“The Center for Labor and a Just Economy, in collaboration with the Columbia Labor Lab, commissioned a survey with over 1600 respondents that delved into the nature of union members’ relationship with the Democratic Party,” Sharon Block writes in “The Future of Labor and the Democratic Party” at Onlabor. “Our results found that unionized workers were significantly more likely to vote for Kamala Harris than their non-union counterparts. Analyses of the election results indicated that Democrats lost ground amongst some of their traditional support groups, in particular working-class Black and Latino communities. In our survey we found that more than 68% of Black union members reported voting for Harris, while 57% of Black non-union workers voted for the Vice President. Interestingly, roughly the same proportion — 24% — of Black union and non-union workers voted for Trump. The major difference was in turnout, with 7% of Black union members saying that they did not vote, compared to nearly      18% of Black non-union workers. Latino voters had a similar trend, as Harris’ support was higher amongst union members than non-union workers, but the major difference was in turnout…union members’ views on who to blame for inflation resonated much more closely with the Harris campaign’s position than the views of other workers.”

“Whether a worker was unionized,” Block continues, “did not impact how they experienced inflation, as 85% of respondents reported experiencing higher grocery prices and over 65% experienced higher gas prices. But unionized workers diverged in the way that they attributed blame for inflation: more than 48% of unionized respondents identified corporate greed as the main driver of inflation, compared to 40.5% of non-union workers…The only unions whose membership were more likely to blame the government, rather than corporate greed, for inflation were the Teamsters and members of the United Food and Commercial Workers, and interestingly these were the only unions whose membership were more likely to support Trump than Harris…Harris’ refusal to go on podcasts like Joe Rogan has been criticized as a strategic blunder and has led to calls for Democratic candidates to spend more time in more diverse media venues. But we found that younger union members were far more likely to rely on a variety of news sources than members aged 45 or older who were far more likely to rely on traditional news sources…Our research on the results of the 2024 election suggests that Democrats have much to gain from a stronger commitment to championing labor law reform to make it easier for workers to turn their desire for union representation into a reality.”

Some comments from Joan C. Williams, founding director at the Center for WorkLife Law, UC San Francisco, during her interview by Meagan Day at Jacobin:  “Democrats should be featuring people who waited six hours at Social Security offices. They should be highlighting what the Trump administration is doing to veterans — a cross-class ideal of people who exhibited toughness, self-discipline, and manliness. It’s important to get the messaging right. With regard to Medicaid cuts, the Democrats’ impulse is to say, “Look what’s happening to poor people.” That’s true, but it’s not the best way to reach the target audience. Say instead, “Medicaid cuts mean closing more rural hospitals.”…If we want to really help poor people, we need to break the elite feeling rules that mandate empathy for certain groups and scorn for others — empathy for poor people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people, but scorn for people who go to church, respect the military, and embody the basic culture of middle-status America. That’s a losing strategy that ironically puts a target on the backs of the aforementioned marginalized communities, as we are seeing…We need to stop asking “what’s the matter with Kansas?” and focus more on “what’s the matter with Cambridge?”…But we need to understand the people we’re trying to persuade: middle-status people who value traditional institutions and obsess over economic stability. Unless we rebuild relationships with them, our progressive values won’t materialize.”

In “‘Tis a Fine Old Conflict:  The Class Struggle Inside the Democratic Party, Stewart Lawrence writes at Counterpunch that Sen. Bernie “Sanders has been especially vocal in pointing out that the party’s strategy – despite its anti-Big Capital rhetoric – does not explicitly favor working class voters on such issues as expanding healthcare coverage through a “public option” or bolstering union organizing rights. And even where it does – for example – by calling for a “wealth tax” in addition to a more progressive income and higher corporate tax rate – the party, he argues, refuses to lead on these issues, hoping against hope that its public neutering of an openly working class agenda might appease moderates and swing voters, many of them Republican, who are genuinely alarmed at Trump’s excesses…Harris, despite much early fanfare, failed in the end to mobilize record numbers of Democratic base voters – but she managed to capture just 50% of wavering independents. For the Sanders/AOC faction of the party, this is strong evidence that Democrats should stop talking out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to class politics. Rally the country with a steadfast populism rooted in the unmet economic needs of the vast majority of working class and lower middle class Americans – while pointing the finger at the “billionaire class” that dominates the GOP and that continues to skew tax and regulatory policies in their favor –  and Democrats can win the White House again, their argument goes.”

