Former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown has a must-read article at The New Republic entitled “Democrats Must Become the Workers’ Party Again: Reconnecting the Democratic Party to the working class is an electoral and a moral imperative, and it will be my mission for the rest of my life.” Some excerpts: “Democrats must become the workers’ party again. It is an electoral and a moral imperative, and it will be my mission for the rest of my life. To win the White House and governing majorities again, Democrats must reckon with how far our party has strayed from our New Deal roots, in terms of both our philosophy toward the economy, and the makeup of our coalition….We cannot solve this problem without an honest assessment of who we are. How we see ourselves as the Democratic Party—the party of the people, the party of the working class and the middle class—no longer matches up with what most voters think….Joe Biden was inarguably the most pro-labor president of my lifetime. He talked about the dignity of work. He ushered in a new era of industrial policy, making dramatic investments to create jobs and move production of crucial technologies home to the United States. He hired economists for top jobs who prioritized worker power in the labor market. He had the most pro-worker U.S. trade representative likely ever. He presided over rising wages and low unemployment. He walked a picket line….But he was horribly unpopular. Americans repeatedly told us that they hated the economy, thought the country was on the wrong track, and feltworse off than ever….So what happened?….The march away from the Democratic Party among working-class voters—now including nonwhite workers—began long before inflation hit. And the road back is going to require more than just waiting for Trump to fail and voters’ memories of inflation to fade….The more that’s been written, the less we seem to have learned. It’s not that complicated. We have an economy today that does not reward work and does not value the work of Americans without four-year college degrees.”

Brown continues, “Over the past 40 years, corporate profits have soared, executive salaries have exploded, and productivity keeps going up. Yet wages are largely flat, and the cost of living keeps getting more expensive….Productivity and wages used to rise together. That changed in the late 1970s. Since then, workers produce more and more, but they enjoy a smaller and smaller share of the wealth they create….And when work isn’t valued, people don’t see a path to economic stability, no matter how hard they work. A couple of years of modestly rising wages are not going to make up for decades of Americans working harder than ever with less and less to show for it….Most people in Ohio believe the system is rigged against them. They’re right. Today, income and wealth inequality rival the Gilded Age. Using one of the most classic definitions of the American dream—that children will be better off than their parents, moving up the economic ladder with each generation—we are going backward. More than 92 percent of children born in 1940 earned more than their parents did. For children born in 1984, it’s only 50 percent….These changes hit working-class kids particularly hard. Children born to parents without college degrees are less likely to get a four-year degree, setting them back in nearly all aspects of life….College graduates have four times the net worth and four times the retirement savings of Americans without degrees. Americans with a bachelor’s degree live eight years longer than those without a bachelor’s degree….In the 1960s, about one in four members of Congress only had a high school degree. Today 96 percent of members are college graduates….If Democrats continue to be seen by voters in places like Ohio as the defenders of a system that rewards a minority of coastal elites at the rest of the country’s expense, we will continue to lose ground among the very people we claim to represent….Today in the Mahoning Valley, I still hear about NAFTA. One member of my Senate staff who grew up in the valley told me last year that, to this day, Clinton is not to be spoken of in his family’s steelworker household, so deep runs the sense of betrayal….People in Youngstown and Dayton and my hometown of Mans­field expected Republicans to sell them out to multinational corporations.

Brown notes, further, “But we were supposed to be the party that looked out for these workers—to be on their side, to stand up to corporate interests….young staffers in the Clinton administration became the seasoned experts in the Obama administration, attempting to ram through the Trans-Pacific Partnership and confidently pushing a vision of an ever-more-interconnected global order. To people in Ohio, that sounded like a recipe for more of the same: more shuttered storefronts, more kids moving away, and more good-paying careers replaced by dead-end jobs at big box stores that have few benefits and opportunities for upward mobility….Most people don’t wantwhat they view as government handouts. Nor do they want to be left to fend for themselves in an unfair market, rigged by multinational corporations, that only benefits the people at the very top….They want a level playing field so their hard work can actually pay off. And they want a government that will actually fight to create that level playing field, which means taking on corporate interests….But instead, the message they’ve heard from party elites, over and over, has been: We know better than you do. Voters sense it. They hate it. And until we fix it, working-class voters will continue to abandon us….Most families at all income levels feel squeezed by soaring housing costs, unaffordable childcare, rising insurance prices, stubbornly expensive health care—not to mention trying to save for retirement, higher education for their kids, and care for aging parents. Life feels unaffordable even for workers whose incomes put them well ahead of their working-class neighbors….And most people get their income from a paycheck, not an investment portfolio. Work unites all of us….We’re all trying to do something productive for our family and our community and our country. We want to develop skills and take pride in them, and we want our work to be valued, and for our paychecks to be enough to provide for our families….That should be our party’s North Star, the foundation on which we build….None of this will be a project measured in months, or in one or two election cycles. We need a generational effort to transform our party, with the dignity of work at the center.”

In “The Democrats’ Working-Class Problem Gets Its Close-Up: A group that spent heavily to defeat Trump is now devoting millions to study voters who were once aligned with the Democratic Party but have since strayed,” Michael Scherer writes at The Atlantic: “The distant past and potential future of the Democratic Party gathered around white plastic folding tables in a drab New Jersey conference room last week. There were nine white men, three in hoodies, two in ball caps, all of them working-class Donald Trump voters who once identified with Democrats and confessed to spending much of their time worried about making enough money to get by….Asked by the focus-group moderator if they saw themselves as middle class, one of them joked, “Is there such a thing as a middle class anymore? What is that?” They spoke about the difficulty of buying a house, the burden of having kids with student loans, and the ways in which the “phony” and “corrupt” Democratic Party had embraced far-left social crusades while overseeing a jump in inflation.” Read more here (paywall).

Are there any lessons for U.S. Democrats in the experience of Europe’s left-center political parties? To help address this question, read Justus Seuferle’s “How the Right Hijacked the Working Class for Culture Wars: The alliance between reactionary forces and the working class is not built on shared economic interests but on a manufactured sense of cultural identity” at Social Europe. As Seuferle writes, “Unlike the post-war era’s material politics—marked by fair wages, strong social safety nets, and democratic expansion—the culturalisation of politics does not lead to tangible material change….This transformation recasts political issues as cultural ones, not only diverting attention from material concerns like wages and social security, but also reshaping fundamentally economic matters into cultural narratives. The latest casualty of this shift is the worker—once defined by economic conditions, now reimagined as a cultural identity….Two competing ideas about the worker dominate contemporary discourse. The first—predominantly found in the United States—is cultural; the second, once prevalent in Europe, is material. The cultural definition, often reflected in self-identification surveys, hinges on the colour of one’s collar. It distinguishes between blue-collar and white-collar workers—those who work with their hands versus those in bureaucratic or intellectual roles. Under this framework, even a small business owner can be considered a worker. The only criterion is a sense of cultural belonging tied to one’s type of work….The misconception that the political right represents the working class stems from the confusion caused by the cultural definition. When identity becomes the central axis of political classification, the struggle for economic justice is reduced to a battle for recognition. The fact that the term “worker” originally denoted a structurally disadvantaged position is now lost in the shallow glow of tribal belonging….In reality, what would materially benefit workers are strong unions, high wages, robust labour protections, good public infrastructure, and universal unemployment insurance to give workers the ability to refuse exploitative jobs—forcing employers to raise wages. Instead, Vance offers only the hollow currency of recognition….The outcome is a hollow anti-elitism, reduced to performative opposition, with no substantive policies to improve workers’ lives.”

