Also from today’s Morning Jolt:

Like a Crazy Ex, Rolling Stone Desperately Hoping You’ll Pay Attention to Them Again

Look, we get it. It’s tough to run a print magazine, particularly if a magazine thinks of itself as a journal of cultural trends that entice and excite young people. Kids don’t read print anymore. People pass by the newsstand and don’t give it a second glance, their eyes pulled away by the latest starlet half-naked and pouting on the cover of Maxim. And if a publication’s editors start feeling financial pressure and a sense of declining relevance to the conversation they seek to influence, they can get desperate, resorting to shock headlines and a sneering tone . . . as we’ve seen:

  

 

But Rolling Stone editors knew what they were doing by putting the Little Brother Bomber on the cover. They were getting the news world to talk about a magazine that had in past months become largely indistinguishable from Entertainment Weekly: Johnny Depp in full Tonto regalia, comedian Louis C. K., Mad Men lead actor Jon Hamm, Seth Rogan and his co-stars of This Is the End.

And in using the soft-focus, Dylan-esque image of Little Brother Bomber on the cover, they scrambled some of our usual political lines. The editor of ThinkProgress says the image makes the bomber look like Jim Morrison.

And some complaints are coming from on high:

Former White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor expressed concern on Wednesday about Rolling Stone magazine putting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on its cover, tweeting that “A disaffected US kid could see this and think terrorist are afforded rock star status.”

The same image once appeared on the cover of the New York Times; objections seem to primarily revolve around the fact that Rolling Stone almost only features celebrities on its covers — most recently Johnny Depp — and thus this image would put an accused terrorist into that category, of someone to be celebrated.

Bingo. A traditional newsweekly could have run that image with the headline, “Into the Mind of a Killer” or something similar, with little objection. The New Republic recalls Time magazine covers featuring Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden.

But this is the cover of Rolling Stone, where we’re used to seeing Janet Jackson’s cleavage, or Angelina Jolie’s cleavage, or Katy Perry’s cleavage, or Shakira’s cleavage, or . . . where was I going with this? Ah, yes! For most of the past decades, Rolling Stone covers have fit into three categories 1) celebrity cleavage 2) here’s a singer or band who is very hot at the moment and whose image will instantly date this magazine 3) “Isn’t Obama awesome!”

There really isn’t a strong tradition of “here’s a detailed look into the face of evil” cover pieces.

Let’s also note that the cover’s text doesn’t help matters, either.

How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster

To their credit, the editors label him a monster. But “failed by his family” seems to suggest his actions aren’t entirely his responsibility, and “fell into radical Islam” is a strangely passive way of describing the choice to commit murder. It’s not a pothole.

Also . . . had Rolling Stone editors personally known any of the victims, would they have made the same choice?

Apparently Rolling Stone editors are comfortable writing off Boston from their circulation area:

Pharmacy chain CVS has announced it will not sell copies of next week’s Rolling Stone featuring suspected Boston terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover.

“As a company with deep roots in New England and a strong presence in Boston, we believe this is the right decision out of respect for the victims of the attack and their loved ones,” the company said in a statement.

The cover, which was teased late Tuesday night, has incited a flurry of controversy, with Rolling Stone’s website being bombarded with complaints and a Facebook page started to boycott to the music magazine. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick have both criticized the cover as in poor taste.

Here’s Erik Wemple, a usually fair-minded reporter and blogger on the media beat for the Washington Post:

*This is good journalism, as the photo depicts the same Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that The Post and the New York Times — and others — depicted in deeply reported pieces. That is, a regular, good guy with friends, interests and activities — a “joker,” even.

*Showing this alleged bomber in his full humanity makes him appear even more menacing.

*Some are saying that Rolling Stone is exploiting this image — this story — for commercial gain. Well, Rolling Stone is a magazine. It exploits all its stories for commercial gain, some more effectively than others.

. . . I’ll leave the last word to two of the victims:

Brothers J.P. and Paul Norden of Stoneham each lost a leg in the attacks and they let the magazine know how they feel in this long Facebook post Wednesday morning.

Here you go Rolling Stones; if you required a cover and wanted marathon related, one would assume that you would have promoted a nation of continued healing, provided American heroes and encouraged moving forward. This is just one of several available shots that would have made sense if you were looking for togetherness.

Instead, your irresponsible behavior did more to tear open wounds and insult victims, survivors and families that have been slowly healing and accepting the horrendous acts of terrorism. There is a very long road that awaits the involved victims and your magazine ripped at the hearts in an instance and cut at the deepest levels and for what, “To increase sales of a magazine that usually is worthy of music celebrities.” Well, Rolling Stones, you just reclaimed your 15 minutes of fame, we only hope, it lasts only fifteen minutes.

What you did yesterday with your incredibly poor decision, was weaken extreme good that has been built from unimaginable evil.

Well, we are here to remind you that we are 2 BROTHERS 1 NATION. . . . Standing Boston Strong. . . . and no room for magazines intended on highlighting evil, hate and death.

Today, we take a step over that magazine and hold our heads up high and ask our supporters to do the same and to also ignore the sensationalism perpetrated by RS.

From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:

Comprehensive Immigration Reform Backers Suddenly Quite Nervous

Hey, remember when passage of immigration reform was a certainty, and lawmakers skeptical of the whole legislative contraption could either get on the fast-moving train or get run over by it? Apparently not anymore:

The White House and its immigration reform allies are banking on the August recess as their next — and possibly last — major opportunity to compel House Republicans to act.

With the issue stalled in the House, the monthlong congressional break is the linchpin of a campaign that President Barack Obama, Senate immigration leaders and a broad coalition of groups now expect they’ll have to wage through the end of the year. They realize they must make progress in the next month to stand any chance of keeping the issue alive into the fall.

“We’re not winning this fight,” Sen. John McCain, a Gang of Eight leader, told POLITICO Wednesday. “They are mounting a better campaign than we are — the opposition is.”

The problem with launching a public pressure campaign on lawmakers during the August recess is that the country as a whole is generally off on vacation.

The Washington Post offers a new poll on the topic this morning, and while there’s majority support for a path to citizenship . . . 

 . . . when you consider how the issue is covered — how a path to citizenship is usually treated as humane and natural and just and with few or no drawbacks, and opponents are usually described as xenophobic or racist, and how even the term “illegal immigrant” has been declared too controversial for the AP — doesn’t a 55–41 split actually seem a bit low?

On those last two questions . . . did 11 percent think that 20,000 border agents and 700 miles of fence along the border with Mexico would be cheap?

From Mark Leibovich’s This Town, Chapter 3, describing Election Night 2006, and how Senator Harry Reid responded to CNN’s declaration that Claire McCaskill of Missouri had won her Senate race:

Reid, a man of thoroughgoing cynicism, is nonetheless capable of a boyish hullabaloo at times like this. So what did Harry Reid do to mark this key step in his ascent to Senate majority leader? He rose from the couch and he kissed the TV — tenderly, caressing the screen. And then he sat back down to receive from [Sen. Chuck] Schumer something between a pat on the head and a noogie.

Well, that’s . . . unusual.

Sometimes, Harry Reid just likes to think about what a great kisser that television screen was.

UPDATE: Leibovich mentioned this kiss in a 2006 profile of Reid. Permit me to cynically conclude that had Mitch McConnell or John Boehner done the same, the anecdote would be much more widely repeated in press accounts as a detail that showcases how weird those lawmakers are.