At Semafor, David Weigel addresses the question, “Trump’s falling in polls. Why aren’t Democrats benefiting?,” and answers: “Democratic leaders love talking about the president’s flagging poll numbers. Their own numbers, not so much…When House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries got asked recently to react to a colleague who worried that the party was too focused on El Salvador, he pivoted: “Our reaction is that Donald Trump has the lowest public approval rating of any president in modern American history.”…One day later, after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer boasted that “Trump has the lowest 100-day approval rating since they started polling 80 years ago,” CNN’s Manu Raju turned the question back on him. Schumer’s own approval rating was 17% in CNN’s poll, much lower than Trump’s…“Polls come and go,” said Schumer. “Our party is united.”…Polls nonetheless put Democrats in a notably weak position for a party aiming to win back Congress next year. In special elections held since Trump took office, Democrats have usually beat expectations, holding their Wisconsin Supreme Court majority and winning a slew of down-ballot races. But the party’s image has not recovered from 2024, and its marks in the spring of 2017 were higher than today.”

From the conclusion of “Who’s the Greatest Grifter of Them All?” by opinion essayist Thomas B. Edsall at The New York Times: “For Trump, a critical determinant of his ability to continue to profit from cryptocurrency will be the outcome of the 2026 election…If, as appears possible if not probable, Democrats retake the House next year, the likelihood is that Trump might well be impeached for a third time, and crypto would almost certainly be a centerpiece of that proceeding…The prospects that two-thirds of the Senate would vote to convict Trump of any impeachment charges about crypto — or anything else — are, however, slim to none, even if Democrats surprise everyone and retake the upper chamber…So what Trump can look forward to is holding office through to Jan. 20, 2029, while he and his business partners continue to come up with new digital currencies and new marketing techniques to raise their potential profits…At that point, with Trump no longer in office, the Supreme Court will once again be able to rule that any pending complaints involving foreign or domestic emoluments are moot…In other words, Trump is well on his way to becoming the greatest grifter of all time.”

Some notes and a map from Kyle Kondik’s “Notes on the State of the Senate: The Post-Kemp Battlefield” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Republicans missed out on a top recruiting target earlier this week, as Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) decided not to challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA)…Georgia remains a Toss-up in our ratings even as Ossoff’s reelection path got clearer… Another place where Democrats are playing defense, Michigan, remains a Toss-up, while a couple of other open Democratic seats in Democratic-leaning states, Minnesota and New Hampshire, are developing better for Democrats than Republicans…While there have already been many key developments in the race for the Senate in 2026, history shows that key candidate decisions may still be months away in some places…Republicans remain favored to retain control of the Senate in 2026, and we are not changing any ratings in this update.” Here’s the map:

WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. probes the reasons why “Trump boomerang sinks Australia’s right wing,” and writes that “voters Down Under offered a potent lesson about the boomerang effect to Donald Trump and his MAGA faithful. The president hoped his dominance of the world stage would inspire an international swing toward the nationalist far right. Instead, Australians — angry and mystified by Trump’s tariffs — gifted their center-left prime minister, Anthony Albanese, whose Labor Party trailed in the polls only a few months ago, a landslide victory few predicted…Labor’s triumph came less than a week after Canada’s voters, in an election even more clearly defined by Trump, rescued the center-left Liberal Party from the polling wilderness and ratified Mark Carney as their prime minister…Wayne Swan, president of the Labor Party and former deputy prime minister, told me that Albanese won because “the economic imperative overrode the cultural imperative.”…Yet on Thursday, another center-left leader, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, suffered a real electoral setback at the hands of the far-right Reform UK party, which took a parliamentary seat from Labor on a huge swing in a special election. Reform UK also marched across Britain in local elections that dealt serious defeats to Labor and, even more dramatically, to the traditionally center-right Conservative Party. You can bet that Trump will try to ignore the triumphs of Albanese and Carney and instead talk up Nigel Farage, Reform UK’s leader and a Trump ally.” In Australia, “A signal moment came when Dutton, during a debate, accused Albanese of being “weak.” Albanese shot back: “Kindness isn’t weakness.” Dionne concludes, “Trump’s tariffs can’t stop good questions from crossing borders or oceans. Importing that one would not affect our balance of payments, but it could alter the balance of decency in our politics. Voters in Australia and Canada would like us to think about it.”

