Obama Admin., Democrats Media Push Ferguson Hands Up Don #39;t Shoot LIE
Michael Brown Incident- New Evidence Clears Police: https://youtu.be/U9jGYu4IOt8 CNN: Michael Brown autopsy expert may be a fraud ...
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Obama Admin., Democrats & Media Push Ferguson Hands Up Don't Shoot LIE - Video
By Emily Cahn and Alexis Levinson Posted at 7:08 a.m. on March 23
Murphys Senate bid is opening up his competitive House district. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call File Photo)
A Senate recruitment victory for Democrats in Florida could, in turn, jeopardize the partys quest for the House majority.
Rep. Patrick Murphy, a favorite of national Democrats for the states potentially open-seat Senate race, is announcinghis statewide campaign Monday. Thatopensupthe Treasure Coast-based House seat Murphy held for the past two cycles one of just five Democrat-controlled House districts Mitt Romney carried in 2012.
Republicans have a voter registrationadvantage in the district, whichRomney won by 4 points. Its a seat Republicans say they never should have lost in the first place, and they are even more optimistic with it open.
There is a strongRepublican field growing down there, said Rick Wilson, a Florida-based GOP consultant. I dont think Murphys luck the first time and no race the second time should be indicative of the competitiveness of the seat.
Needing to pick up 30 seats for House control, if Democrats hold out any hope of winning the majority in the near future this is exactly the kind of district the party cant afford to lose.
The last time Democrats netted at least 30 seats was in 2006, when an unpopular Republican president dragged the GOP down and Democrats won moderate and Republican-leaning districts. Democrats expect next year to be a far more favorable environment than the dismal 2014, with the presidential race driving turnout.
Murphy captured his House seatin 2012 by ousting incumbent Republican Allen West, a tea party firebrand andfount of provocative comments. West is now a Texas resident, he told CQ Roll Call during a recent visit to Capitol Hill, and cannot run for his old seat.
Since that election, Murphy has proved to be a politically astute incumbent. His strong fundraisingcoupled with his moderate voting record scared off top-tier GOP opponents in 2014.
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Democrats' Florida Senate Hopes Could Cost House Seat
Democrats had an impressive weekend in early voting: they will head into Tuesday's election with about a 5 percent turnout advantage over Republicans.
The quick partisan breakdown of early and mail-in ballots: Democrats cast 40,979 votes, Republicans cast 36,432, and voters belonging to "other" parties cast 9,805.
Mayor Alvin Brown's re-election campaign boosted by national Democratic stars and money from the national and state parties is hoping to win outright Tuesday, thus locking up the race without a runoff in the May general election. Winning more than 50 percent of the vote in the first election in which all four mayoral candidates are competing regardless of party is a high bar.
Can the mayor pull off an outright re-election win Tuesday? It would be a stunning win over a well-funded Republican in Lenny Curry, who has locked up endorsements and money from much of Jacksonville's business establishment, local law enforcement, national and state Republicans and many of the city's prominentelected officials.
But the Democrats' strong early-voting push which will benefit their candidates up and down the ballot has turned some heads.
Here are some basic questions to consider before Tuesday's election:
Keep in mind that partisan breakdown of early and mail-in ballots gives us a glimpse into who is getting votes, but it's not an absolute picture.
To that end, is City Councilman Bill Bishop pulling a significant number of Democrats away from Brown? Bishop a Republican who has, at least for Jacksonville politics, staked out a fewprogressive positionsis hoping he does. He'll pull Republicans away from Curry, too. But if Brown hopes to clear 50 percent Tuesday and avoid a runoff with Curry, he needs to bank on Bishop not registering with many Democrats.
Relatedly, is Brown pulling any Republican support? The mayor has made a play to get support from across the aisle. Throughout the campaign, he's tried to position himself as a non-partisan leader who counts Republicans among his friends and political allies. And then there are all those Gov. Rick Scott references.
And perhaps the most obvious, but vexing, question: Who are those 9,805 "other" party voters supporting? This is a frustrating one for everyone.
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Democrats surge in early voting, but unknowns remain ahead of Tuesday election
But just how challenging that task will be was crystal clear Monday afternoon when White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said the administration would not overlook Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's flip-flop on Palestinian statehood last week.