One of the key still-unclear factors in& this year’s Virginia governor’s race is just what mood the voters are in as Election Day approaches. Quinnipiac finds only 8 percent describe themselves as “very satisfied” with “the way things are going in Virginia today,” but 54 percent say they’re “somewhat satisfied.” Another 26 percent say they’re “somewhat dissatisifed” and 11 percent say they’re “very dissatisfied.”

Back in 2009, the top issue was clear — the lingering recession and economic fears — and Republican nominee McDonnell’s simple “Bob’s for Jobs” signs were ubiquitous all over the state. This year, two topics dominated coverage of state politics: a transporation deal that hiked taxes in Northern Virginia and troubling revelations of a wealthy Virginia businessman giving expensive gifts to current governor Bob McDonnell and his family.

However, Quinnipiac finds McDonnell’s approval rating . . . still pretty high — 46 percent approve, 37 percent disapprove. That’s down from a May split of 49 percent approval, 28 percent disapproval, but still not quite as bad as one might think after a month of brutal press coverage. (Also note the same survey finds President Obama slightly underwater in Virginia, with 46 percent approving and 51 percent disapproving.)

So how do Virginia voters feel about the economy? The state’s unemployment rate is relatively low, 5.3 percent. The state slipped slightly in CNBC’s annual survey of best states for business, but from third out of 50 states to fifth. McAuliffe’s economic message is that Virginia could be at the very top with more focus on spending in transporation and infrastructure and education.

Ken Cuccinelli, meanwhile, says his conversations with voters reveal a lot of not-so-obvious lingering economic anxiety.

“The priority is the same for voters, it’s still jobs and the economy,” Cuccinelli told me in a recent interview. “To the extent that we’re technically in a recovery, it’s a pretty weak recovery and it isn’t reaching everybody. Especially with the implementation of Obamacare, you’ve got small businesses that are frozen in place. Heck, our community colleges are pushing their adjunct professors down below 30 hours, and that’s happening in the private sector as well. That’s causing a lot of dislocation. Add to that furloughs and sequestration in the two most economically stable parts of the state, northern Virginia and southeastern Virginia, and you really get a decent amount of anxiety about the economy and job opportunities. So I still find that’s the first focus of voters.”

UPDATE: By the way, one Quinnipiac survey result may offer a key indicator of public cynicism, and why McDonnell’s numbers haven’t tumbled too far: Asked, “compared to most people in public life, do you think Bob McDonnell has more honesty and integrity, less honesty and integrity, or about the same,” 12 percent said “more,” 17 percent said “less,” and 60 percent said “about the same.”

Scratch another potential Democratic candidate in Montana’s 2014 U.S. Senate race:

State Auditor Monica Lindeen says she will not be running for the US Senate. The announcement comes days after former Governor Brian Schweitzer announced he would also not be running for Montana’s open Senate seat.

The midweek edition of the Morning Jolt features Bob Filner’s latest implausible excuses — just a big misunderstanding about hugs! — more revelations about Washington, D.C., from This Town, a troublesome series of decisions from some bloggers on the Right, and . . . 

Cheney. Enzi. Let the Rumble Begin.

The good news: The breaking news that “Wyoming has just elected Liz Cheney its next senator” will probably prompt Democrats to feel like this:

The bad news: Get ready for a big, hard-fought, expensive primary in a state that’s pretty much guaranteed to elect a Republican anyway. Voter-registration statistics indicate Wyoming has 166,643 Republicans, 53,301 Democrats, 34,330 unaffiliated voters, 1,866 Libertarians, 295 Constitution Party voters,and 118 “other” voters.

Assuming every Republican votes in the primary, we’re looking at each candidate spending what, $12 per vote, minimum?

Ari Fleischer: “I’m a big fan of Liz Cheney. But not in this race.”

I think Kurt Schlichter articulates the view of a lot of Republicans that while Enzi may have amassed a conservative voting record, they’re largely unfamiliar with him as a combatant against the Obama administration — and that, ultimately, is what they feel the party needs most right now:

He needs to go because we can do better. It’s not about Mike Enzi or any other Republican politician. It’s about winning this war against progressivism, and if you aren’t leading the fight then bow out and make room for someone who will.

Liz Cheney will. The seat would hardly be at risk — the Wyoming GOP primary is better known as the Wyoming general election — so we can take the chance to do better. After all, Liz Cheney has something Enzi doesn’t — a taste for political combat.

She wants to win. Not to “compromise,” not to “work together,” not sit around singing “Kumbayah” with the liberals. She wants to win.

Enzi wants to be a sober, serious legislator working with his liberal friends across the aisle to make a better country. Except there are no friends across the aisle, and the liberals do not want to make this a better country. Liberals want to ruthlessly acquire and maintain power and control over every aspect of our lives, and anyone who does not see and understand that and who can’t commit to destroying their hideous plans for our country needs to get out the way for a true conservative warrior.

The Times, perhaps again thinking it was helping, noted that Enzi “avoids political talk shows because, he says, their goal is to get guests to ‘beat up on their colleagues.’”

Except we need GOP Senators to be willing to “beat up on their colleagues.” It’s not about collegiality in the cloakroom. We want you hated, despised, and targeted because that will mean you are getting something conservative done.

Expect some big guns to sit this one out, as Katrina Trinko reports: “Both Enzi and Cheney are top notch candidates who would slam dunk a general election, so this isn’t the the type of race we’d engage in,” Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio e-mails. ‘We’re more concerned with primaries where certain results would lead to the Democrats winning.’”

So what will this election be about, besides her argument that it’s time for fresh faces and new blood, and his argument that she’s not really connected to the state, having only bought a house in Wyoming last year? Probably gay marriage.

Liz Cheney on gay marriage, back in 2009: “My family has been very clear about this: We think freedom means freedom for everybody. This is an issue states have to decide for themselves. . . . States have got to make this decision. . . . I certainly would not like to see a constitutional amendment you know, as was suggested in the last administration, banning it. This is an issue that the democratic process has to decide.”

The Tuesday edition of the Morning Jolt features unprintable words about San Diego mayor Bob Filner, new fundraising numbers in Virginia’s Senate race, a thought on stereotyping after the George Zimmerman trial, and then this thought on the “nuclear option” before the Senate . . . 

Save the Earth; Recycle the Opposition’s Old Arguments on the Filibuster

Ah, filibuster debates. So predictable.

Every Republican who wants to keep the filibuster and the current rules in place, just cite the arguments of this guy:

What [the American people] don’t expect is for one party — be it Republican or Democrat — to change the rules in the middle of the game so that they can make all the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet.

The American people want less partisanship in this town, but everyone in this chamber knows that the majority chooses to end the filibuster. If they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse.

We need to rise above the “ends justify the means” mentality because we’re here to answer to the people — all of the people — not just the ones that are wearing our particular party label.

If the right of free and open debate is taken away from the minority party, and the millions of Americans who asked us to be their voice, I fear that the already partisan atmosphere in Washington will be poisoned to the point where no one will be able to agree on anything. That doesn’t serve anyone’s best interests, and it certainly isn’t what the patriots who founded this democracy had in mind. We owe the people who sent us here more than that – we owe them much more.

Those words are from then-Senator Barack Obama, speaking April 13, 2005.

Then again, maybe they can point to the arguments of this other guy:

The filibuster is not a scheme and it certainly isn’t new. The filibuster is far from a procedural gimmick. It’s part of the fabric of this institution we call the Senate. It was well-known in colonial legislatures before we became a country, and it’s an integral part of our country’s 214-year history. The first filibuster in the United States Congress happened in 1790. It was used by lawmakers from Virginia and South Carolina who were trying to prevent Philadelphia from hosting the first Congress.

