By: Harold Meyerson
Like Poe’s purloined letter, the Republican plan to heist the 2012 presidential election sits before us in plain view. And going Poe one better, it is perfectly legal. Rigging the already anti-democratic electoral college should not become the way to win the White House, says Harold Meyerson

The first part of the strategy has been unfolding for months. Since the 2010 elections brought Republicans to power in numerous swing states, officials in many of those states have made it harder for minority, poor and young voters to cast their ballots. GOP governments have been curtailing early voting (in Ohio and Florida) and requiring voters to produce official photo-identification cards (in Wisconsin). In South Carolina, the poll tax lives again: Voters who want an official photo-ID card must present a passport or a birth certificate, neither of which can be obtained for free.

Recently a new ploy has emerged, focused on the electoral college. In Pennsylvania, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R) has proposed changing the way the state’s electoral votes are tallied in presidential elections. (A state’s electoral votes reflect the number of its U.S. congressional districts, plus two more for its Senate seats.) Instead of having all of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes go to the candidate who carries the state’s popular vote, as is the long-standing practice in Pennsylvania and 47 other states, Pileggi wants to apportion those votes by congressional district.

Since Bill Clinton carried Pennsylvania in 1992, the state has gone Democratic in every presidential election. In 2008, Barack Obama carried Pennsylvania with 55 percent of its popular vote, thereby winning its 21 electoral votes. But if Pileggi’s plan had been in place, John McCain would have been given 10 electoral votes by virtue of winning 10 congressional districts. Obama would have been awarded nine for the nine congressional districts he carried, plus two for carrying the state’s popular vote.

The 2010 Census reduced Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation from 19 to 18, and the Republican legislature and governor have drawn new lines intended to create GOP majorities in 12 of the 18 districts. Under Pileggi’s plan, Obama could carry the state in 2012 — by winning huge majorities in heavily Democratic Philadelphia — and still lose the majority of its electoral votes.

Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania’s Republican governor, has said he’ll support the Pileggi plan. Other swing states that came under GOP control after 2010 could adopt their own versions: Thus Obama could carry Michigan, thanks to strong support in Detroit, or Ohio, as a result of big numbers in Cleveland and Columbus, and still lose most of those states’ electoral votes.

Ultimately, what Pileggi’s plan does is extend to the states the electoral college’s bias against popular-vote majorities. The electoral college, after all, was created out of a compromise so that Southern whites wouldn’t be outvoted by Northerners in the House of Representatives or in presidential elections. The compromise was to tally slaves in apportioning congressional districts among the states, and then award the presidency to the winner of the states’ electoral vote, not of the nationwide popular count. In 2000, Al Gore won half a million more votes than George W. Bush, but through the magic of electoral-college apportionment and a Republican Supreme Court, Bush won the White House. Under this new Republican scheme, candidates who win a state’s popular votes could still lose the majority of its electoral votes.

Considered in tandem with the drive to reduce voting among minorities and low-income citizens, the emerging Republican opposition to popular-vote democracy makes long-term strategic sense. With each year, the nation’s population and electorate become less white, even as the Republican Party becomes more and more a white folks’ party. As minorities and the poor tend to cluster in cities, in heavily Democratic congressional districts, apportioning a state’s electoral votes by congressional district creates an opportunity for GOP electoral gains even though the party’s share of the popular vote is waning. By contrast, a number of states controlled by Democrats (most recently, California) are trying to scrap the electoral college by conditionally pledging their electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote; the shift would take effect if and when enough states to elect a president go this route.

It may be that the 2012 presidential election ends in a landslide victory, no matter how the electoral votes are apportioned. But suppose a Republican wins only by virtue of vote suppression and plans such as Pileggi’s. There would be no basis to challenge the legality of the winner’s claim. The same cannot be said of his legitimacy. And if Rick Perry or Mitt Romney takes office solely by virtue of such anti-majoritarian chicanery, Democrats should not hesitate to challenge his presidency — based as it is on flouting majority rule — at every turn. They should refuse, for starters, to confirm his Cabinet appointments.

Rigging the already anti-democratic electoral college should not become the way to win the White House.

