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Apr. 3, 2017 at 6:07 PM

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, at a hearing Jan. 12.

At least 41 Democratic senators have publicly committed to filibuster President Trumps Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, leading to a probable showdown with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The filibuster might seem like payback for Democrats after Republicans refused to consider the nomination of then-President Obamas Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, for 293 days starting last year. Unlike Republicans last year, however, Democrats dont have all that much power. They arent in the majority and McConnell has strongly hinted that he could seek to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court picks if Gorsuch cant get 60 votes. Across a variety of surveys, moreover, a plurality of voters think the Senate should confirm Gorsuch, although a fair number of voters dont have an opinion either way. Therefore, Democrats political endgame is unclear.

Gorsuch is quite unpopular with liberal voters, however: By a 61-15 margin, they oppose his confirmation, according to a YouGov poll last week. Thus, the planned filibuster may simply be a sign of the liberal bases increasing influence over the Democratic coalition. The share of Democrats who identify as liberal has steadily increased over the past 10 years. According to the recently released Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 53 percent of Democratic voters identified as liberal last year. Until recently, it was rare to find surveys that showed liberals made up a majority of the party.

But to some extent, that 53 percent figure understates the case. The CCES also asked voters about whether theyd engaged in a variety of political activities, including donating to a candidate, attending a political meeting, working on behalf of a campaign or putting up a political sign. Among Democrats whod done at least one of those things a group Ill call politically active Democrats 69 percent identified as liberal. These were some of the voters who helped propel Bernie Sanders to almost two dozen primary and caucus victories last year.

Oftentimes these liberals are found in states where you might not necessarily expect them such as in the Mountain West, which was a strong region for Sanders last year. According to a regression analysis conducted on the CCES data, the proportion of politically active Democrats who identify as liberal is larger in states where candidate Trump fared poorly. But controlling for that, its also larger in states that have more white voters, and more college-educated voters. And its larger in the West than in the other political regions of the country. In the table below, Ive estimated the share of politically active Democrats in each state who identify as liberal. Since the sample sizes for some states are small, the estimates are based on a blend of the raw polling data from the CCES and the regression model I described above.

Source: Cooperative Congressional Election Study

Its not surprising that Washington, Oregon and Vermont are places where the liberal wing of the Democratic base dominates. But Idaho, where I estimate that 82 percent of politically active Democrats identify as liberal, and Utah, where I estimate that 80 percent do, also rate near the top. Its not that Idaho and Utah are blue states, obviously; theyre among the most Republican in the country. Nonetheless perhaps because a lot of moderate voters identify with the GOP in these states the few Democrats that remain are overwhelmingly liberal.

The same phenomenon holds in Montana, where I estimate that 76 percent of politically active Democrats are liberal. That may help to explain why Sen. Jon Tester of Montana says he will vote against Gorsuch, even though he faces a tough general election campaign next year. Whether or not Democrats would issue a primary challenge to Tester, who has generally sided with the party on key votes, is questionable. Nonetheless, hell be relying on his base for money, volunteers and a high turnout on Election Day. In Montana, the conservatives are conservative but the Democratic base is fairly liberal also.

By contrast, Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who will vote to confirm Gorsuch, are on somewhat safer ground. Some 61 percent of politically active Democrats identify as liberal in North Dakota, while 57 percent do in West Virginia, according to this estimate. Those figures are almost certainly higher than they would have been a few years ago. But Heitkamp and Manchin probably face more risk from the general election than from a loss of support among their base.

Nor is the Democratic base all that liberal in the Mid-Atlantic region, including states such as Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. Instead, even the party activists in these states can have a moderate, pro-establishment tilt. That may explain why senators such as Chris Coons of Delaware and Robert Menendez of New Jersey were slow to announce their positions on Gorsuch before eventually deciding to oppose him.

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The Gorsuch Filibuster Shows The Liberal Base's Clout - FiveThirtyEight

The Liberal government says it will not pursue mandatory or online voting for federal elections.

