An excerpt from “The real reason Republicans are rushing to pass the Trump megabill” by James Downie at msnbc.com: “And remember, the bill is massively unpopular, and it becomes even less popular the more voters learn about its provisions. Eight years ago, Republicans thought a tax cut bill would save them in the midterms; instead, that bill was so unpopular that they largely stopped talking about it before that campaign was even finished. Surely Republicans want to avoid reprising that disaster, so why not take a beat over the holiday, reassess and see whether there are other bills to give the president a legislative victory?…The answer is: There is no plan B. The megabill is not just the most important legislation of Trump’s first year; at this point, it is the only major legislation of Trump’s first year. If the bill is “big” and “beautiful,” that is by default. Republicans have to pass it because Trump wants them to pass something…What that something looks like does not matter to the president, who has been consistently incurious as to the bill’s contents. Earlier this month, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said Trump was surprised to learn the Senate bill would limit a tax on health care providers that states use to fund Medicaid — a provision that was a key source of savings. On Thursday, as my colleague Steve Benen noted, the president claimed: “Your Medicaid is left alone. It’s left the same.” In fact, the bill would kick millions off Medicaid. On Friday, he claimed — for the second time in two days — that the bill would eliminate taxes on Social Security. It would not…But whether this bill would cut taxes on Social Security — or throw millions off their health care or batter rural hospitals — is ultimately immaterial to the president. All that matters is he has a piece of paper to sign that cuts taxes for him and his wealthy friends and donors.”

In his most recent New York Times opinion essay, Thomas B. Edsall quotes Democratic activist Mike Lux on the class-based trends that are moving through both political parties: “…The foundational idea that Democrats are the party of working people (and its corollary that Republicans are the party of business and the wealthy) has grown much more tenuous than it once was. Democrats are lost without that core idea…Both parties have some elements of elitism. The Republicans have a hard case to make when Trump’s cabinet is full of billionaires and they let big business write their own rules, and when they are cutting taxes for billionaires and paying for it by cutting Medicaid and V.A. benefits and food for hungry children…But, yes, the Democratic Party has some elements of elitism. To survive, we need to re-emphasize our working-class identity and that we are fighting for regular folks. We need to not talk down to folks and not spend so much time hanging out with celebrities…Just like with white folks, working- class voters want candidates to focus on economic issues, and they want people who will fight for them and their communities, to be their proxy…Working-class voters’ perception, fed brilliantly by the Republican and right-wing media infrastructure, was that Democrats cared more about other issues and other people than they did about the essential economic needs of regular working families.”

In “Digging into a New 2024 Postmortem: Findings from Pew’s Validated Voter Study,” Kyle Kondik observes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball in his subsection entitled ‘How the Pew report fits in with other 2024 analyses’: “This morning, the Pew Research Center released its “validated voter” report on the 2024 presidential election. This report is the second of two we were looking forward to this year—the other came out last month from the Democratic firm Catalist…We wrote about the Catalist report in May and compared it to Election Night exit polls/analyses from Edison Research for a consortium of news networks as well as the VoteCastconducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for the Associated Press and Fox News. In today’s analysis, we are going to add Pew’s report to the mix, highlighting some of its key findings and comparing it to these other reports…First, some housekeeping: The full methodology of both the Pew and Catalist reports are available at their websites. The Pew report is conducted differently from the Catalist report. The Catalist report is “based on publicly available vote history data and precinct-level election results … as well as Census data, and Catalist’s proprietary modeling and polling, which are all used to estimate the composition and partisan leanings of the electorate from the precinct to the national level.” Meanwhile, the Pew report is based on a post-election survey of “U.S. adults on our nationally representative American Trends Panel (ATP). We verified their turnout using commercial voter files that aggregate publicly available official state turnout records.” Both reports came out months after the election because of both the large amount of work that goes into producing such reports and the fact that the voter files maintained at the state level take time to update after the election. The Edison and VoteCast analyses are large sample surveys that come out on Election Night and are adjusted to the results, but they don’t have the benefit of access to the voter files…With that, let’s take a look at the Pew report and put it in the context of these other analyses. This also functions as something of a sequel to our earlier analysis of the Catalist report and the exit polls, so there are some aspects of the election that we mentioned there but not here…— The Pew report adds further backing to the now well-established finding that the shifts from 2020 to 2024 were driven by voters of color, particularly Latinos and Asian Americans. Table 1 shows the voting by race in the Pew report, as well as the findings from the Catalist report and the Edison and VoteCast Election Night analyses.”

In addition to the never-ending search for fresh faces to lead the way forward in all of America’s cultural, social and political institutions, April Rubin reports at Axios that “A growing number of Gen Z and millennial Americans are seeking elected office — campaigning on the issues that matter most to them and their peers…Why it matters: The 119th Congress is the third oldest in U.S. history, and both of America’s most recent presidents set records as the oldest ever inaugurated. As leadership skews older, young candidates from both parties are running to get their voices heard in local, state and federal government…Case in point: Thousands of young progressives have expressed interest in running for office since Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral primary win last week…Between Tuesday’s primary and Friday afternoon, about 2,700 people signed up with Run for Something, an organization that supports young Democrats running for down-ballot office…Zoom in: If elected in November, 33-year-old Mamdani would be the youngest among the mayors currently serving in the 50 largest American cities, according to an Axios analysis…He’d also be New York City’s second-youngest mayor, after Hugh J. Grant in the late 19th century…The intrigue: Candidate age is becoming an increasingly important issue for American voters…67% of U.S. adults in a February YouGov poll said they believed maximum age limits should be imposed on elected officials.”