Hillary Clinton in her speech at Texas Southern University in Houston called for sweeping changes to increase voter participation – expanding voting hours, 20 days of early voting, automatic universal voter registration when a citizen turns 18 and more access to polling places.

She also pulled no punches criticizing Republicans and several of the 2016 presidential candidates for attempting to suppress the vote by putting up roadblocks, especially for the poor and minorities.

My friend, experienced press hand and wise sage, Carl Leubsdorf, wrote a column for the Dallas Morning News on Clinton’s proposals and the rise of voter ID laws. It got me thinking: Would a constitutional amendment giving 18-year-olds the right to vote make it through Congress and the states today?

[READ: Is Hillary Clinton Ready for More Democratic Party Debates?]

I seriously doubt it for two reasons.

First, the movement to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 began in World War II when President Franklin Roosevelt lowered the draft age to 18. As a popular slogan of the time asserted: “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote.”

President Dwight Eisenhower supported it in 1954 but nothing much happened until the 1960s when the Vietnam War was raging and 18-year-olds were being drafted. (More than 2.7 million Americans servedin Vietnam, roughly 650,000 of whom were drafted.) Politicians were having trouble denying this basic right to our servicemen and women.

[MORE: Clinton Wants Automatic Voter Registration]

Another political buddy of mine, Les Francis, was one of the architects of the drive for the vote in the late 1960s, and he described a “confluence of factors” that included a broad bipartisan coalition, the backing of veterans’ groups and labor, a small seed fund set up by the National Education Association, and, importantly, confusing federal and state laws.

The result was a movement that quickly led to congressional approval in March 1971 and state ratification just a few months later. So, the draft of hundreds of thousands of young people to fight in Vietnam and the pressure on elected officials were instrumental in getting the 18-year-old vote passed. But, of course, there is no draft today.

The second reason I doubt it could pass today is that the Republicans would be terrified of extending voting rights to the 18-to 21-year-olds who they believe are far more liberal and Democratic than the electorate at large. The 18-to 29-year-olds in 2012 voted for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by 60 percent to 36 percent and made up 19 percent of the electorate. (In 2008, their vote was 66 percent to 31 percent in favor of Obama over McCain.)

[READ: Supreme Court Deals Blow to Voter ID Foes]

It is no wonder that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and other Republican politicians are doing everything they can to suppress the youth vote and to prevent college students from voting. Voter fraud isn’t the problem, their party affiliation is!

Of course, no reasonable Republican would argue now in public against the 26th Amendment to the Constitution but given today’s world, without a military draft and the Democratic bent of our young people, I doubt it would get through this Republican Congress. After all, Republicans are doing everything in their power to suppress voter turnout, not increase it.

It’s David vs. David.

David Brooks writes in The New York Times that the Hillary Clinton campaign is making a big mistake not going after the middle, and thus expanding its reach, but instead concentrating on its base voters. David Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager in 2008, holds the opposite view: “If you run a campaign trying to appeal to 60 to 70 percent of the electorate, you’re not going to run a very compelling campaign for the voters you need.”

First of all, I am not entirely sure that this is an “either/or” proposition nor, is my guess, does the Clinton campaign think it is. Every election is about making sure your voters turn out, and to win in such a 50/50 political environment you have to persuade independents and undecided voters.

We will find out more tomorrow with Hillary Clinton’s announcement at Roosevelt Island. But let’s look at the arguments, the numbers and the candidate and see how this shakes out.

Despite all the polls right now and all the punditry 17 months out, every reasonable analyst would argue that voter turnout will be a key factor a year from November. In a polarized nation with highly sophisticated targeting and lists of each sides’ likely voters safely ensconced in modeling programs, not much is left to chance.

[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on Hillary Clinton]

The 2008 turnout set a modern day record, according to the data compiled by the Presidency Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara. More than 131 million voters turned out, which was over 58 percent of the voting age population, the highest percentage since the 18-year old vote came into play in 1972. The number of voters turning out actually dropped to 129 million in 2012, even though the voting age population increased by 10 million.

Clearly, the real question is who will be voting and who won’t and in what swing states with key electoral votes will this have an effect. The number crunchers from each party are putting that data together in as sophisticated a way as they possibly can right now. And they are figuring out what they need to do to maximize their turnout in those key states.