In “Trump’s Historically Bad First Month of Polls Should Terrify Republicans,” Bill Scher writes at The Washington Monthly: “President Donald Trump’s net job approval average, in both the Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight averages, has slid about 7 points over the first month of his second term, leaving his approval rating just barely above his disapproval….This is a historically bad beginning for a presidency. The only worse example is Donald Trump’s first presidency….Who cares about poll numbers anymore, you might ask. Congressional Republicans should. They are on the ballot next year, and the GOP could easily lose control of the House. If Trump does not defy political gravity, he could drag them down, as he did in his first term….Presidential polling honeymoons always end, but rarely so fast….Trump’s numbers are sinking because he has swiftly implemented radical policies many people do not want. According to the Washington Post-Ipsos poll, the public opposes mass civil service firings, shutdowns of federal agencies, including the foreign aid conduit USAID, banning transgender people from military service, and scrapping diversity programs. Only 34 percent of respondents approved of Elon Musk’s involvement in the administration, while 57 percent believe Trump has “gone beyond his authority as president.”….Trump’s hold on Republican officeholders remains strong. I doubt many of them support Trump’s echoing of Russian narratives about Ukraine or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan for annual 8-percent cuts in the military budget over the next five years. But they are afraid to say as much and risk the president’s wrath and a primary challenge….Yet a continuing presidential poll slide with a midterm election on the horizon could, and should, focus the mind not just on the president’s temperament but the voters. Trump could become a dead weight to the GOP. Congressional Republicans in swing districts and those not necessarily seen as vulnerable today should think about what has been unthinkable: creating some distance between themselves and Trump.”

From “Americans voted for Trump, but don’t support his agenda: Our look at nearly 300 poll questions finds Trump is more popular than Trumpism” by G. Elliot Morris at 538/abcnews: “Looking at all the polls that have been released since Trump took office, we find that while Americans express support for some of Trump’s immigration policy and broad government reform in principle, they oppose most of what he has done in his first month as president….I began by combing through every publicly available political poll that has been released since he took office on Jan. 20. Specifically, I was looking for any question that asked respondents if they supported* an action that Trump had taken or promised to take. As of Feb. 25 at 2 p.m. Eastern, this review yielded over 270 questions from 49 different polls. 538 has made the data for this analysis publicly available here ….I found 63 questions asking about Trump’s immigration policies, ranging from such topics as the deportation of undocumented immigrants who have been accused of committing violent crimes (supported by 89 percent of voters, according to an Ipsos/Washington Post poll conducted Feb. 13-18) to the removal of undocumented immigrants who arrived to the U.S. as children (44 percentage points underwater, 70-26 percent, according to the same poll) to whether immigrants removed from the country should be held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, while they await transfer to their home countries (average support of just 37 percent across three polls)….Generally the broadest policies possible, such as “deporting all immigrants” and “sending the military to the border to help with immigration,” score rather well with the public (52 percent approve and 36 percent disapprove of using military force at the U.S.-Mexico border in the average poll)….But as pollsters get more specific, net approval of those policies tends to fall and go underwater. The AP found, for example, that deporting all undocumented immigrants “even if they will be separated from their children who are citizens” has just 28 percent of Americans in support and 55 percent in opposition. And arresting immigrants while they are at church or school is opposed by more than half of Americans. Excluding questions that ask about the military or Trump’s declared state of emergency on the southern border, the public opposed Trump’s immigration policies by about 1 point on average….Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants (a power he does not have) is underwater by 12 points on average, with 39 percent of adults approving and 50 percent disapproving of the order.”

Morris adds further, “According to an AP-NORC poll conducted shortly before Trump took office, 67 percent of adults think the U.S. government spends too little on Social Security; 61 percent say too little on Medicare; 65 percent too little on education; 62 percent too little on assistance to the poor; and 55 percent too little on Medicaid. Yet these are the programs Republicans are targeting for cutting in order to offset reduced revenues from lower taxes on corporations and richer Americans….Trump’s allies and conservative commentators have run into a classic finding in political science: Voters are “symbolically conservative” but “operationally liberal.” That is, they support liberal social programs and government spending at higher rates than they identify as liberals; to put it in inverse terms, people are more likely to call themselves conservative than they are to support the average conservative policy. It is also generally easier to sell people on vague language and abstract goals (“Reduce the size of government! Make programs more efficient!”) than it is to sell them on the steps it would take to accomplish them (“Fire a ton of people! Make benefits harder to get!”)….A related divide is how people feel toward Trump the man versus how they feel toward his agenda. According to 538’s average of presidential job approval polls, 48.1 percent of adults currently approve of Trump and 47.4 percent disapprove. However, in our new dataset of Trump issue polls, average support for his agenda is 7 points underwater, with just 38 percent supporting his policies and executive orders and 46 percent opposing them….Our new data sheds light on the question of whether the American people voted for everything they’re getting under Trump or whether they supported him for other reasons. Given his agenda is currently 11 points lower than the vote share he won in the 2024 presidential election (49.8 percent), the most likely answer is that this isn’t what Americans had in mind when they voted for him.”

Two of the surest ways to fail in national politics are to preside over high inflation or high unemployment. President Biden gave us an object demonstration in the political danger of inflation. Now, Trump seems to be maneuvering into position to do both. Ironically, he will likely get more benefit from Biden’s infrastructure initiatives than Biden got, because the employment bump will kick in in during the months and years ahead. But with his rash of government lay-offs, Trump-Musk have awakened new fears  of unemployment much larger than the actual danger of it. When sudden mass layoffs in any industry, including government, become the lead news story, the fear spreads and then the market trembles. He would be in much deeper trouble without the infrastructure upgrades Biden secured. It’s a bit early to blame Trump for rising inflation, since, in his own words, “I’m only here for two and a half weeks….I had nothing to do with it.” However as Ed Mazza reports at HuffPo, Trump bragged that “I will immediately bring inflation down on Day 1….Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down.” And it seems a safe bet that Trump’s mass deportations and blanket tariffs are not going to help keep prices down. We are not going to see a lot of guys in red maga hats bringing in the harvest. Nor will adding a surcharge on Canadian lumber help reduce housing prices. One of the post-it notes often seen on the desks of successful small business people says “Under-promise, Over-deliver.” For years Democrats have done the reverse and have paid dearly for it. Now it is the Republicans’ turn.