Since then, the filibuster has been employed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. It’s been employed on legislative matters, it’s been employed on procedural matters relating to the president’s nominations for Cabinet and sub-Cabinet posts, and it’s been used on judges for all those years. One scholar estimates that 20 percent of the judges nominated by presidents have fallen by the wayside, most of them as a result of filibusters. Senators have used the filibuster to stand up to popular presidents, to block legislation, and, yes, even, as I’ve stated, to stall executive nominees. The roots of the filibuster are found in the Constitution and in our own rules.

That, of course . . . is Senator Harry Reid of Nevada back in 2005.

Come on. We all know that any Senate Majority Leader with more than 50 votes but less than 60 votes is going to want to get rid of the filibuster, and any minority leader is going to want to keep it. Neither party has held 60 or more U.S. Senate seats since 1979. Democrats came close in the 111th Congress (the delay in Al Franken’s swearing-in, and the deaths of Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, all complicated the Democrats’ effort to control 60 seats) ; the Republicans had 55 in the 109th Congress. For the foreseeable future, most Senate majorities will have between 50 and 60 votes.

If you’re Harry Reid, the current intolerable situation means you need to hold your 53 votes together, keep Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine on board, and then get five Republican senators to go along. That may not be easy, but it’s hardly “Mission: Impossible.” Put simply, pick five out of the following: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Susan Collins of Maine, Jeffrey Chiesa of New Jersey, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. As we all know, John McCain of Arizona, Marco Rubio of Florida, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and Orrin Hatch of Utah have been known to buck the party line, depending on the issue.

The 60-vote threshold makes sense depending upon the piece of legislation or the importance of the nominee; it’s usually a bad idea to have a sweeping change rammed through, over sizeable objections, by a bare majority. Call us when the minority demands 60 votes for renaming a post office.

Don’t listen to me, listen to Thomas Jefferson: “Great innovations should not be forced on a slender majority.”

Or for a more modern assessment, try Daniel Patrick Moynihan:

Back in 1993, when Hillary Clinton first tried to reform the nation’s health-insurance system, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned about the difficulty of getting such a gargantuan bill passed: “The Senate has its own peculiar ecology,” he told me. “Something like this passes with 75 votes or not at all.” Moynihan was then chairman of the Finance Committee, the Senate’s natural choke point for big social-engineering schemes. He was worried that the Clintons, especially the First Lady, were being stubborn, trying to jam their bill through with a bare majority rather than build a bipartisan consensus.

Of course, if you subscribe to President Calvin Coolidge’s belief that “it is more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones,” the filibuster is a beautiful, noble tool.

Nate Silver sends a chill down Democrats’ spines by declaring:

Our best guess, after assigning probabilities of the likelihood of a G.O.P. pickup in each state, is that Republicans will end up with somewhere between 50 and 51 Senate seats after 2014, putting them right on the threshold of a majority.

One reason Democrats may find 2014 so daunting is that at this (still early) date, quite a few Republican incumbent senators have no Democratic challengers — not merely no big-name or well-funded challengers, but any challengers at all. The few Republican incumbents who do have declared challengers are mostly looking at gadflies and amateurs, operating on shoestrings or less. While there’s still time for bigger-name, better-funded, veteran candidates to jump in . . . knocking off a longtime incumbent is rarely a last-minute venture.

In Alabama, where Senator Jeff Sessions seeks his fourth term, Democrats have . . . well, no one yet.

In Georgia, where Senator Saxby Chambliss is retiring and six Republicans will be competing in a bare-knuckle primary for the open seat, Democrats have . . . first-time candidate Branko Radulovacki, running on the slogan “Dr. Rad for Senate,” and John Coyne, who has no website.

In Idaho, where Senator Jim Risch seeks his second term, Democrats have . . . no declared candidates yet.

In Kansas, where Senator Pat Roberts seeks his fourth term, a self-declared “Moderate” candidate and an independent candidate have filed papers, but Democrats have no declared candidates yet.

You’re probably familiar with the race in Kentucky, where Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell will take on a legitimate first-tier challenger, Kentucky secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes. Hey, good job, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, you found one!

In Maine, where Senator Susan Collins seeks her fourth term, Democrats . . . are still looking for a challenger. No declared candidates yet.

In Mississippi, where Senator Thad Cochran seeks his seventh term, Democrats have . . . no declared candidate yet.

In Nebraska, where Senator Mike Johanns is retiring, two Republicans have announced bids: former state treasurer Shane Osborn and former assistant state attorney general Bart McLeay. At this point, no Democrat has filed papers to run.

In Oklahoma, where Senator Jim Inhofe may or may not seek his fifth term (he hasn’t announced yet, and he’s approaching 80), the Democrats have a declared candidate! You can peruse insurance executive Matt Silverstein’s bare-bones website here. So far it is clear that he has a beautiful family and dog.

In South Carolina, where Senator Lindsey Graham seeks his third term, there are two Democrats that have declared bids, lawyer Larry Pavilack and businessman Jay Stamper. As of March 31, Stamper had raised $14,000.

Also in South Carolina, appointed senator Tim Scott will seek election to finish a term ending in January 2017. At this point, no Democrat has declared a Senate bid for this seat, although it’s quite possible one of the Democrats could shift to this race.

In Tennessee, Senator Lamar Alexander seeks his third term and faces at this point only one Democratic challenger, Larry Crim. (The Nashville Scene mocked his self-published, self-promotional newspaper here.) According to FEC records, as of March 31, Crim’s bid had not raised any money but spent $896.

In Texas, Senator John Cornyn seeks his third term. GreenPapers lists Tim Day as a Democratic challenger, but this site identifies him as an independent Senate candidate; he ran in 2012 as a Republican for Congress in the state’s 14th congressional district. He has apparently also filed papers to run in the 14th district again.

In Wyoming, Senator Mike Enzi seeks his fourth term and faces a GOP primary challenge from Thomas Bleming (and perhaps, soon, Liz Cheney). At this point, no Democrat has filed papers for a Senate bid.

Most of these are very red states, and obviously even the best-known Democrat would start as an underdog. But you never know when an incumbent might develop health issues, become entangled in a damaging scandal, or suddenly have some terrible YouTube gaffe that jeopardizes his chances for reelection. While most incumbents will cruise safely to reelection, a party can capitalize on unexpected swings of fortune by having a credible candidate in place as an alternative. With all due respect to the little-known candidates above . . . most of them don’t appear to be credible candidates.

A party’s task of winning elections is helped when they get their best candidates on the field. But in most of the red-state Senate races, Democrats are still looking to get any player on the field.

Last week, the New York Times offered a not-so-flattering profile of Sean Eldridge, an aspiring Democratic congressman with roughly ∞ in personal wealth who is looking for just the right congressional seat to purchase run for:

Two years ago, Sean Eldridge and his husband, the Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, bought a $5 million estate in Garrison, about 50 miles north of New York City. It offered 80 acres of rolling fields and a farmhouse once owned by a Vanderbilt. It would also allow Mr. Eldridge, 26, to run for the local Congressional seat if he chose to.

But that seat appeared unattainable, and soon the couple’s gaze shifted north, to the neighboring district on the other side of the Hudson River. In January, they bought a $2 million modern home here overlooking a reservoir, laying the groundwork for Mr. Eldridge’s campaign for their new local Congressional seat, New York’s 19th.

