Of all the variables affecting the 2016 presidential contest, one of the more important is the extent to which the “Obama Coalition” of young and minority voters will stay in the Donkey column in requisite numbers. There’s some new evidence it will that I discussed at New York this week:

One clue (h/t Paul Waldman at the Washington Post) is provided by a new Reuters analysis of recent polling on party identification. Here are the most important numbers:

– Among Hispanics who are likely presidential voters, the percentage affiliated with the Republican Party has slipped nearly five points, from 30.6 percent in 2012 to 26 percent in 2015. Meanwhile, Hispanic Democrats grew by six percentage points to 59.6 percent.
– Among whites under 40, the shift is even more dramatic. In 2012, they were more likely to identify with the Republican Party by about 5 percentage points. In 2015, the advantage flipped: Young whites are now more likely to identify with the Democratic Party by about 8 percentage points.
– Meanwhile, black likely voters remain overwhelmingly Democratic, at about 80 percent.
Overall, the study shows, the Democratic margin in party ID has grown from 6 percent in 2012 to 9 percent this year.

These numbers should obviously not be taken at face value. For one thing, self-identification is not an infallible indication of voting behavior. For another, Republicans have recently been winning self-identified independents in competitive races. And for still another, there are obviously people who don’t vote for, or actually vote against, “their” party’s presidential nominee, though such cross-party voters have been declining in numbers rapidly of late.
The central question is whether the stability of the Obama coalition is attributable to what Democrats are doing to keep them happy or what Republicans are doing to repulse them, for all the GOP’s protestations of inclusiveness. If the latter is the case, Republicans might want to nominate a candidate (e.g., the relatively young Hispanic candidate Marco Rubio) with a fighting chance of mitigating the damage. If the former is the case, it would seem the theory that Obama and only Obama can keep “his” coalition together might be wrong, and Republicans have a bigger problem than the precise identity of their nominee.
Many Republicans would protest that even if Reuters’s numbers are accurate, they measure preferences, not enthusiasm, which will tilt results in their direction. I would observe that the numbers are based on Reuters/Ipsos polls of likely voters, so to some extent “enthusiasm” is baked right into them. Now, if Ted Cruz’s claim that 54 million conservative Evangelicals “sat out” 2012 and are waiting for someone just like him to vote for is somehow true, then such hordes of new voters would obviously outweigh any current voter ID advantage Democrats might have. On the other hand, if the Cruz theory is true, we are far, far beyond the realm of empirical evidence and rational argument, and perhaps the donkey party can mobilize elves and wood-sprites to offset the aroused Evangelicals.

Yeah, for those who are interested in data rather than spin, there’s no real indication so far that the Obama Coalition will crack next November.

“Experts are skeptical,” writes Alex Seitz-Wald at nbcnews,com, addressing the power of ‘Independent’ voters to determine the outcome of New Hampshire’s Democratic primary. Seitz-Wald provides a couple of quotes on point: “Past results show that registered Democrats are likely to make up a majority of the primary electorate. Sanders either has to convince more of these voters to support him or he has to turn out an unprecedented number of independents and brand new voters,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute…Andy Smith, the director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, said that every year some candidate attempts to capitalize on the ‘myth of the independent voter.’ “It’s just never been the case that independents have really swung an election for a candidate here,” he noted.”
At Rolling Stone Krysten Gwynne predicts “The 5 Next States to See Legal Marijuana” in 2016. All are blue-bluish states, and their Democratic candidates are surely hoping it will boost turnout of younger voters.
From the United States Election Project charts on “Voter Turnout Demographics”:

