washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Like a master stage magician’s best “sleight of hand” trick, Ruffini makes MAGA extremism in the GOP disappear right before our eyes.

Read the Memo.

A Democratic Political Strategy for Reaching Working Class Voters That Starts from the Actual “Class Consciousness” of Modern Working Americans.

by Andrew Levison

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The recently published book, Rust Belt Union Blues, by Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol represents a profoundly important contribution to the debate over Democratic strategy.

Read the Memo.

Why Don’t Working People Recognize and Appreciate Democratic Programs and Policies

The mythology of “Franklin Roosevelt’s Hundred Days” and the Modern Debate Over “Deliverism.”

Read the Memo.

The American Establishment’s Betrayal of Democracy

The American Establishment’s Betrayal of Democracy The Fundamental but Generally Unacknowledged Cause of the Current Threat to America’s Democratic Institutions.

Read the Memo.

Immigration “Chaos” Could Sink Democrats in 2024…

And the Democratic Narrative Simply Doesn’t Work. Here’s An Alternative That Does.

Read the Memo.

The Daily Strategist

March 29, 2024

Teixeira: Swing-State, Working-Class Blues

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

“I’ve got those mean old swing-state, working-class blues!” I wouldn’t exactly recommend this as the Democrats’ campaign theme song, but it would encapsulate a lot of what appears to be happening to them these days.

A run of national polls have had Biden losing to Trump but, even worse, so have a number of swing-state polls. The latest are of Michigan and Georgia by CNN. In the former, Biden is behind by 10 points; in the latter, he is trailing by 5 points. Peering into the crosstabs, it is clear that Biden’s woes in these states have a lot to do with declining support among working-class voters. Let’s review some of the relevant data, starting with Michigan.

Michigan. In CNN’s Michigan poll, Trump is ahead by 21 points among working-class (noncollege) voters, while Biden is ahead by 10 points among college-educated voters. But Michigan is an overwhelmingly working-class state—according to States of Change projections, Michigan should be around 71 percent working-class eligible voters in 2024—so this a very unfavorable pattern for the Democrats.

Compared to Biden’s successful effort in 2020, the fall off in working-class support suggested here is precipitous. According to States of Change data, Biden lost these voters by a mere 2 points in 2020, so the current deficit of 21 points represents a massive 19-point swing against him. In contrast, the college-educated swing against him in the CNN poll looks quite small: a 12-point advantage among these voters in 2020, compared to a 10-point advantage now.

Other findings from the poll underscore the hole Biden is in among the state’s working-class voters. On whether Biden’s policies have improved or worsened economic conditions in the country, 60 percent of Michigan working-class voters think his policies have worsened conditions, three times more than the 20 percent who believe his policies have improved them.

The poll asked voters about several characteristics and whether Biden and Trump had exactly the characteristics they would like to see in a president, close enough or not what you want in a president. On Biden, 61 percent of Michigan working-class voters say his policy positions on major issues are not what they would like to see in a president. Worse, 65 percent of these voters believe Biden’s ability to understand the problems of people like them is not what they want in a president. And worse yet, 72 percent say Biden’s “sharpness and stamina” isn’t what they’d like to see in a president. In contrast, strong majorities of Michigan’s working-class voters see Trump’s major policy positions, his ability to understand the problems of people like them, and his sharpness and stamina as exactly what they’d like to see in a president, or close enough.

Biden is wont to wave away his troubles by saying: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” When it comes to working-class voters in Michigan, that is not a comparison at present that does much to mitigate his problems.

Georgia. In CNN’s Georgia poll, Trump is ahead by 14 points among working-class voters, while Biden is ahead by 7 points among college-educated voters. Georgia too is an overwhelmingly working-class state, likely around 67 percent working-class eligible voters in the next election, putting the Democrats in a very poor position.

In 2020, Biden lost Georgia working-class voters by just 6 points, so his current 14-point deficit is an 8-point swing against him. But his current 7-point lead among the college-educated is only 3 points less than his lead among these voters in 2020. As in Michigan, working-class defections are driving the move away from Biden to Trump.

It’s worth noting that, while CNN does not supply breaks for nonwhite working class voters, inspections of the internals of these polls indicates that in both states the swing away from Biden among nonwhite working-class voters is likely greater than the overall working-class swing.

The Georgia CNN poll has the same questions as the Michigan poll so it is possible to look at the same Biden evaluations. Georgia working-class voters are far more likely to think Biden’s policies have worsened economic conditions (58 percent) than improved them (22 percent). As for desired characteristics in a president, strong majorities of Georgia working-class voters see Biden as nothaving what they would like to see in a president on major policy positions, his ability to understand people like them and, especially, having the sharpness and stamina to do the job. With Trump, it’s exactly the reverse: on all three of these characteristics, strong majorities of Georgia’s working class see him as having exactly what they want in a president or close enough.

National. CNN also recently released an extensive national poll that sheds more light on Biden’s general working-class woes. Some key findings:

  1. Biden’s working-class approval rating on handling the economy is just 26 percent. Among the college-educated, in contrast, it’s a more respectable 43 percent.
  2. His approval rating on helping the middle class is a mere 28 percent among working-class voters. On handling crime, his rating, at 31 percent among these voters, is scarcely better.
  3. On which party is closer to voters’ views on issues, working-class voters favor Republicans over Democrats by 16 points on the economy. Intriguingly, the parties are essentially tied among Hispanics on this issue.
  4. On immigration, working-class voters prefer the GOP by 22 points. Even more intriguingly, Hispanics favor Republicans over Democrats by 6 points on the issue.
  5. Working-class voters also favor Republicans by 18 points on crime and policing, 12 points on America’s role in the world, 6 points on helping the middle class (!), and 4 points on education. The strongest area for the Democrats among these voters is abortion and even here they only have a single digit (8-point) lead, far less than their lead among the college-educated.
  6. Almost half (47 percent) of working-class voters are very worried that the cost of living will be too high for them to continue living in their current community. Another 32 percent are somewhat worried for a total of 79 percent.

Biden’s path to victory in 2024 of course goes through the key swing states everybody talks about. But people should realize that the path to victory in those swing states goes through the working-class voters in those states, voters among whom he has been losing critical support. He and his campaign will either fix this problem or they will lose. And then they—and the country—will really have those swing-state, working-class blues.


