Reading and watching coverage of the August 7 primaries led me to a meditation on how confusing and unhelpful intra-party labels have become this year, which I wrote up at New York:

It is reasonably clear that Bernie Sanders and his distinct movement (joined on the campaign trail by the new Democratic Socialist megastar from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), had a rough night on Tuesday, when candidates they had backed in person, Michigan gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Kansas congressional aspirant Brent Welder, both lost races many expected them to win, against (respectively) Gretchen Whitmer and Sharice Davids. But were those defeats for “progressivism” or victories for “centrism”? That depends on whom you ask.

The Third Way organization, an influential think tank that doesn’t do actual campaigns, was quick to get on speed-dial with political reporters and pundits and claim victory, as reflected in this quote from a piece by the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel:

“‘This is a fantastic night for centrist Democrats,’ said Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy at the center-left Third Way think tank. ‘We nominated the right candidates who can win House seats and governor’s mansions for the Democratic Party. There’s a quiet enthusiasm in the middle. There’s a quiet voice that people are not hearing in the media, but it’s loud at the ballot box.'”

A piece on the Democratic primaries by influential New York Times columnist Tom Edsall similarly described the primaries as pitting “Sanders-style policies” against the “centrist” advice of Third Way.

But The Nation’s Joan Walsh — a self-conscious “progressive” who is not, however, exactly enamored of the Bernie Sanders movement — pushed back on the whole narrative with gusto:

“I’m not aware of Third Way, a centrist think tank, actually lifting a finger for any of Tuesday’s candidates, by the way. I’m not sure either Whitmer or Davids would label themselves Third Way centrists.

“The real story is that progressives won big on Tuesday might, because by only the most cramped and divisive standards would Davids and Whitmer be considered ‘centrist.’ Both are open to Medicare for All as an end goal but favor Medicaid expansion in the meantime. Both are staunchly pro-choice and pro–Planned Parenthood funding, favor gun-safety reforms and protections for DACA youth as well as comprehensive immigration reform. Whitmer supports a $15 minimum wage.”

So how do you define Democratic candidates like Whitmer and Davids? They aren’t from Bernieland, and would actually fail some lefty litmus tests (like immediate and unqualified support for single-payer). But nor are they out there objecting to “class warfare” or criticizing teachers unions or separating themselves from their party on controversial positions.

Part of the definitional problem is the long war over ownership of the word “progressive.” During the 1990s, when after decades of demonization by the right the term “liberal” fell into disrepute, “progressive” more or less became a default term of self-identification for nearly all left-of-dead-center folk. It’s no accident that the think tank of the quintessential (if now defunct) “centrist” organization the Democratic Leadership Council named itself the Progressive Policy Institute (which is not at all defunct). And very term Third Way, in both the U.S. and U.K., originally connoted an effort to “modernize the progressive tradition,” not just to move the traditional left parties “to the center” (hence the names New Democrats and New Labour).

That all seems to be ancient history at this point, but the idea that “progressive” means following Bernie Sanders or espousing democratic socialism is most definitely disputed, as Joan Walsh’s argument shows.

Some prefer distinctions like “Establishment Democrats” versus “Insurgent Democrats.” That may be useful temporarily in primaries where one can track where official party and elected official money and endorsements are and are not going. Trouble is, though, that once primaries are over, the “Establishment” almost invariably backs Democratic nominees regardless of any prior “insurgent” labels. And in this particular election year, that sort of dichotomy (and for that matter, the “progressives versus centrists” framing) collides with the reality that a large number of “Establishment-backed” women are winning primaries with substantial help from EMILY’s List, a cause-oriented pro-choice group. Some critics claim that this powerful organization doesn’t like risk-taking progressivism these days, or is too beholden to rich donors, or is too close to the Democratic Party itself. But it has its own criteria for picking candidates (early, as its name suggests), and only someone who thinks “progressive” means “Bernie Sanders supporters” would call EMILY’s List “centrist.” It has supported all sorts of pro-choice Democratic women, including, as it happens, Gretchen Whitmer and Sharice Davids.

The bottom line is that left-of-center folk probably need a new vocabulary, or at the very least a clear and thorough debate over what the terms they actually use–actually mean. It would probably be wise to undertake that debate after the November midterms. At that point they may be in a better position to determine whether voters even care about all these labels.

It didn’t get as much attention as it deserved before August 7 (though I did write about it), and the same is true of the remarkable results from Missouri, where the labor movement pulled off a shocker, as I noted at New York:

[Members of] America’s beleaguered labor movement really, really needed this one, and after an impressive investment of time, energy, and money, they got it. In conservative Missouri, a right-to-work law enacted last year by a Republican-controlled legislature and former Republican Governor Eric Greitens was overturned by voters who rejected the anti-labor measure by a comfortable margin. In early returns, rural counties were joining urban labor strongholds in opposing right-to-work.

