Sen. Chuck Schumer’s argument that Democrats must focus more intensely on addressing the concerns of the working/middle class has received a compelling plug from New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall, who explores the purely political downside of Obamacare in his latest column:

The views of Democratic advocates of Obamacare notwithstanding, public opinion has generally sided with Schumer.
A United Technologies/National Journal Congressional connection poll of 1,013 adults in mid-November 2013 found that by a 25-point margin, 59-34, respondents said that the health care law (which includes a major expansion of Medicaid to cover anyone up to 133 percent of the poverty line, and subsidies for the purchase of private insurance for those between 133 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line) would make things better for the poor. But respondents also said, by a 16-point margin, 49-33, that the law would make things worse for “people like you and your family.” White respondents were even more critical, with 58 percent saying that Obamacare would make things worse for people like you and your family, and 63 percent saying it would make things worse “for the middle class.”
Exit poll data from 1994, after President Clinton’s failed bid to pass health care reform, as well as from 2010 and 2014, provides further support for the Schumer argument. In each of those three midterm elections there were huge white defections from the Democratic Party; in 2010 and 2014, there were comparable defections of senior voters.
The loss of white supporters of House Democratic candidates can be seen in the data. In 1992, white voters split 50-50 between Democratic and Republican House candidates; in 1994, after the Hillarycare debacle, they voted Republican 58-42. By 2010 and 2014, whites voted for Republican House candidates by a 24-point margin, 62-38. The defection of seniors is most striking when comparing exit poll data from 2006 and 2010. In 2006, seniors of all races voted 52-48 for Democratic House candidates; in 2010, they voted 58-42 for Republican House candidates.

Edsall cites Schumer’s call for “an active and committed government that is on your side,” despite current cynicism about government. Schumer and Edsall agree that running away from government is political suicide.
It has been duly noted that Obamacare is, after all, a life-saving reform, which also has the potential for saving middle class taxpayers a huge bundle down the road. Edsall’s article is more about the relatively short-term political liabilities of the ACA. It is a trade-off, and only the passing of time will clarify whether it was a wise political strategy in the long term, as well.
There is an argument, which both Edsall and Schumer have not adequately addressed, that it’s more the weak sell behind Obamacare after enactment that has been destructive to Democratic prospects, rather than the ACA itself. Dems shouldn’t waste too much time playing Monday morning quarterback about the timing of the president’s strategy to enact health care reform. Edsall’s analysis nonetheless lends credence to Schumer’s point that, going forward, Democrats had better get talking, loud and clear, about economic reforms that unequivocally benefit the white working-class, as well as the poor and disadvantaged.
Democrats should be able to match or exceed President Obama’s 36 percent of the white working-class in 2012, with an unflinching focus on supporting reforms like: tax cuts for the middle class, coupled with tax hikes for the very wealthy; prosecuting abusive bankers; a minimum wage hike; strengthening labor union organizing; more federal aid for college students; tax incentives for investing in American jobs; expanding Social Security benefits (and scrapping the payroll tax cap); and an incessant call for infrastructure investments that can put millions of people to work.
Of course the Republicans will refuse to pass any of these reforms. But a laser focus on these issues and a refusal to get distracted will help Democrats rebrand both parties in a way that insures that the GOP will suffer a major rout in 2016.

With the 113th Congress returning to D.C. for its final weeks of this session, it is important for the public to weigh in on the “tax extenders” – the obscure set of policy choices that have an immense impact on family incomes, the economy and the deficit – which will be considered. The pundits and elites have rallied around the bi-partisan support for R & D tax credits and the media report a deal that includes making those and the college-tuition tax credits permanent; not slated for permanence in this deal are the Child Tax Credit or the Earned Income Tax Credit. Congressional leaders considering this deal should know that they are threatening to walk away from the tax credits that have the most support with the public.
Democracy Corps conducted surveys in the Senate and House battlegrounds during the last two months before the 2014 election with the off-year electorate. In those surveys, we tested the different tax extenders that would be before the Congress.[1] The two tax credits that are the most popular choices for permanence and earn the most intense support among voters are the Child Tax Credit for lower income and middle class working families with children and the $4,000 a year tax credit for college-tuition and fees.

House battleground: 88 percent favor making the college-tuition credit permanent, 59 percent strongly; 85 percent favor making the Child Tax Credit permanent, 58 percent strongly.
Senate battleground: 83 percent favor making the Child Tax Credit permanent, 59 percent strongly; 82 percent favor making the college-tuition credit permanent, 57 percent strongly.

Some have described the college-tuition credit as a “middle class” policy offer and the Child Tax Credit as targeted to lower income families, but that analysis misses the extent to which working and middle class voters are struggling in this economy with jobs that don’t pay enough. They are looking for help making college affordable and want help lessening the burden of children on working families. Making these credits permanent has broad support and listening to the voters in these contested House districts and Senate states is key to lawmakers being relevant when it comes to the new economy as well as to getting people to view politics as relevant for them.
The Rising American Electorate of minority, Millennial, and unmarried women voters respond to both credits with great intensity. Remember, they will constitute one-half of the electorate in 2016.