How Big Will the Nonmajor Party Vote Be in 2024?

There’s been a lot of talk about one of the big variables in 2024, but not a lot of precision. I tried to provide a bit more at New York:

Between 2016 and 2020, the nonmajor party share of the presidential vote dropped from 5.7 percent to 1.9 percent. It’s impossible to determine whether that factor had a decisive impact on the fact that Donald Trump won the former race and lost the latter; after all, he lost the popular vote in both elections. But if you accept the proposition that his conduct and character have placed something of a cap on his popularity, the availability of robust minor-party or independent candidacies to divert anti-Trump votes seems significant. Beyond that, nonmajor-party votes that might have gone to a major-party candidate always matter to some degree. Indeed, critics of Joe Biden may believe there’s a cap on his popularity as much as on Trump’s, thanks to his age or stubborn negative perceptions of his presidency.

Early 2024 polls have shown a massive uptick in possible willingness to vote for a nonmajor-party candidate, along with low-approval and favorability numbers for the likely major-party candidates, Biden and Trump.

The RealClearPolitics average of polls testing Biden and Trump against announced independent candidates Robert F. Kennedy and Cornel West and likely Green Party candidate Jill Stein shows 18.2 percent of voters willing to go rogue. This is obviously a lot higher than the nonparty vote in 2016 and 2020, and about double the maximum I could find in 2016 polls when minor/independent candidates were last the rage. That’s without a Libertarian (the largest-standing minor party) in the mix, by the way; there are so many candidates running for that party’s nomination that most pollsters are waiting for a name.

There are definitely reasons to assume the number of people willing to vote independent/minor party will decline before November 2024. The first is history, as Jacob Indursky explains in an article on the difficulty of third-party polling:

“Third-party candidates routinely fade in the stretch. A June 2000 Gallup survey found Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and Green Party nominee, and Reform Party nominee Pat Buchanan combining for roughly 8 percent. Still, on Election Day, they only won 3 percent of the national vote, albeit enough to tip Florida, and thus the presidency, to George W. Bush. In 1980, Republican congressman turned independent presidential candidate John Anderson scored around 20 percent in Gallup polling for most of the spring and summer but wound up with under 7 percent of the popular vote.”

A major reason for this nonmajor-party fade is one that is high relevant to today’s grumpy electorate:

“When voters are underwhelmed by the major party nominees and want to express their frustration to a pollster, they may claim to back a third option. With the average favorability of Trump and Biden well underwater, according to FiveThirtyEight, the double-digit polling numbers for RFK Jr. are essentially a ‘cry for help’ from the voting public.”

Indursky also mentions the fall in support that often accompanies minorparty candidates becoming better known. RFK Jr., a man with a famous name and some superficially attractive populist poses, is likely to lose altitude with some of his more erratic conspiracy-theory leanings and a largely incoherent worldview become manifest to voters, as the major-party campaigns are guaranteed to ensure. As the New York Times observed last month, Kennedy was briefly popular among Democratic primary voters before he switched to an independent bid in part because his numbers were crashing:

“The durability of Mr. Kennedy’s appeal to voters remains an open question. Shortly after he entered the Democratic primary race in April, polls found him drawing support from up to 20 percent of the party’s primary voters.

“But as he gained more attention from the news media and articulated more positions that are out of step with the Democratic base, his numbers dropped to the low single digits.”

He’s not as big a factor in the polls as RFK Jr., but Cornel West is already drawing some very hostile press about his personal life and financial probity. Jill Stein’s candidacy, moreover, will bring back bad memories of her alleged role in tipping key states to Trump in 2016.

Still another reason nonmajor-party candidates sometimes poll better than they actually perform in elections involves the difficulty of accurately measuring their supporters’ likelihood to vote. The voters most disgruntled with the choice of Biden and Trump — the “double haters” as they are sometimes called — are disproportionately marginal, and often young, voters, who are less engaged with politics and most likely to just stay home.

And even with the major-party primaries beginning next month, it’s possible additional general election candidates could join the fray and confuse everything. The centrist group No Labels will decide in April whether to field a candidate and claims it will only do so if said candidate could actually win (which seems an extremely dubious proposition). Until its ruled out this option, it must be considered a factor and as deadly a threat to the other nonmajor-party candidates as to Biden and Trump.

And finally, there is the crucial question of how many voters in the states that will decide the Electoral College winner in 2024 will even have the opportunity of voting for these candidates. According to veteran political observer Doug Sosnik, the nonmajor-party candidates have had variable success in obtaining the ballot access necessary to affect the presidential election:

“Jill Stein announced that she is running again as the Green Party candidate and thus far she has qualified to be on the ballot in three battleground states — Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Stein will likely attack Biden from the left on a variety of issues, including his support for Israel. This could have a significant impact in Michigan, with a population of over 300,000 Arab Americans. No Labels will be holding a convention on April 14 in Dallas to determine if it will field a candidate. So far it has achieved ballot access in the swing states of Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina. Robert Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West are running, but neither has qualified to be on the ballot in any state.”

However large the minor party/independent vote looks at any given point, we will hear arguments that either Biden or Trump would have had an additional advantage if the other candidates weren’t around. So far the 2024 polling shows the minor party vote helping the 45th president though not massively; the RealClearPolitics head-to-head polling averages show Trump leading Biden by 3.2 percent; while the more limited five-way polling that includes Kennedy, West, and Stein shows Trump leading Biden by 5.7 percent. That could change a bit once a Libertarian candidate is in the field. But for all we know the non-major-party vote could split so evenly that it will still be a Biden-Trump race to the finish. Most experts now believe the most successful independent candidate of recent decades, 1992 and 1996 presidential aspirant Ross Perot, didn’t really affect the outcome of either election, other than marginally influencing the mix of issues the major candidates addressed. So while a smaller non-major party vote is good for the major parties, the outliers in the field could just add to the noise.

 

 


Dems Get Ready to Deploy ‘Secret Weapon’

The following article by Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, is cross-posted from  Democracy Docket:

Polls for an election a year away drive chatter in some Washington, D.C. circles, but if you get outside of Washington and away from the media’s obsession with Donald Trump and the horse race for the White House, you’ll find Democrats are actually in a position of strength across the country.