PLAYLIST: Republican Election Fraud — How They Steal Elections

PLAYLIST: Republican Voter Suppression

   By: Michael Tomasky
It was a rare confessional moment for Barack Obama. At a Miami fundraiser in mid-June, the president acknowledged that it’s “not as cool” as it was in 2008 to support him. It isn’t just a matter of fewer hip posters and viral videos. It’s a matter of votes. Rekindling the enthusiasm of African-Americans, educated white liberals, Latinos, young people, and union members–the Democratic Party’s most loyal and progressive members–will be a huge challenge. After all, you can only elect the first African-American president once, and the past two and a half years have deeply disappointed many liberals. “I know a lot of the kids who worked hard in 2008,” says Hodding Carter III, adviser to the last one-term Democratic president (Jimmy Carter) and now a professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. “They walk around like cattle who’ve been hit with stun guns between their eyes. This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”

Obama and his people have heard this sort of thing so often that they no longer bother to take umbrage. When I asked chief Obama reelection guru David Axelrod about this sense of disillusionment, he patiently ticked off a list of accomplishments: health-care reform, repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” financial regulatory reform, the drawdown from Iraq, student-loan reform. “Did we keep faith with the things that the president said he would do when he ran?” asks Axelrod. “There is a long list of things he said he’d do that we in fact did.”

It’s a solid inventory. But it’s countered by the undeniable reality that the country hasn’t noticeably moved in a more liberal direction (quite the opposite), and by the widely held perception among progressives that Obama will never wage fierce battle on behalf of liberal ideals. When I interviewed Justin Ruben, the executive director of MoveOn.org, whose 5 million members (many in swing states) must be revved up and mobilized if the president is to be reelected, he gave me four or five variants of the line “People need to feel like the president and the Democrats are really going to fight for their side.”

   President Obama arrives in Miami on June 13.

Unfortunately, making tough, partisan economic arguments has never been the president’s strong suit. “Since the beginning of his candidacy in 2007, Barack has struggled to put together a sustained, winning economic argument,” said Simon Rosenberg of NDN, a Washington-based think tank.

“With ‘Morning in America’ not really a viable option for 2012, he is going to have to draw brighter lines with the GOP, and particularly do much more to discredit their failed and reckless economic approach.”

The base vote can still emerge in large numbers, but the dominant factor this time won’t be hope and change. Instead, the factors will be fear of the other side, state and local political conditions (think of how motivated Democrats are to regain control of their politics in Wisconsin), and demographic changes that are still redounding to the Democrats’ benefit. And because we elect presidents by states, the place to assess Obama’s prospects is on the ground.

Wake County, N.C.; Arapahoe County, Colo.; Franklin County, Ohio–these are representative base Democratic counties. They are in swing states, which means the president will need a big vote in these places to offset a presumed high conservative turnout in other parts of these states. And they are counties that have only recently become solidly Democratic, because of demographic changes. “Obama’s majorities in these counties are not secure,” says Ruy Teixeira, coauthor of the 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority, which predicted the bluing of states like then-red Colorado. “He needs a full-bore mobilization effort in these counties to get his supporters out and develop the margins he needs to carry swing states like Ohio, Colorado, and North Carolina.”

Wake County is home to Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina. Bush won it by 7 points in 2000 and then, in a sign that demographics were changing, by just 2 points in 2004 against the Yankee John Kerry. But in 2008 Obama blew it open–a 15-point win, 57-42, and a turnout 80,000 votes higher than in ’04. Since then? Very different story. In 2009 voters installed an aggressive conservative majority on the school board, and in 2010 Republicans took a congressional seat and swept most state and county offices (the GOP won back both statehouses last year).

I don’t know a single expert who thinks Obama has a great shot at winning the Tarheel State again. But he wants it badly enough to hold the Democratic convention in Charlotte (Mecklenburg will be another county to watch). Mack Paul, the attorney who chairs the Wake County Democratic Party, believes that population growth has brought in more Democrats since 2008, and he insists, “I hear more anger directed at Democrats who don’t support the president.” His GOP counterpart, Sue Bryant, ventures that her party’s candidate might just carry Wake, but “even if we come within 5 points here, that’s the election in North Carolina.”