House battleground: 87 percent of the RAE support making the college-tuition credit permanent, 63 percent strongly; 84 percent support making the Child Tax Credit permanent, 59 percent strongly.
Senate battleground: 86 percent of the RAE support making the Child Tax Credit permanent, 66 percent strongly; 87 percent support making the college-tuition credit permanent, 61 percent strongly.

But as Democrats begin the broader discussion of how to appeal to the white working class, note that white non-college educated voters also put the child tax credit at the top of their list. Both are clearly central to the Democrats as they move forward.

House battleground: 87 percent of white non-college voters favor making the college-tuition credit permanent, 61 percent strongly; 87 percent favor making the Child Tax Credit permanent, 56 percent strongly.
Senate battleground: 84 percent of white non-college voters favor making the Child Tax Credit permanent, 61 percent strongly; 83 percent favor making the college-tuition credit permanent, 54 percent strongly.

There is broad support for extending R & D tax credits, but note it does not have the intensity and breadth of support that the public gives to the college-tuition and Child Tax Credits.

House battleground: 83 percent favor making the R & D credits permanent, 48 percent strongly.
Senate battleground: 80 percent support favor the R & D credits permanent, 50 percent strongly.

Former Mayor of Denver Wellington Webb weighs in on where Dems went wrong in the midterm elections: “Unfortunately, we Democrats had little to no respect for, and therefore almost invisible identification with, the accomplishments of President Obama, who had accumulated a litany of successes. We, as Democrats, should have been proud of and owned up to our record of sterling accomplishments from 2008 to 2014: Gasoline prices are down, unemployment is down, health care accessibility is available to all, and, we even justifiably assassinated Osama Bin Laden. Not once, did we mention one Democratic success. This omission was the most shameful outcome of this 2014 election…We ran away from our successes – and Republicans fought against them, even though our efforts improved the lives of Americans. We should have been talking about everything from increasing the minimum wage across the nation, to fighting to protect Medicare and Social Security and providing a national security plan to protect America. But we didn’t. Shame on us Democrats for not amplifying our improvements to the country.”
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has a point here. But a big tent party is going to have its public spats, and right after an election is better than before one.
E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s “How Obama and the Democrats Can Save Their Agenda” cuts through the GOP’s triumphalist fog with a salient overview: “Now, it will be a Republican Congress vs. a Democratic president. Voters will have a much easier time seeing who stands for what…Obama and progressives should spend the next two years accomplishing as many useful things as they can, blocking regressive actions by Congress, and clarifying the choices facing the nation’s voters. And they’ll get much further by doing all three at once.”
Politico’s Alex Isenstadt takes a look at “The Obama Republicans,” who hold congressional seats in 26 districts President Obama won in 2012, and concludes that the thinning of the vulnerables in the Democratic herd may free up resources to win back a healthy portion of those seats in 2016.
At The Hill Tim Devaney and Lydia Wheeler report on “The GOP’s Strategy to block Obama’s Regs.”
The National Journal’s Alex Roarty probes a much-buzzed question, “Can Clinton Win Back the White Working Class?” and quotes TDS Founding Editor Ruy Teixeira: “Democrats, to win regularly, not just the presidency but other levels of government, they need to do better among … noncollege whites than they’ve been doing,” said Ruy Teixeira, a demographer who has written extensively about the electoral advantages inherent in the nation’s changing demographics. “You can’t … just rely on the coalition of the ascendant…Are they going to convince the majority of these voters that they have a plan and it’ll definitely work?” Teixeira asked. “Well, that’s probably not going to happen. You don’t have to convince most of these voters. You just have to convince a persuadable part of them.”
At The Plum Line Paul Waldman makes a good point, that the future makeup of the Supreme Court is a hugely consequential and substantive issue. Making it a pivotal issue with swing voters will require some creative messaging.
From Paul Rosenberg’s wonky Salon.com post, “Why are these clowns winning? Secrets of the right-wing brain“: “There are things going on in our social and political world that we don’t have names for–and because we don’t have names for them, we can’t think and talk about them coherently. So, we have conservatives on the one hand acting on their mythos, mistakenly believing it’s true as a matter of logos–which is one kind of incompetence–and yet, nonetheless reshaping reality through the power of reflexivity. (Think of how invading Iraq in response to 9/11 helped bring ISIS into existence, for example.) On the other hand, we have liberals seeing things only in terms of logos, who can’t understand how wildly mistaken conservatives can nonetheless reshape the world to reflect their paranoid fantasies, because they’re missing the crucial concept of reflexivity (and even the very concept of missing concepts, the concept of hypocognition)–which is another, very different, but very real form of incompetence.”
What took him so long?