At The Guardian, Lauren Aratani reports that “A quarter of US shoppers have dumped favorite stores over political stances: A new poll also found that four in 10 Americans have shifted spending to align with moral views in recent months,” and writes: “Americans are changing their shopping habits and even dumping their favorite stores in a backlash against corporations that have shifted their public policies to align with the Trump administration, according to a poll exclusively shared with the Guardian….Four out of 10 Americans have shifted their spending over the last few months to align with their moral views, according to the Harris poll.

• 31% of Americans reported having no interest in supporting the economythis year – a sentiment especially felt by younger (gen Z: 37%), Black (41% v white: 28%) and Democratic consumers (35% v 29% of independents and 28% of Republicans).

• A quarter (24%) of respondents have even stopped shopping at their favorite stores because of their politics (Black: 35%, gen Z: 32%, Democratic: 31%).

More Democrats (50%) indicated they were changing their spending habits compared with Republicans (41%) and independents (40%). Democrats were also more likely to say they have stopped shopping at companies that have opposing political views to their own – 45% of Democrats indicated so, compared with 34% of Republicans….It is a sign that consumers with liberal views are starting to use their wallets in response to politics in the private sector.”

John L. Dorman reports at Business Insider: “When [Sen. Reuben] Gallego was asked why many voters concerned about the economy seemingly had little issue with an administration filled with the ultrawealthy, the Arizona lawmaker said personal wealth is aspirational for many voters….”People that are working class, poor, don’t necessarily look at the ultrarich as their competitors,” he said. “They want to be rich someday.”….He said those voters would give Trump, Musk, and their allies the benefit of the doubt until they were personally impacted by governmental actions….Gallego also predicted that Trump would face political backlash over the GOP’s long-sought tax bill, which could include $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and potential spending reductions for programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program….”That’s when you’re going to see people saying, ‘No, no, no, that’s not what I want,'” he said….Gallego defeated Lake last November even as Trump flipped Arizona red in his victory over then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the key swing state….The first Latino to represent Arizona in the Senate, Gallego outpaced Harris with Latino voters and male voters. The lawmaker attributed his success to his work to engage with voters everywhere, especially as it related to their economic concerns.”

In “America Needs a Working-Class Media: Catering to rich audiences is not serving us,”  Alissa Quart, executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, writes at the Columbia Journalism Review: “America needs a working-class media. It’s something that has preoccupied me for years. If we thought of it as precariat media, we would also include the falling middle class that I have called the middle precariat (including most freelance writers right now). After the 2024 election, the punditocracy has seemingly rediscovered the working-class voter for the second time—following Donald Trump’s first victory, when J.D. Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy emerged to “explain” the rage of those left behind economically. Neither time, however, did they “rediscover” the value of working-class journalists…. The identity crisis of the Democratic Party—and debate over the extent to which the party should identify with the working class—unfolds as I write this; see Bernie Sanders’s, Faiz Shakir’s, and other progressive politicians’ and media figures’ refrain that the party pursued donors and ignored the working class in the 2024 electoral campaign. And if that balance of power must change, the media should be similarly realigned….What would that media look like? It would be one where economic reporters are embedded in blue-collar communities and neighborhoods rather than financial districts, and source networks built around people with direct experience instead of outside analysts. Centering inflation coverage around wage stagnation rather than the stock market and written for people who live paycheck to paycheck. Healthcare reporting would be conducted by those who have experienced medical debt. Labor reporting that represents workers not as mute sufferers but as true experts. Housing that is considered from the perspective of the renter, not the landlord or developer….As Christopher Martin, author of the 2019 book No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class, told me: “Media has increasingly centered on a class audience rather than a mass audience.”

Echoing some of the themes developed by Andrew Levison, Ruy Teixeira and Stanley Greenberg at this website and others, here is a 17+ minute Ted Talk video clip by Joan C. Williams, Distinguished Law Professor and Founding Director of the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings:

For a discussion of Williams’ latest book, click here.

In his latest column, “Democrats, Trump has given you a mission. Accept all of it. The republic is under siege. What can be done?,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes that “However, disoriented Democrats may be, they have to understand that Trump has given them a mission. They need to accept it — all of it….Which means that a lot of what once passed for strategy is useless now. Democrats cannot pretend that business-as-usual behavior is appropriate to this moment. They cannot “choose their battles” because what’s at stake is not just this or that policy but whether we will endure as a free republic in which presidents recognize they are not monarchs. It’s absurd to say of Trump “we will work with him where we can” when the project on which they’d be “working with him” involves shattering the rule of law and making it impossible for government workers to do the jobs Americans expect them to carry out….Democrats who want to save the nation — and their party — need to end their malaise, mobilize their supporters and fight for something that matters. If our constitutional democracy doesn’t matter, I don’t know what does….Franklin D. Roosevelt built the New Deal coalition by opposing concentrated economic power and highlighting the human costs of a form of capitalism with weak guardrails and a paltry safety net. Ronald Reagan unraveled the New Deal coalition with his three antis — anti-government, anti-tax, and anti-communism. In both cases, the power of negative thinking created paths to sweeping affirmative agendas….Trump’s firings have disabled the National Labor Relations Board by depriving it of a quorum. It now has no way of enforcing labor law and protecting workers’ rights. That’s his reward to the many working-class voters who helped elect him….Republicans who control Congress should also be up in arms about the Trump-Musk incursion on their authority. But since they’re falling into line behind a surrender to the executive branch, Democrats have no choice but to make the Trumpist GOP’s going as difficult as possible.”

Dionne continues, “Trump’s obvious indifference to rising costs should, as party strategist James Carville has argued, be at the center of Democratic accountability efforts. Trump, after all, promised to “slash your prices” and bring down “the price of everything.” But his priorities — revenge, political control of the administration of justice, the intimidation of civil servants, and, for that matter, takeovers of Greenland and Gaza — have nothing to do with lowering what consumers pay for groceries, gas or housing. His tariffs will only make inflation rise….An alert reader might say that much of what’s being proposed here sounds a lot like “the resistance” to the first Trump presidency. That is precisely what is needed now — more, even, than the last time around….Sure, the term was a little precious, but what’s forgotten is that the first resistance was effective. It helped save the Affordable Care Act, end Republican control of the House, flip seven governorships, and elect hundreds to legislatures and local offices. Legions of smart lawyers repelled many of Trump’s abuses — and this time around, the legal profession has been at the forefront of the early victories against his maneuvers, including Saturday’s ruling restricting the Musk group’s access to Treasury Department data….Theda Skocpol, a Harvard political scientist who studied the anti-Trump movement, noted recently in the New Republic that what worked the last time were the “persistent, community-based efforts by 2,000 to 3,000 grassroots Resistance groups in every town, city, and suburb across virtually all congressional districts.” The events of the past three weeks summon Americans again to diners, churches, libraries, union halls and taverns to organize, to pressure their elected officials (especially the 15 House Republicans who won last year by five percentage points or less), and to reach out to their friends and neighbors to warn them about what Trump is doing to their democracy.”