At the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), we’re seeing encouraging signs after two consecutive years of Democrats’ sweeping wins in November elections, and an impressive trend of overperformance in special elections throughout 2023.

Just this month, the DLCC won majorities in both legislative chambers in Virginia, protecting reproductive rights for millions and ensuring voting rights and our democracy will continue to function — giving Democrats full legislative control in a key political battleground. After Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) funneledmillions of dollars into these races and cast this election as a referendum on the GOP and its proposed abortion ban, voters showed that MAGA extremism is unwelcome in Virginia, echoing the results we’ve seen in special elections across the country all year long.

Democrats also protected a key governing trifecta in New Jersey, not just preserving the majority in both chambers, but also gaining at least six seats. The millions that Republicans spent to break our majorities were no match for voters who soundly rejected MAGA extremism and enthusiastically backed Democratic leadership.

And in Pennsylvania, the DLCC invested an historic six-figures into the election for Democrat Daniel McCaffery, who secured a critical state Supreme Court seat. This seat is crucial to ensure that Pennsylvania certifies the results of the2024 presidential election, regardless of the outcome. Earlier in the year, we won five special elections in the state, defending our one-seat majority in the state House every time.

Lastly, Democrats scored an important victory in Ohio, where voters approved a ballot measure to protect abortion access. This landmark vote was a strong rebuke of Republicans’ extreme priorities and reinforces what the DLCC has long known: protecting fundamental freedoms is a winning issue.

Midterms are historically tough for the party in power, but in 2022 we made history — securing the best state legislative results for the president’s party in power since before 1934, protecting every state legislative majority and flipping four chambers from red to blue. In 2023, we over-performed in special elections by an average of seven points.

These victories represent a promising trend. When we focus on the data points that matter — actual election results, instead of polling — Democrats are in a strong position in 2024. At the ballot level closest to the people, voters are recognizing and choosing Democrats’ vision for the future over the increasingly extreme politics of the Republican Party.

For the last two decades, Republicans have been laser-focused and unfortunately wildly successful in seizing power in state legislatures. Following elections in 2010 and 2014, they built red majorities across the country and locked themselves into power with redistricting.

The consequences of this takeover still play an oversized role in driving the direction of this country.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, it wasn’t just the conservative justices who were responsible — it was the Republican-controlled legislatures across the country who put the Court’s opinion into action, writing and passing the state laws that stripped rights away from millions of Americans.

State legislatures enact the policies that have the most direct impact on people’s day-to-day lives. While the districts we work in are small, the implications of a single seat can be huge. Take the Michigan Senate and Minnesota Senate, two chambers where we won single-seat majorities in 2022: Soon after, the new Democratic majorities swiftly protected abortion, expandedvoting rights, passed legislation to benefit workers and took action to protect our kids from gun violence and hunger. When Democrats win power in the states, we deliver.

It’s clear what Democrats need to do for the 2023-24 cycle. We’ve made significant progress over the last decade, putting Democrats back in control of 41 chambers nationwide — many of them in states we would expect to be solidly blue on a presidential map. We now have momentum to push into battleground states, and our target map outlines our strategy to make gains and solidify power in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These fights will be our toughest yet, but we’re laser-focused.

Our biggest challenge isn’t the president’s approval ratings — it’s the lack of attention and resources that Democrats at our level of the ballot need to be competitive. Democrats absolutely need to win the White House in 2024 and win majorities in Congress. But our party cannot be fully successful if we do not also make state legislatures a core part of our collective strategy.

In fact, voting laws passed by state legislatures can impact who can vote and what ballots are counted in 2024. Right now, the ballot level furthest from Washington and closest to the voters is where we’ve had a winning strategy and where we have the best opportunities to change the direction of the country with smart investments. 2024 can be the year of the states if we stay focused and seize the opportunity. We can’t afford to neglect the states — fundamental freedoms and our entire democracy are hanging in the balance.


Low Approval Ratings Happen to Nearly Every President, Not Just Biden and Jimmy Carter

Reading about President Biden’s approval ratings lately, it’s struck me that some of the panic among Democrats is based on a lack of accurate historical perspective. I sought to address that at New York?

Joe Biden’s presidential job-approval numbers have been sinking recently, and are now under 40 percent in both the RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight polling averages. This data point is understandably being linked in a lot of commentary to Biden’s relatively poor showing of late in general-election polls matching him against Donald Trump and/or a larger field that includes a passel of minor candidates.

To place this in the proper context, it’s helpful to note that a sub–40 percent job-approval rating is not terribly unusual for U.S. presidents. As Gallup explains, 11 of the 13 post–World War II presidents — all but Eisenhower and JFK — had approval ratings below 40 at some point. One of those presidents, of course, was Trump, who managed to hit 34 percent just as he was noisily and reluctantly leaving office.

No president has been reelected with a sub–40 percent job-approval rating on Election Day, but per Gallup, three had ratings below 50 percent in June of their successful reelection years (Harry Truman: 40 percent; George W. Bush: 49 percent; Barack Obama: 46 percent), and Gerald Ford missed reelection by an eyelash after posting a 45 precent approval rating in June 1976.

The idea that Biden is toast 11 months before Election Day 2024 is ridiculous. But what makes it especially ridiculous is the double-incumbency factor. Trump is not some fresh, promising alternative to an unpopular incumbent. He’s a recent incumbent himself who is very well known and steadily unpopular. Every struggling incumbent wants to make reelection a comparative rather than a referendum election. The 45th president is the ideal foil for the 46th.

Biden’s poor job-approval ratings should be compared to Trump’s very similar recent favorability ratings. At RCP Trump’s favorability averages are currently at 40.4 percent, a half-percent above Biden’s job-approval averages. Trump’s record as president is in the can, and he has clearly doubled down on the issue-positioning and personal conduct that have put a cap on his popularity. Biden’s popularity has room for improvement as his presidential record evolves. Trump’s? Not so much.