From “Good Jobs, Strong Families In Working-Class America” by Grant Martsolf at ifstudies.org: “The last 50 years have been difficult for many working-class Americans. Beginning in the late 1970s, the U.S. economy entered a period of rapid deindustrialization, leading to a significant decline in manufacturing jobs—jobs that had long provided reliable, well-paying employment for Americans without a college degree (a common definition of the “working class”), especially men. Economic prospects for this group have suffered considerably. Between 1979 and 2019, real wages for workers without a college degree declined by 11%, while wages for the median college graduate increased by 15 percent…The challenges facing working-class Americans extend beyond economics. They have also seen a broad erosion of key social institutions traditionally associated with a flourishing life. One institution arguably hit hardest is the family…In a new IFS/PRRUCS report, Brad Wilcox and I show that, in 1980, working-class men ages 25–54 were actually four percentage points more likely than college-educated men to be married with children at home. However, that changed rapidly over the following decades. While all men experienced significant declines in marriage and family formation, working-class men were hit especially hard. By 2021, only 34% of working-class men were married with children at home, compared to 44% of college-educated men…There are certainly many factors driving these trends, but the worsening economic prospects of working-class men are clearly among the most important. We know that marriage and work are closely linked. For example, women are more likely to be attracted to potential partners that can reasonably provide for a family—men with well-paying, stable jobs that offer benefits. Likewise, men with families are more likely to work and to pursue stable, higher-quality employment.” Read more here.

For a peek at what political leaders can do at the state level to help working-class families and gain support from them, check out “New Blue Collar Caucus Aims to Support Connecticut’s Working Class” by Karla Ciaglo at ctnewsjunkie.com. An excerpt: “HARTFORD, CT — A new coalition of legislators made its debut earlier this week as the 30-member Blue Collar Caucus held its first press conference to lay out an agenda…State representatives Kara Rochelle, D-Ansonia, and Rebecca Martinez, D-Plainville, the caucus co-chairs, outlined the group’s priorities: expanding job training, enforcing wage laws, ensuring access to affordable healthcare, protecting labor rights, advancing tax policies that prioritize the middle class, and taking legislative action to confront corporate greed…Martinez pointed to the economic hardship in her own district, where nearly one-third of households fall below the ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) threshold…“No one should have to choose between rent, medicine, safety, and survival,” Martinez said. “I am committed to affordability, education, collective bargaining, and senior dignity. It’s time we put our working families first.”…The representatives, joined by labor leaders and community advocates, spotlighted a slate of bills backed by the caucus, including measures to provide healthcare support for paraeducators, combat wage theft, protect residents in manufactured homes and bills expanding child tax benefits…A key focus was Senate Bill 8, An Act Concerning Protections For Workers and Enhancements to Workers’ Rights. That bill would provide unemployment insurance benefits to striking workers…State Rep. Kate Farrar, D-West Hartford, celebrated the inclusion of a new child tax credit in the state’s revenue package — $150 per child, up to three children, with income-based phaseouts — and said she’s optimistic about the caucus’s impact moving forward…“We know that meaningful tax relief isn’t just common sense,” Farrar said. “It also addresses our broken tax code, which for too long has favored the wealthy. This puts dollars in the hands of families who need them most.”

Jake Johnson rolls it out in his Common Dreams article, “‘A Disgrace’: Trump Budget Gives $1 Trillion to Military While Slashing Programs for Working Class,” and writes: “The budget blueprint that U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled Friday would give a record $1.01 trillion to the American military for the coming fiscal year while imposing $163 billion in total cuts to housing, education, healthcare, climate, and labor programs…The proposal, released by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, was viewed by Democratic lawmakers and other critics as a clear statement of the White House’s intent to gut programs that working class Americans rely on while pursuing another round of tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and bolstering the Pentagon, a morass of waste and abuse…”President Trump has made his priorities clear as day,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “He wants to outright defund programs that help working Americans while he shovels massive tax breaks at billionaires like himself and raises taxes on middle-class Americans with his reckless tariffs…This president believes we should shred at least $163 billion in investments here at home that make all the difference for families and have been essential to America’s success—but that we should hand billionaires and the biggest corporations trillions in new tax breaks,” Murray added. “That is outrageous—and it should offend every hardworking American who wants their tax dollars to help them live a good life, not pad the pockets of billionaires.”

