Election Day 2013 All of Them

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Mann 2, Cuccinelli 0: Climate Denial Becomes Wedge Issue, As Hockey Stick Beats Tea Party

The pro-science side has won the latest skirmish in the climate wars. In a tight race where climate denial became a focus, pro-science candidate Terry McAuliffe was elected governor of Virginia over anti-science candidate Ken Cuccinelli, who infamously launched a (losing) witch hunt against leading climatologist Michael Mann.

And in a timely coincidence, that most vindicated of climate scientists has just published the paperback version of his excellent new book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. Anyone who wants to be informed about real climate science and the state of the climate fight should get a copy here.

Chris Mooney noted in his 2012 article on my blogging, “For years, he’s been arguing that talking about the science of warming is a winning political strategy. Now, new polling data are backing him up.”

More and more public opinion analysis is making clear that a candidate advocating climate action drives a wedge between the anti-science Tea Party extremists and the rest of the Republican party (and independent/moderate voters).

In fact, a Pew poll out just this month finds that the Tea Party is the only major political group in this country mired in denial. While 67% of all Americans say “there is solid evidence that the earth has been getting warmer over the last few decades,” and 61% of non-Tea Party Republicans say that, only 25% of Tea Party Republicans agree with that basic statement of fact.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...l-wedge-issue/

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Minimum wage: Today SeaTac, tomorrow the nation?

Well, no. If the trend holds and SeaTac voters approve a $15-per-hour minimum wage, it will be very hard to translate this victory into a national movement.

SeaTac is a tiny municipality with only 12,000 registered voters. It has a large number of low-wage restaurant and hotel businesses that are captive to their proximity to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. They will have little choice but to pay the new wage.

For that same reason, SeaTac won’t likely be a useful laboratory to examine the unintended consequences that critics warned about, or the benefits that supporters claim.

Enacting the wage in a city such as Seattle would be much more difficult, even though Mayor-elect Ed Murray has paid lip service to it. Business community resistance would be fierce and potent. And businesses would have more options: Move, close, cut back hours and refuse to hire the least-skilled workers.


America does face a serious inequality problem that drives support for measures such as the SeaTac vote. At one time, businesses shared productivity gains more widely with workers. That stopped in the 1970s. If the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity, it would have been $21.72 an hour last year, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Instead, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 and $9.19 in Washington, the highest in the nation.

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/jontal...ow-the-nation/

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G.O.P. Weighs Limiting Clout of Right Wing

Leaders of the Republican establishment, alarmed by the emergence of far-right and often unpredictable Tea Party candidates, are pushing their party to rethink how it chooses nominees and advocating changes they say would result in the selection of less extreme contenders.

The push comes as the national Republican Party is grappling with vexing divisions over its iden y and image, and mainstream leaders complain that more ideologically-driven conservatives are damaging the party with tactics like the government shutdown.

The debate intensified on Wednesday after Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the deeply conservative Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, lost a close race in which Democrats highlighted his opposition to abortion in almost all cir stances, his views on contraception and comments in which he seemed to liken immigration policy to pest control.

The party leaders pushing for changes want to replace state caucuses and conventions, like the one that nominated Mr. Cuccinelli, with a more open primary system that they believe will draw a broader cross-section of Republicans and produce more moderate candidates.

Similar pushes are already underway in other states, including Montana and Utah,

“Conventions have a flimsy track record of selecting the most electable candidates,” David Kochel, an Iowa-based Republican strategist, said in an interview on Wednesday. “There’s just no good subs ute for a full-scale vetting by a large universe of primary voters.”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/11/07...?from=homepage