Without much question, the impending Biden-Trump rematch is an “unpopularity contest.” As veteran political observer Bill Schneider suggests, these two men are precisely the kind of presidential candidates who play into partisan stereotypes that cut both ways:

“Democrats win when they nominate a ‘tough liberal.’ They used to do that in the old days, with standard bearers like Harry Truman (who fired General MacArthur), John F. Kennedy (the Cuban Missile Crisis) and Lyndon Johnson …

“Many Republicans have a reputation for being mean and nasty (Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and certainly Donald Trump). Republicans need a ‘nice conservative’ …

“That was Ronald Reagan, who, voters quickly found out, was not going to start a war or throw old people out in the snow. Donald Trump denounces “niceness” as a sign of weakness. He has advised the police, ‘Please don’t be too nice’ in handling criminal suspects.”

So in 2024, we are likely to have an unpopularity contest between a Democrat who is not very tough and a Republican who is not very nice. That’s why it’s so close, and so hard to predict.

Biden is more likely to get tough than Trump is to get nice. But the key point is that this will be a comparative election no matter how far Biden’s job-approval rating lags at this point. As the president often says: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty but to the alternative.”

Yes, Biden needs, and is perfectly capable of achieving, a higher job-approval rating between now and next November. But his opponent’s popularity is crucial and is probably capped. Team Biden needs not only to energize its currently passive electoral base but to have the kind of swing-voter appeal that was crucial in beating Trump in 2020. Indeed, Biden may have to win voters who don’t like either candidate, which will require a focus on Trump’s terrifying second-term agenda.

There is no particular level of popularity, however, that the incumbent president needs to achieve in order to prevail in a contest with his unpopular predecessor. This really could be a race to the near-bottom.


Political Strategy Notes

Some excerpts from “Joe Biden has an electoral math problem to solve” by Zachary B. Wolf at CNN Politics: “Former President Donald Trump would need to flip three states Biden won in 2020 to complete his political resurrection and retake the White House – and a new set of CNN battleground state polls out Monday suggests that if the election were held today, Trump is most of the way there….While national polling suggests the country doesn’t much approve of either Biden or Trump, it is battleground state polls like the ones CNN released Monday from Michigan and Georgia that should raise serious questions about Biden’s ability to make the Electoral College math work….Assuming Trump secures the Republican nomination (a pretty good assumption at the moment), if he can flip Georgia and Michigan and their 31 combined Electoral College votes, he would need to flip just one more battleground state that Biden won in 2020. These include Arizona, with its 11 Electoral College votes; Pennsylvania with 19; or Wisconsin with 10….In Georgia, Trump could go on trial as soon as August for 2020 election interference – among other things, he asked local officials to “find” him enough votes to overcome Biden’s 11,779 margin of victory in that state. Although Fulton County prosecutors want the trial to begin in August, it is also possible the state trial is delayed until after the election….Most registered voters in Georgia – 52% – say they approve of the charges, and a strong minority, 47%, say Trump should be disqualified from the presidency if the charges are proven….But right now, Trump has a lead in that state among registered voters (49%) over Biden (44%) in a hypothetical matchup, according to the CNN poll conducted by SSRS. For context, when Trump won the White House in 2016, he won Georgia by less than a percentage point.”

“Today, Trump is polling at 50% in CNN’s Michigan poll compared with Biden’s 40%” Wolf continues. “It’s telling that 10% of registered Michigan voters said they won’t vote for either man, but the frustration seems to be breaking against Biden at the moment in a hypothetical race for the state’s 15 electoral votes….Georgia is part of the diversifying Sun Belt that Democrats have long seen as their future….Biden won there in 2020 with the support of 88% of Black voters, a key constituency in Georgia, according to CNN’s exit polls….In the Georgia poll released Monday, Biden gets the support of 71% of Black voters (vs. 24% for Trump), not an exact comparison since those figures are among all registered voters, not necessarily those who will turn out to vote in 2024. But it certainly suggests Biden has work to do to maintain Democrats’ diverse coalition….Interestingly, Trump’s lead in Georgia and Michigan is built on people who don’t always take part in the political process….CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy write: Trump’s margin over Biden in the hypothetical matchup is significantly boosted by support from voters who say they did not cast a ballot in 2020, with these voters breaking in Trump’s favor by 26 points in Georgia and 40 points in Michigan….Those who report having voted in 2020 say they broke for Biden over Trump in that election, but as of now, they tilt in Trump’s favor for 2024 in both states, with Biden holding on to fewer of his 2020 backers than does Trump.” There will be many more polls to come in the months ahead, and poll-analysts will focus increasingly on the swing states more than the national polls, which mean a lot less when it comes to sussing out the likely Electoral College vote.

For example, in her article, “Biden Leads Trump In These Key Battleground States—But Is Still Losing Popular Vote, New Poll Finds,” Sara Dorn writes at Forbes: “President Joe Biden would beat former President Donald Trump in seven swing states in a general election matchup, according to a new poll that also found a potential conviction could hurt Trump significantly—the latest survey, amid a series of negative polls for Biden, showing a hotly contested race if both become their respective parties’ nominees….Biden leads Trump by four points among likely voters in the seven states with the most closely contested results in 2020: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Michigan, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll….But the survey also found Trump would beat Biden by two points nationally (38% to 36%) in a head-to-head matchup if the election were held today, though 26% of voters said they were undecided, according to the poll of 4,411 U.S. adults taken Dec. 5-11 (margin of error 2 points).” The 26 percent undecided vote certainly diminishes the value of a head-to-head horse race poll, especially considering the omission of  huge wild card of third party candidates such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Cornell West and possibly a “No Labels” candidate. But it would be ironic if Biden wins the Electoral College but loses the popular vote, like Trump did in 2016. All of a sudden, Trump would be the loudest champion of direct popular election the cause has ever had.