A story like this is an easy lay-up for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which put together a web ad hitting Eldridge:

The only catch: How many people even remember Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous?

UPDATE: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee writes in to let us know that unlike 2012, when Mitt Romney was the devil incarnate, successful entrepreneurs who invest in other companies are now exactly the kind of people we want in government:

“While a lot of people talk about the needs to create jobs, Sean Eldridge has actually been doing it, investing in small businesses throughout the Hudson Valley and helping them to expand and create jobs. Sean also has a strong record promoting environmental protection and civil rights throughout New York. While some folks work tirelessly to protect tax breaks for billionaires and corporate special interests, Sean has been working to grow small businesses and fight for middle class families.” – Emily Bittner, National Press Secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Thanks, DCCC!

Meet Greg Brophy, a fourth-generation Coloradan, candidate for governor, veteran state senator, hunter, cyclist, melon farmer, Prius driver, and not Tom Tancredo.

“We now have a gun-control governor,” Brophy said of laws that limit ammunition magazines to 15 rounds and require universal background checks on all gun sales and transfers. “They passed the most extreme gun-control measures ever seen in the Rocky Mountain West.”

At one point in his remarks, Brophy, who has represented his sprawling eastern Colorado district in both the state House and Senate, brandished a large-capacity magazine he legally obtained from the manufacturer Magpul, which plans to leave the state with the passage of the new laws.

“Instead of limiting the capacity of ammunition magazines, we will work to increase the capacity of our highways,” Brophy said. “We will increase the number of charter schools and magnet schools.”

Sunday’s campaign kickoff was the first event on a four-day swing across Colorado where Brophy will meet with voters.

As mentioned, Brophy is not the Tom Tancredo who left the GOP to run as a Constitution-party candidate for governor in 2010, who garnered 36 percent in a three-way race against John Hickenlooper, the current incumbent Democrat, who finished with 51 percent. Tancredo has reregistered as a Republican and announced a gubernatorial bid in June.

With an image like this one on his campaign website, do you think Brophy thinks the gun issue is going to be big in Colorado next year?

The first Morning Jolt of the week looks at some obscure court-case verdict down in Florida, the Democrats’ cries to investigate the investigator in the IRS scandal, some largely unnoticed big developments in Syria, and then this big news for 2014:

The Stakes Just Got a Little Higher in Every Competitive 2014 Senate Race

The weekend also brought a lucky break for Republican hopes of capturing a majority in the Senate in 2014:

Former Gov. Brian Schweitzer shocked the Montana and national political establishments Saturday with his announcement that he wouldn’t run for an open U.S. Senate seat in 2014 as many had expected.

“I never got in this race,” Schweitzer told the Gazette State Bureau in a telephone interview Saturday morning.

He acknowledged that he considered running for the Senate seat being vacated by longtime Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, but in the end he decided a legislative body isn’t the place for him.

“I’m a doer,” Schweitzer said.

He said he likes to plow half a field in the morning and see the progress by noon before he finishes the job in the afternoon.

“I’m used to being in charge of things, getting things done,” Schweitzer said. “Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate is a place where things die.”

Keep that comment in mind for when Schweitzer inevitably endorses the Democratic tomato can that wins the primary. “I tell you, my fellow Montanans, State Senator John Smith is exactly the right man to serve in the place where things die!” Maybe they should nominate a mortician.

Rick Moran:

Schweitzer would have been a clear favorite going into the race, given his proven vote-getting and fundraising skills. His assumed candidacy explained the reluctance of GOP Congressman Steve Daines to challenge for the seat — a better possibility now that Schweitzer has declined to run.

A Daines bid could create a domino effect:

Two other Republicans, former state Sen. Corey Stapleton, of Billings, and current state Rep. Champ Edmunds, of Missoula, already are in the U.S. Senate race. Edmunds has said he would drop to the House race if Daines goes for the Senate.

Here’s how Politico sees the state of play at this point:

Republicans are favored to win two seats left vacant by Democratic retirements — in West Virginia and South Dakota — and the Schweitzer move will make it much easier for the GOP to win in Montana. That means the battle for the majority will likely be fought in a handful of red states with Democratic incumbents, including North Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana and Alaska.

Of course, a bunch of avoidable Senate losses in the past two cycles have pretty much beaten the excessive optimism out of us, hasn’t it?

A conservative who has been quite successful in Hollywood writes in to dispute the notion that studio bias is the primary impediment to conservative cultural influence. He’s referring to the arguments in this section of the Morning Jolt:

Once More into the Breach of Conservatives’ Struggle to Influence the Culture

Rod Dreher, crunchy con and former contributor to National Review, now writing over at The American Conservative, examines and expands upon the common lament that conservatives need to become better storytellers:

• Argument has its place, but story is what truly moves the hearts and minds of men. The power of myth—which is to say, of storytelling — is the power to form and enlighten the moral imagination, which is how we learn right from wrong, the proper ordering of our souls, and what it means to be human. Russell Kirk, the author of The Conservative Mind whose own longtime residence in his Michigan hometown earned him the epithet “Sage of Mecosta,” considered tending the moral imagination to be “conservatism at its highest.”

  Through the stories we tell, we come to understand who we are and what we are to do. This is true for both individuals and communities . . .

  Stories work so powerfully on the moral imagination because they are true to human experience in ways that polemical arguments are not. And because the moral imagination often determines which intellectual arguments—political, economic, theological, and so forth—will be admitted into consideration, storytelling is a vital precursor to social change.

But there’s one note in his lengthy cover piece that grated on me:

• [Sam] MacDonald came from a working-class western Pennsylvania family, graduated from Yale, and worked in Washington journalism at Reason before returning home to raise his kids. His experience has taught him how hapless the right is at understanding the power of storytelling.

  “The smart people on the Right are working in the conservative infrastructure,” he says. “You want a conservative view on healthcare? It comes from Heritage, or maybe the Wall Street Journal op-ed page. Except most people don’t care. It’s too confusing.”

  It would make a much greater difference, MacDonald believes, if conservatives were bringing their insights to bear writing for the network medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy.” But that is hard to imagine, he says.

Well, no kidding. My views about, say, the need for tort reform would catch on a lot quicker if Patrick Dempsey were to express them, shaking his fist in righteous indignation, about how the hospital’s fear of a lawsuit is interfering with him performing a high-risk but needed surgery on the critically ill adorable little girl of the week.* I’ll cast Wise as the ambulance-chasing lawyer and the audience will instantly know he’s the bad guy.

“Hi, I’m Ray Wise, perhaps best known for playing Leland Palmer and The Devil. When I appear as a guest star on your favorite show, you can rest assured that I was indeed the one who committed the murder the protagonists are trying to solve.”

But a writing gig on Grey’s Anatomy or any other highly-rated network drama is hard to get. This is where the discussion amongst conservatives usually turns to, “and liberals in Hollywood will never hire a conservative writer, or allow a conservative message to get through!”

And that’s true, at least in some cases. A few years back, Ben Shapiro did a great job getting interviews with producers and executives who more or less openly admit that they see their work as a chance to promote their viewpoints, and that sometimes they put in story elements to emphasize a message of “’f*** you’ to the right wing.”

But the obstacle isn’t purely ideological. Some of the obstacle is that there aren’t that many high-quality shows with mass audiences, those shows only have a certain number of full-time writing gigs, and the supply of potential writers is way, way, way higher than the demand. Yes, there are probably a bunch of talented conservatives trying to make it in Hollywood and finding the doors closed. But there are probably some talented liberals trying to make it in Hollywood and finding the doors closed.

