The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

One of the points I made in my book, The Optimistic Leftist, was that “the political dynamic unleashed by right populism will actually contribute to its own demise”. No one paid much attention at this time, since everyone was busy panicking about Trump. But perhaps I wasn’t so crazy, given the way things have been unfolding lately.

Along these lines, I was very interested to see this piece on Bloomberg from columnist Karl W. Smith. Smith is not a conventional leftist; he is rather a “liberaltarian” who is a fellow at the Niskanen Center, the split-off from hard-libertarian Cato Institute. Here’s some of what Smith had to say:

“Trump’s election was supposed to have heralded a political realignment in America. The Republican Party, long associated with the interests of business and more affluent Americans, would now be fueled by the white working class and a powerful nativist sentiment. In the Democratic Party, the interests of organized labor and the working class were giving way to those of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the cosmopolitan elite. The new partisan divisions would be based not on class but on openness to globalism.

To be blunt about it: This didn’t happen. (To be fair, some were skeptical at the time.) Instead, the entire country is shifting in a more populist direction, and Democrats are dominating the policy debate.

Exhibit A is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her off-the-cuff mention of a 70 percent tax rate, which has sparked a national discussion. Polls show that it’s popular not only with Democrats but with a plurality of Republicans. Celebrated left-wing economists argue that high tax rates are necessary to prevent the U.S. from slipping into an oligarchy, a message that is likely to resonate strongly among anti-globalist Trump supporters.

Likewise, Ocasio-Cortez has forced elites on both sides to at least grapple with the economic tenets of modern monetary theory. MMT, as it is known, suggests that a government with its own currency does not need to raise taxes in order to increase spending. So far MMT has faced strong pushback from elites of the left and right. But its basic contention, that deficit spending isn’t as bad as you have been led to believe, is gaining support.

These two propositions — that the government should check the power of private-sector billionaires and should spend freely to alleviate social ills — form the core of the classic leftist platform. And these positions are becoming more influential, not less, in the Democratic Party….

If their nominee in 2020 is someone like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Sherrod Brown, then I predict a rapid shift. Democrats would win back many of the white working class voters they lost and cruise to victory. Centrist pro-business Democrats would be sidelined, and the only resistance to the president’s tax and spending priorities would be from Senate Republicans. That would just drive more populists out of the Republican Party and into the Democratic Party, which would enter a period of almost complete electoral dominance.

If, on the other hand, Democrats nominate a more centrist candidate, such as Kamala Harris or Cory Booker, then the uneasy status quo would remain…..

In the long run, however, the end result in both cases would be largely the same. America is moving leftward. And that shift infuses the left of the Democratic Party with an energy that is unmatched anywhere else along the political spectrum.”

Interesting times!

In his post, “How AI-Assisted messaging Can Help Democrats in Shutdown Fight,” At Campaigns & Elections, Michiah Prull, co-founder and CEO of Avalanche Strategy, reports on the findings of a new study of attitudes about immigration conducted by his firm: “Even among first and second generation immigrants—a segment of the American electorate we might expect to skew sympathetic to immigration—there’s a significant portion of voters who express a belief that they followed the rules in order to be a part of this country, and others should too…Americans who relate to immigration through a Fairness lens are very concerned about people getting what they deserve based on their actions. This “reap what you sow” version of fairness is a significant aspect of the moral reasoning that drives support for stricter enforcement of immigration laws…In our research, this value was very clearly tied to a belief that immigrants are receiving a great amount of taxpayer support, while ordinary Americans are left to struggle on their own. We saw this in particular among union members and soft conservative suburban woman, who may express high levels of care and concern for the struggles of immigrants, but feel a strong sense of unfairness about their perception that immigrants receive greater benefits, support and opportunity than their own families receive…Whether we agree with them or not, viewing the current standoff through the lens of these values and narratives explains why the border wall is such a powerful symbol for Trump’s base. For many of them, the wall is a physical manifestation of a deep and emotional attachment to the need to respect authority and to feel fairly treated compared to other groups…By understanding the deep why behind the border wall, Democrats can frame their communications to ameliorate and even attract elements of that base.”