Republicans had sought to make Missouri the 28th state to adopt right-to-work, which prohibits “union shop” arrangements whereby workers who benefit from collective bargaining agreements can be required to help defray union costs. When unions and their allies succeeded in putting the law on hold pending the ballot measure, the legislature countered by moving the vote from the relatively-high-turnout general election to the primary, hoping to kill it with voter indifference. But it didn’t work.

A reported 5-1 financial advantage for the No on Prop A campaign obviously helped produce this result. But you have to figure there was an intensity factor, too. The Supreme Court’s June decision imposing the equivalent of right-to-work rules on all public-sector workplaces was not just a blow to unions, but a huge setback in the sector of the workforce where labor had made most of its recent membership gains. Labor needed to mount a comeback, and as fate would have it, the opportunity arose first in Missouri, a state with a proud labor tradition but an increasingly pro-corporate state government.

Today’s verdict by voters should give pause to anti-union pols and organizations who assume they can roll back collective bargaining rights at will in any state where Republicans have control.

I wrote this well before the final results, which exceeded all expectations: the right-to-work law went down by more than a two-to-one margin–in Missouri. That is truly good news for embattled union folk everywhere–and for Democrats who very much need a vibrant labor movement.

Looking at some historical data from Cook Political Report‘s Amy Walter, I noticed some trends that may be germane to this election cycle and wrote about them for New York:

The Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter points out that in two recent “wave” midterm elections, in 2006 and 2010 — both of which flipped control of the House — the late trends were very strongly against the party controlling the presidency:

“In July of 2006, The Cook Political Report rated just 14 GOP-held seats as highly vulnerable. By November, the number of GOP-held seats in danger had tripled to 43. We saw a similar pattern in 2010. In August of that year, we listed 36 Democratic-held seats as highly vulnerable. By November, the number of vulnerable Democratic-held seats had more than doubled to 78. On Election Day of 2006, Republicans lost 30 seats; Democrats lost 63 seats in 2010.”

A lot of seats that wound up falling weren’t even on the radar a few months earlier:

“[O]f the 30 seats that Democrats won in 2006, 21 of them (or 70 percent), weren’t classified as the most vulnerable GOP-held seats in July. Almost half of the Democratic seats Republicans won in 2010 were classified as Lean or Likely Democrat in August.”

Right now, Cook has 34 Republican-held House seats looking very vulnerable (3 are likely Democratic, 7 lean Democratic, and 24 are toss-ups). But the landscape could get much bluer in a hurry:

“This year, Republicans already have more seats in the highly vulnerable category than they had at this point in 2006 or than Democrats had in August 2010. If 2018 follows a similar pattern to 2006 and 2010 — where less vulnerable seats move into more vulnerable territory in the fall — the GOP is almost certain to lose its majority. There are currently another 53 GOP-held seats in lean/likely Republican.”

What would account for this kind of late trend? In 2006 and 2010 it was not, interestingly enough, any deterioration of the president’s own approval ratings:

“There wasn’t a point where the bottom just dropped out for one party. The approval rating for President George W. Bush was 40 percent in mid-July 2006 and 38 percent in early November. President Obama was sitting at 44 percent in mid-August 2010 and 45 percent in early November.”

So Donald Trump’s exceptionally stable approval ratings won’t necessarily serve to limit his party’s losses in the House. Late trends could also reflect intensifying excitement over an approaching win for the “out” party. But most likely what we are seeing is simply a public recognition of trends that were developing all along. Forecasters like those at Cook are naturally conservative about predicting change of party control for any given House district, given the power of incumbency and the generally strong grip of partisan inclinations in this century.

There have, of course, been some nasty surprises for the “out” party in late midterm trends, and they’ve been relatively recent. In 1998 when Democrats actually gained House seats in Bill Clinton’s second midterm (Newt Gingrich made his painful concession-of-failure speech in front of a backdrop covered with the legend “America’s Victory”), and in 2002 when Republicans repeated that amazing feat. But then Clinton in 1998 had a approval rating just before the midterms of 66 percent, and George W. Bush enjoyed a 63 percent approval rating going into the 2002 midterms. Add in the reaction to the pending GOP impeachment effort in 1998 and the effects of 9/11 on 2002, and you have sets of circumstances that are extremely unlikely to recur between now and this November.

We could even realize in retrospect that the best 2018 signals to watch may have been the strongly pro-Democratic special-election results in 2017 and 2018, rather than November projections or even the generic ballot, as portending a wave that has been obscured in those less-tangible indicators. Since the pace of special elections has slowed this year, a lot of attention will be focused on next week’s special election in Ohio over yet another GOP-held U.S. House seat (one that Republicans have held for 36 years).