National Journal’s Ronald Brownstein sees a growing distinction between ‘bridge-builder’ and ‘wall-builder’ populists coming into conflict in the U.S. and Europe: “On both sides of the At­lantic, the lead­ers de­fend­ing an open in­ter­na­tion­al or­der and in­clus­ive do­mest­ic so­ci­et­ies face grow­ing pres­sure to show their ap­proach can im­prove life for the frus­trated, of­ten fear­ful voters flock­ing to the de­fens­ive na­tion­al­ists. The in­su­lar pop­u­lists who would build walls are now banging on the gates.”
In shameless hypocrite news, NJ’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie blasts rival Sen. Rubio for missing senate votes — even though Christie has vetoed bills passed by the NJ state legislature to broaden early voting access and establish automatic voter registration.
At The Upshot Nate Cohn presents an interesting map showing Donald Trump’s strongholds across the nation by congressional district. Cohn comments: “Donald Trump holds a dominant position in national polls in no small part because he is extremely strong among people on the periphery of the Republican coalition…He is strongest among Republicans who are less affluent, less educated and less likely to turn out to vote. His very best voters are self-identified Republicans who nonetheless are registered as Democrats. It’s a coalition that’s concentrated in the South, Appalachia and the industrial North, according to data provided to The Upshot by Civis Analytics, a Democratic data firm…Mr. Trump’s huge advantage among these groups poses a challenge for his campaign, because it may not have the turnout operation necessary to mobilize irregular voters.”
AP’s Geoff Mulvihill has an update on “New Laws in 2016 Show States Are Diverging on Guns, Voting.”
While early polls are useless for predicting electoral outcomes, they may have some value to campaigns, argues Elizabeth Williamson in her New York Times ‘Editorial Observer’ post, “The More We Poll, the Less We Know.” As Williamson explains, “Early polls do, however, provide a window into voter concerns, policy preferences and priorities that shift, collide, then eventually coalesce around a single candidate…One recent example is the uptick in support for candidates whom some voters see as best qualified on national security after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, like (inexplicably) Gov. Chris Christie, and the fall of others, like Ben Carson, who haven’t demonstrated fluency on foreign policy.”
I’ll close the year’s Strategy Notes with a question: How can this not spell big trouble for one of the GOP’s top presidential candidates?

Bernie Sanders has been spending some time lately arguing that he is the rare Democrat who can appeal to Donald Trump’s white working class following. It’s a fine idea. But his approach to them brings back some bad memories of past campaigns, as I discussed earlier this week at New York:

Remember “Bittergate,” one of the big but ultimately not decisive moments of the 2008 Democratic presidential nominating process? It’s pretty clear Bernie Sanders doesn’t, because he’s repeating Barack Obama’s much-repented mistake of condescendingly speaking of white working-class voters’ concerns on noneconomic issues as representing displaced anxiety about lost jobs and low wages.
On Face the Nation yesterday, Sanders had this to say about Donald Trump’s appeal to downscale white voters:

“Many of Trump’s supporters are working-class people and they’re angry, and they’re angry because they’re working longer hours for lower wages, they’re angry because their jobs have left this country and gone to China or other low-wage countries, they’re angry because they can’t afford to send their kids to college so they can’t retire with dignity,” Sanders said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“What Trump has done with some success is taken that anger, taken those fears which are legitimate and converted them into anger against Mexicans, anger against Muslims, and in my view that is not the way we’re going to address the major problems facing our country,” he said.

Compare that to Obama’s famous remark about the same kind of voters in 2008:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for twenty years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Other than the fact that Obama’s comments were made in a private Bay Area fund-raiser and subsequently leaked, while Sanders made his on national television, they differ mainly in that the former slighted the hot-button subjects of religion and guns while the latter limited his condescension to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim appeals. But in both cases you get a strong whiff of the ancient lefty habit of claiming the noneconomic concerns of economically stressed people represent a “false consciousness” actively promoted by the economic ruling class.
What should Sanders (and other progressives) be saying to less offensively make their case for working-class economic populism? For one thing, it would be helpful not to conflate quasi-economic issues with totally noneconomic issues, as Sanders does with immigration and terrorism. You can tell people that corporate power rather than “illegal immigration” is the reason wages have been stagnating without insulting them. Telling them they should be worried more about money than (in their view) their families’ and their country’s security against terrorism is another matter altogether, especially when in both cases you are more than slightly hinting they are bigots for listening to Donald Trump. Having a progressive answer to fears about terrorism — even if it’s to say such fears are exaggerated — is invariably better than changing the subject or implying that if you care about terrorism you are a conservative.
Barack Obama apologized immediately and often for “Bittergate,” and did not again make the mistake of appearing to tell downscale voters their professed concerns and beliefs show what dopes they are. But Democrats seem to need a reminder now and then, just as Republicans seem to need a reminder that their contempt for the poor and minorities is as easy to spot as Mitt Romney at a civil-rights rally.