Aaron Rupar shares the results of some new polls at vox.com on Trump’s tanking approval numbers as a result of his shutdown, including: A “Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that a majority of voters — 54 percent — blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown, compared to 35 percent who blame Democrats…A CBS News poll “finds that 71 percent of Americans “don’t think the issue of a border wall is worth a government shutdown, which they say is now having a negative impact on the country.”…The poll “also finds that Americans think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is doing a better job than Trump at handling the shutdown.”…CNN’s latest poll of polls also shows Trump’s approval rating dramatically underwater” with 57 percent disapproval, while a Marist/NPR/PBS poll indicates  “a majority of registered voters — 57 percent — say they will definitely vote against him in 2020” and “two-thirds of Americans want him to agree to a budget without wall funding as a way to end the shutdown.” In addition, an Emerson College poll finds that “57% said it was time to give someone else a chance while 43% said President Trump deserves to be re-elected.”

“At their core, congressional investigations are a form of political theater, which means their success won’t just depend on what Democrats find but how they present it,” notes Amelia Thomson Deveaux in her post, “Could A Slew Of New Congressional Investigations Erode Trump’s Approval Rating?” at FiveThirtyEight. “There is evidence that congressional investigations can erode presidential support, especially when the government is divided like it is now, but if hearings are unfocused, too technical or appear petty, they can either be ignored by the media or dismissed by the president and his supporters as partisan “harassment.” Congressional investigations can be an extremely powerful tool in a divided government — but only if the investigations make a clear, coherent case for executive branch wrongdoing…It is, of course, impossible to predict exactly what Democrats will uncover in a hearing like Cohen’s or in their potentially numerous other investigations, but we do know two things from studies on previous congressional investigations. First, House investigations have tended to be concentrated during periods of divided government. And second, this increased activity or “weaponization” of the congressional investigation process can weaken the president significantly in the public’s eye.”

Also at C & E, Sean J. Miller reports that a new “study backs the effectiveness of digital advertising to increase turnout among Millennial voters in competitive local elections.” As Miller notes, “Researchers Jay Jennings and Katherine Haenschen said their study, published this month in the academic journal Political Communication, is “the first evidence that online ads can positively impact turnout…this is the first study that shows with scientific rigor that exposure to internet ads increases turnout,” Haenschen, a practitioner-turned-researcher at Virginia Tech, told C&E…The research centered on a $50,000 digital ad campaign during a non-partisan May 2017 Dallas municipal election where the mayoral seat wasn’t up…The study was conducted in Dallas at the request of the publisher of the Dallas Morning News “due to the city’ s historically low levels of municipal participation particularly among Millennials.”. Miller adds, “After the Saturday Election Day, turnout was measured using public voting records. Haenschen said they increased voter turnout by 0.9 percent among people exposed to the ads.” She notes, however, that “digital spots are “not the most cost-effective method” for voter turnout. That would be social pressure mailers, which can increase turnout by up to 3 percent. But digital ads, she said, are great for targeting voters for turnout in hard-to-reach areas — apartment dwellers or people in gated communities.“This is a tool that should be used in compliment with broader campaign strategy,” she said.”

If you want to get up to speed on democratic reforms in the states, read Amy Hanauer’s “States of Change” at The American Prospect, which notes a number of encouraging developments, including: “While not perfectly correlated, higher minimum wages, more per-pupil education spending, more health-care access, lower incarceration, and more progressive taxes tend to cluster in states where Democrats have had more power. There are surprises—Massachusetts, Illinois, and Colorado have flat income taxes that fall more heavily on poor people; Washington, despite the litany of pro-worker policies, still has no income tax. But places led by progressives do more progressive things. And it pays off—education, income, life expectancy, and other measures of well-being are generally higher in places with liberal policies.” Also, “Naomi Walker, who directs the Economic Analysis and Research Network out of the Economic Policy Institute, sees more opportunities for state-level worker justice than Americans have had since 2010, when Republicans gained control in many states. “We have a chance not just to get back to where we were but to make advances,” she says.”

“States with a smaller population than Los Angeles County” — a compelling graphic that shows why the ‘two senators for every state’ thing needs to be corrected:

In “Midterms Showed That Midwestern Economic PerformanceCould Decide 2020 Race,” John C. Austin writes at Brookings: “Of course, economic evolution in many of the Midwest’s small and medium-sized industrial cities—which can be viewed as both an economic andpolitical priority—won’t happen overnight. But until then, experts suggest, the winning political path for Democrats in key Midwest states appears to be one of “both-and.” As political observer Ruy Texeira observed in the Washington Post: “Carry white college graduates, strongly mobilize nonwhite voters, particularly blacks, and hold deficits among white non-college-educated voters in the range of 10 to 15 points. Unlike Hillary Clinton in 2016…Democrats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota got all three parts of the formula right in the midterms.”