Speaking of third parties, Jacob Indursky explores their prospects in his article, “The Trouble with Polling Third-Parties: Sure, third-party candidates have decided any number of contests—including presidential races—but experts are stymied by gauging how these potential spoilers will do come Election Day” at The Washington Monthly. As Indursky observes, “Eleven months before Election Day 2024, early polling suggests third-party and independent candidates will roil the presidential race. A much-discussed poll of battleground states from The New York Times found remarkable support for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in a three-way race against President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, with the scion of the famous political family scooping up votes from roughly a quarter of respondents….In the Real Clear Politics average of a possible five-way race, the combined total of Kennedy, Cornel West, the leftist intellectual, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, a perennial source of annoyance for Democrats, hit an unsettling 19 percent. Polls that test a two-way and a five-way race show Trump improving his margin in these expanded fields by about two points….And these are just the polls, including the announced candidates. We still don’t know if the moneyed centrist operation No Labels will go forward with its announced plans for a bipartisan ticket, and if so, who their candidates will be….The combined support of the two most prominent third-party candidates, Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson, often cleared 10 percent in mid-election year polling. In one July 2016 poll, just four months before the election, the two combined for 18 percent.…But in the end, Johnson and other third-party candidates collectively came in under 6 percent of the popular vote, which is unsurprising. Third-party candidates routinely fade in the stretch. A June 2000 Gallup survey found Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and Green Party nominee, and Reform Party nominee Pat Buchanan combining for roughly 8 percent. Still, on Election Day, they only won 3 percent of the national vote, albeit enough to tip Florida, and thus the presidency, to George W. Bush. In 1980, Republican congressman-turned-independent presidential candidate John Anderson scored around 20 percent in Gallup polling for most of the spring and summer but wound up with under 7 percent of the popular vote.” Indursky goes on too give fair credit to 3rd party candidacies that may have made a difference, but nonetheless concludes, “But if there’s a time to panic, that time is not now. As [poll analyst Stan] Greenberg says, “There’s just no predictive value of these polls whatsoever.”


Dems Building ‘Track and Corner’ Strategy for 2024

In “Democrats plan to track and corner Republican 2024 candidates on Trump,” Jarrett Renshaw reports at Reuters:

When Republican U.S. Representative Don Bacon was asked if he supports Donald Trump’s bid for the White House next year at Nebraska town hall last month, he batted away the question, saying it was too early to say, given the former president hadn’t yet secured the nomination.

Despite the non-answer, a Democratic activist with a video camera filmed the exchange, and it was quickly blasted it online with the headline Bacon “refuses to tell Nebraskans if he supports Trump.”

Crenshaw notes further,

Democrats are monitoring local radio interviews, scouring news stories and hiring teams of political trackers armed with cameras to blanket Republican events, to capture the moment a candidate is asked a Trump loyalty question.

North Carolina, Arizona and Pennsylvania Democrats are currently hiring “trackers” to follow, record and post footage of Republicans at local events, according to job websites.

For $4,000 a month, a tracker will be responsible for “comprehensively tracking opponents’ schedules” and providing “same day footage” to “drive the campaign narrative,” one such job posting says.

Tracking, essentially following an opponent with the hopes they slip up or do something that can be used to influence voters, has become a ubiquitous practice in U.S. political campaigns in recent years. It will only grow in 2024, some Democrats say.

American Bridge 21st Century, the largest research, tracking, and rapid response operation in the Democratic Party, spent $84 million tracking Republican candidates and using the footage to run ads against them in their home states in 2020.

In 2024, the operation is “going to be bigger than it’s ever been,” President Pat Dennis told Reuters.

Renshaw adds, “Republicans in suburban districts are the most squeezed by Trump politics, making them the best areas to film, Dennis said….”The amount of damage Trump has done to the Republican Party in the suburbs is extraordinary. So that’s sort of the pain point for them,” Dennis said.”

Good to know that state and local Democratic parties are paying attention with determination to hold GOP candidates accountable. Now, if local media will do its job, Dems will have a fighting chance to elect a working majority that can get America moving forward in the post-Trump era.


Teixeira: The Democratic Coalition Is Falling Apart

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Let’s face it: the Democratic coalition is in poor shape. It’s springing leaks everywhere—young voters, Hispanic voters, black voters, women voters, working-class voters, moderate and independent voters. Of course, some Democrats dismiss the accumulating evidence as irrelevant because it’s too early, too biased, or not consistent with recent positive election results. It reminds me of the widely shared meme of the anthropomorphic dog calmly sipping his coffee in a burning room saying: “This is fine.”

And for sure, it is early. But these are very disturbing data that indicate the scale of the Democrats’ challenge in 2024. Two recent data releases document this ongoing decay of the Democratic coalition. First, looking at the national picture, Adam Carlson at the excellent Split Ticket data analytics site, has produced a compilation of cross-tabular data that allows us to compare average current Democratic performance with Democratic performance from 2020 to estimate shifts in preference since that election by key group. The second data source is a major survey of battleground states and districts by Democracy Corps/PSG/Greenberg Research (DCorps) that provides some rich demographic breakdowns of vote preference and opinion where the 2024 election will almost certainly be decided.

The Democratic “base” as a whole. This group isn’t in the Split Ticket data, but is displayed in the DCorps battleground data. In their definition the Democratic base is an amalgamation of Democratic-friendly demographic groups: “Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, LGBTQ+ community, Gen Z, millennials, unmarried and college women”. Overall, across this constellation of groups, Biden trails Trump in the presidential battleground by 4 points—no better for Biden than among all voters in the battleground.

These base voters also give Trump a higher approval rating than Biden; three-quarters think the country is off on the wrong track. Their most pressing issue by far for the country is inflation and the cost of living. Crime, homelessness and violence is second while, interestingly, abortion only ranks eighth.

Young voters. The Split Ticket data show Biden carrying 18-29 year olds (primarily Gen Z) by 16 points, a 7-point pro-Trump shift relative to 2020. (Note: where Catalist data are available, I use their data alone, rather than averaged with AP/Votecast and Pew validated voter data as Split Ticket does.) Among 30-44 year olds (primarily Millennials), Biden is ahead by only 8 points, a 6-point pro-Trump shift compared to 2020.

The DCorps battleground data suggest the situation may be particularly dire with white Gen Z and Millennial voters. Trump is 28 points ahead of Biden among white Gen Z voters in the presidential battleground and 25 points ahead among white Millennials. Their most pressing issue by a wide margin is inflation and cost of living. Among white Gen Z voters, Biden’s approval rating is 27 percent compared to 59 percent (!) for Trump; among white Millennials, Biden’s rating is 33 percent while Trump’s is 60 percent.

Hispanic voters. The measured pro-Trump shift here is particularly startling. Biden’s average lead among Hispanics is a mere 5 points, an 18-point decline from his lead in 2020. And in the DCorps presidential battleground data, Biden is actually behind among these voters by 3 points. Battleground Hispanics’ key issue is inflation and the cost of living, followed by crime. They give Trump and Biden exactly equal approval ratings.