Helaine Olen’s Salon.com post, “How Elizabeth Warren Wields Power: Even without running she’s forcing the Democratic candidates to look out for consumers” reveals one way a leader who is not a presidential candidate can set her party’s economic policy agenda. Olen’s article also provides a solid rebuttal to the GOP meme that the Democrats’ “bench” is weak. Sen Warren is already amassing an impressive record and wielding considerable influence
But Olen’s post also provides an intriguing idea to help Democrats get a bigger bite of the high-turnout senior demographic on election day, 2016. As Olen explains,

…In late March, Warren–along with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin–thrust Social Security into the spotlight by adding an amendment to a congressional budget resolution calling for an increase in benefits. The move seemed like so much political theater. After all, there was zero chance the measure would pass the Republican-controlled Congress. But the deft legislative maneuver forced Senate Democrats to take a stand on the issue. As Mother Jones enthused prophetically, “Warren just turned Social Security expansion–once a progressive pipe-dream–into a tough-to-ignore 2016 issue.”
No kidding. Now, all three Democratic candidates are competing to expand the program. Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders are calling for increasing retirement benefits, while Hillary Clinton is advocating a tax credit for those who take time out of the paid workforce to manage family responsibilities. On the other hand, with the exception of Donald Trump, all the leading Republican contenders are campaigning on promises of raising the retirement age or taking other steps to cut back on Social Security payments, likely setting up a clear contrast for voters in the general election next year. (Marco Rubio, for example, supports raising the retirement age and would increase benefits for low-income retirees by reducing the growth in benefits for wealthier seniors.)
Warren also contributed to breaking a five-year logjam over a Department of Labor effort to expand investor protection for retirement accounts. At the beginning of the year, the effort appeared to be foundering, derailed yet again by fierce financial services industry pushback.

There are no recent polls which show whether or not most seniors would favor a hike in Social Security benefits financed by lifting the cap on wages taxed for SS. But studies have indicated that most seniors have inadequate assets for a comfortable retirement, so it’s hard to see much downside in Democrats making it more of a campaign issue.
Half of all Americans “say they can’t afford to save for retirement,” and one-third “have next to no retirement savings at all,” according to a recent Frontline report. The Retirement Income Deficit, “the gap between what American households have actually saved today and what they should have saved today to maintain their living standards in retirement,” is currently estimated to be about $7.7 trillion, according to the Center for Retirement Research.
It’s not about securing a ‘sea change’ in senior voting trends in 2016. That’s a longer-term project. But if Democrats can reduce by just 2 or 3 percent the proportion of seniors who vote Republican, it could make a big difference down-ballot, as well as in electing the next president.
Democrats simply have to do a more effective job of messaging to seniors, making the case why voting Democratic is good for the living standards of older Americans. A campaign including youtube videos, TV ads, ‘message du jour statements’ and soundbites by all Democratic candidates, particularly in battleground states, could help persuade enough seniors that Democrats have more to offer them.
During the last year, it’s fair to say that Republicans demonstrated more relentless ‘message discipline’ than did the Democrats. 2016 would be a good time for Dems to reverse that trend, starting with our presidential candidates focusing more on measures to improve retirement security.

Paul Krugman’s “Challenging the Oligarchy” in the New York Review of Books provides a perceptive review of former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few. Of current progressive economists, Krugman and Reich are the most skilled at framing “the dismal science” for time-challenged readers who want a better understanding of economic policy options in the context of today’s political realities. In the concluding section of his favorable review, Krugman explains:

…Like a number of other commentators, Reich argues that there’s a feedback loop between political and market power. Rising wealth at the top buys growing political influence, via campaign contributions, lobbying, and the rewards of the revolving door. Political influence in turn is used to rewrite the rules of the game–antitrust laws, deregulation, changes in contract law, union-busting–in a way that reinforces income concentration. The result is a sort of spiral, a vicious circle of oligarchy. That, Reich suggests, is the story of America over the past generation. And I’m afraid that he’s right. So what can turn it around?
Anyone hoping for a reversal of the spiral of inequality has to answer two questions. First, what policies do you think would do the trick? Second, how would you get the political power to make those policies happen? I don’t think it’s unfair to Robert Reich to say that Saving Capitalism offers only a sketch of an answer to either question.