Trying to be a screenwriter in Hollywood requires being willing to endure a lot of rejection, with no guarantee of success, and probably trying to write, on spec, some sort of brilliant, attention-catching, so-good-the-producers-can’t-possibly-pass work while simultaneously holding down a day job to pay the bills. It means living in Los Angeles — with a cost of living 36 percent higher than the national average — and spending a lot of time trying to make connections in an intensely competitive field. And of course, the process of bringing a concept for a show or film to the airwaves or silver screen is legendarily complicated, arbitrary, consensus-driven, and difficult.

We’ve heard a lot of “we need to take back the culture!” and “Breitbart warned us, ‘politics is downstream from culture’” in the past nine months or so. Jonah reminded us:

• [Hollywood’s] influence is agonizingly hard to predict or dismiss as unthinkingly liberal. Studies of “All in the Family” found that viewers in America, and around the globe, took different lessons from the show based on their politics and cultural norms. Despite Norman Lear’s liberal best efforts, many found Archie Bunker more persuasive than his “meathead” sociologist son-in-law. HBO’s epic series “The Wire” was a near-Marxist indictment of urban liberalism and the drug war, making it quite popular among many conservatives and libertarians. The popular BBC series “Downton Abbey” is shockingly conservative in many respects. The aristocrats are decent, compassionate people, and the staff is, if anything, more happily class-conscious than the blue bloods. And, yet, as far as I can tell, liberals love it.

  Obviously, the market is a big factor. No doubt many Hollywood liberals would like to push the ideological envelope more, but audiences get a vote. And that vote isn’t cast purely on ideological grounds.

  There’s a difference between art and propaganda. Outside the art house crowd, liberal agitprop doesn’t sell. Art must work with the expectations and beliefs of the audience. Even though pregnancies are commonplace on TV, you’ll probably never see a hilarious episode of a sitcom in which a character has an abortion — because abortion isn’t funny.

  The conservative desire to create a right-wing movie industry is an attempt to mimic a caricature of Hollywood. Any such effort would be a waste of money that would make the Romney campaign seem like a great investment.

It’s worth noting that some liberal efforts to influence public opinion through art fall flat on their collective faces, perhaps the most notable recent example being a slew of mostly heavy-handed anti-Iraq-War films:

• A spate of Iraq-themed movies and TV shows haven’t just failed at the box office. They’ve usually failed spectacularly, despite big stars, big budgets and serious intentions.

  The underwhelming reception from the public raises a question: Are audiences turned off by the war, or are they simply voting against the way filmmakers have depicted it? . . .

  The Iraq war-themed “In the Valley of Elah,” starring Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon, received mixed critical notices and did little business upon its release last September (total domestic gross: $6.8 million). “Redacted,” a Brian De Palma-directed film about a renegade Army unit, was barely seen when it came out in limited release in November (it grossed just $65,388).

  An even more paltry reception greeted “Grace Is Gone” (2007), in which star John Cusack deals with the aftermath of his wife’s death in Iraq; “Home of the Brave” (2006), about a group of soldiers (including Samuel L. Jackson and Jessica Biel) adjusting to life after the war; and “The Situation” (2006), about a love triangle set amid the conflict.

To make a good movie requires talent, yes, but also capital — you need to get the equipment to make the film, hire actors, build sets or get filming permits in locations, costumes, music, etc. — and that’s just the basics, never mind special effects, stunts, sound effects and editing, renting the crane for a crane shot or helicopter, etc.

Notice that we don’t lack conservatives who can thrive in radio and more recently podcasting, web videos, etc. I think a big factor is that those products are cheap to produce.

* Why, no, I don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy out of the corner of my eye while Mrs. CampaignSpot watches it on the DVR, and by no means do I mock that every episode ends with some patient croaking in melodramatic fashion during a montage set to Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” (“If I lay here . . . If I just lay here . . . Would you lie with me and just forget the world?”) leading to perpetual basket case Dr. Grey offering a voice over with some sort of pseudo-philosophical Chinese-cookie-worthy life lesson that the doctors learned while botching their latest life and death surgical procedure (“You spend your entire life searching for a place to call home, and only when all seems lost do you turn around and realize, you’ve been there all along”) and I absolutely totally don’t mimic EKG flatline noises every time “Chasing Cars” comes on the radio.

Few congressional defeats stung conservatives as much as Representative Pat Murphy’s defeat of Allen West — NR Cruiser — in Florida.

Besides the popularity of West among conservatives, the district was hardly tough territory for Republicans. Florida’s 18th congressional district is one of only nine in the U.S. that elected a Democrat to the House but gave more of its vote to Mitt Romney last year. Two Republicans announced bids early, former Connecticut state lawmaker Alan Schlesinger (you may remember him as the token longshot Republican in the 2006 Joe Lieberman–Ned Lamont Senate race) and Juno Beach vice mayor pro tem Ellen Andel. But the Republican field now features a veteran state lawmaker with serious financial resources at his disposal, Carl Domino.

Domino served four terms and lost in the 2010 GOP Senate primary; as of 2012, his personal financial disclosure forms listed his net worth as roughly $24 million. He was the wealthiest state legislator in Florida during his term. His old state-legislative campaign site can be found here; his financial firm’s site can be found here.

West has said he’s open to challenging GOP senator Marco Rubio in 2016.

The final Morning Jolt of the week reveals that one of the least-favorite Democrats from the past is indeed a bad guy:

You Stay Classy, San Diego Mayor!

One of my all-time favorite Republican candidates is Nick Popaditch, a Purple Heart and Silver Star–winning Marine who lost an eye in the first battle for Fallujah, who ran for Congress in Southern California 2010 and 2012. In his 2010 race, he lost to longtime incumbent Bob Filner, who later went on to run for mayor of San Diego and win.

The guys you like don’t always turn out to be heroes — COUGHbobmcdonnellCOUGH — and the guys you don’t like don’t always turn out to be creeps. But sometimes they do, and it’s somewhat satisfying.

Sounds like Filner’s a Grade-A Jerk:

Earlier Thursday, three high-profile San Diegans described sexual harassment allegations involving “numerous” female employees of Mayor Bob Filner who were subjected to “unfortunate and reprehensible circumstances” but refused to reveal victim identities or details of the alleged behavior.

Filner released a statement on Thursday afternoon apologizing to city residents.

“As someone who has spent a lifetime fighting for equality for all people, I am embarrassed to admit that I have failed to fully respect the women who work for me and with me, and that at times I have intimidated them.

“I am also humbled to admit that I need help. I have begun to work with professionals to make changes in my behavior and approach. In addition, my staff and I will participate in sexual harassment training provided by the city.

“Please know that I fully understand that only I am the one who can make these changes. If my behavior doesn’t change I cannot succeed in leading our city.

“In the next few days, I will be reaching out to those who now work to those who now work in the Mayor’s Office or have previously worked for me — both men and women — to personally apologize for my behavior.”

Filner then said that residents have every right to be disappointed in him.

“I only ask that you give me an opportunity to prove I am capable of change, so that the vision I have for our city’s future can be realized,” he said.

“Failed to fully respect the women who work for me.” Is that what they’re calling it now?

Does “give me an opportunity to prove I am capable of change” work for harassment in other workplaces?

How about Nick Popaditch for mayor?

Today’s Morning Jolt features a discussion of Eliot Spitzer’s mental state, whether the sequester counts as a “disaster,” and then this account from the campaign trail with Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli:

On the Pre-Debate Campaign Trail with Ken Cuccinelli

Ken Cuccinelli isn’t showing any sweat.

