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As Obama’s Approval Rating Slips, Democrats are Avoiding Him

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Photo Credit: JACQUELYN MARTIN/AP
When President Obama goes abroad, world leaders come to meet him. When Obama travels at home these days, members of his own party often avoid him.

When Obama speaks Wednesday in St. Paul, Minn., on the economy, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) “hopes he can join the President,” a spokesman for the former funnyman said. “But it’s uncertain if his schedule will allow for travel since the Senate is in session.”

“Maybe out of an abundance of caution Franken is hesitating to be in the state,” said prominent political handicapper Stuart Rothenberg.

Minnesota is a liberal state by national standards. But a poll this month by the state’s Star Tribune newspaper found Obama’s approval rating there had for the first time turned negative. Half of Gopher State respondents disapproved of Obama’s performance while 43% approved, his worst marks since his election.

Nationally, Democrats hold 55 Senate seats to Republicans’ 45. But most contested Senate races feature Democratic incumbents running states Obama didn’t carry.

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Democratic and GOP Governors Face Off in Washington Over Minimum Wage Hike

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Photo Credit: REUTERSPresident Obama and fellow Democrats are trying to use the annual Washington meeting of governors to rally support for increasing the federal minimum wage, as their Republican counterparts argue the idea is a jobs killer.

“I’m not for increasing the minimum wage because I’m concerned it would destroy jobs, especially for small business owners,” said Oklahoma GOP Gov. Mary Fallin, chairman of the National Governors Association. “The market will take care of itself.”

The annual winter meeting officially began Saturday morning, but both sides were jockeying for position earlier, as the Democrat-controlled Senate prepares to debate the Obama-backed plan to incrementally increase the federal wage from to $7.25 to $10.10 an hour by 2016.

On Friday, Obama met with Democratic governors at the White House to build momentum for his effort.

“This is not just good policy. It also happens to be good politics,” he said. “Because the truth of the matter is the overwhelming majority of Americans think that raising the minimum wage is a good idea.”

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More Bad News for Democrat Mid-Term Prospects

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsBy Chris Stirewalt.

For a second straight week, Democrats find themselves explaining why it’s a good thing for fewer Americans to be employed. Last week, it was a Congressional Budget Office report that said millions would leave the U.S. workforce in order to obtain ObamaCare benefits. This week, the CBO says that the centerpiece of the Obama Democrats midterm campaign pitch, a call to increase the federal minimum wage by 40 percent, will cost as many as 1 million jobs.

Democrats aren’t much disputing the finding from the nonpartisan green-eyeshade brigade, but are instead trying to explain why less work is a good thing. Again. The argument is that while those low-wage jobs would be wiped out, the enhanced incomes of those still working will pay dividends in the years to come. It’s a similar argument as last week’s: Fewer people will work, but their being “freed” from unsatisfying employment will create new opportunities and raise overall living standards.

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Dems side with GOP over Medicare cuts

By Jonathan Easley.

Nineteen Democratic senators signed a letter Tuesday to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services warning of the dire consequences for seniors if cuts to Medicare Advantage go through as expected later this month.

The letter was signed by party heavyweights, including Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), as well as vulnerable Democrats facing reelection, such as Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

Twenty-one Republicans also signed the letter. The GOP has sought to make cuts to Medicare Advantage an election-year issue.

“We write to raise serious concerns about the Medicare Advantage (MA) 2015 rate notice and the impact further cuts may have on the millions of individuals enrolled in the program,” the senators write. “We are strongly committed to preserving the high quality health plan choices and benefits that our constituents receive through the MA program. Given the impact that payment policies could have on our constituents, we ask that you prioritize beneficiaries’ experience and minimize disruption in maintaining payment levels for 2015.”

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Busted! Democrats in Major Voting Scam (+video)

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Photo Credit: APA new investigative video by guerrilla journalist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas reveals Democrat activists in Texas boasting about breaking the state’s election law by mining confidential records.

O’Keefe, who helped bring down ACORN, the community “organizing” behemoth for which Barack Obama worked as a lawyer, shows Battleground Texas Field Organizer Jennifer Longoria confirming on video that the group is culling names, telephone numbers and addresses from voter registration cards to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis.

However, Project Veritas points out that copying the personal details is illegal in Texas.

In the video, Longoria explains that the goal of her group, run by a former field director for Obama for America, is to increase the number of voters in Texas to try to raise the support for Democrats.

“So every time we register somebody to vote, we keep their name, number,” she says. When a Project Veritas investigator asks, “That’s from the voter registration form?” Longoria responds, “That data collection is the key.”