It’s only January, but If they gave awards for the lamest op-ed of 2019, WaPo columnist Marc A. Thiessen’s, “Trump is being the adult in the room on the shutdown” would be a safe bet for the category. Yes, Thiessen’s cheesey message du jour for the GOP echo chamber was in The Washington Post, not The New York Post. And no, it was not just a rogue head-line writer’s descent into drugged dementia; Thiessen actually went there, as in “Trump is being the adult in the room” a few graphs into the redolent rant.

For those who prefer less unhinged conservative analysis, David Bier’s “Senate GOP Bill Doesn’t Extend DACA. It Guts It” at The Cato Institute offers the following observation: “This weekend, President Trump promised to an “extension” of DACA for the “700,000 DACA recipients brought here unlawfully by their parents at a young age many years ago.” But the Senate bill that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced to implement his deal does not extend DACA but rather replaces it with a totally different program that will exclude untold thousands of Dreamers who would have been eligible under DACA.” Also, the bill provides “less than 3 years of relief from deportation and work authorization, not a pathway to citizenship.” Bier concludes, “Commentators should not describe this bill as “extending DACA” or even extending that status of DACA recipients.”

Donald Trump’s blatant and vicious appeal to pure prejudice regarding immigrants and immigration has led many progressives and Democrats to respond in an equally categorical way, describing all objections to immigration as simply a smokescreen for racism.

Since opinion polls have consistently shown that most Americans are not bitterly anti-immigrant and do not support draconian measures like mass deportation, this reaction does not immediately seem to present a major problem for Democrats in 2020.

But, in fact, it does. While most Americans do not share Trump’s visceral loathing of Latin Americans and actually support a range of positive measures such as providing a path to citizenship for long time, law-abiding undocumented immigrants, a very substantial group also supports the demand that America regain control of the southern border and prevent further “illegal” immigration.

Simply dismissing all these voters as racists who do not deserve any response other than condemnation is a profound mistake–one that will endanger Democratic hopes of winning the presidency in 2020 and almost certainly place the Senate entirely out of reach. Democrats need to provide a reasonable response to the concerns that do exist, particularly among working class Americans.

To meet this challenge, the Democratic Strategist presents the following TDS Strategy Memo:Democrats need to understand how to talk to working class voters about immigration–and not just dismiss them as racists.

Democratic candidates, campaigns and office-holders would do well to read “What Democrats Can Learn From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Her communication style is worth emulating, not dismissing” by Aaron Huertas at medium.com. Some insights from Huertas:

Attention is a limited resource in politics, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., commands a lot of it. She has almost 2.4 million Twitter followers, and media outlets breathlessly cover her statements and policy proposals as well as feckless attempts by Republicans to throw her off her game.

For a lot of Democrats in Washington, this is disruptive. Normally, a freshman member of Congress would command little if any public attention and would quietly sit in the back benches, slowly building seniority over time with the hopes of one day running a powerful committee.

Huertas notes AOC ‘s unique appeal to millennials, who “grew up with a political system that has proven incapable of addressing student debt, income inequality, or climate change. We aren’t waiting for change; we don’t have the time. And there are more of us voting every single year.” Further,

That’s why it’s a mistake for Democrats to try to “rein in” the party’s biggest rising star, as this Politico article put it. Instead, the party should be looking to Ocasio-Cortez for guidance on how to effectively speak to working people, collaborate with activists, and beat Republicans soundly in 2020 and beyond.

Huertas cites  an article on Politico, dissing NY-14’s new congresswoman for being popular on Twitter, and argues that “This idea is so backward. Twitter stars can be great legislators, and having nearly 2.4 million Twitter followers is a very effective way to get out the message about legislation.”

Activists, like Ocasio-Cortez and John Lewis, who have a genuine grass-roots connection to their constituents, have an advantage in educating them and mobilizing volunteers. Huertas adds, for example,

Ocasio-Cortez’s advocacy for a Green New Deal is a great example of combing inside and outside influence from activists to advance an agenda. Several progressive House candidates campaigned on a Green New Deal last year, but the topic received little interest during the campaign. It only grabbed public attention after Ocasio-Cortez joined Sunrise Movement protesters in Nancy Pelosi’s office who were demanding a special committee create a Green New Deal…Did the Sunrise Movement and other Green New Deal advocates get exactly what they wanted right away? No, definitely not. But now the Green New Deal is a new standard for what serious climate policy looks like, and presidential candidates are starting to line up behind them.

AOC’s experience knocking on doors as a Bernie Sanders campaigner and her participation in the Standing Rock protests also served her well. It’s not a bad thing for elected officials to have had significant face time with grass-roots activists. “The simple truth,” says Huertas, “is that there is nothing preventing a lawmaker from actively working with protesters, dissidents, and activists to achieve serious political change. In fact, doing so is smart politics.”