The Liberals had raised the ideas for consideration in their 2015 election platform and tasked the special committee on electoral reform with studying the possibilities.

But MPs on the special committee were divided on the merits of mandatory voting and concerned about the security of online voting, and recommended against pursuing either.

In a formal response to the committee's report, submitted on Monday, Minister of Democratic Institutions Karina Gouldsaid the government agrees with the committee.

"While Canadians feel that online voting in federal elections would have a positive effect on voter turnout, their support is contingent on assurances that online voting would not result in increased security risks,"Gould wrote."We agree."

A Liberal adviser publicly suggested mandatory voting in a 2014 paper.

Voting has been compulsory in Australia since 1924. Any eligible voter who does not cast a ballot must provide a valid excuse or pay a $20 fine. Turnout in the last Australian federal election was 95 per cent.

The Liberals say they are committed to finding other ways of encouraging voter turnout. Legislation currently before Parliament would allow citizens to use the voter information card for identification purposes at the polls and restore Elections Canada's ability to promote voting.

The Liberal response restates that the government won't be pursuing electoral reform, as Gould announced in February.

"The electoral system is foundational to any democratic system, and any changes to how we vote must have the broad support of Canadians," Gould writes.

"As stated in my mandate letter released publicly on February 1, 2017, 'A clear preference for a new electoral system, let alone a consensus, has not emerged. Furthermore, without a clear preference or a clear question, a referendum would not be in Canada's interest.' Changing the electoral system is not in my mandate as Minister of Democratic Institutions."

The electoral-reform debate hasn't entirely faded from view in the two months since Gould announced that change was not in her mandate.

NDP reform critic Nathan Cullen recently embarked on a national series of town hall meetings on the topic. And Fair Vote Canada, an organization that promotes proportional representation, participated in the recent set of byelections in hopes of "sending a strong message" to the Liberals.

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Liberals say no to mandatory and online voting - CBC.ca

There were no seat changes in Monday's federal byelections, but the governing Liberals took a hit in all five of the contested ridings marking their worst byelection performances so far under Justin Trudeau.

The Conservatives saw gains in three of the five ridingswhile the New Democrats took hits of their own in all but one, leaving the Conservatives as the winners of the night.

The Liberals held on to the three ridings they were defending (MarkhamThornhill, OttawaVanier and Saint-Laurent) while the Conservatives retained their two seats of Calgary Midnapore and Calgary Heritage, the latter being the old seat of former prime minister Stephen Harper.

But across the five ridings, the Liberals' vote share dropped by an average of 4.7 points. That was a steeper loss than the NDP's average 2.2-point decline. The Conservatives gained an average of 4.2 points compared to their supportin the 2015 federal election.

This is a reversal of the trends exhibited between the 2011 and 2015 votes, when the Liberals made gains in 13 of 15 byelections and the Conservatives suffered losses in all of them.

Granted, byelections can be largely driven by local issues.But being on the wrong side of the trend line does not bode well for future performance.

Turnout was low on Monday, ranging from 27.5 per cent in MarkhamThornhill to 34.1 per cent in OttawaVanier. Accordingly, the big parties lost votes in every riding and the Liberals lost vote share across the board.

Though the most significant decline for the Liberals occurred in OttawaVanier, the result for Mona Fortier (51.2 per cent of the vote, down 6.4 points) was better than the late Mauril Blanger's scores between 2004 and 2011, when the Liberals were either in opposition or reduced to a minority government.

Support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals fell from their 2015 election results in all five byelections Monday, including Calgary Midnapore, where Trudeau campaigned for candidate Haley Brown, right. (Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)

The nomination controversies in MarkhamThornhill and Saint-Laurent did not seem to have a disproportionate impact on Liberal fortunes, as the decreases suffered there by Mary Ng (down 4.4points to 51.3 per cent) and Emmanuella Lambropoulos (down 2.5 points to 59.1 per cent) were not notablydifferent than those in the other three ridings.

