In “Not Left vs. Center, but the People vs. the Powerful: The flawed study ‘Deciding to Win’ may help Democrats get back to fighting for the forgotten middle class again,” top expert on the politics of social class, Stanley B. Greenberg writes at The American Prospect: “We are digesting a wave of studies on why Democrats lost in 2024 and what they should do now. Deciding to Win, by Simon Bazelon, Lauren Harper Pope, and Liam Kerr, argues that Democrats must move to the center to succeed. It’s getting a lot of attention; after all, its findings seemed to be endorsed by Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and my partner, James Carville…So, is the answer to eschew the left, to moderate and move to the center?…The study’s authors are right that Democrats have to address their losses with moderate voters, eschew the elite’s identity politics in favor of economic issues, and address fundamental doubts on crime, immigration, gender identity, and American exceptionalism…But they divide the political world crudely into a bad camp on the “left” and a good one composed of “moderates” and centrists. Their ideological blinders block out results favorable to progressives. Their failure to take account of Donald Trump polarizing our politics leads the authors to misread why Democrats and their strong partisans are prioritizing certain issues. And they just ignore the finding that the most effective candidate is running as an economic populist and battling the wealthy…Most important, they diagnose the Democrats’ deep problems without any clear ideas on how to fix them. Grabbing the top-testing items in a table or looking at case studies of candidates who ran ahead of other Democrats is unserious.” More here.

In “Ex-Trump voters swung hard to Democrats over costs in NJ & VA, new research shows,” Elena Schneider writes at Politico: “Donald Trump voters who backed Democrats in two key governor’s races last month did so because of their alarm over cost-of-living issues, according to the results from focus groups conducted for Democrats and obtained by POLITICO — the latest sign that a flagging economy will be a problem for the GOP heading into the midterms, if Democrats can keep their focus on it…Post-election research of Trump or third-party 2024 voters who flipped to Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia last month found that economic concerns were top of mind for these voters. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) made cost-of-living the centerpiece of their campaign messaging, and it helped propel them to double-digit victories…The findings credited Spanberger and Sherrill’s victory for staying “laser-focused” on the economy “while avoiding partisan finger-pointing,” while these swing voters felt “disillusioned by Republican leadership on costs.”…The four focus groups were commissioned by the centrist Center Aisle Coalition, founded by former Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), and conducted by Impact Research. Democratic pollster Molly Murphy, who conducted the focus groups, briefed some House Democratic members on its findings Tuesday, according to one person who attended and a second person who was briefed on them, both granted anonymity to describe private meetings…The research mirrors a raft of recent public polling, showing voters’ deepening concerns about the cost-of-living. Nearly half of Americans said everyday costs, like utility bills and groceries, are difficult to afford, according to The POLITICO Poll conducted last month. The unemployment rate rose to 4.6 percent in November, its highest level in more than four years, the Labor Department said Tuesday.”

But don’t get too optimistic, because “The MAGA Crack-Up Is Overrated. MAGA Is Here to Stay,” Bryn Tannehill argues at The New Republic. Among her observations: “There is an emerging conventional wisdom that MAGA is eating itself alive with internecine warfare between various politicians, pundits, thought leaders. People also point to the diminution of Trump as a tired, spent force as a reason for celebration. They want hope in a time when there seems like none, and this jockeying for the crown even as the king falls asleep in his chair while his minions fawn over his vitality and vigor seems to offer it…Some will point to Republican politicians bucking Trump as a reason to believe that the whole circus tent is about to collapse…There are Trump’s health concerns, and the obvious vying by Cabinet members like JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio to be seen as the natural successor to the president in the MAGA movement…However, this does not mean that MAGA is disintegrating. What defines MAGA is still there, and won’t go away for the foreseeable future. If you reduce the equation to the simplest terms, you have the Trump voters who pay attention to the chaos and those who don’t. No matter how you slice it, neither group is going to suddenly start voting for Democrats, regardless of which monkey wins the poo-flinging contest…Trump’s greatest political ability was to get low information, low propensity voters out to vote for him…Trump’s biggest vulnerability is the economy, because that will affect at least some of his voters. If his successors can keep sentiment about the economy at arm’s length (Not my fault, I wasn’t president, I’ll do it differently and fix everything), while tapping into the same nativist and transphobic sentiments that propelled Trump to a second term, Democrats will face a nasty surprise as the low information, low propensity voters once more turn out in droves for the Republican nominee in 2028.”

Tom Nichols cuts to the chase at The Atlantic and provides  a clear-eyed summation of Trump’s rant to the nation last night. In “This Is What Presidential Panic Looks Like,” Nichols writes: “The president of the United States just barged into America’s living rooms like an angry, confused grandfather to tell us all that we are ungrateful whelps…When a president asks for network time, it’s usually to announce something important. But tonight, Donald Trump did not give anything like a normal speech or address. He was clearly working from a prepared text, but it sounded like one he’d written—or dictated angrily—himself, because it was full of bizarre howlers that even Trump’s second-rate speech-writing shop would probably have avoided, such as his assertion that inflation when he took office was the worst it had been in 48 years. (Why did he pick 1977 as a benchmark? Who knows. But he’s wrong.) He read the speech quickly, his voice rising in frustration as he hurled one lie after another into the camera…We could take apart Trump’s fake facts, as checkers and pundits will do in the next few days. But perhaps more important than false statements—which for Trump are par for the course—was his demeanor. Americans saw a president drenched in panic as he tried to bully an entire nation into admitting he’s doing a great job. For 20 minutes, he vented his hurt feelings without a molecule of empathy or awareness. Economic concerns? Shut up, you fools, the economy is doing fine. (And if it isn’t, it’s not his fault—it’s Joe Biden’s.)” Read more here.