In Arapahoe County, outside Denver, Democrats only recently came to outnumber Republicans in voter enrollment. But the trend lines are clear: whereas Bush beat Kerry 51-47 in 2004, Obama romped McCain by 56-43 in 2008, when turnout was about 15 percent higher than four years earlier.

In the last decade, the Latino population of Arapahoe County has more than doubled, to 105,249. If the Democratic Party can register and mobilize this key Obama constituency–Latinos gave him 67 percent of their votes nationally last time–the president would likely carry Arapahoe by a far larger margin than he did in ’08. But Olivia Mendoza, executive director of the nonpartisan Colorado Latino Forum, says the community’s temperature about Obama is awfully lukewarm. “This is very anecdotal,” Mendoza ventures, “but overall, in my experience? General dissatisfaction.”

Todd Mata, the county Democratic chairman, acknowledges that “a lot of people are a little disillusioned, rightly or wrongly,” with Obama, but he says that on the ground, the party structure is working much more closely than last time with Organizing for America (OFA), the Obama get-out-the-vote vehicle. Obama might benefit here from a local GOP that “doesn’t have it together,” according to Scott Adler, political-science professor at the University of Colorado. When I spoke with Joy Hoffman, the county Republican chairwoman, she did acknowledge she’s herding cats, between the more traditional Republicans and no fewer than “15 or 16 distinct Tea Party groupings in the county.” But, she insisted, the state GOP is picking up the pieces from its 2010 debacle, when its gubernatorial candidate got just 11 percent of the vote.

And then there’s Ohio. Big numbers in Franklin County–home to the state capital of Columbus, Ohio’s largest city–are crucial to Democratic hopes. Again, the trend is evident: Al Gore won the county 49-48 in 2000, when 414,000 votes were cast. Kerry won it 53-45, with 517,000 total votes. Obama: a 59-40 blowout on the strength of 575,000 total votes.

It’s pretty difficult to imagine another nearly 20-point win. But Greg Schultz, the county’s Democratic chairman and the state director for OFA, says an on-the-ground network exists today in a way it didn’t even in 2008. “There’s a structure that remains in place today that is self-organizing,” he boasts, even in Republican-leaning parts of the county like Westerville.

Another factor that might motivate Democrats in Franklin, and across Ohio: the unpopular Republican governor, John Kasich. He won a narrow victory over Democratic incumbent Ted Strickland in 2010, when base Republican voters turned out and their Democratic counterparts did not. Now Kasich and his public-employee-union-bashing bill (S.B. 5) are targets of rage. “If the Democrats are smart,” says Herb Asher of the Ohio State University, “here and in Wisconsin they’ll have a very simple theme: Elections have consequences. Look at what happened in your states.”

That’ll be about the strongest argument Obama can make to base voters: it could, and will, be a lot worse if you don’t vote for me. That’s true, and fear is usually a pretty good motivator in politics. But it still isn’t what people were hoping for, and it seems inevitable that some percentage of the most loyal Democrats will stay home. In these three counties and others like them, that percentage will be the difference between reelection and retirement.

Playlist: Road To 2012 U.S. Presidential Elections [ 194 Clips ]

Playlist: Road To 2012 — Barack Obama Re-Election Campaign [ 43 Clips ]

The political degenerates at Fox have done it again!

MMF: Days after host Eric Bolling used scripted news teases and online graphics to portray hip-hop artist Common and the president of Gabon as a couple of the “hoods” that President Obama hosted in “the hizzy,” an image of Obama appeared onscreen during the Monday episode of Glenn Beck at the exact moment Beck asked, “Why would you get a gun?” [ READ MORE ]

Beck Asks, “Why Would You Get A Gun?” — Then Points To Pictures Of Obama, Sunstein

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I say somebody ought to castrate this treasonous goon, his boss Ailes and the owner of Fox — Rupert Murdoch! Fox employees and Republicans in general have incited their imbecile, gun packing, racist anti-Obama audience — numerous times before. Here are some examples:

1. Glenn Beck Threatens Obama’s Life
2. PSALM 109:8 — The ‘Treasonous’ Republican Prayer For Obama
3. Fox’s Mike Huckabee Wishes Loudly That Obama be Shot
4. Plot To Kill Obama — White Supremacist Assassins Caught In Denver …
5. Republican Pastor Prays For Obama’s Death
6. Secret Service: Palin Responsible For Death Threats Against Obama
7. Who is Going To Shoot Obama?; Racist-Hypocrite Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) Incites Town Hall ‘Neo-Klan Lynch-Mob’
5. Pattern of Violent Rhetoric From Fox Personalities — John Stossel, Glenn Beck, Dick Morris, …Bill O’Reilly

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Elsewhere: The Union Busting, Police ‘Idioting’, racist, “All-White” government Ohio Governor — John Kasich, Took a Swipe at LeBron James

Following the Miami Heat’s loss in the NBA Finals Sunday night, Ohio’s Republican Governor John Kasich, on Monday issued a resolution proclaiming the NBA champion Dallas Mavericks “honorary Ohioans” since “the proud city of Cleveland and the entire state of Ohio share the excitement of Dallas Mavericks fans everywhere.”

“Nowitzki chose to resign with the Dallas Mavericks in the summer of 2010, forgoing free agency and keeping his talents in Dallas, thus remaining loyal to the team, city and fans for whom he played his entire career,” wrote Kasich.

James played his first seven NBA seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers before announcing last July in a highly publicized prime time television special that he would leave Cleveland to team up with a spate of other all-star players in Miami.

The move instantly soured James’ relationship with Cavaliers fans and pretty much everyone else in Ohio.

No word yet on how the Mavericks players and fans will take advantage of all of the “privileges and honors” that come with their new honorary citizenship.

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Reference: ‘NBA Billionaire Owner’ Dan Gilbert Goes Nuts After His ‘Strongest Slave’ ‘Mandingo James’ Bolts The Plantation; Jesse Calls Him Out
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   By: Donna Brazile
GOPs 2012 game plan is to keep voters home: Across America, Republican lawmakers have talked a big game about cutting budgets, but they also are seeking reductions to something much more fundamental: Americans’ voting rights. From coast to coast, the GOP is engaged in what appears to be a coordinated, expensive effort to block voters from the polls.

The motivation is political — a cynical effort to restrict voting by traditionally Democratic-leaning Americans. In more than 30 states, GOP legislators are on the move, from a sweeping rewrite of Florida’s election laws to new rules for photo identification in Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina and more than 20 other states.

As a result, 11% of Americans — 21 million citizens of voting age who lack proper photo identification — could be turned away on Election Day. And these people tend to be most highly concentrated among people of color, the poor, the young and the old.

Florida’s mess

The Florida Legislature recently sent an overhaul of the state’s election code to Republican Gov. Rick Scott. Among other things, this bill would slash early voting from 14 days down to eight. And it would, according to the non-partisan League of Women Voters, impose fines on voter registration drives for all completed voter registration forms that are not returned to the state within 48 hours — a big reduction from the current 10-day deadline.

Yet another hurdle: Voters who had moved to another county (potentially millions of people) would not be able to update their addresses at the polls on Election Day. Under the proposed law, these voters would have to cast a provisional ballot, which used to be cast when a voter’s eligibility was questioned. Such ballots sometimes are not counted. Do we really want to see Florida’s 2000 election controversy replayed?

In the states pushing for strict photo ID requirements, Republican lawmakers have argued that voter impersonators need to be stopped. Yet in Ohio or Wisconsin — two swing states where GOP legislatures are pushing for mandates — there is no record of this ever happening.

Unnecessary, costly

But not all Republicans support voter IDs. Jon Husted, Ohio’s secretary of state, says “a better way” would be to rely on a utility bill, government-issued check, or bank statement at the polling place — as now permitted in Ohio.

In the largest disconnect from their campaign rhetoric, Republicans ignore the high cost of these laws. In the four years since Indiana passed the nation’s first such requirement, it has spent more than $10 million to provide free state ID cards. The Institute for Southern Studies estimated that a similar ID law in North Carolina would cost $18 million to $25 million over three years — money that could be used to keep cops on the street or teachers in the classroom.