Gabriel Thompson says it well in “Trump Promised to Fight for Workers — Instead, He’s Undermined Them: 100 days in, the self-styled champion of the working class has delivered layoffs, trade wars and an erosion of worker protections” at Capital and Main. As Thompson explains, “Trump campaigned on fighting for the working class, and exit polls found that he won 56% of the blue-collar vote, defined as voters without a college degree, while making gains among working-class Black and Latino voters. Shortly after the election, Trump nominated Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a pro-union Republican, for labor secretary. On Inauguration Day, Trump promised his administration would “protect American workers.”…The administration has fired tens of thousands of federal workers, stripped a million more of collective bargaining rights, axed higher minimum wage requirements and gutted programs and agencies that enforce labor and safety standards and protect workers’ rights to organize…“This regime of billionaires has launched an all-out assault on working people,” said Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which has joined the American Federation of Government Employees in lawsuits to block a number of Trump’s executive orders. “They’ve brought to a halt the very agencies that help workers negotiate strong contracts, investigate unfair labor practices and hold employers accountable.”…Trump has also hollowed out agencies and programs that protect workers from physical harm, harassment and discrimination. In April, cuts to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, which researches workplace hazards, led to a workforce reduction of more than 90%…In early April, J.P. Morgan raised the likelihood of a recession to 60% and has maintained that forecast, even after Trump suspended some tariffs.”

Hugh Cameron reports that “Union Workers Turn on Trump Tariffs: ‘Direct Attack on the Working Class’‘ at Newsweek,” and writes: “…The president’s trade policies, both the recent reciprocal tariffs and previous measures targeting metals and auto imports, have received support from many unions, which have praised them as necessary to amend global trade balances and increase the competitiveness of domestic industry…However, there is growing discontent among the sectors likely to feel the impacts of the drastic increase in import taxes and rising prices, with the logistics sector the latest to claim that the tariffs will wreak havoc on their industry and the economy at large…”We demand fair trade policies that put working class Americans first, protect jobs, and reduce taxes on the American people, not trade policies dictated by a president’s whims,” the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) said in a policy statement…While the ILWU said that decades of free trade agreements had “negatively impacted American workers,” it criticized Trump’s approach to addressing this as “haphazard and destructive,” while warning that the costs of food, energy and household goods would rise as a result…Similar warnings have been issued by associations representing the retail and home construction sectors, while the United Auto Workers union (UAW)—which had previously voice its support for “aggressive tariff action to protect American manufacturing jobs”—has recently offered a more critical view on Trump’s import duties…”We support some use of tariffs on auto manufacturing and similar industries. We do not support tariffs for political games about immigration or fentanyl,” UAW president Shawn Fain said in an address to members on April 10…Veronique de Rugy, a political economist at George Mason University, in response to the decline in trans-Pacific shipping, told Newsweek: “This kind of sharp drop means that a wide range of American industries—not just retail, but also manufacturing, transportation, warehousing, and wholesale sectors—will feel the consequences.”

New York Times opinion columnist Thomas B. Edsall probes “How Does a Stymied Autocrat Deal With Defeat?,” shares the results of several interviews and notes: “The window of opportunity that allowed President Trump to overwhelm his adversaries with an onslaught of executive orders dismantling core American institutions is closing…Public opinion has turned against him, the economy is faltering, the Supreme Court has ordered him to stand down, his tariffs have backfired, and such conservative mainstays as National Reviewand The Wall Street Journal are questioning his judgment…How does a stymied autocrat deal with defeat? As the opposition gains strength, frustrating the nation’s commander in chief, how will Trump respond?…It is unthinkable to imagine him graciously acknowledging defeat, changing direction and moving on.” Edsall quotes Steven Pinker, “a psychologist at Harvard who has been at the forefront of the university’s confrontation with the Trump administration,” who says that Bullies and street toughs “think well of themselves not in proportion to their accomplishments but out of a congenital sense of entitlement. When reality intrudes, as it inevitably will, they treat the bad news as a personal affront and its bearer, who is endangering their fragile reputation, as a malicious slanderer…And the trio of symptoms at narcissism’s core — grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy — fits political tyrants to a T. It is most obvious in their vainglorious monuments, hagiographic iconography and obsequious mass rallies.”