This is not to say he isn’t sweating; it’s just that he can hide it well as he walks through the Holly, Woods and Vines nursery and greenhouse in Alexandria, Virginia, in a light blue dress shirt, tie, and suit pants while in 80-degree heat with the region’s traditional wet-mop-to-the-face midsummer 88 percent humidity. I, meanwhile, have arrived straight from CNN’s studios in a dark wool suit and can feel my body rapidly dehydrating as Cuccinelli talks to Vanessa Wheeler, the owner and proprietor of the nursery, about the challenges facing small businesses like hers.

Photo credit: Jim. Pretty good for a writer, huh?

The half-dozen other members of the press in attendance aren’t interested in the shipping costs of begonias; the one big topic on their minds is the new revelation about additional gifts and donations from businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. to Virginia governor Bob McDonnell and his family. The latest news means Williams gave a grand total in $145,000 in gifts and loans to the McDonnell family in 2011 and 2012. With any more revelations, the scandal will stop being about a wealthy donor giving expensive gifts in a potential attempt to influence the governor and start being about a wealthy donor who vastly overpaid for alleged influence with a term-limited governor.

Cuccinelli characterizes the allegations against McDonnell as a distraction from what he wants to talk about and what he contends is preeminent in the minds of most Virginia voters, the economy and job creation. (While Virginia’s unemployment rate is relatively low, sequestration and other factors have clouded the jobs outlook in the state.)

NBC’s reporter asks Cuccinelli about his own failure to report gifts from Williams.

“I inadvertently didn’t report some things. I’m the one who went back and found them, and I’m the one who held a press conference and said, ‘hey, here are all my items.’ I missed four or five over the course of four years. That’s part of my commitment to transparency. When I make mistakes, I own up to them. Back in the Senate I supported budget transparency and other changes like that. That’s also a part of why I put out eight years of my tax returns, and I think my opponent ought to do that as well.”

(Cuccinelli also asked the Richmond Commonwealth Attorney to conduct an independent review of his disclosures.)

Cuccinelli feels like he’s got a pretty good defense. He doesn’t merely not do special favors for his donors; he’s something of an ingrate, because as attorney general, he’s actually made decisions and fought suits against them.

“Speaking for my office, the only thing [Jonnie R. Williams Sr. has] ever gotten out of my office is opposition to one lawsuit. So there’s been nothing in our office other than that one case where we came out and immediately opposed their position. . . . The perception is met best by facts, and the fact is that the one occasion that something came across the desk of the attorney general’s office responsibility, they were pushed back on, they were fought, without giving an inch.”

This was a 2011 Star Scientific lawsuit, challenging a sales-and-use tax assessment on tobacco-curing barns the company owns in Mecklenburg, Va.

“Hey, look at my biggest donor in the last ten years. What did they get for it? They got an electricity bill that will drag Dominion’s revenue down $700 or $800 million over the next twelve years. That’s what they’ve got for it. Virginians will continue to get that good policy, regardless of who’s supporting me or not.” He appears to be referring to this case, where the “Virginia Supreme Court affirmed a decision of the State Corporation Commission (SCC) regarding Dominion Virginia Power’s recently concluded base rate case. The court rejected the arguments advanced by Dominion, which would have allowed Dominion to earn a higher return on equity from customers than the SCC’s interpretation of Virginia law allows.” Cuccinelli and his office represented Dominion customers in the court fight.

Cuccinelli is nine days away from his first debate with rival Terry McAuliffe, and there’s a sense he and his team are itching to get the pair on stage, early and as often as possible. Cuccinelli’s campaign proposed 15 debates, with one in every major and minor media market in the state. McAuliffe has countered with five debates, and it sounds like negotiations for the details and rules of the remaining debates are proceeding slowly and with great frustration.

“It took, like, a tractor-trailer to drag him to the [Virginia] Bar [Association] debate,” Cuccinelli sighs during an interview on the ride over to the nursery. “They threatened to walk over one candidate-to-candidate question. So he asks me one, I ask him one. They were going to walk away from the debate for that.”

Why is Cuccinelli so eager to get out on the debate stage with McAuliffe, and so determined to get to ask his rival one question? Well, watch how Cuccinelli used his one question in a debate Steve Shannon back in the 2009 attorney general’s race.

Cuccinelli’s one question: “How many divisions are there in the attorney general’s office? And please name each one and explain briefly what each one does.”

Simple . . . as long as you’ve taken the time to familiarize yourself with the office you hope to win. Unfortunately, Steve Shannon didn’t do the reading.

Shannon responded . . . “So, I’ll talk about that in just a second, but let me go [back] to the 2004 budget real quick . . .” Cuccinelli teased him about not answering the question, but Shannon continued with an answer that meandered slightly more than the Mississippi River:

The first thing is that with the 2004 budget, we had proof that there were Virgina state troopers who were eligible for food stamps. And that budget allowed them to not be eligible for food stamps. We had sheriff’s deputies who were able to get a pay raise. That was important to public safety and important for higher education. We’ve now came to the point of the election cycle where we play a game of gotcha.’ Ken asks questions about the bureaucracy, and then I come back and say, ‘Well, Ken, last week you told a reporter that hitting a cop was a misdemeanor, not a felony.’ Or ‘Ken, are you familiar with the case of Commonwealth vs. Thomas, it’s a Court of Appeals case, very important to the criminal justice system.’ It’s about a prosecutor who went after a drug dealer in possession of firearms. Do you know what the holding in that case was? I know because I was the prosecutor in that case.

But you know what, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really doesn’t matter. Because what matters is that every four and a half minutes, another violent crime is being committed in Virginia. The reality is that presence of gangs is at its worst point since 2000. It’s not getting better, it’s getting worse.

[audience begins to chuckle at meandering answer] The reality is, you can laugh, but there are 357 pedophiles right now who are using computers in Virginia to trade child pornography. We know who these people are, we know how to get them, but we don’t devote sufficient resources to them.

But what does Ken want to talk about? He wants to talk about arcane questions. He wants to talk about details of the bureaucracy. You know what? The reality – the reality is that kids are being abused in Virginia right now, and if you want to focus on the bureaucracy you’re clearly going to vote for Ken. But if you want somebody who’s been a prosecutor, who’s going to go after those pedophiles, who’s going to go after those gang leaders, who’s going to go after drug dealers, who doesn’t need on-the-job experience, those are the people who I want to vote for me.”

I asked Cuccinelli, “Is it safe to assume that given the opportunity, you might ask about some of the specifics of Virginia governance, and that you may, perhaps, have some doubts about Terry McAuliffe’s familiarity with all that?”

For the first time in my presence, Cuccinelli really smiles. “Perhaps.”

Cuccinelli and his team expect McAuliffe to try to shift the debate to social issues, early and often.

McAuliffe and his campaign appear to believe that in order to win the governor’s race, they need Virginians to believe that his rival is really Todd Akin. Cuccinelli and his campaign appears to believe that in order to win, they need Virginians to believe that his rival is really Terry McAuliffe.

Finally, in news you can use, Holly, Woods and Vines features Biker Chick Garden Gnomes.

You’re welcome.

Today’s Morning Jolt, hitting e-mailboxes now, also features a look at how the growth and maturation of “Generation X” suggests “Generation Y” and “the Millennials” may have a quite different outlook on life and politics within a decade or two.