McDonough told a friendly crowd during a conference held by the pro-Palestine Jewish advocacy group J-Street that a two-state solution is "the best way to guard Israel's long-term security," and that's why Netanyahu's declaration that there would be no Palestinian state while he was prime minister which he later disavowed was "very troubling."
"After the election, the prime minister said that he had not changed his position, but for many in Israel and in the international community such contradictory comments call into question his commitment to a two-state solution," McDonough said. "We cannot simply pretend that these comments were never made."
McDonough repeatedly pledged strong U.S. support for Israel, promising to "continue to ensure Israel's qualitative military edge" and echoing President Barack Obama's proclamation that the U.S. "has Israel's back."
RELATED: 367 House lawmakers warn Obama on Iran
But his remarks underscore just how fraught relations between the two nations have become in the wake of Netanyahu's speech to Congress earlier this month, against the urging of the White House and a number of congressional Democrats, who saw it as an affront to the President.
Following his election win last week, Obama told Netanyahu that he would "reassess" U.S. support for Israel. Obama was reportedly particularly offended by Netanyahu's comments that Arab Israelis were coming out to vote in "droves," which critics said had racial undertones.
Netanyahu apologized for those comments in a Facebook post on Monday.
"I know that my comments last week offended some Israeli citizens and offended members of the Israeli Arab community," Netanyahu said, according to a translation provided by his party, Likud. "This was never my intent. I apologize for this."
Congressional Democrats, it seems, are looking to mend fences as well. Israel told CNN that he helped arrange the dinner with Dermer, which will take place at the Israeli ambassador's residence, in hopes of "tamping down on the drama" between Democrats and the Israeli prime minister's government.
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First on CNN: House Democrats to dine with Israeli ambassador
In a recent interview, Rep. Steve King of Iowa said:
I dont understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their president.
Steve King has questions. We have answers.
I turned to the political scientist Kenneth Wald, who is the distinguished professor of political science and Samuel R. Bud Shorstein Professor of American Jewish Culture & Society at the University of Florida. He is also the author of the newly published article The Choosing People: The Puzzling Politics of American Jewry. He graciously responded to some questions via e-mail. Below is a lightly edited version:
Q: The title of your article refers to the puzzling politics of American Jewry. So what is puzzling about their politics?
In their voting behavior, political identity and attitudes, American Jews are disproportionately clustered on the liberal/Democratic side of the political spectrum. The pattern has held more or less steady since the late 1920s. But we expect most affluent people to favor the party of the right. As a group, even allowing for individual differences, American Jews rank at or near the top on most measures of social class education, income, occupational prestige and such. That makes their commitment to the Democratic party and liberal values puzzling.
Q: Your argument discounts explanations that depend on the distinctive aspects of Judaism. For example, you say that its not that Jewish values promote liberalism, or that liberals have historically been more accepting of Jews, or that Jews tend to make common cause with other socially marginalized groups on the left, like blacks. Whats wrong with those explanations?
I criticize what I call Judaic theories that emphasize Jewish values, Jewish historical experience, and minority consciousness as the cause of this liberal/Democratic skew among American Jews. I dont mean to deny that one can interpret Judaism as intrinsically left-liberal or read the historical record to conclude that liberals have historically been supportive of Jewish aspirations, or that having been a stigmatized minority may engender Jewish empathy with other oppressed groups.
But these explanations dont help us explain political differences among Jews across countries or over time. American Jews share a religious tradition, historical inheritance, and minority status with most Jewish communities around the globe and yet only Jews in the United States are concentrated on the left. Jews outside the U.S. are sometimes centrist, sometimes rightist, and occasionally indistinct from the general population, but never as tightly clustered on the left as American Jews.
And if, as these theories presuppose, liberalism is intrinsic in the Jewish experience, how can we explain short-term fluctuations in American Jewish political behavior? Judaic theories are universal and static, so they cannot account for American Jewish political exceptionalism nor the oscillations in American Jewish voting patterns.
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Monkey Cage: Why most American Jews vote for Democrats, explained