As expected, and as I noted in yesterday’s post, Ben Sasse won his primary race for Senate in Nebraska and Shelly Moore Capito won her primary for Senate in West Virginia. Both are expected to win in the general elections in the Fall.

Sasse will replace retiring Senator Mike Johanns (R). Capito will replace Jay Rockefeller (D) adding one more Senate seat to the ‘Pubs.

***

Tales of Gloom and Despair! That is what one pundit is prophesying for the dems in the elections this year. Michael Barone, writing in the Investor’s Business Daily, mulls the future for the democrats.

Demographic Trends Aren’t Necessarily In Favor Of Democrats

By MICHAEL BARON, Posted 05/13/2014 06:24 PM ET

Michael Barone

Demography is destiny, we are often told, and rightly — up to a point. The American electorate is made up of multiple identifiable segments, defined in various ways, by race and ethnicity, by age cohort, by region and religiosity (or lack thereof), by economic status and interest.

Over time, some segments become larger and some smaller. Some prove to be politically crucial, given the politics of the time. Others become irrelevant, losing cohesion and identity.

From the results of the 2008 presidential election, many pundits prophesied a bleak future for the Republican Party, and not implausibly.

The exit poll showed that President Obama carried by overwhelming margins two demographic segments that were bound to become a larger share of the electorate over time.

He carried Hispanics 67% to 31%, despite Republican opponent John McCain’s support of comprehensive immigration reform. Obama carried voters under 30 — the so-called Millennial Generation — by 66% to 32%.

But over time, Democrats’ hold on these groups has weakened. In Gallup polls, Obama’s job approval among Hispanics declined from 75% in 2012 to 52% in 2013 and among Millennials from 61% in 2012 to 46% in 2013.

The recent Harvard Institute of Politics poll of Millennials showed Democrats with a big party-identification edge among those over 25, but ahead of Republicans by only 41% to 38% among those 18 to 20.

The older Millennials came of political age during the late George W. Bush years and were transfixed by the glamor of candidate Obama in 2008. The younger Millennials are coming of political age in the middle Obama years and are plainly less enchanted and open to the other party.

There are other rifts in what some saw as the emerging eternal Democratic majority. National Journal analyst Ronald Brownstein often contrasts whites and nonwhites, but nonwhites are not a single homogeneous group.

Hispanics tend to vote more like whites than blacks, with high-income Hispanics trending Republican.

When California Democrats tried to use their legislative supermajorities to put on a ballot proposition repealing the state’s ban on racial discrimination in state college and university admissions, Asian-American legislators withdrew their support.

They got hundreds of calls from parents concerned about their kids’ chances to get into Berkeley and UCLA.

Campus-based Asian activists maintained solidarity with their fellow “people of color.” Asian parents with their families’ futures at stake saw things differently.

Union members were long a key Democratic constituency. But there are increasing splits between public sector and private sector unions.

In New Jersey, Democrats with private sector union backgrounds have backed GOP Gov. Chris Christie’s fiscal reforms. In Nevada, the state AFL-CIO is opposing the teacher unions’ drive for more than doubling the business tax to pay for education spending.

On the national level, Laborers International Union president Terry O’Sullivan has spoken out bitterly against the Obama administration’s refusals to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

The column continues at the IDB website. It explores the splits in unions over the Keystone pipeline versus, “billionaire Tom Steyer’s pledge to spend $100 million against the pipeline.”

***

Hundreds trapped underground after explosion, fire at Turkish coal mine

OFFICIALS SAY ‘hopes are diminishing’ Wednesday as rescuers struggle to reach more than 200 miners trapped underground after an explosion and fire at a coal mine in western Turkey kills at least 205 workers during a shift change.

This headline strikes close to home. I grew up in coal country. My Father was a coal miner as were our neighbors around us. Dad was in two mine explosions when he was much younger. After the second, he changed jobs to work above ground where he operated a loader filling railroad cars with coal.

Mine explosions used to be fairly common. It was one area the UMWA worked with mine owners to improve safety. No one, not the miners, the union, nor the mine owners, wanted explosions. Not only did it kill people, it disrupted production and repairs were costly. More than one mine was closed, never to reopen, after an explosion.

I had a personal experience with one large mine explosion. I still remember the event to this day.

Night of the Big Bump!

Miner’s Memorial, Benton, Illinois

On December 21, 1951 at 7:40PM, an explosion occurred at the Orient #2 coal mine in West Frankfort, IL. The explosion occurred at a depth of approximately 500 feet and about 2 1/2 miles from the shaft head—almost directly under our farm.

Read more here…