There are two bits of good news. The DCCC plans to make the 2014 campaign about the minimum wage. That they're two smart picks is one bit of good news. Those look like great choices for the 2014 national campaign. The other piece of good news is that unlike 2010, there actually will be a national campaign.
I don't take that last part for granted, not when I recall with horror October 2010. It was sometime in that month, after waiting and waiting for the national Democratic campaign to get going, that I learned there was no national campaign. It was a deliberate decision to respond to being on the wrong side of a wave election by localizing every race and ignoring national issues. It worked as well as might have been predicted by anyone who recalled that this was the same strategy the Republicans used in 2006, by Democrats in 1994, Republicans in 1982, Republicans in 1974... you get the idea. Presidential races seem to force an election to be nationalized, but midterms not so much. So to hear the DCCC is picking issues for a national election, whatever those issues are, is good news.
So in a way the choice of the minimum wage as a 2014 is just gravy, but ... good gravy! (Come one, you thinking it too). The minimum wage has that great combination of good policy and good politics. In one linked post, Nancy Pelosi makes an argument I've been making, proving she follows my posts (though I suppose there's a slight chance she thought of it herself), that a low minimum wage is a subsidy to low wage employers since their employees get help from government programs, as well as charities. So a higher wage reduces the demand on both charities and the government. it shows that applying a principle, that everyone who works full time should be paid enough to be self-supporting, has good practical effects too.
In political terms though, which presumably has occurred to the DCCC, the minimum wage is popular. It polls well, and in those instances where supporters have had to resort to ballot measures because the state legislature couldn't escape the grip of corporate special interests who lobby for a low wage, minimum wage increases normally win. Maybe they always win, since I can't find an instance where an increase lost. So if Republicans block an increase, they are handing Democrats a proven cudgel.
We need to expand beyond the basic increase to abolishing the tip penalty, which allows employers of workers who receive tips to pay just $2.13 per hour. Bill Moyers had a segment on restaurant workers which reported that the law requiring employers to make up the difference between tips and the minimum wage is frequently ignored, and workers in tipping jobs are twice as likely as other minimum wage workers to be receiving food stamps. Ending the tip penalty would make a significant difference in the pay of restaurant workers, and like raising the wage in general, has the effect of increasing incomes at the bottom of the wage scale and stimulating the economy. At a minimum, the jobs lost when workers are fired by employers who can't or won't pay the higher wage are balanced by jobs created at employers who need to hire to keep up with increased demand from better-paid low wage workers.