In any event, it will all get very real in the fall, and if both parties seem to be achieving new levels of furious intensity, it could be because the electoral tremors beneath the surface are getting stronger every day.

With all the endless talk of disagreements among Democrats about the right message for the midterm elections, I though it was worth noting that Republicans aren’t exactly all on the same page either, and I wrote it up at New York.

With less than 100 days to go until the midterm elections, there’s an increasingly sharp division of opinion between the White House (aligned with hard-core House Freedom Caucus types) and more conventional congressional Republicans about strategy and messaging. It has been dramatized by Trump’s renewed threats to shut down the government at the end of the fiscal year if he doesn’t get what he wants in the way of immigration policy, which is about as welcome to Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan as syphilis, as The Hill reports:

“Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) want Republicans seeking reelection to focus on the booming economy and the GOP’s tax-cut package passed last December. House GOP leaders are also touting a new campaign slogan for the midterms, asking Americans if they are ‘Better Off Now.’

“They believe that’s a message that will propel them to victory in competitive swing districts and states around the country, helping them stave off a Democratic wave this fall.”

Even among Republicans who don’t mind a little immigration demagoguery, there’s no big desire for presidential antics, as Byron York notes after discussions with GOP election wizards:

“What Republicans would like now is the absence of noise and distraction coming from the White House.

“‘We just need a decent level of calmness so we can message,’ said [one] strategist. ‘If we could just have calmness, we could talk about the economy and ICE. And if we could talk about the economy and ICE, we’d be fine.'”

But Trump and the HFC think otherwise, and it’s not just a matter of temperament or sheer hatefulness (though those do play a part). Some key voters love noise and distraction:

“Trump’s shutdown threat … [is] appealing to loyalists whose support he needs right now as he battles special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and approval ratings in the low to mid 40s.

“‘His base is reacting positively to it,’ one conservative House lawmaker told The Hill …

“Trump’s message is consistent with the one being made by Jordan, the former Freedom Caucus chairman running for Speaker who said Monday that ‘heck yes’ conservatives would fight tooth and nail to stop GOP leaders from punting a fight over funding the border wall and other Trump priorities until after Election Day.”

This represents a pretty classic division of opinion between pols focused on swing-v0ter persuasion and those devoted to base mobilization. And in turn it reflects the two quite different types of Republican House seats in peril in November.

The New York Times’ Nate Cohn took a long look at the 60 most vulnerable GOP-controlled House seats and while some conform to the stereotype of highly educated suburban districts (many of which were carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016) expected to stray from the GOP banner, others are white working-class-dominated districts where Trump did well in 2016.

A ferocious runup to the midterms dominated by Trump and culture-war issues may help Republicans turn out their vote in places like the First District of Iowa or the Second District of Maine or the Eighth District of Minnesota. But it might also help mobilize Democrats, and might not help the GOP at all in highly educated suburban districts like Virginia’s Tenth or Georgia’s Sixth. And there are many competitive districts with both kinds of voters where the choice of targeting one or the other category can be excruciatingly difficult.

Truth is, it is a bit late in the game for either party to be arguing over electoral messaging, which increases the pressure on individual candidates (and their ad-buying “independent” friends) to tailor an appeal to individual districts that makes the most sense. When all else fails, of course, candidates can just go negative and hope to win by damaging opponents as much as by attracting support. Republicans do have the advantage of very low expectations, along with structural advantages that mean they can lose the national House popular vote and still control a majority of seats (as they did in 2012), just as Trump won the Electoral College while losing the presidential popular vote by 2.1 percent. But if they approach November dissenting from their own president’s message, a bad result will inevitably mean all sorts of blame games and finger-pointing at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

After reading repeatedly about Democratic prospects in 2018 and 2020 being spoiled by “Democratic extremism” or
“Democrats moving too far to the left,” I smelled a rat, and wrote up my findings at New York:

There is a convention going back into the mists of time whereby the Democratic Party is thought of as a disorganized and divided mess. The early 20th-century humorist Will Rogers, himself a Democrat, once said:

“The difference between a Republican and a Democrat is the Democrat is a cannibal. They have to live off each other, while the Republicans, why, they live off the Democrats.”

He wasn’t trying to be funny on that occasion, and it made a fair amount sense to think of the Donkey Party as an unwieldy paradox back when it was the preferred political vehicle of rural populists, southern segregationists, urban machines, and ethnic minorities doing battle with a Grand Old Party that mostly revolved around defending economic privilege and deploring anything that wasn’t WASPy.

But the “Democrats in Disarray” meme has lived on, and for a brief moment in the late autumn of 2016, it was pretty accurate, as Democrats reeled from a shocking defeat against a presidential candidate who looked more like a cartoon villain than a serious aspirant to high office.

