Progress Illinois

In my article yesterday on the potential effect of Obama's massive voter registration drive, I referred frequently to increments of increased turnout among certain demographic groups in specific states.

From an organizing standpoint, however, the more important data relates to the universe of voters in each state: the number that are eligible to vote and the number of those that are unregistered. So I've put together a spreadsheet that lays out the relevant registration numbers in 20 significant states (using U.S. Census data collected after the 2004 election). You can view it here or download it here.

Also, over at FiveThirtyEight, Poblano posted a Q&A regarding his methodology.  It's worth a read.

At her Ultimate Power Lunch yesterday, Rep. Jan Schakowsky told the Tribune it's time for Hillary Clinton to bow out: ""There really are no options left, so now the decision is really the exit plan."

Sen. Dick Durbin sounded a similar note:

"Only Hillary can make this decision, no one can make it for her. Those who think that they can push or pull, it's not going to work. She has to make this decision. If I were to counsel her, and she's not asking me, [but] if I were, I would tell her this is a great moment for her to seize, where she can bring the party together, rally her supporters for the good of the cause and maybe in the process sit down with Barack and take care of two unfinished pieces of business: Michigan and Florida. If the two of them can work it out, then I think it would be a great close to what has been a terrific campaign that she's waged."

Back in March, we noted how a Facebook group created by Lake Forest College sophomore Phil Miatkowski to rally support for Illinois Rep. Greg Harris' (D-Chicago) civil union bill had attracted over 8,000 members. Well, the AP is reporting today that that number has climbed to nearly 9,000:

At first, his site detailed the bill's progress for friends, who began inviting hundreds of other friends.

Within weeks, Miatkowski and students from across the state organized online "rallies" to flood legislators with e-mails, faxes and phone calls. Members also have held petition drives at train stations, written editorials and set up campus events.

The group's efforts made enough of an impression that Illinois lawmakers mentioned it to Harris, sponsor of the civil unions bill. Harris contacted Miatkowski and other student leaders to discuss how to gather more momentum on the bill.

"This is an organic thing. That's the exciting thing about it," Harris said. "There's no way I could talk to 9,000 individuals from every county in this state and get them on board with this. They did this themselves."

Harris' bill would give same-sex couples in Illinois equal rights and access to benefits. It advanced out of committee earlier this year and Harris says he's confident it will pass the full House before the year is over. You can learn more about the measure and the Illinoisans it would affect at CivilUnionsIllinois.org.

From the Southtown Star:

City testing of Chicago's drinking water has turned up small amounts of a manmade drug and the insect repellent DEET, but officials said Friday that city water is safe to drink.

"Right now, there is no research out there that shows there's any harmful health effect from the components we found at very low levels," said John Spatz, commissioner of the city's water management department.

he city testing found a trace amount of the drug gemfibrozil, typically used to treat blood triglycerides, in treated and untreated water. Carbamazepine, often prescribed to control seizures, was found in untreated water, Spatz said.

To learn more about drugs in our water -- and what you can do to ensure these "small amounts" don't increase -- check out Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner Debra Shore's recent column on the topic.

On Tuesday, Adam highlighted Alex Kotlowitz's recent New York Times Magazine article on CeaseFire, the Chicago-based anti-violence program whose $6.2 million in state funding was cut last year. In the piece, Kotlowitz reports that independent researchers working for the Justice Department recently released a study demonstrating that CeaseFire's tactics resulted in significantly less violence in six of the seven neighborhoods analyzed.

According to the Tribune, those findings have caught the attention of certain state legislators, who are dismayed that Gov. Blagojevich's anti-violence funding includes no money for CeaseFire:

Earlier this week, the governor proposed a $150 million anti-violence initiative that would provide summer jobs for youth statewide and promote after-school programs and other activities. The plan made no mention of CeaseFire, a fact that frustrated some lawmakers.

"I think it's absolutely irresponsible to announce a $150 million anti-crime plan that is not spearheaded by CeaseFire," said Rep. Susana Mendoza (D-Chicago). [...]

Blagjoevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said CeaseFire was cut because of a lack of money in the state budget but could benefit from the governor's new plan.

Speaking at The New Yorker Festival this morning, Rep. Rahm Emanuel called Barack Obama the "presumptive nominee." From the Huffington Post:

"At this point, Barack is the presumptive nominee," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel during the New Yorker's magazine conference. "Hillary can't win but something could happen that could effect that Barack could lose the nomination."

Emanuel wouldn't go so far as to say that Clinton should drop out. "Next question!" he declared when asked. But his voice does carry political sway.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder offered the following analysis of Emanuel's remarks: "[H]is words reflect the developing consensus of many high-profile Clinton supporters. The race is over, but let's let Clinton will determine when and how to exit."

Shortly after Ambinder blogged about Rahm's comments, House Democratic Caucus communications director Sarah Feinberg walked them back a bit:

I would like to clarify two points:

1. All Rahm said was that Senator Obama is clearly now the frontrunner, which by and large means, because of the calendar, he is the presumptive nominee, at this point. He was stating the obvious. Its about the calendar.

2. The "presumptive" quote is only accurate if you ignore the several sentences proceeding this half sentence and the several minutes of conversation that followed it. I'd call it selective quoting. Congressman Emanuel also stated about 90 seconds after this that he thought Senator clinton can still win the nomination and he stands by that.

Of course, if it were only about the calendar, Barack should have become the "presumptive nominee" a good while ago.

Meanwhile, what MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is calling the "superdelegate drizzle" (not yet a flood) continued today.