The Liberals were unable to maintain the gains made in Calgary in 2015 (whenthey won their first seats there since 1968), capturing21.7 per cent of the vote in Calgary Heritage (down 4.3 points)and just 17 per cent in Calgary Midnapore(down 5.7 points). Nevertheless, with the exception of 2015, those were the party's best results in the ridings since 1980and 1997, respectively.

With 71.5 per cent support for Bob Benzen in Calgary Heritage, up 7.7 points from 2015,and 77.2 per cent for Stephanie Kusie(+10.5) in Calgary Midnapore, the Conservatives made a renewed show of strength in two traditional strongholds. Kusie's score in Calgary Midnapore was the Conservatives' best in the riding since the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and Canadian Alliance in 2003.

Conservative candidate Stephanie Kusie celebrates with her husband James and son Edward after winning Calgary-Midnapore. (Todd Korol/Canadian Press)

The Conservatives also put up good numbers in MarkhamThornhill, the kind of GTA riding the Conservatives will need to win in the future to form a majority government. The party captured 39 per cent of the vote, up 6.7 points and their best performance since 1997 when the Liberals last lost the riding.

But the Conservatives put up worse results in two francophone ridings, OttawaVanier and Saint-Laurent. The party held its 19.5 per cent vote share in the Montreal seat. In OttawaVanier, the Conservatives were down 3.7 points, their worst performance there since 1968.

It is possible the Conservative leadership race has helped boost the party elsewhere, but the lack of French-language skills among the field of 14 candidates for the top job (including one of the front-runners, Kevin O'Leary) may not be doing the party favours in ridings with large francophone populations.

The New Democrats saw their vote drop most significantly in ridings that were primarily head-to-head contests between the Liberals and the Conservatives down 4.4 points in Calgary Heritage, 5.2 points in Calgary Midnapore and 7.2 points in MarkhamThornhill.

Their numbers in these three ridings were their worst since before Jack Layton took over the party in 2003.

The loss of 3.7 points in Saint-Laurent is not a good sign for the New Democrats in Quebec, where the party needs to regain some lustre.

But the results in OttawaVanier were far more positive for the NDP. The New Democrats gained 9.4 points, reaching 28.7 per cent andnearly matching their all-time best performance in the riding in 2011.

Liberal candidate Mona Fortier, centre, won the Ottawa-Vanier byelection. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)

The Greens saw little change in their numbers with the exception of again of 5.6 points in Saint-Laurent, where their deputy leader, Daniel Green, was a candidate. The Bloc Qubcois, in its first electoral test under new leader Martine Ouellet, did little better in Saint-Laurent than the party did in 2015, but also no worse.

So the results of the byelections have something to please each of the opposition parties, with the Conservatives having the most to smile about in addition to their two wins.

On the government's side, theirthree comfortable victories might be little to worry about just yet.But if these byelections acted as a mid-term report card for the Liberals, they might want to return to their studies or risk failing the next test.

The rest is here:
Liberals lose support, Conservatives gain in status quo byelections - CBC.ca

OTTAWA Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau emerged unscathed from his first real test with voters on Monday as the incumbent party held onto power in five by-elections across the country, leaving Trudeau's Liberals with an undiminished majority in parliament.

As expected, none of the regional votes to elect members of parliament produced an upset, with Trudeau's Liberals retaining three seats in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa and the opposition Conservatives holding onto two seats in Calgary, according to preliminary results from Elections Canada.

With the majority of votes counted in each race, all of the incumbent parties were leading by more than 10 percentage points and all had been projected as winner by the Canada Broadcasting Corp.

Still, the votes could be the last easy victory for the Liberals, who have enjoyed a long honeymoon with voters in part because both opposition parties are in the process of replacing their leaders ahead of a 2019 general election, when both Trudeau and members of the House of Commons face the electorate.

"I don't think it means anything at this stage because it was very predictable," said Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto.

