At 11 a.m. today, Democratic National Committee Chair Tim Kaine, DNC Vice Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other Democratic members held a press conference to introduce what they call the “Republican-Tea Party Contract on America.” According to DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan, these Democratic leaders, “will present the American people a handy 10-point blueprint for how the Republican-Tea Party would govern, based on actual positions taken and held by Republican-Tea Party members.” The blueprint includes repealing the health-care law, privatizing or phasing out Social Security, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, repealing financial reform and abolishing the Education and Energy Departments.

And even 19 percent approval seems high:

Casting a shadow over [GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg] Whitman’s campaign is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s continuing status as the least popular Governor in the country. 71 percent of voters in the state disapprove of the job he’s doing and only 19 percent give him good marks. Generally when you have an outgoing Governor that strongly disliked you’re not going to be inclined to replace him with another person in the same party.

Schwarzenegger is now even less popular in California than George Bush and Sarah Palin — arguably the other two most famous Republicans — are nationally:

According to [a NBC/Wall St. Journal poll earlier this month], just 29 percent view [Palin] favorably, compared with 43 percent who view her unfavorably (not far from George W. Bush’s 29 percent-50 percent score). In addition, the poll shows that 52 percent have problems with a candidate who has been endorsed by Palin, versus only 25 percent who are comfortable with that attribute. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Palin is more of a political celebrity than a political figure.

As I said last month, Schwarzenegger’s career as governor should be a cautionary tale about electing novices in times of crisis.

Huffington Post:

The New York Times’ Brian Stelter tweeted that, according to Nielsen Media Research, Fox News has averaged just 29,000 black viewers in primetime so far this television season (9/09-7/10). That represents just 1.38% of its 2.102 million total viewer audience.

CNN and MSNBC, meanwhile, both have far more black viewers, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of their overall audiences.

MSNBC has averaged 145,000 black viewers, representing 19.3% of its 751,000 total viewer audience.

CNN has averaged 134,000 black viewers, representing 20.7% of its 648,000 total viewer audience.

Last year, the trade magazine Variety reported that figures for the 2007-2008 television season showed that the average age of Fox viewers was 65 years old — the “absolute oldest” audience of any cable channel.

Public Policy Polling:

[New Hampshire GOP senate candidate] Kelly Ayotte’s seen her appeal to moderate voters crumble in the wake of her endorsement by Sarah Palin and her lead over Paul Hodes has shrunk to its lowest level of any public polling in 2010- she has a 45-42 advantage over him, down from 47-40 in an April PPP poll…

Most of the movement both in feelings about Ayotte and in the horse race has come with moderate voters. Moderates make up the largest bloc of the New Hampshire electorate at 47 percent, and Hodes’ lead with them has expanded from just 8 points at 47-39 in April to now 21 points at 51-30. Ayotte’s favorability with them has gone from +5 at 32/27 to -19 at 27/46.

The Palin endorsement may well be playing a role in this. 51 percent of voters in the state say they’re less likely to back a Palin endorsed candidate to only 26 percent who say that support would make them more inclined to vote for someone. Among moderates that widens to 65 percent who say a Palin endorsement would turn them off to 14 percent who it would make more supportive.

Democrat Paul Hodes is unopposed. Ayotte faces Bill Binnie, Jim Bender and Ovide Lamontagne in the Republican primary on Sept. 14. They are running to replace Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican, in the general election on Nov. 2.

One of the most nonsensical claims by opponents of gay marriage is that it is a threat to “traditional marriage,” by which they mean what their intellectual hero, Carrie Prejean, the disgraced former Miss California USA, referred to as “opposite marriage.”

For people who aren’t tuned into the debate, the canard that gay marriage threatens heterosexual marriage sounds vaguely reasonable — like marriage is a zero-sum game and that as gay marriage increases so will the divorce rate among straight couples.

A recent report from Pew Research indicates that the opposite of that is true:

The national divorce rate is higher now than it was a century ago, but it has been declining for the past two decades. According to provisional data for most states from the Centers for Disease Control, there were 3.5 divorces per 1,000 people in 2008, compared with 4 per 1,000 people in 2000. (Marriage rates have also declined but the divorce rate also has declined if expressed as the number of divorces per 1,000 married couples.) [Emphasis added.]

