For years, the Republicans were smart enough to come together to nominate someone who could potentially appeal to a majority. It appears very likely they won’t do that this year. So we should turn the tables and, at the very least, if you don’t support Hillary Clinton, stop denigrating and damaging her. This fiction that she’s not progressive is just that — fiction. She has been on the forefront of the progressive movement since she was in college and she’ll take those same values to the White House.

She will also allow us to win here in Texas. When more and more Republicans start looking for a new home, I assure you they will be far more willing to join a party led by Hillary Clinton than a party led by Bernie Sanders.

I completely understand youthful idealism; I had plenty of it. And I certainly understand the anger that has turned many Sanders’ way. But idealism and anger are not going to change our state; that is only going to happen when Democrats once again become competitive statewide. Along with a lot of others, I am so tired of toiling in the trenches for the Democratic Party and then watching as we form a circular firing squad.

We need to seize this opportunity we’ve been handed. We need to be relevant once again.

For years, the Republicans were smart enough to come together to nominate someone who could potentially appeal to a majority. It appears very likely they won’t do that this year. So we should turn the tables and, at the very least, if you don’t support Hillary Clinton, stop denigrating and damaging her. This fiction that she’s not progressive is just that — fiction. She has been on the forefront of the progressive movement since she was in college and she’ll take those same values to the White House.

She will also allow us to win here in Texas. When more and more Republicans start looking for a new home, I assure you they will be far more willing to join a party led by Hillary Clinton than a party led by Bernie Sanders.

I completely understand youthful idealism; I had plenty of it. And I certainly understand the anger that has turned many Sanders’ way. But idealism and anger are not going to change our state; that is only going to happen when Democrats once again become competitive statewide. Along with a lot of others, I am so tired of toiling in the trenches for the Democratic Party and then watching as we form a circular firing squad.

We need to seize this opportunity we’ve been handed. We need to be relevant once again.

Ralston noted yesterday that “organized” Republican efforts to intervene in the Democratic contest are now underway. This includes College Republicans urging members to support the “socialist” in order to help the GOP candidate “prevail” in November, and coincided with work from a prominent conservative activist in Nevada encouraging Republicans to intervene with a similar message.

Hillary has laid out her vision for how to expand access to the ballot box for all Americans and how to defend against the systematic, deliberate efforts to stop millions of citizens from participating in our democracy:

Repairing the Voting Rights Act. Congress should move quickly to pass legislation that would fix the damage done to the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court and restore the full protections American voters need and deserve. These protections are crucial for young and minority voters, seniors, and other underrepresented groups disproportionately affected by harmful Republican efforts to restrict voting.

Setting a new national standard for early voting. It’s time to set a standard across our country of at least 20 days of early in-person voting, including opportunities for evening and weekend voting. This will reduce long lines and give more people an opportunity to vote, especially those who have work or family obligations during the day. Early in-person voting isn’t just convenient—it’s also more secure, more reliable, and more affordable than absentee voting.

Implementing universal, automatic voter registration. Every citizen in every state should be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18, unless they choose to opt out. At the same time, we need to make sure that registration rolls are secure, up to date, and accurate. When you move, your registration should move with you. Modernizing registration will add tens of millions of voters to the rolls, cost less, and reduce the potential for errors or irregularities.

After a difficult start to her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, with a narrow win in Iowa and a bad loss to Bernie Sanders Tuesday night in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton needs a major boost. Fortunately for her, the next state to cast its votes is much more favorable territory for the presumed front-runner. Part of her advantage in Nevada, which holds its Democratic caucuses on February 20, is demographic: It's a far more diverse state than the lily-white ones that kicked off the contest. But Clinton is also counting on a secret weapon to dominate the ground game in Nevada and deliver her a decisive win: campaign manager Robby Mook.

The 36-year-old Mook first rose to fame in Clintonland after he oversaw Clinton's 2008 Nevada caucus campaign, where she won 51 percent of the popular vote. (Barack Obama actually netted more delegates from the state, thanks to the convoluted math of the caucus system.) After glowing reviews of his Nevada performance, Mook was entrusted with managing Clinton's efforts in other important territories: Ohio, Indiana, and Puerto Rico—all of which she went on to win. "Robby was instrumental in her winning them," one member of the 2008 Clinton campaign's leadership told me last spring when Mook took the job atop Clinton's 2016 nationwide campaign.....

Clinton's Nevada organization is headed by Emmy Ruiz, a member of the Mook Mafia who started out as a field organizer in Las Vegas in June 2007. She ended up running Latino outreach in the state for Mook before the 2008 caucuses and returned to Nevada to manage Obama's winning general election effort there in 2012. "She went to the Robby Mook school of political organizing," says Rory Reid, the son of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid who served as Clinton's 2008 Nevada state chairman and is supporting her informally this year. "Robby's influence is significant."

I asked Ruiz if she's trying to replicate the Ganz-style community-based organizing that Mook used last time. "Absolutely!" she responded. "We've been able to bring together a lot of the best practices of different organizing styles. Similar to what we ran with Robby in 2008, there's a high emphasis on community outreach and empowering precinct captains to really take ownership of organizing their communities."

Ruiz says the Clinton campaign is benefiting from the ground-game emphasis of 2008, with precinct captains from the last campaign signing up to help out again. "It feels like déjà vu all over again," Reid says. "It's the same kind of effort."

DURHAM, NH — Today, New Hampshire will require voters to bring a photo ID to the ballot box for the first time in its history. Those who don’t have an ID can ask the poll workers to vouch for them, but if they don’t personally know the voter, he or she will have to sign a “challenged voter” affidavit and allow poll workers to take a Polaroid picture of them.

Voting rights advocates say they’re worried this gives individual poll workers leeway to discriminate, and that it could cause delays and long lines at the polls if the half-million expected voters turn up at the polls. Others fear the new Polaroid photo provision will feel like a “mug shot.”

“I think it’s unnecessary and a form of voter intimidation, especially for people my age who aren’t totally sure of their voting rights,” Chelsea Krimme, a junior at the University of New Hampshire, told ThinkProgress. “They could get scared away from wanting to vote, both this year and in the future.”

This will be New Hampshire’s hundredth year of hosting the country’s first presidential primary, but it may be among the most complicated.

Krimme, an environmental sustainability major, has been tabling and phone-banking across campus to educate students about the voting process. She says she is concerned about the level of confusion she’s witnessed among her peers.

“A lot of students think they’re required to bring an ID when they’re not. They don’t know about being able to sign the affidavit,” she said. “And about half the out-of-state students I’ve talked to think they can’t vote in New Hampshire, when they can. It’s sad, because are so many important issues right now, from student debt to climate change, that students care about and they want to have a voice.”