"I think once the Conservatives select their new leader, you're going to see a boost in Conservative support - it happens after every leadership convention, and that goes on for a while ... so the more important by-elections will be those closer to 2019," Wiseman added.

A December poll showed Trudeau's approval rating remained high but was dropping amid rising dissatisfaction with the economy, and voter anger over a broken promise to reform the electoral process could eat into the government's popularity.

In addition, nearly half of Canadians want to deport people who are illegally crossing into Canada from the United States, and a similar number disapprove of how Trudeau is handling the influx, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released in March.

(Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Michael Perry)

ANKARA Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday called on Iraqi Kurds to lower the Kurdish flag in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, warning that failure to do so would damage their relations with Turkey.

CARACAS Venezuelan security forces quelled rowdy protesters with tear gas, water cannons and pepper spray in Caracas on Tuesday after blocking an opposition rally against unpopular socialist President Nicolas Maduro.

CAIRO Islamic State said on Tuesday the United States was drowning and "being run by an idiot".

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Canada Liberals unscathed as by-elections return status quo - Reuters

Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a contributing editor to Reason magazine.

The New York Public Library hosted an event Saturday dedicated to what seems, in our day and age, a far-fetched goal: civil dialogue across partisan and ideological lines.

The symposium, Shades of Red and Blue, was co-sponsored by American and international groups, in partnership with the British daily, The Guardian. It featured novelist Salman Rushdie, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, and former Princeton University dean and Obama administration official Anne-Marie Slaughter on panels that discussed topics ranging from White House politics to national security to immigration to the media and the fake news problem.

Not surprisingly, the Trump presidency dominated the discussion with former Richard Nixon counsel John Dean providing analogies to another turbulent presidency. But political polarization, and the divide between middle America and the cultural elites, was a central topic as well.

On the morning panel, John Podhoretz, editor of the conservative Commentary magazine, noted that in the 1980s and 1990s, he used to say that conservatives were bilingual they spoke the language of the conservative movement but also the language of the more mainstream liberal culture and understood liberal thinking while liberals tended to be more monolingual. Today, he said, things have changed: a conservative can easily stay in his or her own niche and have little understanding of liberals. Veteran liberal journalist Hendrik Hertzberg, a writer at The New Yorker, agreed. The right and the left no longer touch each other across a no mans land, he said.

Did the elites misunderstand and wrongly condescend to Trump voters? The question repeatedly came up, causing some fireworks at times, with the partisan lines not always predictable. Anti-Trump Republican, author and Naval War College professor Thomas Nichols, author of the new book, The Death of Expertise, was a strong proponent of the view that the Trump voters populist grievances stem largely from ignorance a shallow understanding of foreign policy and a failure to grasp the ways in which they themselves benefit economically from globalization. This caused some sharp exchanges between Nichols and Bard College foreign affairs professor Walter Russell Mead; Mead argued that the widespread sense among Americans that working hard and playing by the rules are no longer tickets to a good life is rooted in real social and economic shifts.

There was more spirited debate on the media panel, where conservative journalists Mollie Hemingway and Matthew Continetti argued that declining trust in the media is due largely to the medias political biases and insufficient commitment to truth and accuracy. The liberal panelists Rushdie and Bard College president Leon Botstein focused on the post-truth environment promoted by the Trump White House, which Rushdie called the source from which all untruth flows.

Hemingways assertion that the media largely gave Barack Obama a pass while leaping at every instance of Republican misbehavior got loud applause from a small portion of the audience but was disputed by Rushdie and Botstein; but in the end, there seemed to be a fair amount of agreement with Hemingways suggestion that mainstream media should get more input on how their coverage looks to conservatives, if only from a devils advocate standpoint. Rushdie still got the biggest applause for saying that well have to work very hard to get the American people to believe in truth again.

It will take hard work to get the American people to talk to each other across the no mans land of the political divide again. The forum was a good start that should be emulated.

Cathy Young is a contributing editor to Reason magazine.

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Liberals, conservatives really can talk - Newsday