The days of Richard Nixon promising to visit every state in the course of the 1960 campaign are long gone. From Hillary Clinton’s perspective, she needs to make sure that she focuses on those voters she can get to the polls and those voters she can persuade in the course of the campaign.

Certainly, she will likely get in excess of 90 percent of the African-American vote, as well as more than 60 percent (and maybe closer to 70 percent) of the Hispanic vote. She will win the women’s vote and the youth vote. So the real question is 90 percent of what? And 70 percent of what? And will these voters be sufficiently motivated to go to the polls? If her message is mushy and middle of the road and doesn’t portray a future president who will fight for their interests, these voters will sit on their hands.

In addition, she does have a primary fight on her hands and the most compelling opponent is Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who will watch his numbers grow if Hillary Clinton isn’t appealing to progressives. Thus far, she has articulated a very strong and future-oriented platform that Democrats can rally behind. Bottom line, too, is that she is comfortable with this agenda and will push hard in the coming weeks laying out specifics on the issues she has identified.

[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on the 2016 Presidential Elections]

Contrary to the Brooks piece, she has also exhibited her pragmatic and working-across-the-aisle approach as a senator and as secretary of state. The notion that Clinton will only run a “base” campaign does not give her enough credit for her results-oriented approach over nearly 40 years in public life.

I do believe that the campaign understands the importance of running a strong primary race coupled with a general election campaign that mobilizes the large number of voters who are drawn to her candidacy. If the base is disaffected, she is in trouble, just as if many Americans who are undecided believe she is neglecting their interests and move away from her.

If this is a Seinfeld campaign – “the campaign about nothing” – Hillary will lose not just the base but the middle as well. But she is on the road toward a strong, clear, progressive race. My guess is that that the announcement tomorrow will lay that out very well and so will her weekly speeches during the summer on key issues.

In 1975, when I was a 27-year-old staffer on the Church Committee that investigated our intelligence community, my boss, then-Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) made this statement on an August 1975 broadcast of “Meet the Press”:

[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on the NSA]

That was 40 years ago – before cell phones, before the Internet, before email, before personal computers, before we even knew the meaning of the phrase “digital communications.” Church saw around the corner and could have made this statement if he was sitting next to Rand Paul on the Senate floor Tuesday.

One of my jobs on the Church Committee was to investigate the NSA’s technology and its practice of creating “watch lists” of Americans – Americans who protested the Vietnam War, demonstrated for civil rights or questioned their government. Church fully understood the abuse that had taken place and what it meant for the future. What he, or we, did not understand at the time was that both then-Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.), a member of the committee, and Church were both put on the watch list to be monitored.

[READ: Rand Paul’s Big Gift]

So, where are we now and what should be done now?

Despite Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s rants, 67 senators voted to reform the Patriot Act and curb NSA’s bulk collection of American’s phone records and to make the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court at least somewhat more transparent. That is a major change from when the Patriot Act was enacted hastily in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001.

But there is much more that needs to be done after Tuesday’s Associated Press revelations about FBI spy planes. Evidently, the FBI has more than 100 secret aircraft it is using to collect information from Americans’ cell phones and photograph areas and individuals in cities across the United States. Over a recent 30-day period, 11 states and 30 cities were spied upon with these aircraft, some with the capability of using the “cell-site simulator” (code name: Stingray). There were no warrants issued for video surveillance, and only recently were some warrants required for the cell phone intervention.

[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on Congress]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law are both calling for increased oversight, reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legislation and serious examination of the impact of the new technology on Americans’ basic privacy. Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act allows for mass surveillance of online communications, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation believes it should be curtailed.

The House and the Senate passed the new USA Freedom Act and the president signed it, but that is only a first step. If we are truly going to get a handle on everything from drones to detention camps to torture, as well as NSA surveillance, we need a full investigation of our intelligence agencies similar to the Church Committee and serious legal and executive remedies.

338-88. That was the overwhelming vote in the House of Representatives last week to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection program. When little about our Congress is bipartisan, that vote showed remarkable unanimity among Republicans and Democrats that our intelligence agencies desperately need reining in, and soon.