In “Former Sanders, Fetterman campaign consultants start new firm aimed at winning back working-class voters: They’re aiming to elect more nontraditional candidates with a populist, anti-establishment streak,” Holly Otterbein writes at Politico: “A group of Democratic strategists who worked for some of the biggest unorthodox names in liberal politics is launching a new firm….The consultants who helped guide Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and the winning Senate bids for John Fetterman and Ruben Gallego are branding their new company Fight Agency….They said they’re aiming to elect more nontraditional candidates with a populist, anti-establishment streak. They’re even open to fielding left-leaning independents who eschew the Democratic Party label altogether….POLITICO is first to report on their announcement….The strategists behind Fight Agency declined to share the names of any potential new clients, but said they expect to work in the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential campaign….They have at points worked to elect more traditional candidates, including former President Joe Biden. But many of their past clients are known for their offbeat styles, willingness to speak off the cuff, and a propensity to ruffle the feathers of their own party leaders — an approach to politics the consultants plan to employ at their new venture….McDonald, who made ads for Dan Osborn, a left-leaning independent Senate candidate in Nebraska who lost but outperformed the top of the ticket in 2024, said “outsiders, working-class candidates, even a few independents — this is kind of what people want, and there should be a team that can help them.”….As Democrats grapple with how to win back blue-collar voters, Mulvey said Sanders, Fetterman and Gallego provide “clues” for their party. He said they “all have the ability to connect with working-class and independent voters” and represent “anti-establishment, economic messaging, populist messaging.”

According to Jennifer Bowers Bahney, writing at The Raw Story, a “Single Trump decision could be driving working-class Hispanics back to the Dems: analysis.” As Bahney explains, “Working-class Hispanic voters who turned their backs on Democrats to help elect Donald Trump may soon make a U-turn, according to an analysis in Tuesday’s New York Times….The report listed Trump policies that appealed to Hispanic U.S. citizens and which are currently being carried out: “raids and deportations; the opening of a migrant internment camp at the U.S. base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; the president’s attempt to end automatic citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil; tariffs threatened, then pulled back, on Mexican goods; and the U.S. military dispatched to the border.”….But, the report claimed Trump’s embrace of billionaire Elon Musk and the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could be the catalyst that drives Hispanic voters back into the arms of the Democrats….Sylvia Bruni, a Democratic Party leader, agreed that the party needed to focus less on issues like abortion and gender “if it wanted to win back socially conservative Latinos.”….Bruni said, “The Republicans kept telling voters: I promise you, eggs are going to be down to $1 a dozen. Economics is what did us in.”

In “Here’s What Senate Democrats Should Be Doing to Fight Trump; Senate rules were explicitly designed to protect the minority. Democrats should exploit them mercilessly to slow Trump and Musk before they destroy the country,” Aaron Regunberg writes at The New Republic: “Democrats have additional tactics they can, and must, start deploying. As groups like Indivisible have been highlighting, the U.S. Senate is an institution designed to protect the rights of the minority party. That means Democratic senators have an arsenal of procedural tools they should be weaponizing to disrupt and delay Republicans’ agenda in protest of Musk’s infiltration of our federal payment systems….Perhaps the most significant tool Democratic senators could use to throw sand in the gears is the denial of unanimous consent. Unanimous consentis the framework by which the Senate operates. Technically, all of the basic day-to-day functions of the Senate—from scheduling votes to moving bills forward—require time-consuming procedural steps like roll-call votes and debates. But senators agree, or unanimously consent, to skip over these processes. If Democrats deny unanimous consent, they can grind Senate business to a crawl….Democrats in the Senate could use quorum calls to disrupt the flow of GOP business. Officially, according to Senate rules, business can’t be conducted without a majority of senators present on the Senate floor. Most of the time, nobody asks for a quorum, as there are rarely a majority of senators on the floor. But any senator can request a quorum check at any time, making the clerk do a full roll call of all the senators. If fewer than 51 respond, Senate business stops until there’s a majority….as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has argued, these actions can force the GOP to “fight for every single step” because “the slower they go, the less they can break.”

At The Guardian, read “Here’s how Democrats should fight back against Trump” by Margaret Sullivan, who says: “Some Democrats in a new generation are punching back hard, and in so doing, showing their colleagues how to overcome their reputation for spineless dithering.” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy “has been relentless in calling out exactly what’s happening and why, especially in the shocking weeks since Trump took office….“We have days to stop the destruction of our democracy,” Murphy raged at a protest Tuesday in front of the US treasury building in Washington. “It’s the people who rule, not the billionaires….“Democrats need to throw every possible wrench into the plans of Trump, Musk and their Republican cultists in Congress,” argued scholar Norm Ornstein in the Contrarian newsletter. “Doing so will also underscore how serious the threat is to our system, thereby forcing media to cover it.” As the Virginia congressman Don Beyer suggested on Greg Sargent’s Daily Blast podcast from the New Republic: “Put those things that used to be routine and make them not routine until Trump stops breaking the law.”….In other words, attack on multiple fronts, including through leveraging the power of Democratic state governments. Most of all, prepare for the midterms elections next year by honing a strong, populist message….And lead with convincing voices that can motivate the public….if the public believes there is no determination to fight back, Trump’s destruction will continue unabated.”

“With just over a month until government funding expires,” Nicholas Wu and Mia McCarthy write at Politico, “Democrats remain divided on whether they should use the threat of a government shutdown as a political cudgel as they try to push back on President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk….Key progressives want to use every point of leverage the minority party has at its disposal to push back against the slashing of federal agencies being undertaken by Trump’s budget office and Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”….“It is the Republican majority’s responsibility to gather the votes necessary for them to pass their agenda. I do not believe that Democrats should be helping,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “Given the Republican majority’s attempts to completely gut the federal government, any concession necessary for the Democratic Party to assist them in passing a CR must be incredibly substantial.”….“These guys are in charge, running around, bragging about a mandate, so they should put on their mandate pants and pass whatever they want to pass but if they want us [to help keep the government open], they have to work with us,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). This is about give and take — about a compromise. And if they don’t want to do that, then they’re on their own.”….“No House Democrat wants to shut down the government,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told reporters Tuesday morning. But he added that there’s “very little appetite to help Republicans when we don’t trust that Donald Trump is going to spend the resources that we’ve allocated.”