So these voting hurdles won’t improve the integrity of our elections, but they will change the face of the electorate.

President Obama was swept into office with overwhelming support from newly registered voters, minority voters and youth voters. I suppose it’s not a surprise, then, that heading into the 2012 election, these are the groups who will be most affected by these restrictions.

In my career, I have felt the elation of a hard-fought, successful campaign and the crushing defeat of an equally grueling loss. I’ve learned that campaigns are about which side makes the more compelling case to the electorate.This is what makes our democracy great. What the GOP is attempting to do is change the rules of the game, leaving only their players on the field.

About The Author: Donna Brazile, a Democratic political strategist is a university professor, author, columnist, and the Democratic National Committee’s Vice Chair of Voter Registration and Participation. The author of the best-selling book Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics. She can be seen as a political contributor on CNN and ABC as well as “This Week with Christiane Amanpour.” Ms Brazile is the author of Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in America (See all Biographies & Memoirs). Visit her website at: http://donnabrazile.com/ | Follow Donna on Twitter: http://twitter.com/donnabrazile.

Playlist: Republican Voter Suppression

References:

1. How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative
2. Election Rigging in Ohio, 2004
3. How To Rig An Election In The United States
4. Vote Rigging – Voter Suppression Articles in PA
4. How Bush Stole Florida in 2000
5. Republican governor of Florida Rick Scott signed a controversial voter bill that critics say will disenfranchise voters – The bill reduces the early voting period to 8 days from 14, bars people from changing their address at the polls, and imposes tough new rules on organizations that register people to vote. The news could cast doubt on the outcome of a lawsuit by a Miami-Dade Republican running for county mayor, who says the law if implemented now, could disenfranchise voters. [ READ MORE ]

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MMFA: After President Obama released the long-form version of his birth certificate, members of the conservative media declared Donald Trump the “winner” for having pushed birther theories so intently. However, these conservative media figures ignored the fact that the long-form birth certificate made Trump’s previous claims that Obama’s birth certificate “was missing” and that Obama might not even “have a birth certificate” look completely ridiculous. [ READ MORE ]

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Meanwhile, over the weekend Trump unleashed a profanity laced tirade in Las Vegas to a Republican Women’s Group, who slurped it in like cotton candy. This came immediately after Mr. Trump had been “savagely” mocked by President Obama and comedian Seth Meyers at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, both who belittled Trump [ Correctly ] as a political charlatan with an unchecked ego and a dead fox plastered on his head. LOL!

The ‘Family Values’ Party Slurps-Up Donald J. Trump’s ‘Foul-Mouthed‘ Comedy Show

As Low as It Takes: Donald J.Trump Continues ill-Advised Tough-Racist Talk

Trump Unleashes Foul-Mouthed Speech in Vegas; Romney Wants To ‘Hang’ Obama

….and I am not surprised that the HARD-CORE birthers including Trump are not convinced and/or are busy moving the goal-posts. They are now claiming that the document(Obama’s Long-Form Birth Certificate) is fake or has been altered, and that Obama played “rope-a-dope” on birther issue — to distract from other issues.

   Pamela Geller and Eric Bolling(The New Glenn Beck) Excrete Diarrhea on a Life Size Picture of Obama’s Birth
   Certificate

‘Birther-Haters’ Pamela Geller, Eric Bolling Move Goal Posts After Obama Releases Birth Certificate

Anti-Obama Racism: Donald Trump and The GOP’s Race Problem

It’s NOT About The Birth Certificate!!…..

Finally,

THE REPUBLICAN STRATEGY FOR 2012 ELECTIONS — DISQUALIFY ELIGIBLE VOTERS: Across the country, Republican lawmakers are resurrecting one of their party’s favorite but most cowardly tactics to quote, win elections. They are seeking to create new barriers to voting by passing stricter voter ID laws intended to prevent the very electoral segments who helped to elect President Obama in 2008 from receiving ballots in 2012, particularly the young, poor and elderly, according to voting rights groups. [ READ MORE ]

More on How Republicans are Planning To Steal 2012, as They Did in 2004 (OHIO) and 2000 (FLORIDA)

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