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Congressional Budget Office: Wage Hike Would Lift Pay But Cost Jobs

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Photo Credit: REUTERSA plan by President Obama and fellow Democrats to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would cost roughly 500,000 jobs but increase wages for roughly 16.5 million Americans, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.

The report was immediately met with sharp Republican criticism for the wake hike plan.

“While helping some, mandating higher wages has real costs, including fewer people working,” said a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. “With unemployment Americans’ top concern, our focus should be creating — not destroying — jobs for those who need them most.”

The CBO analysts said their estimate of employment losses was approximate. They said the actual impact could range from a very slight employment reduction to a loss of one million workers.

Increasing the minimum wage has emerged as a key part of Obama’s second-term agenda, with the president restating his intentions just hours before the release of the report, at a public event in suburban Maryland.

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California Bill Seeks to Extend Subsidized Health Care to Illegal Immigrants

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Lucy NicholsonA California Democrat is looking to extend taxpayer-funded health-care benefits to illegal immigrants.

State Sen. Ricardo Lara of Long Beach introduced legislation late last week that would extend health-care coverage to all Californians “irrespective of immigration status.”

“The purpose of the Health For All Act is simple — provide health care coverage to California’s remaining uninsured by expanding Medi-Cal and creating a new health exchange where the undocumented can purchase coverage,” Lara said in a statement.

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House Dems Plan To Use Rare Tactic to Try to Force Vote on Immigration, Minimum Wage

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House Democrats are vowing to try a rarely used tactic to force votes in the GOP-led chamber on the minimum wage and immigration reform, a strategy that will likely fail but might hurt Republicans with voters in this year’s elections.

The tactic is known as a “discharge petition.” It would require the minority party, in this case Democrats, to persuade roughly two dozen Republicans to defy their leadership and join Democrats in forcing a vote on setting the federal minimum wage at $10.10 an hour.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said fellow chamber Democrats will push the issue when Congress returns from its break Feb. 24.

The attempt to force a vote on a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws could occur in a few months.

Democrats think that a majority of Americans support both issues and that attempting to use the discharge petition will at least portray House Republicans as the obstacle to their success.

Video: Democrats Running Ads Criticizing Obamacare

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In Florida’s 26th district, Democrats are running away from the president completely, and Obamacare in part:

Now, it is true that Garcia doesn’t call for repeal. Indeed, the ad boasts that the candidate is “working to fix” the law, and it praises him both for holding “insurance companies accountable” and for defending the provision that prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions…

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Obama Administration Undermining Key to America’s Unparalleled Success

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Photo Credit: NY Post Among its many stamps, the Postal Service has a series called “Made in America, Building a Nation.” The strip of “forever” stamps is a collection of iconic photographs of 20th-century industry featuring men and women toiling on railroads, skyscrapers and factory floors.

A celebration of work and workers, the series quotes Helen Keller saying, “The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”

My, oh, my, how times have changed. America now has a government that views work as a trap and celebrates those who escape it.

That is the upshot of last week’s remarkable exchange over ObamaCare. It began when the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the interplay of taxes and subsidies in the law “creates a disincentive for people to work.” The report predicted the mix would lead to fewer hours worked, costing the equivalent of nearly 2.5 million jobs.

In response, President Obama’s spokesman pleaded guilty — with pride and pleasure.

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To Distance Themselves from Obama, 2016 Democrats Will Move To the Left

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Photo Credit: Cliff OwenThe 2016 Democratic presidential field is likely to run to the left of President Obama, partly because candidates will try to distance themselves from his political baggage while jockeying for an increasingly liberal base of voters, analysts predict.

Prospective candidates and their surrogates insist it’s too early to tell what kind of standing Mr. Obama will have with voters and whether he will be seen as damaged goods the way President Bush was for Republicans in 2008.

But discontent is brewing within the Democratic Party over what some see as Mr. Obama’s concessions to Republicans.

Those Democratic voters will be looking for candidates willing to slide further to the left, especially on economic issues.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the next Democratic candidate is likely to be more populist than Obama has been. I think you might see [Hillary Rodham Clinton] move in that direction. I think you might see any major challenger to her move in that direction,” said Mike Lux, co-founder and CEO of the consulting firm Progressive Strategies who has worked on five presidential campaigns. “I think you will see that rumbling under the surface, that a Democrat is going to need to run a more populist campaign. I don’t think it will be an open, outright distancing from Obama, but just a much more populist version” of the Obama approach.

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