From massive data mining of American’s personal information to the uncontrolled use of torture in secret prisons overseas to the rapid expansion of invasive drones, the time for oversight is now. But several controversial sections of the Patriot Act are about to expire and Congress is in a quagmire about what to do.

Let me offer one suggestion. Don’t make any long-term moves without serious analysis and examination. What is needed is an in-depth investigation of our intelligence agencies and Congress should take the lead with a special, select committee that includes key members involved in intelligence and homeland security issues. President Barack Obama should also issue an executive order to create a “Simpson-Bowles”-type commission on intelligence oversight for the 21st century. Both a Congressional investigation and presidential commission are long overdue.

Before September 11, 2001, oversight was lacking; since then it has been “how big a check can we write?” According to the Washington Post, Snowden-leaked documents indicate that our 16 spy agenciesemploy over 107,000 people and now spend over $70 billion. That is twice the budget of 2001.

Despite efforts to consolidate intelligence gathering and analysis after 9/11 there is still ample evidence that we are confronted with competing fiefdoms, lack of direction, confusing command and control and increased compartmentalization. This, combined with a rapidly growing complex technology that allows for easy collection, inexpensive storage and a vastly enhanced intrusive look at people’s personal information demands a fresh, new look at civil liberties, national security and the laws that govern intelligence.

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that many of us worked on is woefully out of date, despite selective revisions. The passage of the Patriot Act that was done quickly after 9/11 needs to be seriously revisited. But right now, Congress is rushing to pass legislation without a serious and thorough look at what is needed and why it is needed. Right now, neither the Obama administration nor certain leaders in Congress want to rock the boat on intelligence.

Forty years ago this year the Church Committee was established to investigate domestic spying, assassination plots against foreign leaders and the lack of serious oversight of our intelligence agencies. Next week, two members of that committee, former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Sen. Gary Hart, will headline a day-long look at strengthening intelligence oversight, sponsored by the Brennan Center. Along with former staff members of the Church Committee and other experts, they will explore paths to reform.

As a young staff member of that Committee, I felt that we were steering the country in the right direction, away from warrantless wiretaps of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., away from covert actions that hurt America abroad, away from a system without accountability or serious oversight. We produced 14 lengthy reports on abuses and suggested recommendations, many of which became law.

Now, the technology has changed, the threats have changed, the world has changed. It is high time that our country and our government take a good, hard look at the role and responsibility of our intelligence agencies, the laws that govern them and what kind of oversight is essential to preserving our democracy.

First of all, I hate these “10 things” diatribes, and I especially hate the presumption that 18 months out from an election anyone should be so arrogant as to claim the answers were apparent. Yet, I find myself having the overwhelming urge to do just that – mainly as an exercise that tests both what might be the conventional wisdom and what might be a bit outside the box. So here goes: advice for Hillary Clinton.

First, this is very much about having a thick skin. If you think the past 20-plus years have been rough, “the vast right-wing conspiracy” was just getting started. If you think the Swift Boat crowd was outrageous and way over the top, that was softball compared to what you will be experiencing. If you think that all those Fox News characters saying nice things about you and Bill was anything other than their way of eviscerating President Barack Obama, fasten your seat belt.

Point is, they want to generate a response from you. That is why there will be more books, more prodding of the press, more hounding your events, more orchestrated and persistent and personal attacks from third parties as well as the nearly two dozen so-called Republican candidates for president. Stay calm. Stay cool. Stay focused on what the American people care about. It will not be easy since much of this will focus on your family, on Bill, on Chelsea, on the work of the Clinton Foundation, on trying to tear you down as a person – your motivations, your personality, your very essence.

[READ: Hillary Clinton 2016 Campaign Bakes Humble Pie in Iowa]

But here is the key: Even as you fail to respond to most of these inane attacks, you need a “truth squad” that sorts through the slings and arrows and makes careful, reasoned decisions on countering the ones that need to be countered. Not just in the eight-second back-and-forth nonsense of gladiator cable TV but in serious, fact-based rebuttals that a responsible press can digest and the public will understand.