At Salon, former congressman Tim Roemer shares “After the big loss, what’s next? An open letter to the Democratic Party: We can bring the party together — and win — if we’re willing to address inequality and advocate for radical change,” and writes: “We must improve our connection to and our communications with the middle class and blue-collar voters….We must be aggressive and tenacious once again, in the tradition of historic and inspirational leaders like Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., by advocating for radical change in housing, education, health and labor rights….Defending the overall status quo at a time when the American Dream is slipping away for so many working Americans is politically tone-deaf and dangerously out of touch. Defending the status quo on rental rates and home prices, especially if you want the votes of middle-class people or voters under 40, is insane….We did not convey a message of fresh and viable economic change for working people. …Democrats need to be the working-class voice of frustration and their hammer for change….most Americans desperately want to hear about what we will do to curb rising housing prices, reduce escalating egg prices, keep gas prices low and fix out-of-control college costs. Food, energy, housing and education are core voting issues, especially when you experience them as reducing your choices and chewing up your family budget….Voters want to hear what we will do to protect their current job and create new ones. They want lower prescription drug costs and less Medicare bureaucracy….Rebuilding our economic message is the key to winning. The American Dream remains achievable, but the ladder required to climb up and grab it requires modernizing and repairing. The rungs on that ladder have always been education, jobs, housing and health care. Let’s learn from this past election, fix the mistakes we have made through the past several cycles, and propose a positive economic agenda for reaching the American Dream.”

One of the central concerns of The Democratic Strategist has been to explore ways that Democrats can regain the support of a healthy majority of working-class voters, including white working-class voters, a group which accounts for about half of the electorate. Toward that end, Andrew Levison has a new TDS Strategy Memo entitled “Democratic Political Strategy is Developed by College-Educated Political Analysts Sitting in Front of Computers on College Campuses or Think Tank Offices . That’s Why the Strategies Don’t Work.” Levison, author of influential works of political analysis, including “The White Working Class Today: Who They Are, How They Think and How Progressives Can Regain Their Support,” argues that nearly all of the previous political analysis of white working-class voters “is profoundly and painfully superficial” because “It essentially visualizes working people as if they were isolated individuals sitting in their living rooms watching TV or reading a newspaper and thoughtfully evaluating the political messages and policy proposals that they see presented.” Further, Levison writes: “What is entirely ignored in this way of conceptualizing how workers make political choices is the massive effect of social and community life, of neighborhood and community institutions and a voter’s personal history and experience on their political perspective – on how daily interaction with friends, neighbors, co-workers and others in a workers’ neighborhood, workplace and community shape that person’s political attitudes.”

This is a very different perspective than the common wisdom embraced and regurgitated by many political analysts. As  Levison notes further, “At first glance these articles appear to offer a vast range of distinct suggestions but when examined more closely can be seen to fall into three basic categories:

William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck, two of the Democratic Party’s most astute strategists, make their case for ‘Renewing the Democratic Party,” cross-posted here from The Third Way:

A time comes for every political party when its policies and dominant assumptions no longer meet either the public’s expectations or the needs of the times. We believe that the Democratic Party has reached one of these moments and stands in urgent need of renewal.

This renewal involves more than communications, organization, and mobilization. It will require the party to ask itself hard questions about the reasons for its dwindling support among groups it has long taken for granted, to reflect on declining public confidence in government as a vehicle of progress, and to think anew about its policy agenda in an era of rapid change, at home and abroad. This process will be neither quick nor easy, which is why it must begin now.

The purpose of Democratic renewal is not only to win the next election. It is to build a party that can command a sustainable majority over a series of elections based on an agenda that successfully addresses the central issues of our time.

The Key Challenge to a Sustainable Democratic Majority: Losing the Working Class

As the 2024 election has made clear, the populist revolution that Trump has spearheaded within the Republican Party is reconfiguring the coalitions of both parties, to the Democrats’ disadvantage.

For the first time since the mid-20th century, the central fault line of American politics is neither race and ethnicity nor gender but rather class, determined by educational attainment. But in the intervening half century, the parties have switched places. Republicans once commanded a majority among college-educated voters while Democrats were the party of the working class. Now the majority of college educated voters support Democrats. Meanwhile, the troubled relationship between the Democratic Party and white working-class voters that began in the late 1960s now includes the non-white working-class as well, as populist Republicans are expanding their support among working-class Hispanics¹ and an increasing share of African American men. Making matters worse, several groups of Asian Americans shifted to the right as their concern mounted about crime in public spaces and attacks on test-based admissions to elite public high schools.²

The sorting of partisan preferences based on educational attainment is bad news for Democrats, demographically and geographically. Fewer than 38% of Americans 25 and older have earned BAs, a share that has plateaued in recent years after increasing five-fold between 1960 and 2020.³  And so, it appears, has the Democratic share of the college graduate vote (57% in 2020, 56% in 2024) even as the Republican share of the non-college vote surged from 51% to 56%. Meanwhile, non-college voters still make up 57% of the electorate, a figure that rises to 60% in the swing states.⁴

If Democrats cannot build a broader cross-class alliance, one that includes a larger share of non-college voters, their future is not bright. At the presidential level, they could end up confined to states with high densities of college-educated voters, leaving them far short of an Electoral College majority. Although Democrats won all the states with shares of BA degree holders at 40% or higher in 2024, there were only 12 of them, none swing states. By contrast, Democrats won only one of the 29 states with BA shares at 35% or lower while prevailing in seven of the 10 states with college attainment between 36 and 39%.⁵ And because ticket-splitting between presidential and senatorial races has become more infrequent, the new class-based politics bodes ill for Democrats’ U.S. Senate prospects as well.

The new class-based politics is reinforced by the fact that prosperity in twenty-first century America is concentrated in metropolitan areas where the workforce is educated, innovation is strong, and the information economy dominates. Our Brookings colleagues looked at all the counties in America and found that in 2024 the richer counties voted for Harris while the poorer counties voted for Trump.⁶ As the table below, taken from their recent report, illustrates, this trend has been going on for some time. Today, 60% of America’s wealth is concentrated in only 382 of the country’s more than 3000 counties. These wealthy counties are densely populated, which explains why Harris’ popular vote was competitive, but they are found in either deep blue states or as islands of high education and prosperity in deep red states.

National Trends

Donald Trump won a surprisingly broad-based victory in 2024. He received 3.1 million more votes than he did in 2020 and, contrary to the expectations of many, won the popular vote by 2.3 million. He bettered his share of the popular vote by 3.1 percentage points, coming within 0.1 point of winning an outright majority while sweeping all seven swing states, some by substantial margins. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris’s share of the popular vote was 3 points lower than Joe Biden’s in 2020.

Compared to Biden’s performance in 2020, Harris lost ground in almost every demographic group, with especially severe losses among young adults⁷ and non-white voters, particularly Hispanics and Black men. Moreover, Harris’s non-stop efforts to mobilize women on the abortion issue fell well short of its goal, even though large majorities continued to vote for the pro-choice position on referenda. Indeed, Harris’s margin among suburban women, a major campaign target, was 4 points lower than Biden’s had been four years earlier.⁸

To be sure, Trump’s victory fell well short of the landslide he often claims. Kamala Harris won 48.4% of the popular vote, falling short of Trump’s share by just 1.5 points. Some Democratic leaders are trying to put a sunny spin on this result.⁹

But the fact remains that Trump has improved his vote total and vote share in both presidential elections since his surprise Electoral College victory in 2016, disproving pundits who spoke confidently about the “low ceiling” of his popular support. And he is winning the public argument about the issues on which he has run consistently for decades—trade, globalization, and immigration.