Black voters. In the Split Ticket data, Biden is averaging a 52-point lead among black voters. That may sound good but it actually represents a precipitous 29-point drop from Biden’s 81-point lead in 2020. It seems hard to believe that Biden will ultimately drop that much support from black voters but even half that drop would be disastrous for him.

The DCorps presidential battleground data confirm this relatively weak black support for Biden. Interestingly, while inflation and the cost of living is these voters’ top issue, as it is for most other groups, crime is actually very close behind, much closer than among other groups. Consistent with this, black battleground voters are most likely to pick “crime and homelessness being out of control in cities and the violence killing small businesses and the police” as something that would upset them the most if Biden was re-elected.

Women voters. The Split Ticket data show Biden’s average lead among women voters at 6 points, down 7 points from his 2020 showing. This shift is actually slightly larger than the pro-Trump shift among men at this point.

The DCorps presidential battleground data indicate particular problems among white unmarried women (25-point Trump lead) and white working-class (noncollege) women under 50 (47-point Trump lead). These two groups of women are by far the most worried about inflation and the cost of living. Both groups of women give Trump higher approval ratings than Biden. The under 50 white working class women, in fact, give Biden an abysmal 16 percent approval rating compared to 57 percent for Trump.

Working-class voters. The Split Ticket data show Trump averaging solid leads among both high school or less (15 points) and some college (9 points) voters. These leads represent, respectively, a 5-point and a 7.5-point shift toward Trump relative to 2020.

In the DCorps data, Trump has an amazing 21-point lead among the working class as a whole in the battleground states and districts. And that’s 63 percent of the voters in these areas—the areas that, as noted, will decide the outcome in 2024.

Independent and moderate voters. The Split Ticket data show Trump leading Biden by 6 points among independents, a 15-point turnaround from Biden’s 9-point lead in 2020. Biden currently leads by 14 points among moderate voters, which sounds OK, but is actually a 12-point decline from his lead in 2020. And in the DCorps presidential battleground, Trump leads independents by a healthy 18 points.


It no doubt seems odd to Democrats that voters in the center—independents and moderates—aren’t flocking to their banners because surely they all know and believe that chaos agent Trump and his anti-democratic Republican Party represent everything that is immoderate and super-partisan in American politics.

But here’s the problem: these voters don’t necessarily see Trump and the Republicans as clearly being the worst in these areas. In the DCorps poll, battleground voters prefer Trump and the Republicans over Biden and the Democrats on “opposing extremism” (by 3 points), “getting beyond the chaos (by 6 points), “standing up to elites” (by 8 points), “protecting the U.S. Constitution” (by 8 points), and “putting country over party” (by 8 points). These voters see the parties as tied on “democracy being secure”and give Biden and the Democrats negligible leads of 2 points on “presidents not being able to act as autocrats”, and one point on “protecting democracy”. So while partisan Democrats may think these issues are not even close when comparing Biden and the Democrats to Trump and his “semi-fascist” Republican Party, there are clearly huge numbers of less partisan voters who disagree.

Similarly, in a recent Morning Consult poll, voters deemed the Democratic Party more ideologically extreme than the Republicans by 9 points. And in a poll conducted by The Liberal Patriot and YouGov, more voters thought the Democrats had moved too far left on cultural and social issues (61 percent) than thought the Republicans had moved too far right on these issues (58 percent).

Something’s clearly not working here for the Democrats. Despite turning it up to 11 on the threat posed by Trump to democracy throughout Biden’s presidency, and now perhaps to 12 as the probability of a Biden-Trump rematch looms ever larger, actually-existing voters don’t seem to be stampeding in their direction. The big lead that Democrats feel should be naturally theirs is not appearing.

To me, this raises the question: where is the popular front against Trumpism? If he is indeed as bad as most Democrats seem to believe—i.e., we’re one step away from fascism, it’s Weimar Germany 1932 all over again—shouldn’t Democrats be casting the net as wide as possible, compromising on anything and everything to make their party maximally accessible to persuadable voters? After all, we’ve got to stop fascism here!

But that’s not what’s happening. Despite their dire assessment of the threat posed by Trump, moves to compromise on contentious issues that persuadable voters care about are few and far between. Look what’s happening with the immigration issue that has come to the fore in the negotiations over aid to the Ukraine and Israel. Instead of eagerly embracing a deal to move the aid forward that would include fairly modest reforms to the asylum system and other changes to tighten border security, Democrats are evincing the greatest reluctance to make such a deal. And this is despite the reality that voters, including most persuadable voters, view the Democrats as absolutely abysmal on the issue of border security.

It’s hard to understand. And the great irony here is that progressive Democrats, who are precisely the ones who are most hysterical about the threat posed by Trump and Trumpism, are also the ones most adamantly opposed to making any compromise on border security as part of this deal. Or really anything else for that matter.

This is not a recipe for success. I suppose that’s because they don’t really want a popular front against Trumpism but rather a popular front for all the stuff they feel comfortable supporting. But that’s not how a popular front works and it’s certainly not how Democrats are going to rebuild and expand their coalition for 2024. Instead, such a sectarian approach simply enhances the very real possibility that Donald Trump will (gulp) win next November.


Political Strategy Notes

Despite all of the hand-ringing about President Biden’s sagging poll numbers, the smart money currently has a rematch of the 2020 presidential contest nearly locked-in for next year. Looking a bit further ahead, however, Democrats have reason to be optimistic about their stable of potential presidential nominees in 2028. in “Delicately dancing Democrats: Looking ahead to 2028 but with half an eye on 2024, presidential hopefuls are positioning themselves for a run” Lesley Russell shares some notes at Inside Story, including: “The line-up of Democrats eager for the presidential candidacy highlights both a recognition that any one of them could have the chance to step up ahead of 2028 — an incentive to strengthen their national profiles — and the fact that there’s a wealth of well-credentialled candidates. “So many people, it’s breathtaking,” says veteran Democratic strategist James Carville. “The level of talent in the Democratic Party in 2023 — and I say this with great confidence — is as high as any political party has ever had in my lifetime.”….Three people stand out: Shapiro, Beshear and Whitmer….Having only taken office this year, Shapiro is still in the honeymoon phase of his gubernatorial stint. It remains to be seen whether the fifty-year-old moderate has staying power….Beshear became a Democratic hero in November when he won a second term as governor of Kentucky, defying the usual political leaning of his red state. The forty-five-year-old, who was first elected as governor in 2019, has emulated his father, also a two-time Kentucky governor. In his first term Beshear was credited with having responded well to a series of natural disasters — the devastating tornadoes and horrific floods that ravaged parts of Eastern Kentucky — and the pandemic….” He is the emblematic Democratic politicians who has proved he can win votes from Republicans.