Nevertheless, bottom line, this cannot be a defensive campaign. You have the wind at your back, and the Republicans know it. The demographics benefit you tremendously in 2016. When Bill was elected in 1992, 87 percent of the voters were white, and the odds are that figure will be around 70 percent this time. The retrograde Republican Party is destined to nominate someone who will be backward-looking on gay rights, on immigration, on climate change, on women’s rights and civil rights, and on tax giveaways to the wealthy instead of helping everyday working people. Their personalities and platforms will appeal to a narrow portion of the electorate, not most Americans. A candidate cannot be anti-women, anti-black, anti-Hispanic, anti-Asian, anti-gay, anti-young, anti-working families – and pro-1 percent – and win a presidential election.

So, as you began in Iowa and New Hampshire, the message must be about who understands the problems, the frustrations and the predicaments of most Americans. Who will make their lives better, who will fight for them, whose experience and history can be trusted to deliver the goods? Who believes in them and who has been, and will be, effective? As a Senator, you “co-sponsored legislation and engaged in advocacy efforts with nearly every conservative member,” according to the book “The Way to Win” by Mark Halperin and John Harris. Many of these Republican Senators had voted to impeach your husband.

[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on Hillary Clinton]

So, as intense as the personal attacks will be, your job and the job of your campaign will be to stay on the offensive. Your platform is sound and, unfortunately for the Republicans, theirs is not. I would like to say there are some real substantive differences among the Republicans, but basically they are all cut from the same cloth. And they are all going even further right to win the nomination. This is your opportunity to make your views clear and to provide a solid and hard-hitting contrast to the Republicans.

If they are going to hit you personally for the next year-and-a-half, you can use that time to talk in clear, comparative terms about the country’s future, what you would do and what they would do. The Republican candidates are all in the same boat, not a moderate among them, so votes on the inheritance tax, supporting Gov. Mike Pence in Indiana, cutting education across the country, opposing increases in the minimum wage, opposing immigration reform and being anti-campaign finance reform are all easy comparisons.

Finally, in the upcoming forums and debates that you will have with other Democrats who are running for the nomination – and there will be at least three, I believe (Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb and Martin O’Malley) – you can use that opportunity to draw a clear contrast with the Republicans. There will be widespread agreement among all of you about the train wreck that is this field of Republicans, and this is a great opportunity to draw the clear differences to strengthen your candidacy.

[Hillary Clinton’s Iowa Van Trip and the Problem With ‘Authenticity’]

A version of the listening tour and meeting with voters in these early states will pay huge dividends and should be continued throughout the year. In the coming weeks and months, you can weave in the clear distinctions between you, the Democratic Party, and the Republican candidates and the Republican Party. The change in the Republican Party over the past three decades, especially the past decade, has turned people away. It is increasingly becoming a very small tent, especially as America’s tent has grown bigger. This is not your grandmother’s Republican Party anymore. And that message can be personalized to any one of the Republicans running this year.

This is truly a marathon, and the ups and downs will probably be more intense than almost any presidential campaign in history. But voters respect resilience, appreciate strength and admire leaders who come through the fire. There will be plenty of fire, but you will be the better for it.

Marco Rubio, 43, kicked off his campaign yesterday by telling voters that he is the future and Hillary Clinton is the past. He is young, she is old. He is 21st century, she is 20th century.

But there is one very basic and glaring flaw with his argument: His views fit well into the 1800s, while Clinton’s views are modern and look very much like the America of today and tomorrow. Age isn’t everything, Marco.

Let’s try equal pay for equal work. Rubio is against the Lilly Ledbetter Act, while Clinton co-sponsored it. He voted twice against the Paycheck Fairness Act. Clinton is a strong supporter and became the lead sponsor when Tom Daschle left the Senate.

[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on the 2016 Presidential Elections]

How about equal rights for the LGBT community and support for gay marriage? Rubio is solidly against gay marriage and supported not only the recent Indiana law on “religious freedom,” but even the Arizona version in 2013. He is consistently out of step. Clinton, of course, supports gay marriage and equal rights.

On the minimum wage, Rubio is not only opposed to it being raised but has said, “I don’t think the minimum wage law works.” Clinton favors raising the minimum wage.

On tax policy, Rubio has consistently supported the late 19th century, Gilded Age tax policy that benefited the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. Once again, his answer is to cut taxes for the wealthiest of Americans. According to the Washington Post, “If he wins his party’s nomination, though, Rubio will have to defend a tax plan that, while said to address the challenges of the middle class, includes a huge break that all-but bypasses the middle and greatly boosts the rich. It was a tax plan that was even too large for Romney himself to run on.” Rubio would eliminate all taxes on dividends and capital gains. That sounds like it was written by the robber barons of old to me. Clinton, of course, believes that kind of tax policy is the way of the past, not the wave of the future.

