 Being In Congress Bites
Increasingly over the next few weeks, if you haven't already heard or seen political advertising for primary races in the 2014 midterm elections, we can almost guarantee you will. Avoiding being bombarded in that kind of situation will be like trying to handle snakes without getting bitten - a task crazy snake-handling preacher Jamie Coots just proved isn't exactly realistic.
In short, the 2014 election races have begun.
While the data-driven accurate political journalism of both Nate Silver's new team, and Ezra Klein's new group aren't yet ready for the 2014 elections, there is already some data - both scientific and anecdotal - that's already available. In short, for both Democratic and Republican politicians, the information we're seeing now could have some serious bite for this fall's elections, if the data continues through this fall as it is now.
To start with, Congress' current job approval rates, for both Democratic and Republican politicians, is still hovering near it's worst levels ever. To most thinking people, that level of disgust might spur members of Congress to pass a nearly universally popular bill, so they had some kind of achievement to sell voters come next autumn - for example, raising the federal minimum wage.
Conveniently, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released a report on Tuesday that focused on what the impact would be of raising the federal minimum wage. The result was positive, if not a bit confusing...
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