“Whitmer, fifty-two, has been governor of Michigan, an important swing state that voted Trump in 2016 and 2020, since 2019,” Russell continues. “She was re-elected in 2022, winning by nearly eleven points over her Republican opponent. Her signature causes are infrastructure, healthcare and abortion access. With Democrats in control of the governor’s office and both the state’s legislative chambers following last year’s election, Whitmer has pushed through tax cuts, gun control measures and protections for abortion and gay rights. She has served as one of the vice-chairs of the Democratic National Committee since January 2021….Whitmer was recently described in the Atlantic as having a “foul-mouthed irreverence, goofy humour, and ability to pound beers and disarm adversaries.” That may not play in Peoria or Washington, DC, but one thing is clear: she knows how to deal with Trump and his ilk. As a target of his nasty rhetoric, she has accused Trump of helping to incite, and later condoning, an October 2020 plot to abduct her. The planned kidnap by a group of men associated with the Wolverine Watchmen, a Michigan-based militia group furious over tough Covid-19 rules and perceived threats to gun ownership, was thwarted by the FBI and undercover agents — something for which Trump took credit, while simultaneously downplaying the threat to Whitmer….Whitmer might be the best of the three, but she faces one clear obstacle — she’s a woman. On that basis alone she would be ruled out of consideration as Harris’ vice-presidential nominee if one were needed.” Of course it would be a mistake to rule out Vice President Harris this soon, especially if the Biden-Harris ticket is re-elected. She could shine brightly in the next four years. And GA Sen. Raphael Warnock has unique political gifts, including an ability to reach out across party lines, that could make him a lock on the 2028 ticket in the veep slot, if not the top of the ticket. And there are others, including Newsom, Pritzker and Buttigieg, to name a few who have the skill-set to move up into front-runner status in 2028.

To paraphrase a recent social media one-liner, “Would you rather vote for a presidential candidate with 81 years behind him or 91 felony charges in front of him?” It’s a sharp dig because it makes a couple of good points in very few words. Trump is not going to be found innocent of all 91 felony charges, and the importance of Biden’s age shrinks in comparison to Trump’s mental health/moral laxity, which the meme flags. And lest we forget, Trump is no spring chicken at 77  (78 on the next election day). Trump supporters and undecided voters alike are being urged to ignore all of the charges against him and to believe that every single one of them is politicized, even though they come from different legal jurisdictions. Yes, many Trump supporters are quite prepared to do exactly that, and his hard-core personality cult followers don’t really care if he is guilty of criminal charges. But millions of Republicans who are sincerely concerned about crime in their communities and states are being told, in effect, to ignore Trump’s example, even as they are prioritizing ‘tough on crime’ policies for other candidates. That’s a very tough sell and a crapload of cognitive dissonance, which may prove too much for most thoughtful conservatives to swallow. It can only get worse as Trump’s legal problems mount and his reactions become increasingly unhinged. The gullibility required to ignore all of Trump’s coming convictions demands an awful lot of denial from self-respecting or democracy-valuing swing voters. Of course, all of this pro-Biden optimism assumes that a lot of people expressing preference for Trump in recent polls are blowing off steam and will vote differently in the sober light of 2024, when they realize they have to vote for or against democracy.

From “New Civiqs poll: Americans say inflation won’t be solved until prices drop” by Daniel Donner at Daily Kos: “Americans have a very different understanding from economists of what inflation is and how the economy works….The latest Daily Kos/Civiqs survey finds that pluralities of Americans—across party lines—think the problem of inflation won’t be solved until prices drop back down to where they were a few years ago; that in a good economy, prices will naturally drift downward; and that when inflation goes down, prices either go down or stay the same….The latest reading of inflation for groceries stands at 2.1% on an annual basis. That means that, on average, Americans paid $102 for groceries this October that would have cost them $100 a year ago. This is a small difference, and most people would be hard-pressed to notice this change….However, when asked what has happened to grocery prices in their area in the past year, almost everybody—88% of those surveyed—said prices had gone up. Only 5% said prices had “remained about the same.” Either nearly everybody is keeping very careful track of grocery prices, or people are inadvertently comparing current prices to what they were used to more than a year ago….A full 50% of Americans agree that “solving the inflation problem means that prices should go back to where they were a few years ago.”….If inflation continues to go down (economists call this “disinflation”), it could go down to the level we’ve been used to in recent decades—around 2% per year—where prices are still increasing but not as quickly…. 67% responded that they would expect prices to go down or stay the same if inflation goes down.” Prices rarely drop without increased competition, and even then it’s not a safe bet. What Democrats can do is help the public understand that current price hikes are connected to record corporate profits and are modest compared to what other countries are experiencing.


Trump’s “Drain the Swamp” Plan Worse Than a Return to the Spoils System

It’s hard to keep up with the growing evidence of the horrors Trump plans to implement in a second term, but I wrote about one item that really struck me at New York:

There have been many credible reports that a second Trump administration would feature an assault on the federal civil-service system in order to reduce “deep state” resistance to his authoritarian ambitions — or, to use his terms for it, to “drain the swamp” — while stuffing the higher levels of the federal bureaucracy with political appointees. Those of us who are history-minded have immediately thought of this as threatening a return to the “spoils system” of the 19th century, which was more or less ended by enactment of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 (signed into law by Republican president and reformed spoilsman Chester Alan Arthur).

But the more we know about Team Trump’s plans, this understanding of what they want to do in staffing the federal government looks increasingly inadequate and anachronistic. The spoils-system beneficiaries of the distant past were by and large party foot soldiers rewarded for attending dreary local meetings, talking up the the party’s candidates in newspapers and forums, and, most of all, getting out the vote on Election Day. No one much cared what they believed in their heart of hearts about issues of the day or how they came to their convictions. It was enough that they put on the party yoke and helped pull the bandwagon to victory.