Huertas argues that some of Ocasio-Cortez’s critics are more judgemental about women of color than they are about male office-holders, ignoring the reality that “A big reason Ocasio-Cortez resonates is that millennials actually have members of Congress who represent our generational interests now: eliminating student loan debt, income inequality, gun violence, and climate change…pundits and columnists should be asking themselves how they can market their own ideas more effectively. Because there is a zero-percent chance any leftist politician is going to take their free advice and hand the spotlight back to them.”

In addition, “In many midterm races, the youth vote was decisive as young people broke two-to-one for Democrats. Splits like that are a once in a generation opportunity to build lasting power,” as this chart illustrates:

Ocasio-Cortez “dunks on right-wingers who make stupid arguments with abandon,” notes Huertas. “While other Democrats ignore them or respond in somber, serious tones, Ocasio-Cortez rejects the premise that bad faith arguments should be taken seriously” — and boldly discredited.

This has created an incredible attention cycle online. Every time a prominent Republican takes the bait and attacks Ocasio-Cortez, they simply empower her more by giving her the opportunity to spend a few minutes composing a trenchant tweet, which then gets covered with short posts on dozens of media outlets.

When Republicans tried to bash Ocasio-Cortez for advocating higher taxes for the wealthy, “Instead of taking this argument seriously or posting charts and graphs, Ocasio-Cortez responded by debunking a powerful GOP legislator, questioning his knowledge about policy, and then pointing out why the GOP routinely lies about tax rates.”

It’s about getting engaged with adversaries, being confident and unafraid to confront them with well-informed refutations of their flawed defenses. She understands that “Politicians hate talking about their most unpopular policy positions, such as low taxes for wealthy people,” and denies them any wiggle room. Also, notes Huertas,

Calling out bad faith arguments has also extended to what Republicans call “working the refs.” In Ocasio-Cortez’s case, that means taking on fact-checkers who have rewarded her with four Pinocchios/Pants on Fire ratings for relatively mild errors. For instance, what’s worse: denying the scientific reality of climate change or not precisely representing budget figures from a media story about Pentagon accounting? How about scapegoating immigrants with hateful, dishonest rhetoric or talking about people who aren’t unemployed but are working multiple jobs to keep ahead of the cost of living?

tenIf you’re a fact-checker, it’s perhaps not something you’ve thought about because that’s a value-laden, moral question. But in challenging fact-checkers over what they choose to scrutinize, Ocasio-Cortez has exposed how an overly precise focus on facts can obscure the deeper moral questions at the heart of politics…When debates are broken, challenge the premise of the debate. Don’t obscure the real-world impact policy has. Confront it.

In addition, AOC “has helped foster more debate about the ways “how do you pay for it” rhetoric is selectively deployed for health, education, and environmental protection but not military spending, tax cuts, and other deficit drivers” — a good, and often overlooked point that adds needed perspective on spending debates that can help Democrats.

Huertas highlights the difference in communication styles between traditional liberal Democrats and Ocasio Cortez:

…Prominent Democratic Twitter users like Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Ted Lieu, both D-Cal., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, tend to strike a more serious tone and often point out their political opponents’ hypocrisy. These arguments have a lot of reach, but Donald Trump and other Republicans can’t really be hypocrisy shamed any more, so these messages don’t quite have the same reach or impact they had a few years ago.

They’ll also dabble in memes, leetspeak, and slang, but playing along with internet culture is distinct from being born into it, and as a younger person, Ocasio-Cortez’s use of these tropes resonates, is consistent with her bio, and is stickier for audiences.

Finding one’s online voice is different for every politician, but emulating Ocasio-Cortez in this regard means finding novel, deeply personal ways to talk about the news of the day and a progressive policy agenda. That means effective communicators don’t just play along with how social media works. They embody it. Finding ways to be authentic online is incredibly hard, especially for politicians, but that’s the difference between being good on social media and being great.

Huertas distills her debate strategy as, “When debates are broken, challenge the premise of the debate. Don’t obscure the real world impact policy has. Confront it. And speak to people’s moral values and the type of world we want to live in.”

No doubt the nit-pickers will continue to needle Ocasio-Cortez at every opportunity. But there is zero chance that they are going to distract the new Rep from NY-14. Democrats would do well to study and emulate her energetic engagement and refusal to give them the last word.

In his conclusion, Huertas advises Dems to “Embrace that change, including change from the outside, and don’t be afraid to compromise with the next generation.” Good advice, right on time.