A single statistic sums up the Democratic Party’s decline. Between 1976 and 2020, Democrats consistently led Republicans as a share of the presidential electorate. Republicans won elections only when they garnered significant support from Democrats, as Ronald Reagan did in 1980 and 1984 and George H. W. Bush did in 1988. The 2024 election interrupted this longstanding trend: Republicans constituted 35% of the electorate compared to just 31% for Democrats. Donald Trump got only 4% of votes cast by Democrats, but this poor performance didn’t come close to costing him the election.¹⁰

This break with the past reflected more than the sharp 2024 decline in Democratic turnout. During the past three years, Republicans have led Democrats in party identification for the first time since 1991.¹¹ If they can mobilize their base and do reasonably well among independents, they now can win elections without reaching across party lines. Whether or not Donald Trump was aware of this trend, he sensed that turning out the party faithful would be enough to win. To this end, he pursued a relentless strategy of intensifying rather than broadening his support, and it worked.

The Swing States Versus the Rest of the Country

Drilling down below the national aggregates, we find that the 2024 election was actually two separate and very different contests—one in the seven swing states, the other in the rest of the country. In the latter, where advertisements and voter mobilization were scarce, support for Harris collapsed from the high-water mark Biden had established, especially in blue states. In the swing states, by contrast, the Harris campaign came very close to equaling Biden’s performance in the aggregate. This wasn’t enough, however, because Trump improved significantly from his 2020 showing.

In many of the blue states, Trump’s vote total expanded modestly if at all while Harris’s collapsed relative to Biden’s performance four years earlier. In Illinois and New Jersey, Harris received about 400,000 fewer votes than Biden. In New York, Harris fell short of Biden by 600,000. And in California, the shortfall reached an astonishing 1.8 million votes, a drop of 16.5% from 2020.

By contrast, Harris performed well in most of the swing states. She got more votes than Biden in three swing states (Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin), fewer than Biden in three swing states (Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania), and virtually tied him in Nevada. Her vote total in the swing states trailed Biden’s by just 47,000—three tenths of one percent. But fatally for her presidential prospects, Trump improved on his 2020 showing in the swing states by nearly one million votes—6.2%.¹² While Harris lost them all, it would be more accurate to say that Donald Trump won them, with a message strong enough to overcome the Harris campaign’s edge in funds and organization.

The implication of the swing state outcomes is clear: as Democrats ponder the way forward, their challenge is not only to repair their weaknesses but also to develop an agenda and message appealing enough to counter the strength that Republicans showed in 2024.

As President Trump began his second term, he enjoyed substantial support from the American people, and so did his party.  In contrast, the Democratic Party hit new lows in public approval. At the end of January 2025, only 31 percent of the people had a favorable opinion of the party, compared to 57 percent unfavorable.  Among Independents, the favorable/unfavorable split was 22/59; among men, 22/67.  After an intensive Democratic outreach throughout the Biden administration, the party scored only 39 percent approval among women, barely better than the Republicans’ 37 percent.  The party cannot hope to recover until unless it finds a way to improve its brand.¹³

Why Harris Lost

Optimists may argue that Kamala Harris’s defeat stemmed from a series of unfortunate events without broader significance for the future of the Democratic Party. If Joe Biden had not, in 2024, engaged in a presidential debate in which he appeared to have aged substantially, if he had honored what many Democrats thought was a tacit promise to serve only one term, if he had announced his intention not to run after the 2022 election, if there had been a presidential primary that gave the winner not only public exposure but also time to plan for the general election, if Harris had found more effective ways of distancing herself from President Biden and explaining why she had abandoned her past positions—the 2024 contest could well have turned out differently.

These arguments have merit—up to a point. For example, a wide-open primary in 2023 and 2024 may have attracted candidates free to tackle the key issues of inflation and immigration more aggressively and without the constraints that a sitting vice president faces.

But these might-have-beens do not absolve Democrats from the disagreeable but necessary task of facing their underlying weaknesses and their opponents’ strength. In 2024 an attractive if flawed candidate lost to a former president with legal woes and personality defects who had been impeached twice and defeated for reelection, allowing a former incumbent to return to the White House for the first time since 1892.

If President Trump fails to fulfill the promises that drove his campaign, Democrats could defeat his successor in 2028. But this would merely perpetuate the destructive status quo of narrow, ever-shifting majorities that undermine successful governance. Democrats must work to build a sustainable majority. This means more than playing better the cards they now hold. They need a reshuffled deck and a new deal.

A year after the Biden presidency began, the authors of this memo published “The New Politics of Evasion: How Ignoring Swing Voters Could Reopen the Door for Donald Trump and Threaten American Democracy.”¹⁴ In that article, we warned Hispanic voters could continue to move away from the Democratic Party. We noted Democrats’ weakness among working-class voters, especially in the swing states. We suggested that contrary to the belief of many Democratic leaders and activists, Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 did not herald a new progressive era in either economics or culture. “For reasons of education, income, and geography,” we argued, too many Democrats were “far removed from the daily experiences and cultural outlooks of non-college voters.” And we showed that Democrats’ weakness among working-class Americans threatened to overwhelm their gains among voters with college degrees.

The 2024 election results confirmed our fears and revealed structural weaknesses in the Democratic Party as serious as those that were revealed in George H. W. Bush’s victory over Michael Dukakis in 1988. They require an equally comprehensive response.

In this context, we turn to a more detailed analysis of the factors that undermined Kamala Harris’s chances.

Inflation and Immigration

There is wide agreement that inflation and immigration hurt Harris’s chances, but the administration’s defenders argue that both higher prices and mass migration were global phenomena over which President Biden and Vice President Harris had little control. We disagree. Several well-known economists who served in prior Democratic administrations—for example, Larry Summers and Jason Furman—argued that Biden’s stimulus bills were excessive and therefore inflationary, a point recently conceded by the president’s chief economic advisor.¹⁵ To be sure, these bills were passed in the shadow of a national trauma—the COVID-19 epidemic—and the impulse to spend money was powerful. The Biden administration acted quickly to ease the COVID-induced interruption of supply chains, the one concrete action they could take to ease inflation. But as President Jimmy Carter found many decades ago, the president’s toolbox for dealing with rapid inflation once it has begun is pretty bare.

Given the lack of effective policy options, the administration was too slow to acknowledge the pain being felt by Americans beset by high grocery store and gasoline prices. Because so many Democratic voters now come from the upper middle class, the Administration overlooked the fact that inflation hits working-class voters, who live from paycheck to paycheck and spend most of their income on necessities, especially hard. In this context, the administration’s ill-conceived effort to sell “Bidenomics” was a fiasco that succeeded only in making the president and the party appear out of touch.