The year 2000 is key here. Before 2000, anti-gay activists had been winning their war against gay marriage, including the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act by Congress in 1996. In 2000, however, the course of the war began to change, and the good guys started to win:

Ken Rudin:

You should get out of the race for governor, former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R) told Colorado Republicans Scott McInnis and Dan Maes last week, if polls show that you can’t beat Democratic candidate John Hickenlooper in the November election. And if you don’t, I’m going to run as a third-party candidate.

McInnis and Maes, battling each other in the Aug. 10 primary, refused. Today … Tancredo joins the race as a candidate of the American Constitution Party.

Of course, Tancredo — who served in the House as a Republican for five terms and sought his party’s presidential nomination in 2008 on an anti-illegal immigration platform — has to first register with his new party. But that’s just a formality.

McInnis, a former congressman who had been his party’s frontrunner for gov., has been under a barrage of criticism over plagiarism charges… Once upon a time, back when Bill Ritter (D) decided to retire, Republicans were confidently predicting they would take back the governorship. But between the McInnis woes and the increasing negativity in the Senate contest between Jane Norton and Ken Buck … the opportunities for GOP gains in both contests are in jeopardy.

Talking Points Memo has obtained an invitation being circulated by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele for a fundraising event in Beverly Hills next month that will feature Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing propagandist behind the doctored videos in the ACORN and Shirley Sherrod scandals:

The fundraising event, billed as an “Election Countdown,” will take place from August 12-14 in Beverly Hills, California, and will also feature other politicians such as California Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, and Nevada Republican gubernatorial nominee Brian Sandoval. Steele and Breitbart are scheduled to co-headline a welcome reception on the first evening, August 12…

RNC spokesman Doug Heye confirmed to TPMDC that the event is going on, but declined to comment further on the nature of fundraising events…

The Four Seasons hotel company, which owns the Beverly Wilshire, has also confirmed to TPMDC that the event is booked for those days, but was unable to confirm a guest list.

I guess the RNC figures, what the heck, we weren’t going to get votes from blacks and others who oppose racism in California anyway, so why not bring out the David Duke of new media to raise money for the party in the heart of the Southern California liberal enclave.

(And it’s fitting somehow that the event will be held in the hotel that was the setting for “Pretty Woman,” the Disney movie that sent a powerful message to young girls that all they had to do to find fulfillment in life was become a street whore and and then fall in love with a wealthy john.)

It will be interesting to see how the city fathers and mothers of Beverly Hills deal with their city being tarred by association with an event featuring a notorious racist, not to mention the protest rally that is sure to be scheduled for the street in front of the hotel, at Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive, on August 12.

San Franciso Chronicle:

Two new polls released this week seem to indicate that public opinion in California is slowly, slowly shifting towards an acceptance of gay marriage — despite the defeat of Proposition 8 two years ago.

A Field Poll on Tuesday showed that if a vote was held on Proposition 8 now, 51 percent of all Californians would vote it down. Then yesterday the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI)released a survey showing, among other findings, that 51 percent of Californians would vote to approve same-sex marriages if given the chance and only 22 percent of Californians believe Proposition 8 has been a good thing for California.

Huffington Post:

Former Vermont governor and chair of the Democratic National Committee HOWARD DEAN: The Tea Party called out their racist fringe and I think the Republican Party’s got to stop appealing to its racist fringe. And Fox News is what did that. You put that on. Continuing to cater to this theme of minority racism and stressing comments like this — some of which are taken out of context — does not help the country knit itself together…

Politico.com:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has turned over e-mails to federal authorities investigating Sen. John Ensign’s extramarital affair with a campaign aide, the latest sign that the criminal probe into the embattled Nevada Republican is picking up steam.

Coburn told POLITICO that he is cooperating with the Justice Department in the investigation of Ensign, and says he’s willing to submit himself to an interview with the FBI or Senate Select Committee on Ethics, which is conducting a parallel investigation into whether Ensign broke Senate rules.

“We’ve given them everything they wanted,” Coburn said, referring to the Justice Department.

Coburn would not reveal what was in the e-mails he is sharing with federal authorities, but a Coburn aide said the Oklahoma Republican turned over more than 1,200 pages of documents to the Justice Department…

At the time of Ensign’s affair, Coburn and the Nevada Republican were roommates, sharing a townhome on Capitol Hill known as the “C Street” house, run by a Christian group.