[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on Hillary Clinton]

On one of the most critical issues of our time, climate change, Rubio again has his head in the sand, along with most of the other Republican candidates for president. Last May, he told ABC News that “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. And I do not believe that laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it. Except it will destroy our economy.” Clinton, as we all know, supports efforts to combat climate change, such as the president’s Clean Power Plan.

So, who really has a vision for the future – on equal rights, on equal pay, on tax policy, on the environment – on where this country should be headed? And who does not learn the lessons of history, but seems condemned to repeat them, as if he were back in the 1800s?

If Rubio truly believes his views are appealing, maybe his slogan should actually be “Back to the Future.”

This is a blog, not a history lesson. But I can’t resist trying to make some sense of the current Republican desire for self-immolation.

Where has this so-called “Hell No Caucus” come from? Whether it is refusing to pass bills to fund the government, approve increases in the debt ceiling or provide money for the Department of Homeland Security, the Republican Party has an increasingly apparent and growing antagonism to pragmatic solutions. It has drifted so far right that it is truly in danger of self-destruction. As New York Republican Rep. Peter King, put it on ABC’s “This Week,” “[T]here’s a wing within the Congress which is absolutely irresponsible – they have no concept of reality.” Speaking with MSNBC’s Luke Russert on Friday, he added, “I’ve had it with this self-righteous, delusional wing of the party.”

The GOP has become more and more extreme, to a point where it is barely recognizable from what it was in the 20th century. Even Ronald Reagan, and certainly Barry Goldwater, would not understand their party today.

[SEE: Political Cartoons on the Republican Party]

I remember producing a pamphlet on the rise of the “New Right” in the early 1980s with an analysis of groups like the National Conservative Political Action Committee, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, the Conservative Victory Fund and many others. We argued how destructive the extreme right wing views were at the time but little did we realize how nihilistic they would become.

Here is the history lesson.

A very conservative group formed in 1973 called the Republican Study Committee. They were small, but they were opposed to both Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford as too liberal and decided to organize against their policies. Then-Rep. Phil Crane of Illinois and congressional staffers Paul Weyrich, who went on to found the Heritage Foundation, and Ed Feulner, who later headed Heritage, were driving forces, along with several other members of Congress. When Newt Gingrich became House speaker in 1995, he didn’t want a separate group on his flank causing trouble, despite the fact that his conservative views were not too far from theirs. So he abolished it; but it came back.

[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on the Tea Party]

A National Journal article last year discussed in detail the evolution and rapid growth of this far right caucus.The growth of the Republican Study Committee since 1995 has been truly dramatic – 15 members out of 218 in 1995, up to 72 members out of 220 in 2001 and skyrocketing to 171 members in 2013. The percentage of Republicans who joined this very conservative group went from 7 percent in 1995 to over 70 percent last year.

It is not too difficult to understand why House Speaker John Boehner, or any speaker, might have trouble with his or her Republican caucus.

Of course, there are other groups. Michele Bachmann helped organize the Tea Party Caucus several years ago, a group more extreme than the Study Committee. And, now, an initial nine members of the Study Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, have begun to assemble the House Freedom Caucus. More trouble is afoot than Republicans may realize.

The vote last Friday where 52 Republicans bucked the speaker on his effort to move forward on funding for DHS says a lot about the GOP’s direction. The numbers don’t add up for Boehner to move much of anything forward, and the Senate won’t buy what the Study Committee or the Freedom Caucus are selling.

[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on Congress]

The rapid radicalization of the Republican Party is playing out in the presidential sweepstakes as well. The Conservative Political Action Conference has gone from a fringe gathering to a primary litmus test for most candidates.

There is no such thing as a moderate voice in the leadership of the Republican Party any longer; there is barely a Main Street conservative voice that will get traction within the party that now finds itself in control of the House and Senate. Even the John Boehners and the Mitch McConnells live in fear of the new suicide caucus.

The problem, as many Republicans know, is that this crowd is ungovernable and ultimately, nationally, unelectable.