While there is some uncertainty whether Biden could have done more on inflation once it emerged, there is none on the question of immigration.

Between 2020 and 2023, migration and arrivals at the border surged.¹⁶ Several factors were no doubt responsible, but among the most important was that Democrats had been staunch critics of Trump’s border policies, especially his policy of family separation. In a world of instant communications, even in the poorest countries, the change in American leadership and policy after the 2020 election was not lost on people trying to escape poverty and violence, and they came to the United States in record numbers. As immigrants overwhelmed the border, opposition by progressive advocacy groups to tougher border enforcement or asylum reforms helped deter the president from acting until the political costs of inaction became prohibitive.

Unlike inflation, where President Biden’s policy tools were weak, he had plenty of authority to act at the border. The effective immigration restraints Biden implemented in 2024 could have been put in place years earlier.¹⁷ In fact, as the border was being overrun, Democrats in Congress, seeing the chaos and the effect on their constituents, agreed with Republicans on one of the toughest immigration bills ever. Once Trump torpedoed the bill, Biden’s insistence that he couldn’t act because he didn’t have the legal authority to do so only added to the public perception that he was weak, and his shift toward a tougher stance in 2024 undermined the claim that he lacked legal authority.

Democrats need to understand just how badly the Biden administration’s mishandling of immigration hurt Kamala Harris’s chances in 2024, not only among white voters, but across the board. Political scientist Michael Tesler has shown that between 2020 and 2024, the percentage of Hispanic and Black voters who agreed that “immigrants drain national resources” increased dramatically and that this shift moved voters of color to Trump.¹⁸ A Progressive Policy Institute survey found that by a narrow margin, working-class Hispanics actually preferred Trump to Harris on immigration.¹⁹ A Financial Times survey found that while 80% of white progressives believe that “immigration to the US should be made easier,” only 30% of Hispanics agree.²⁰ Even in deep-blue California, 63% of Hispanics now consider unauthorized immigrants to be a “burden,” contributing to the large shift of Golden State Hispanics toward Trump.²¹

Nowhere has the impact of shifting Hispanic opinion been more dramatic than in Florida, a former swing state. In 2012, Barack Obama carried Florida by 1 point. In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost it by 1 point. In 2020, Joe Biden lost by 3 points. In 2024, Kamala Harris lost the Sunshine State by a stunning 13 points, 56-43, mainly because Hispanics deserted her for Donald Trump. In 2020, Joe Biden carried Florida’s Hispanics by 7 points, 53-46. This year, Harris lost them by 14 points, 56-42.

Without regaining an edge among Hispanics, who now constitute almost one-quarter of Florida’s voters, Democrats have no chance of recapturing Florida in the foreseeable future. But to do so, they must discard obsolete ideas about the interests and preferences of this increasingly influential bloc, the majority of whom are now native-born citizens. Years ago, we predicted that Hispanics would turn out to be the Italians of the 21st century, and now it is happening.

Read more…

In “Democrats Launch Plan To Win Back Working Class,” Kahleda Rahman writes at Newsweek: “The leading super PAC supporting House Democrats in next year’s midterms has launched a $50 million fund aimed at winning back working-class voters….The House Majority PAC’s investment, which it has dubbed the “Win Them Back Fund,” is “focused on ensuring that we win back working-class voters across the congressional battlefield,” according to a Monday memo. It comes two years after it began the 2024 election cycle with funds for House seats in New York and California….The memo said that one of the “major roadblocks we have faced as a party has been declining support among a multiracial group of working-class voters.”….But it noted that some House Democrats including Representatives Adam Gray, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Don Davis “continue to overperform with this crucial bloc of voters,” demonstrating that House Democrats “can win back this coalition of voters with the support of strategic investments in recruitment, research, and programming.”….The memo said, “the House Republican agenda—including tariffs and taxes that would raise costs on families and force steep cuts to programs like Medicare, Social Security, and veterans’ benefits, would hurt working-class voters and only benefit the ultrarich—and awareness of that reality is key to our success with these voters….The super PAC’s memo included a list of 14 Republicans the fund will initially target, saying they represent districts where working-class voters would be “especially hurt” by the Republican policies….Mike Smith, the president of the House Majority PAC, said in a statement to Newsweek: “We’re laying a marker down with our Win Them Back Fund—this is a priority. Crafting and developing a credible working-class message through an economic frame is the single best thing we can do as a party.”

Les Leopold explains “Why Working People Need a Political Movement of Their Own” at Common Dreams, and writes: “It would be suicidal, some argue, for the working class to abandon the Democrats. Better that they exert pressure so that the Democrats become genuine economic populists. For that to happen, realistically, it must be proven that Democrats can win elections on a populist platform in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin….But Sherrod Brown, a very strong economic populist, lost his Senate seat in Ohio in 2024. Did populism drag him down? Brown, who lost by 3.6 percent, certainly ran better than Harris, who lost Ohio by 11.2 percent. Brown believes, however, that he was done in by NAFTA, the free trade bill pushed for and signed by Bill Clinton in 1993….The power of NAFTA, not the working-class racism, is also what delivered the South to the Republicans, according to Nelson Lichtenstein in his new book on the Clinton years, A Fabulous Failure. Even after Nixon used his racist Southern Strategy to lure the South away from the Democrats, Lichtenstein notes that congressional representation in the southern states was still evenly split between the two parties. After NAFTA demolished the southern textile industry, however, most of the South abandoned the Democrats….The Democrats also have failed to redevelop decimated areas by directly creating jobs, as the New Deal did during the Depression. Job stability is not something either political party cares about, because corporate interests come first, but the issue hurts the Democrats more because of its historical claim as the party of working people….Working people, union and non-union alike, can still be mobilized through civic engagement to express their hopes and desires. Workers could join something new, like a new Workers Populist Alliance, to develop and put forth a working-class agenda….The billionaire class has two political parties. Working people need one of our own.”

Democrats should energetically publicize that military veterans are included in the Trump-Musk  seizure of data pertaining to all U.S. government payments. As Rebecca Kheel writes at military.com: “Over the weekend, Musk and his team gained access to the system that the Treasury Department uses to make all U.S. government payments. The system includes taxpayer data, such as Social Security numbers, for nearly every American, which naturally includes scores of veterans. On top of that, information about VA disability and retirement benefits, Medicare and Medicaid payments and any other government benefits veterans might receive would be swept up in the system….”Anyone who’s receiving payments from the federal government, first and foremost, is likely to be concerned that payments that they are obliged to receive might not show up, either intentionally because they’re getting blocked for some reason that’s not explained, or even unintentionally, because they’re giving admin access to a critical piece of our federal infrastructure to random coders off the street, which violates like every principle of cybersecurity and administration of these systems that exists,” said Alan Butler, executive director and president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit privacy advocacy group….”With this takeover, Musk can now access veterans’ personal data — from where they live, to their bank account info, and the amount of their earned VA benefits,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement. “Veterans risked their lives to defend this country, and they deserve more than to have unaccountable billionaires playing with the benefits they earned and rely on.” Read on here.