Edsall adds, “There is still a larger question. If, in the face of adversity, Trump and his allies attempt to overturn democracy, what are their chances? I asked Herbert Kitschelt, a professor of international relations at Duke and the 2025 recipient of the prestigious Johan Skytte Prize in political science, that question, and he provided a nuanced reply by email: “No scientific, evidence-based investigation can currently provide a factually grounded prognosis” on “whether and how Trump and the Christian evangelical-nationalist-Southern wing of the Republican Party might break the democratic Constitution of the United States,” he wrote…Instead, Kitschelt argued, it is possible to “outline the forces that may impinge on whether this process will take place or not.”…A severe economic crisis, which Kitschelt believes is probable, given current trends, would sharply undermine Republican prospects in the 2026 congressional elections, which might prompt Trump and his allies to “realize that they cannot win a free and fair election and actually might face a defeat in the midterms severe enough to precipitate the impeachment of both president and vice president.”

In “Democrats are losing the most important fight in history,” Mark Sumner explains at Daily Kos: “The purpose of every protest, every call, every letter, every blog post, and every skeet being made in opposition to Donald Trump is the same: Show that what Trump is doing isn’t just wrong, it’s also unpopular. Because popularity, like it or not, is important…Establishing the popularity of a position is key to political power. Mass protests alone may not be enough to move the needle, but that needle nevermoves without mass protests. And the calls. And the letters. It takes it all…The good news is that, when it comes to Trump’s poll numbers, it’s all working. Despite a national news media that seems disinterested in calling out Trump’s goose-stepping all over the Constitution, they can’t hide the basic chaos and vindictiveness of this regime…Trump is underwater on the economy, on the war in Ukraine, and even on immigration. He is so immensely unpopular that he has broken the previous unpopularity record set by … Donald Trump…With their razor-thin advantage in the House, Republicans should be terrified. Phones should be ringing off the hook at lobbying firms as Republican reps seek to leverage their positions for fresh employment while they still can…polls still show that the Democratic Party is hugely underwater, and despite everything, less popular than the Republican Party on every key issue. Even as Americans are waking to the horror of what Trump is doing, they are not looking to Democrats for help…Trump is sinking, but the Democratic Party is sinking more than Trump. Republicans continue to enjoy an advantage in head-to-head polling…Trump is historically unpopular. He’s going to get more unpopular as prices rise, jobs decline, and people realize they’ve all been taken for a ride. We’re even seeing something this cycle that we didn’t see in 2018: A large number of Trump voters waking up to their mistake and looking for an alternative…Democrats better give them that alternative soon. Or someone will.”

Alan I. Abramowitz explains why the “Generic Ballot Model Gives Democrats Strong Chance to Take Back House in 2026“: “…Even in a neutral political environment, one in which the two parties are tied on the generic ballot, Republicans would be expected to lose about 13 seats in the House and about 5 seats in the Senate. Losses of that magnitude would give Democrats control of both chambers in the next Congress. As of April 23, 2025, the generic ballot average, according to RealClearPolitics, favors Democrats by 1.5 points—very close to a tie…While the generic ballot model’s current prediction of a Democratic gain of more than a dozen seats in the House probably will not surprise most observers of American politics, the model’s forecast of a Democratic gain of five Senate seats—one more than Democrats would need to regain control of the Senate—undoubtedly will. The main reason for the expectation of a significant Democratic gain in the Senate is the fact that Republicans will be defending 22 of the 35 Senate seats at stake in the 2026 midterm election, and seat exposure is a strong predictor of seat swing in the model. However, there are reasons to be skeptical about the model’s Senate forecast…Over time, Senate elections, like House elections, have become increasingly aligned with presidential voting patterns. In 2022, for example, the correlation between the Republican share of the Senate vote and the Republican share of the 2020 presidential vote was a near-perfect .96, and 34 of 35 states voted for a Senate candidate from the party that carried the state in the 2020 presidential election. The only exception was Wisconsin, which backed Democrat Joe Biden for president in 2020 and then reelected Republican Sen. Ron Johnson two years later, both by very narrow margins…The challenge for Democrats in 2026 is, while 22 Republican seats will be up for grabs compared with only 13 Democratic seats, only one of the states with a Republican Senator—Maine—voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, while two states with Democratic senators—Georgia and Michigan—voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Moreover, only one other state with a Republican senator—North Carolina—voted for Trump by less than 5 points. The next likeliest states for Democratic gains in 2026 would be Ohio, Iowa, Texas, and Florida, all of which voted for Trump by margins of between 10 and 15 points…Given the close connection between Senate and presidential voting patterns in recent elections, these results suggest that the national political environment would probably have to be tilted significantly in favor of Democrats for Republicans to suffer a net loss of four or more Senate seats in 2026. The current 1.5-point Democratic advantage on the generic ballot probably would not be enough. It would probably take a Democratic lead of close to 10 points to produce a swing of that magnitude.”