In an editorial yesterday on Wal-Mart's apparent decision to give up efforts to open a store on Chicago's South Side, the Tribune repeated the same old canard about the mega-retailer's purported benefits to the community and slammed the living wage movement as contributing to "food deserts" in the city's low-income neighborhoods:

This is all about preventing a non-union grocer from gaining a foothold in Chicago.

Remember the Big Box fight? In 2006 the City Council passed a law to force large retailers to pay a higher minimum wage and benefits than other businesses were required to pay. It was an effort to keep Wal-Mart out of Chicago. The mayor rightly vetoed the ordinance.

But the Daley administration has surrendered. It's not saying that, of course. But it doesn't want to confront labor again on this. So the Chatham Supercenter/grocery store is dead.

Wal-Mart has been allowed to open only one store in Chicago to date. That store, on North Avenue, has created 440 jobs and seeks to hire more people. Average wages for hourly employees are $12.

Here's a statement responding to the Tribune from Amisha Patel of the Grassroots Collaborative, one of the groups that led the 2006 living wage fight:

There is a crisis of poverty in urban communities of color. Those examining how to alleviate such poverty often cite lack of jobs as the primary factor. But equally devastating is that those jobs available to low-income communities of color are low-wage, no- benefit positions, with incredibly high turnover.

If Wal-Mart's average wage is indeed $12/hour, as asserted in the Tribune editorial, why such resistance to our ordinance's paltry requirement that they pay at least $10/hour by the year 2010? Perhaps because they include management salaries in that "average" figure? In that case, why don't they throw CEO Lee Scott's $29 million salary into the mix as well?

50 percent of Wal-Mart employees leave their jobs every year -- that's one of the highest turnover rates in the industry. In comparison, the profitable Costco chain offers its workers living wages and health insurance. As a result, it reports a turnover rate of about 17 percent. The fact that community residents on the South and West Sides -- most of them African-American and Latino -- organized to demand high quality jobs from billionaire mega-retailers is a testament to the powerful belief that communities demand and deserve good jobs. Jobs that they can raise families on.

To blame community and labor for demanding higher wages and benefits is like saying that civil rights marchers in the 60s should have just stayed home and kept quiet. We must address the very real need of communities on the South and West Sides having access to fresh fruits and vegetables. But we must also demand that those sources of food provide jobs and benefits that uplift workers out of poverty, not keep a foot to their throats.

Tonight on Outside The Loop Radio, our own Adam Doster will be talking about his recent feature article on the Chicago City Council's Independent Caucus.

You can listen to the show at 6 pm on WLUW 88.7 in Chicago. Those outside of the city can stream the show live at wluw.org.

Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL) is one of the Obama campaign's congressional whips, meaning that she's in charge of counting and coralling those undeclared or wavering superdelegates on Capitol Hill. Yesterday, Talking Point Memo's Greg Sargent asked Bean: "How often do super-dels raise concerns about Reverend Wright, or about Hillary's claim that Obama struggles with blue collar whites?" Here's her response:

"I have not heard that as a reservation from anybody. I only heard about Reverend Wright in the context of people saying it made them decide to step forward sooner to declare their support for Senator Obama."

If this is true, than the congressional superdelegates are quite a bit more shrewd than the media has given them credit for. For weeks and weeks, the talking heads have been telling us that the Wright controversy would cause superdelegates to second-guess Obama (while ignoring that his skillful handling of the matter might, to the contrary, encourage them). Media figures have also propped up the flawed narrative -- advanced by the Clinton campaign -- that Obama's relative lack of support among working-class whites in the Democratic primaries spelled doom for his general election prospects.

Well, if Bean's account is accurate, the congressional superdelegates didn't bite. Good for them.

Appearing this morning on WLS Radio's "Don Wade & Roma Morning Show," ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopolous said that John McCain's record of "cooperation with Democrats" is going to be "one of his strongest selling points in the fall." Stephanopolous' remark came in response to host Don Wade's assertion that McCain "has a bad reputation with some Republicans because he's reached so many times across the aisle." (You can listen to the full segment here).

Such characterizations of McCain's legislative record fit into the common media narrative about the Arizona Senator: that he's an unreliable conservative who regularly bucks his party on the issues of the day.

Of course, this "maverick" image -- peddled again and again by media figures far and wide -- is bunk. The most recent evidence comes from an Arizona Republic examination of McCain's last 10 years in the Senate. From their article yesterday, headlined "In tight Senate votes, McCain not a maverick":

[A]n Arizona Republic analysis of his Senate votes on the most divided issues in the past decade shows that McCain almost never thwarted his party's objectives.

The presumptive Republican nominee arguably cast the decisive vote 14 times since 1999 to ensure Republicans got their way, and he had five other close cases where his vote may have made a difference, Senate records show. By comparison, McCain effectively handed Democrats a win on roll-call votes four times in the same period. On one of those occasions, Republicans could still have won if Vice President Dick Cheney had cast a tie-breaking vote.

David Brock and Paul Waldman also highlight McCain's highly selective disloyalty in their book Free Ride: John McCain and the Media:

The truth is that McCain's breaks from the Republican Party line are few and far between. According to Congressional Quarterly's "party unity" ratings, since he came to the Senate in 1989, there have been only three years in which McCain voted with his party less than 80 percent of the time. When he has gone against the party line -- such as on campaign finance reform, global warming, or tobacco regulations -- McCain has taken a position that was overwhelmingly popular with the public, meaning that when he takes a "maverick" stance, he's gaining support with the public -- and hardly taking a political risk.

So if Stephanopolous (or any of the others) pops up on your local radio station at 8 a.m. and starts talking about all of McCain's "cooperation with Democrats" over the years -- don't buy it.

(Transcript after the jump ...)