As New York’s Eric Levitz explained last November, however, any talk of Democrats being fatally divided or in despair during 2017 was visibly rebutted by the steady drumbeat of Democratic victories in special and off-year elections.

Democrats don’t have nearly as many special elections to show they’re feeling their oats this year, and they’ve lost some of the huge, double-digit lead in the generic congressional ballot that was regularly appearing when Levitz wrote his upbeat assessment of Democratic prospects. And for those (both conservatives and conflict-seeking mainstream-media folk) who deeply cherish the Democrats in Disarray meme, those special elections are helpfully being replaced by party primaries in which Democrats are running against Democrats! Imagine that! Worse yet, in some of these primaries the winners are self-proclaimed progressives! And as we all know, the American people have a deep craving for sensible centrists who want to cross the party aisles and get things done. If Republicans don’t have any of those anymore, then by God, it’s critical that the loyal opposition keep the faith and avoid extremism.

Veteran political writer Walter Shapiro has written a useful skewering of this all-too-common narrative, which has been sent into overdrive by the June primary victory in New York of Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over House Democratic Caucus chairman Joe Crowley:

“[A]n emblematic story led Sunday’s New York Times under the print headline, “Democrats Brace as Storm Brews Far to Their Left.”

“The themes of the Times story and dozens like it are familiar. They all highlight young activists such as 28-year-old giant slayer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who upended potential Nancy Pelosi successor Joe Crowley in the New York primary. Risky issues are highlighted as main stream Democrats recoil from demands for single-payer health insurance and the abolition of ICE (the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement)….

“Yet by the historical standards of Democratic internecine warfare, today’s disputes are like 6-year-olds battling with foam swords.”

Spoken like a man that remembers the fraught intraparty ideological battles over the Iraq War, Clinton’s “New Democrat” movement, Cold War defense spending and national security strategy, and civil rights. Democrats are more unified on a host of issues — including hot buttons like abortion policy, criminal justice, and the social safety net — than they have been for years. And Democratic Socialists represent but one influence bubbling up from the grassroots. As Shapiro notes, for a party allegedly in the grips of an existential crisis, they’re in pretty good shape:

“It’s hard to identify a Senate or House seat that is being lost because of excessive Democratic activism. Even if a Democratic incumbent like North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is troubled by calls to ax ICE, there is scant evidence that this makes her more vulnerable than before in a state that Donald Trump carried by better than a two-to-one margin.

“No incumbent — not even Heitkamp or Joe Manchin in West Virginia — is being denounced as a DINO. According to a new Monmouth University Poll, moderate Democrat Rep. Conor Lamb, who won a high-profile special election in western Pennsylvania earlier this year, holds a hefty lead in his bid for a full term. Lamb is a prime example of a Democrat who has prospered by defying litmus-test politics in his opposition to Nancy Pelosi as House speaker.”

There’s really not much excuse for the hyperventilation so evident about the Democratic Party falling apart or “going off the deep end.” So why is this narrative so ever-ready?

Some of it is simply the result of a lazy habit of “balancing” the chaos coming out of the White House every day with the “disarray” allegedly found within the opposition party. But a deeper motive, particularly in conservative media, is the need to distract attention from the ideological revolution going on in the GOP by suggesting that something equally if not more alarming is going on across the partisan barricades. The idea is very simple: If you can’t expand your support beyond the ranks of the party “base” by “moving to the center,” then a good fallback position is to deny your opponent “the center” by alleging it’s being taken over by extremists. Aside from blurring the natural public and media focus on the strange people running the country and almost daily destroying old GOP positions on issues ranging from trade and deficits to the environment and NATO, the “here come the socialists!” cry appeals viscerally to the false-equivalence needs of MSM reporters and pundits who are constantly seeking protection against claims of liberal bias.

And so Ocasio-Cortez becomes, somehow, a vastly more significant figure than her most obvious recent conservative counterpart Dave Brat of Virginia, who similarly upset a congressional leader of his party in 2014. That’s true even though Brat almost certainly was emblematic of a strong rightward trend in the GOP, while the jury is definitely still out on whether Ocasio-Cortez is a harbinger of a world to come or simply an adept local pol who upset a complacent incumbent in an incredibly low-turnout primary in an incredibly atypical district.

It’s possible we are about to witness an extremist polarization of both parties to an extent unknown since the Spanish Civil War. But that’s not at all clear at this point, and as for Democratic divisions, none seem to matter nearly as much as a common revulsion toward Donald Trump and his enablers. As Shapiro observes, parties are ultimately defined by presidents. We see what that has meant for the GOP since 2016. Let’s give Democrats a chance to display their own proposed new leadership in 2020 before deciding they are equally feckless or reckless.