“Donald Trump won back the Oval Office and took charge of the government amid the strongest poll numbers of his political career,” Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy write in “CNN Poll: Trump’s approval at 100 days lower than any president in at least seven decades” at CNN Politics. They continue, adding “but as the 100-day mark of his presidency approaches, Americans’ views of what he’s done so far have turned deeply negative, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds…Trump’s 41% approval rating is the lowest for any newly elected president at 100 days dating back at least to Dwight Eisenhower – including Trump’s own first term…Approval of Trump’s handling of the presidency is down 4 points since March, and 7 points lower than it was in late February. Just 22% say they strongly approve of Trump’s handling of the job, a new low, and about twice as many say they strongly disapprove (45%)…Since March, Trump has seen notable drops in approval from women and Hispanic Americans (down 7 points in each group to 36% among women and 28% among Hispanics). Partisan views of Trump remain broadly polarized, with 86% of Republicans approving and 93% of Democrats disapproving. But among political independents, the president’s approval rating has dipped to 31%, matching his first-term low point with that group and about the same as his standing with them in January 2021…The poll finds the president underwater and sinking across nearly all major issues he’s sought to address during his time in office, with the public’s confidence in his ability to handle those issues also on the decline.”

The ‘abundance’ freaks get a proper thrashing in “An Abundance of Credulity; They want abundance. But they ignore who profits most from scarcity” by Hannah Story Brown, who writes in her review article of two books at The American Prospect, “In the months before the re-election of Donald Trump precipitated our rapid descent into authoritarianism, two books were being written about the idea that progressivism went astray in the 1960s and 1970s. In Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson describe a drift into a “politics of scarcity,” and in Why Nothing Works, Marc Dunkelman calls it a “cultural aversion to power.” Both books ask a pertinent question: Why doesn’t the government do big, bold things, quickly, to address the pressing issues of our time? We have an abundance of viewpoints and veto points, they argue, but a shortage of affordable housing and transmission lines. Something’s got to give…The unstated question, of course, is who must give. The problems the authors identify are real, but they largely ignore who benefits from prolonging them. Their vision is of a government that’s more responsive to the public’s needs, but their proposal is to remove already inadequate levers for accountability in political decision-making. We should be able to agree that the tools we have to ensure progress and affluence are insufficient, without concluding that the answer is to throw them away. Improving those tools—making them actually fit for purpose—will require keeping them out of the hands of those who would wield them to exploit us. But that discussion is missing from these books…Yet the political landscape has shifted rapidly under the feet of these authors over the first several weeks of the second Trump term. Arguing for fewer checks on government action hits very different amid mass firings, unilateral cancellations of appropriated spending, and dissolutions of entire federal agencies. The diagnosis of what constrains the state acting authoritatively to meet public needs—more or less the messy multivocality of democracy—is an ill match for an era of accelerating authoritarianism.” Read on here for more of Brown’s argument.