Krugman adds that Reich “calls for a sort of broad portfolio, or maybe a market basket, of changes aimed mainly at “predistribution”–changing the allocation of market income–rather than redistribution. (In Reich’s view, this is seen as altering the predistribution that takes place under current rules.)” Specific reforms would include “fairly standard liberal ideas like raising the minimum wage, reversing the anti-union bias of labor law and its enforcement, and changing contract law to empower workers to take action against employers and debtors to assert their interests against creditors.”
But Reich also urges reforms to “move corporations back toward what they were a half-century ago: organizations that saw themselves as answering not just to stockholders but to a broader set of “stakeholders,” including workers and customers.” Noting that the New Deal was “remarkably successful at creating a middle-class nation,” Krugman asks,

But how is this supposed to happen politically? Reich professes optimism, citing the growing tendency of politicians in both parties to adopt populist rhetoric. For example, Ted Cruz has criticized the “rich and powerful, those who walk the corridors of power.” But Reich concedes that “the sincerity behind these statements might be questioned.” Indeed. Cruz has proposed large tax cuts that would force large cuts in social spending–and those tax cuts would deliver around 60 percent of their gains to the top one percent of the income distribution. He is definitely not putting his money–or, rather, your money–where his mouth is.

As Krugman concludes, “Still, Reich argues that the insincerity doesn’t matter, because the very fact that people like Cruz feel the need to say such things indicates a sea change in public opinion. And this change in public opinion, he suggests, will eventually lead to the kind of political change that he, justifiably, seeks. We can only hope he’s right. In the meantime, Saving Capitalism is a very good guide to the state we’re in.”
All three Democratic presidential candidates will find much to agree with in Reich’s book and Krugman’s analysis. None of them favor wholesale nationalization of the economy, as the Republicans suggest they do. And though Senator Sanders has awakened broad interest in the ideas of democratic socialism, he too envisions a robust role for the private sector, especially small business entrepreneurs.
As the Republicans double down on government-bashing, increasing tax breaks for the rich and their war to obliterate the labor movement, Democrats have a unique opportunity and a clear field ahead as the party of reason and moderation. Indeed it is increasingly clear that the Democrats are the only American political party capable of negotiating and navigating the way to reduce economic inequality. That’s a pretty good brand for 2016.

At The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Allison Sherry’s article, “Rep. Keith Ellison hones new voter-turnout strategy for Democrats: Democrats around the country have high hopes the new effort will lead to more victories in nonpresidential elections” explores an interesting idea. Sherry quotes Ellison: “As a fifth-term Minneapolis Democrat who routinely wins his elections by more than 65 percent, Ellison is increasingly convinced that the future of Democratic victories is hiding in apartment buildings and low-income urban areas across the country. Trust me, there’s 3 percent in every congressional district in the United States,” Ellison said. “If we had a good turnout strategy across the country, you could really turn things around.” To do this, Ellison has workers fanning out to apartment buildings and low-income communities to reach potential constituencies in more personal ways. His idea is that through more one-on-one contact, Democrats can drive more people to the polls and cement lifetime allegiances to the party.”
Maxwell Tani of Business Insider explains “Here’s how badly Democrats have to screw up to lose the election.” Tani quotes Whit Ayers on the challenge Republicans face: “Un­less you count on the Re­pub­lic­an getting Ron­ald Re­agan-like num­bers among whites, you’re go­ing to have to be some­where in the mid-forties with Hispanics.” Tani also quotes Ruy Teixeira, who notes that Dems will win of they hold an “11-point deficit among white college graduates, a 22-point deficit among white working-class voters, and a 64-point advantage among minority voters”
Matt Viser reports at Boston Globe Politics that “Number of GOP polls jumps 90 percent in four years.” Viser notes, “The number of polls of Republican voters in the first three primary and caucus states — Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — has skyrocketed nearly 90 percent compared with the 2012 GOP primary, according to a Globe review of polls tracked by the news website Real Clear Politics…The trend toward saturation polling shows little sign of abating, with online polls now cheaper than ever and polling firms and universities competing to satisfy an insatiable media appetite for the latest upticks and downturns, the trends in the minute-by-minute drama of the contest.”
The question is “Would an independent Jim Webb candidacy pull more votes from the Dem nominee or the GOP opponent? Or does it even matter, since Webb has a history of getting very little national traction? It does indicate that Webb was not much of a committed Democrat to begin with and he appears more interested in pursuing his personal ambitions than leading the Democratic party to achieve meaningful reforms.
Albert R. Hunt explains why “Democrats See Chance to Reclaim Senate Majority” at Bloomberg View. Says Hunt: “This time, half of the seats are in states carried by President Barack Obama, and some of the most competitive are in solidly blue states.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders has developed an assertive pitch to win working-class voters away from Trump, including reminding them that Trump says the minimum wage is too high. Both Gallup and Pew Research polls show support for a significant minimum wage hike is over 70 percent.
“Trump is pushing the racial and cultural resentment button a lot harder than he’s pushing the economic button,” argues Heather Digby Parton at Salon.com (and Alternet). “In fact, he’s pushing the resentment button so hard that it’s activated some very serious racists who truly had been pushed to the fringes of the right wing fever swamps…This is not to say that all Trump supporters are white supremacists.” But it does appear that he is courting the racist vote.
A new Democracy Corps poll of LVs found that “72 percent favor a law to provide candidates with “limited public matching funds for small contributions they raise from constituents,” with 39 percent favoring it strongly. Only 21 percent oppose it, and of those, only 7 percent oppose it strongly…Support was strong across the political spectrum, with 76 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of independents, and 66 percent of Republicans favoring such a law.,” reports Jon Schwarz at The Intercept.
Krugman updates The Chart:

Political analyses of the future prospects of the two major parties vary according to a lot of variables. But to over-simplify, some observers stress long-range trends while others focus on short-term events that could significantly bend future trends. A good example of the former has just been published by Peter Beinart at The Atlantic, and I discussed my misgivings about it at New York today:

Excessive faith in the inevitability of progress is one of the hazards of being a “progressive”…. Peter Beinart has written an election-year table-setter that political people left of center will be forwarding to one another to ward off fears of a Ted Cruz presidency or worse. Its title is “Why America Is Moving Left.” I wish I were sure he is right.
Beinart’s jumping-0ff point is his belief that though conditions might seem right for an old-fashioned law-and-order backlash to phenomena like #blacklivesmatter, liberalizing forces in both parties will prevent that from happening. Again, I’d feel better about that prediction if it rang true a few years from now.
One big factor preventing a shift to the right, says Beinart, is that the “centrist” forces in the Democratic Party, which in the ’80s and ’90s pushed for accommodation of conservative ideology, are largely gone. He speaks as the former editor of one such institution, The New Republic. I feel qualified to respond not only as a fairly substantial contributor to TNR for a while, but also as a former staffer at two other “centrist” institutions he mentions, the Democratic Leadership Council and the Washington Monthly. In Beinart’s view, the center-left discredited itself by enabling George W. Bush’s domestic and international agenda. While his account is oversimplified — the DLC, for example, attacked the Bush tax cuts pretty aggressively, though some of its congressional allies voted for them anyway — I’d say there’s some truth to it. But it’s also true that Democrats absorbed enough “centrist” common sense in the 1990s to make it possible to exploit the implosion of conservatism under Bush. And some of the ideas Beinart writes about as “centrist,” such as the neoliberal advocacy of means-testing big social programs (associated with WaMo), were not accommodations of conservatism but rather efforts to make more funds and political energy available for the truly needy. Unlike the kind of split-the-differences “centrism” that really has expired, there could be a future for means-testing, as suggested by Hillary Clinton’s habit of looking in that direction for new social initiatives like pre-K and paid family leave….
All quibbling aside, Beinart is obviously right that the Democratic Party is more consistently liberal than it has ever been. But the idea that it’s all part of a leftward trend that is invincible even within the Republican Party is much more problematic.
Yes, ultimately, the more progressive views of millennials mean that a GOP that has been trending pretty steadily rightward for four decades will have to adjust to reality, at least on cultural issues. And yes, the fact that many of the conservative movement’s most fervent causes — such as fighting universal health coverage or same-sex marriage or any sort of gun regulation — are not exactly sweeping the country means they will not have a cakewalk in presidential contests where the electorate is not skewed in their favor.
But that’s an influence, not a trend. Beinart believes any GOP general election candidate this next year will smell the coffee and appeal to millennials and minority voters by repudiating the hard-core conservatism that’s characterized the nominating process for so long. You sure would not guess that from the electability theories of candidates and analysts alike, who believe a supercharged turnout by the same old conservative coalition could prevail if reinforced by natural fatigue with a two-term president, a sluggish economy, and terrorist fears. Beinart also believes a Republican president would turn the page to the left. Yet the most profound reality the country faces is that a GOP president with a GOP Congress could, via the budget reconciliation process, repeal almost all of Obama’s accomplishments. The nascent and in many respects faint progressive impulses of the Reformicons are to a considerable extent just too little and too early.
Yes, in the long run there are forces that will build a wind to the back of progressives. But today’s conservative-movement-dominated GOP is too radical and too close to total power for anyone to take that to the bank. Some very reactionary days could be just ahead.

It really is going to depend on what happens next year.