How Generation X Shows Hope for Generation Y, and ‘Reality Bites’

Flipping through the channels the other night, I came across Reality Bites, a modestly successful little 1994 romantic comedy that somehow came to be considered one of the iconic films of the 1990s, or at least one of the films that came to define the reputation of “Generation X” — those born between the early 1960s and early 1980s.

A little while back, the great Mary Katharine Ham brilliantly dissected how the film looks from the perspective of today: the characters’ self-absorption and whining, the constant smoking, the grunge soundtrack, and the dated notion that Ethan Hawke’s grungy bar-band slacker is the hero, and that Ben Stiller’s kind-hearted but ambitious yuppie executive at an MTV-style network is the wrong guy for Winona Ryder. (Like MKH, I’m just going to use the actors’ names.)

Some modern analyses of the film like this one (funny but NSFW language) note the irony that the film is about the frustrations of unemployed or under-employed 20-somethings, and their fears that their dreams will never be realized . . . in the early-to-mid 1990s. That early-90s economy looks like Nirvana compared to today (no pun intended, but I’m pretty proud of it now that I realize it) and we know that in a year or two, Silicon Valley and the dot-com boom are about to turbocharge the job market that the characters find so horrific.

Looking back, we in Generation X had it pretty good. Not only was the U.S. economy roaring at the time, but opportunities for young workers were pretty widespread in the dot-com era. As costly as higher education was then, it looks positively inexpensive compared to today. It was a time of relative peace, when U.S. military actions in Somalia, Haiti, and the Balkans could be largely ignored by most of the public, and few foresaw the horrors of 9/11 lurking around the corner.

“Back in my day, son, before the Internet, we hung out on strangely unsecured building roofs, drinking beers and playing guitar, brooding.”

Despite the clunky landline phones, flannel, 1-900 psychic hotlines, and Lisa Loeb on the soundtrack, “Reality Bites” is less about a moment in our cultural life than a moment in the modern career trajectory. A large chunk of Generation X came out of high school or college with big dreams of success — high expectations fueled, in part, by the boom of the 1980s and the surprise end of the Cold War. We left the shelter of academia and entered the real world . . . and, for many of us, at least initially, the real world just kicked our asses. Only professional athletes leave college to step into their dream job. Almost everyone else starts at the bottom, interning or one step above interning, and gasps when they realize the distance between themselves and that dream job. Try and fail enough times, and you begin to fear the dream job might be just a dream. And how much does a hidden fear of failure fuel those pronouncements of disdain for “selling out”?

Of course, as fun as it is to mock Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder’s insufferable dismissal of any type of compromise on the road to success as “selling out,” there is a genuine, legitimate anxiety that those characters and the film express.

A lot of us feel some sort of creative impulse, and desire to create something — a book, a painting, a song, a sculpture, a film — that stands out and is recognized for its excellence, its insight, its ability to stir emotions in others. And we fear going through the effort and struggle of the creative process only to lose our creation, or to have it co-opted by others who just want to use it to sell things. You fear that just as you’re about to make a key point, and establish some sort of connection with the audience —

DON’T FORGET TO BOOK YOUR CABIN NOW FOR THE NATIONAL REVIEW NORWEGIAN FJORDS CRUISE! DON’T DELAY! ACT NOW! CABINS ARE RUNNING OUT!

Anyway, as I was saying, both this film and another one of my mid-90s favorites, Grosse Pointe Blank, deal with the fear of spending years pursuing a career only to wake up one day and realize you hate what you do. Several characters in Reality Bites describe the divorces and frustrated dreams of their parents, and seem determined to avoid those mistakes — yet their preferred option is to not try.

Even then, the movie has to cheat to make the “selling out” option look so unappealing and bohemian rebelliousness look so appealing. A major plot point is that Clearly-MTV-But-Not-Called-MTV-for-Legal-Reasons executive Stiller takes a videotape of Ryder’s documentary, and shows it to network executives in New York, who he says are thrilled. But at a screening party in Houston, she’s shocked to find her earnest exploration of her housemates’ life challenges — awaiting the results of an AIDS test, the gay one coming out to his mother, etc. — has been heavily edited into crass pabulum.

Stiller says he didn’t know it would be edited that way either. So we’re to believe that nobody watched the program they were about to screen at the party? Huh? (I suppose Stiller could be lying.) Winona’s reaction is to storm out of the party, hurt and betrayed . . . instead of trying to salvage some of her original vision. (Did she sign a contract? Is this the final cut? All of these questions are ignored, to serve the plot’s requirement that Stiller is the “bad guy” or at least the wrong guy, because he’s a corporate sellout.)

After watching enough movies where the characters spent almost no time at work and live in lavish apartments, it’s refreshing to watch one where the protagonists worry about paying the phone bill. But even here, the movie cheats by suggesting that stealing from your parents will do in a pinch. Winona’s character gets cash from motorists and pays for their gasoline on her father’s gas-station credit card, running up $900 in charges. [MKH calculated that would be $1,400 today.] The closing lines of the movie play the dad’s reaction as sort of a joke. He might as well say, “Lucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do!”

Why am I writing at great length about a 19-year-old movie? Because the criticisms of Generation X back in the 1990s — they’re lazy, they’re educated but lack ambition and drive, they’re over-privileged whiners — aren’t that different from what we hear about Generation Y today. (To the extent one can generalize about an entire generation based on survey data, Generation X is pretty hard-working.) A lot of conservatives talk about today’s 20-somethings in fatalist terms, as if they’re all Occupy-protesting, Obama-backing hipsters with six figures of college debt from their post-graduate degrees in Puppetry Studies who want to enjoy a perpetual adolescence and free birth control.

Generation X grew up and got to work; 65 percent work full-time, 10 percent work part-time. What’s more, 82 percent are homeowners, 74 percent have children, 70 percent are married, 66 percent have a 401(k) or other retirement plans, and only 6 percent live with their parents. Perhaps most surprising, 29 percent reported making $100,000 or more annually. To be conservative, you usually have to have something you want to conserve.

Of course, Generation X’s maturation process had some help — that booming economy of the 1990s and about a decade and a half of policies under Clinton and Bush that fueled that steady growth. With the policies of this administration in place, who knows when we’ll next see steady growth and serious job creation. In fact, those policies may actually be impeding the process that prompts young people to drift towards the right as they age:

The U.S. birth rate has generally fallen since the Great Recession began in 2007, and some of the sharpest drops have been among women in the 20s. The birth rate for women ages 20 to 24 hit a record low of 85.3 births per 1,000 women in 2011, according to the most recent detailed data available from the Centers for Disease Control. For women ages 25 to 29, the 2011 birth rate of 107.2 births per 1,000 women was the lowest since 1976.

The drop comes amid a longer term trend toward women having their children later in life. The average age for a woman having her first child was 25.6 years old in 2011, up from 21.4 years old in 1970, according to the CDC.

It also has coincided with an excruciatingly long period of high unemployment and weak economic growth.

No kidding.

When Representative Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) announced she wouldn’t run for reelection, the Democrats’ past challenger, businessman Jim Graves, announced he wouldn’t run in 2014.

Since then, Democrats have found one candidate . . . probably not quite what Bachmann’s fiercest critics were looking for:

Judy Adams said Monday she will seek the DFL endorsement in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District.

Adams, who calls herself “the lead-prevention lady,” hasn’t run for or held elected office. She says she works as a painter and lead remodeler and has used her expertise on those issues to lobby Minnesota legislators to improve state lead laws. Now Adams says she’d like to advance that cause, as well as the cause of small businesses, as a member of Congress.