As Axios reports, one questionnaire used late in the first Trump administration to vet job applicants and another distributed by the Heritage Foundation to build up an army of second-term appointment prospects show a far more discriminating approach:

“The 2020 ‘Research Questionnaire,’ which we obtained from a Trump administration alumnus, was used in the administration’s final days — when most moderates and establishment figures had been fired or quit, and loyalists were flexing their muscles. Questions include:

“’What part of Candidate Trump’s campaign message most appealed to you and why?’

“’Briefly describe your political evolution. What thinkers, authors, books, or political leaders influenced you and led you to your current beliefs? What political commentator, thinker or politician best reflects your views?’

“’Have you ever appeared in the media to comment on Candidate Trump, President Trump or other personnel or policies of the Trump Administration?”

Similar questions are being asked for the Talent Database being assembled by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — the most sophisticated, expensive pre-transition planning ever undertaken for either party.

The Heritage questionnaire makes it especially clear that being just any old kind of Republican isn’t going to be enough. It asks if applicants agree with a number of distinctively MAGA issue positions, including:

“The U.S. should impose tariffs with the goal of bringing back manufacturing jobs, even if these tariffs result in higher consumer prices. …

“The permanent institutions of family and religion are foundational to American freedom and the common good. …

“The President should be able to advance his/her agenda through the bureaucracy without hinderance from unelected federal officials.”

One insider told Axios that both the 2020 Trump and 2024 Heritage questionnaires have a common and very particular purpose:

“An alumnus of the Trump White House told us both documents are designed to test the sincerity of someone’s MAGA credentials and determine ‘when you got red-pilled,’ or became a true believer. ‘They want to see that you’re listening to Tucker, and not pointing to the Reagan revolution or any George W. Bush stuff,’ this person said”.

This represents a really unprecedented effort to place the executive branch under the direction of people chosen not on the basis of merit or experience or expertise, and not on party credentials, but on membership in an ideological faction that is also a presidential candidate’s cult of personality. As such, it’s more dangerous than a return to the partisan habits of a bygone era.

 

 


Edsall: Biden’s Fraying Coalition in Danger

Some excerpts from Thomas B. Edsall’s  “‘This Is Grim,’ One Democratic Pollster Says” at The New York Times:

The predictive power of horse-race polling a year from the presidential election is weak at best. The Biden campaign can take some comfort in that. But what recent surveys do reveal is that the coalition that put Joe Biden in the White House in the first place is nowhere near as strong as it was four years ago.

These danger signs include fraying support among core constituencies, including young voters, Black voters and Hispanic voters, and the decline, if not the erasure, of traditional Democratic advantages in representing the interests of the middle class and speaking for the average voter.

Any of these on their own might not be cause for alarm, but taken together, they present a dangerous situation for Biden.

Edsall notes further, “From Nov. 5 through Nov. 11, Democracy Corps, a Democratic advisory group founded by Stan Greenberg and James Carville, surveyed 2,500 voters in presidential and Senate battleground states as well as competitive House districts….In an email, Greenberg summarized the results: “This is grim.” The study, he said, found that collectively, voters in the Democratic base of “Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, L.G.B.T.Q.+ community, Gen Z, millennials, unmarried and college women give Trump higher approval ratings than Biden.”

Edsall goes on to roll out the discouraging specifics, including:

On 32 subjects ranging from abortion to China, the Democracy Corps survey asked voters to choose which would be better: “Biden and the Democrats” or “Trump and the Republicans.”

Biden and the Democrats led on six: women’s rights (ahead by 17 percentage points), climate change (15 points), addressing racial inequality (10 points), health care (three points), the president will not be an autocrat (two points) and protecting democracy (one point). There was a tie on making democracy more secure.

Donald Trump and the Republicans held leads on the remaining subjects, including being for working people (a seven-point advantage), standing up to elites (eight points), being able to get things done for the American people (12 points), feeling safe (12 points) and keeping wages and salaries up with the cost of living (17 points).

In the case of issues that traditionally favor Republicans, Trump and his allies held commanding leads: patriotism (11 points), crime (17 points), immigration (20 points) and border security (22 points).

As for the causes, Edsall writes, “There is some evidence in both the Democracy Corps survey and in other polls that concerns specific to Biden — including his age and the surge in prices during his presidency — are driving the perception of Democratic weakness rather than discontent with the party itself…..The survey found, for example, that Democratic candidates in House battleground districts are running even with their Republican opponents among all voters and two points ahead among voters who say they are likely to cast ballots on Election Day.”

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Biden’s sagging popularity is weakening Democratic 2024 prospects. As Edsall notes,

Along similar lines, a November 2023 NBC News poll found Trump leading Biden by two points, 46 to 44, but when voters were asked to choose between Trump and an unnamed Democratic candidate, the generic Democrat won 46 to 40.

In a reflection of both Biden’s and Trump’s high unfavorability ratings, NBC reported that when voters were asked to choose between Biden and an unnamed generic Republican, the Republican candidate led Biden 48 to 37.

What makes these numbers and conclusions harder to ignore than other recent polls indicating trouble for Democrats, is the name Stan Greenberg associated with the Democracy Corps poll and related analyses. While James Carville is familiar to many political junkies because of his frequent television appearances, his political partner Stan Greenberg is the Democrats’ platinum standard pollster, poll and election data analyst. Indeed, they have advised successful social democratic candidates all over the world. Greenberg and Carville steered President Bill Clinton’s two victorious election campaigns, and if Hillary Clinton heeded their advice to focus more on winning the support of  working-classs voters in key states, the nation might have been spared the entire Trump disaster, which now threatens the future of America’s democracy.

It is true that nobody knows what is going to happen in the months ahead, and yes, Biden could rally, if the economic picture improves substantially, or if Trump’s legal problems drag him down. In any case, President Biden, or whoever runs against Trump or another GOP nominee, would do well to pay close attention to the insights of Stan Greenberg and James Carville.

To round out your take on Democratic 2024 prospects, do read the rest of Edsall’s column. It provides as thorough and carefully-considered a report as you are going to find.