellectual was Newt Gingrich. Their leaders, from Ralph Reed to Bill Frist to Tom DeLay to Rick Santorum to Romney and Ryan, were an interminable assembly line of shrieking, witch-hunting celibates, all with the same haircut – the kind of people who thought Iran-Contra was nothing, but would grind the affairs of state to a halt over a blow job or Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.” “A century ago, the small-town American was Gary Cooper: tough, silent, upright and confident. The modern Republican Party changed that person into a haranguing neurotic who couldn’t make it through a dinner without quizzing you about your politics. They destroyed the American character. No hell is hot enough for them. And when Trump came along, they rolled over like the weaklings they’ve always been, bowing more or less instantly to his parodic show of strength.”