It’s not going to happen and it’s just a distraction from the Administration’s barrage of unpopular recent initiatives. But Kevin Liptak, Alayna Treene and Jeff Zeleny explain “How Trump arrived at his stunning idea to ‘take over’ the Gaza Strip” at CNN Politics: “President Donald Trump’s idea — announced Tuesday evening at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — was formulated over time, people familiar with the matter said, and appeared to originate with the president himself. It was only the latest reminder that policy ideas often start with Trump, rather than slowly build through national experts before ultimately reaching the Oval Office for discussion….“The president has said he’s been socialing this idea for quite some time. He’s been thinking about this,” his press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday….The proposal for Gaza has not come up in private meetings Trump has held with GOP members of the Armed Services Committees, aides said, even though the ceasefire and broader challenges across the Middle East were key points of discussion as late as last week….Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was traveling in Guatemala, heard the idea for the first time as he watched Trump’s news conference with Netanyahu on television. The Middle East has been dramatically reduced from his portfolio, with Witkoff, the president’s longtime friend, serving as the US envoy to the region….A day after Trump made his comments, [national security advisor Mike] Waltz suggested it had been in the works for some time….“We’ve been looking at this over the last weeks and months, and frankly he’s been thinking about it since October 7,” Waltz said Wednesday on CBS….In public and private conversations over the last year, Trump has repeatedly highlighted the value of Gaza’s seaside location, suggesting it was prime real estate for development….Sending US troops to the region would be in stark contrast to Trump’s long-held critique of nation building and foreign entanglements. He was among the sharpest critics of Republican orthodoxy of national building during the George W. Bush administration.”

In “What Is Donald Trump’s Mandate? Voters want big changes from Biden’s failed policies, but many are not in Trump’s plan,” Stanley B. Greenberg, one of America’s most respected pollsters and poll analysts, writes at The American Prospect: “Democratic leaders sound understandably cautious when talking about whether President Donald Trump has a mandate, or what steps Democrats should take now. They are respecting the voters who put Trump back in office, and they recognize the elites have gotten a lot of hot-button issues wrong….We will have no clue about the Trump mandate or what Democrats should do, of course, unless we are frank about what happened with Joe Biden and what changes voters want. Major parts of the mandate will help Trump, but failure to deliver change will hurt. And other parts of Trump’s agenda insult voters in ways that will push down his already unimpressive approval ratings….Knowing what happened starts with knowing voters were more fearful of “Biden continuing as President” than “Trump winning a second term.” A 53 percent majority in a Democracy Corps survey felt that. And that majority grew to 54 percent after seeing all the Trump attacks….President Joe Biden gave an upbeat account of his progress, but he was deeply and singularly unpopular. About 60 percent disapproved of his presidency in our November election poll. And other polls have shown his approval and favorability decline further as he left office in January.”

Greenberg explains further, “Kamala Harris ran much worse with working-class voters than Biden did in 2020, but his approval in our November poll was below her vote. His support was eroding further. And how do you get a strong vote in the base when 37 percent of Blacks, 56 percent of Hispanics, and 59 percent of white millennials disapproved of Biden on Election Day?….According to Gallup, 3 in 5 Americans thought the country “lost ground” under Biden on debt, immigration, crime, the economy, “the gap between the wealthy and less well-off,” and “United States’ position in the world.”….What is so difficult for all of us to process is that Trump has a mandate to fix where Biden failed on the border, the economy, crime in cities, and certain aspects of the woke agenda. Those actions will help Trump….But voters’ disappointment with Biden also included not helping the middle class enough or addressing inequality. Trump has no mandate to exploit all energy sources and reverse Biden’s climate policies. He has no mandate to put the oligarchs in the White House. And contrary to Trump’s actions, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is very popular with the public.”

Greenberg goes on to share the results of poll questions he posed. Here is one example: “Trump’s top mandate is to secure the open border and deport undocumented immigrants in our cities. We examined many possible reasons to vote for Trump, but nothing came close to support for his commitment to “secure the border and deport illegal immigrants.” The same is true in the reasons to vote against Harris. Nothing is close to the “open border and illegal immigrants in all our cities.” These are each 10 to 20 points above the next reason cited….Over 70 percent of white working-class men, women, and union households give it as the top reason to vote for Trump—about 20 points above the next reason….Democratic leaders need to understand that this mandate is also the very top reason Hispanics voted for Trump and against Harris. They are not looking for “comprehensive immigration reform” or policies that “solve the problem.” Fully 64 percent chose that Trump would “secure the border and deport illegal immigrants,” and 54 percent rejected Harris because of the “open border and illegal immigrants in our cities….Blacks and Hispanics were angry that non-citizens were competing for housing, schools, and health services in their cities. And they were already much more likely to say that “crime and homelessness in the cities” should be a top priority….Democrats may be paying a price already. They get their most Fs from voters on “prioritizing citizens over non-citizens.” Additional issue attitudes explored in the poll and Greenberg’s analysis include: inflation; taxes; crime; abortions; tariffs; and transgender identity, and others. Read Greenberg’s entire American Prospect article right here.

From “Trump Caves On Tariffs After Getting Virtually Nothing From Canada” by Jason Easley at Politicususa: “As markets started getting shaky and outrage was growing over his tariffs, Donald Trump needed a way out. Mexico gave Trump an escape hatch by staging a little performance on the border, and Canada got the tariffs postponed by continuing to implement their already passed border plan….Trump got some Mexican troops to go to the border and parade around, and Canada is going to keep doing what it was already doing, plus a new intelligence directive and a fentanyl czar, whatever that is….Trump settled for getting nothing because he is so poorly informed that he thinks he is getting something in the deal.” Clearly, the president needs some better economic advisors. At Daily Kos, The Critical Mind saw it this way in “Promises? What promises? Trump folds as Canadian/Mexican tariffs are postponed – likely permanently”: “Trump will spin this as a victory. ‘I got what I wanted and more — much more. It was the best deal ever.’ The reality is otherwise. Both Mexico and Canada made vague promises. But there will be no real change — or money spent. Trump had seen the polls — and realized people knew his tariffs would slam their pocketbooks….Even he had to admit that his ill-considered nationalism was financially catastrophic. It would spur inflation. And the promised income to the treasury from tariffs would prove far less than the federal subsidies he would have to send to American farmers and manufacturers to keep them onside. So he caved.” However, nobody should be surprised if Trump argues that his tariffs initiative was mostly a successful negotiating tactic designed to tighten up the border and reduce fentanyl smuggling. His tariff on China is a bigger gamble, with larger potential for disaster.