Adams says she doesn’t believe the DFL is conservative enough on many issues, but she isn’t interested in running as a Republican.

If nominated, “Lead Prevention Lady” will take on former state representative Tom Emmer, state senator John Pederson, or Anoka County commissioner Rhonda Sivarajah. Emmer just announced that his campaign for Congress in Minnesota’s sixth district took in more than $220,000.

Today’s Morning Jolt begins with what could be one of the biggest stories of the 2014 election cycle . . . or just another comment that never amounts to anything:

A Sarah Palin for Senate Bid? Oh, Please! Oh, Please!

This could be big. On the other hand, we’re all familiar with the phenomenon of eagerly anticipating a big-time, endlessly scrutinized, high-stakes campaign from Sarah Palin, only to find out she’s decided against it.

Sarah Palin may not be done with politics after all.

The former Alaska governor, who was also 2008’s GOP vice presidential nominee, said Tuesday she’s contemplating a bid for U.S. Senate against Democrat Mark Begich. He’s up for re-election in 2014.

“I’ve considered it because people have requested me [to] consider it,” Palin told conservative radio host Sean Hannity on his show. “I’m still waiting to see what the lineup will be. And hoping there will be some new blood, new energy. Not just kind of picking from the same old politicians in the state that come from political families.”

Remember, Obama’s political-activism group, Organizing for Action, has loudly pledged they won’t help Begich at all in 2014 because he voted against the background-check bill. (You’re forgiven for wondering aloud just how many volunteers Organizing for Action has in Alaska, but presumably OfA would be able to steer a lot of donations Begich’s way if they so chose.)

I’m all for a Palin-for-Senate bid; nothing like “Senator Palin of Alaska” and “Senator Liz Cheney of Wyoming” to convince the Left that their world is falling apart. Obviously, she would have enormous fundraising prowess, unparalleled name ID, and her opponent won by about one percentage point over incumbent Republican Ted Stevens, about one month after Stevens was convicted of seven felony counts of failing to report gifts. Sure, a February PPP survey had her trailing Begich considerably, but that’s a theoretical. If nothing else, she would make the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have to spend oodles in Alaska to protect an incumbent.

But it’s tough to get too excited about a Palin bid, considering the number of times she’s made comments that suggested a particular course of action, only to reverse course:

• Back in September 2010, she sounded like she might run for president: “If nobody else wanted to step up, Greta, I would offer myself up in the name of service to the public.”

• Then she announced she wouldn’t run . . . but then she later said, “You know, it’s not too late for folks to jump in and I don’t know. Who knows what will happen in the future?”

• After leaving Fox News in January, she declared, “I encourage others to step out in faith, jump out of the comfort zone, and broaden our reach as believers in American exceptionalism. That means broadening our audience. I’m taking my own advice here as I free up opportunities to share more broadly the message of the beauty of freedom and the imperative of defending our republic and restoring this most exceptional nation. We can’t just preach to the choir; the message of liberty and true hope must be understood by a larger audience.” And then . . . in June, she signed up with Fox News Channel again.

• Just a few days ago, asked whether she would form a third party with radio-show host Mark Levin, she sounded like she was open to forming a third party.

So if this Senate bid never comes to fruition . . . will anyone be surprised?

If former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford’s comeback bid for the U.S. House had failed earlier this year, it’s possible that scandal-ridden former governor Eliot Spitzer and former congressman Anthony Weiner wouldn’t have launched their comeback bids.

“If he can do it, I can do it” is an optimist’s mantra, and it requires the public to gloss over any differences.

When Sanford’s disappearance from the state became public knowledge, he returned to the U.S. and, in front of the cameras, Sanford confessed his sins . . . and kept talking . . . and kept talking . . . and kept going until almost everyone in the state begged him to stop talking about it. A messy divorce followed; a state legislative ad hoc committee voted to censure but not impeach him. (Sanford may have been helped by the fact that quite a few political factions in South Carolina wanted the lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, to have a leg up in the upcoming gubernatorial race.)

In some voters’ eyes, adultery is adultery, and the details don’t matter much. But Sanford’s scandal didn’t quite fit the standard template of political sex scandals. Rather than the usual chasing-the-secretary-around-the-desk, Sanford and Maria Belen Chapur had met in person just four times in eight years, and the two wrote effusive e-mails, calling each other “my love” and “sweetest”; Sanford later publicly referred to Chapur as his “soul mate.” The govenor and Jenny Sanford had separated, at her request, when he went on the infamous trip to Argentina.

After the Sanfords divorced, the governor and Chapur got engaged. In a country where roughly half of all marriages end in divorce and 19 percent of marriages that occurred in 2008 were the second marriage for at least one spouse, the sad ending to Mark and Jenny’s marriage is regrettable, but hardly uncommon.

Weiner, of course, did not confess when caught. He vehemently denied the reporting of Andrew Breitbart about the lewd images and claimed his Twitter account had been hacked; he and more than a few allies, like CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, suggested that Breitbart was probably lying. The controversy triggered days of questions about how and why someone would hijack Weiner’s account to send out those photos, and increasingly implausible comments from the congressman, including his famously telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he could not say whether or not the photo was of his own underwear-clad private parts. Weiner let his friends, like Kirsten Powers, go out and lie for him, contending the allegations couldn’t be true. He audaciously denied the charges with indignation, calling a reporter a “jackass” during a press conference.

A few days later, Weiner called a press conference in a hotel in New York City to admit that, indeed, that was him in the photo, and he had engaged in sexual chat with young women on Twitter. But before Weiner arrived, Breitbart stepped up to the microphones and “hijacked” the press conference, denouncing Weiner for lying and the media for uncritically repeating his lies.

Spitzer’s scandal was not mere impropriety; it was illegal. What’s more, Spitzer had, as attorney general, led the prosecution of two alleged prostitution rings and other companies he believed had ties to prostitution. Here’s the reasoning from Michael Garcia, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, on why he didn’t press charges:

ELIOT SPITZER has acknowledged to this Office that he was a client of, and made payments to, the Emperors Club VIP.

Our investigation has shown that on multiple occasions, Mr. SPITZER arranged for women to travel from one state to another state to engage in prostitution. After a thorough investigation, this Office has uncovered no evidence of misuse of public or campaign funds. In addition, we have determined that there is insufficient evidence to bring charges against Mr. SPITZER for any offense relating to the withdrawal of funds for, and his payments to, the Emperors Club VIP.

In light of the policy of the Department of Justice with respect to prostitution offenses and the longstanding practice of this Office, as well as Mr. SPITZER’s acceptance of responsibility for his conduct, we have concluded that the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges in this matter.

Resigning from the governor’s office appears to represent “Spitzer’s acceptance of responsibility for his conduct.” Spitzer believes he’s spent enough time in the penalty box of the private sector, hosting shows on CNN and Al Gore’s Current TV, and is ready to return to public life.

As the song goes, “It’s up to you, New York.”

Great news, everyone! The Office of Management and Budget says that this year’s deficit is slated to come in at only $759 billion!

Looking at the inflation-adjusted numbers for our annual deficit, year by year . . . $500 billion used to be considered a really big annual deficit. We hit that in 2004; unadjusted for inflation, it came in at $413 billion. Back in 1991, the year’s deficit came in at $453 billion. So a half a trillion was the pre-Obama all-time high.

Now look at the Obama era:

2009: $1.5 trillion

2010: $1.36 trillion

2011: $1.32 trillion

2012: $1.1 trillion

In other words, Obama’s best year is 50 percent worse than it’s ever been before.