If you want to give the yapping of nationalist wingnuts a rest and ponder current politics from a global perspective, check out “The Chainsaw International: From Trump to Milei, the far right is betting that spectacles of revenge will compensate for steep economic sacrifice.” by William Callison and Veronica Gago, who write at Boston Review: “In an image shared around the world, Elon Musk is seen grunting while waving a chainsaw over his head at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington in February. Perhaps less virally circulated was the scene just before, when the far-right libertarian president of Argentina, Javier Milei, walked onstage to gift Musk the chainsaw—a replica with a blade etched with his now-famous motto, ¡Viva la libertad, carajo! (“Long live freedom, dammit!”)…Milei represents a far-right vanguard of authoritarian experimentation. From the war on gender to defunding universities, from the glorification of Israel’s destruction in Gaza to rejecting an independent judiciary, new authoritarian regimes are showing how fascism can develop most rapidly and directly…In this project, the chainsaw is not simply a metaphor. It is the logic of a new far-right wave of anarcho-authoritarian neoliberalism spreading across Latin America, North America, and Europe…Milei turns the whole country into a “sacrifice zone”—to borrow a term from scholarship on extractivism—by offering up land to businesses for further plunder and environmental degradation…In this way, individual sacrifice and national sacrifice zones are two sides of the same coin. Sacrifice is a rhetoric that seeks consent for dispossession. You are neither exploited nor dispossessed, it says; you are part of a greater sacrificial project that must be embraced to be successful. Your suffering is necessary and will ultimately do you well. While land, resources, and peoples must be sacrificed—that is, gifted—to international capital, the ethos of speculative competition is imposed on individuals as a general law, transforming subjectivities and exhausting social reproduction…From the United States to Argentina, El Salvador to Ecuador, the wager of the resurgent right is that these spectacles of revenge—trolling the zurdos, owning the libs—can mask or even compensate for material dispossession. When citizens start balking at the sacrifices demanded of them, these governments simultaneously deflect, deepen their cuts, and demand anticipatory obedience. How long the wages of cruelty can substitute for real wages remains to be seen. But so long as they do, popular resistance will be necessary to contest the chainsaw’s right to rule.”

At Brookings, William A. Galston has a post up, entitled “Trump loses public support during his first 3 months in office” and writes: “Trump began his second term with a burst of public goodwill and hope. After his first week, an average of 50.5% of the American people approved of the way he was doing his job, while 44.3% disapproved, a net positive rating of 6.2 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. By mid-April, his job approval had fallen to 46.9%, a decline of 3.6 points, while disapproval rose to 50.3%, an increase of 6.0 points. This represents a substantial swing of 9.6 points, from a net positive of 6.2 points in late January to a net negative of 3.4 points today…Trends within the highly regarded Economist/YouGov survey, which is conducted weekly, help us understand why this is happening. According to this survey, the public’s top concerns since the beginning of the administration until now have been economic, specifically inflation/high prices and jobs/overall economy. Back in January, Trump’s handling of inflation and high prices was viewed positively by 45% of the public and negatively by 39%, for a net positive rating of 6 points. But by mid-April, the public’s assessment had become strongly negative, with just 37% approving versus 55% disapproving. Approval fell by 8 points, while disapproval surged by 16 points. Trump’s handling of jobs and the economy during this period showed another concerning pattern, beginning with a 12-point net positive rating and ending with a 7-point negative. Approval fell by 7 points while disapproval rose by 12 points.”

Galston adds, “Not surprisingly, the public’s confidence in their economic future took a hit. At the beginning of the administration, 38% expected that “a year from now, you and your household will be better off,” compared to just 20% who expected to be worse off. By April, the share who expected to be better off had fallen by 7 points to 31% while the share who expected to be worse off had increased by 14 points to 34%. Otherwise put, an 18-point net positive turned into a 3-point negative…Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election reflected large gains among two previously Democratic-leaning groups, Hispanics and young adults ages 18 to 29. Since the beginning of his administration, however, his loss of support from these groups has been especially steep. Among Hispanics, his favorability has fallen from 42% to 25% while disapproval has rocketed from 47% to 71%. Among young adults, his rating moved from a 5-point net positive (48% to 43%) to a 21-point net negative (33% to 54%). During this period, Hispanic approval of his handling of inflation and high prices dropped sharply—from 42% approving and 37% disapproving to 27% approving and 67% disapproving—a net decline of 45 points. Among young adults, approval also fell significantly, with a net drop of 40 points. Consistent with these economic judgments, the share of both Hispanics and young adults who thought that the country was on the wrong track rose by 10 points.”

Galston continues, “There is, of course, no guarantee that these trends will continue, but Trump’s decision to impose high tariffs on the rest of the world may make it more difficult for him to recover the ground he has lost, and his shifting stances on when and where to implement these tariffs further weakens public support as well as business confidence…The most recent Economist/YouGov survey found only 38% approval for this strategy, compared to 54% disapproval. Only 30% of young adults approved, and among Hispanics, just 24%, with 67% disapproving. Fifty-one percent of young adults and 60% of Hispanics believe that these tariffs will be harmful to both the economy and consumers, with “no real long-term benefits.”…It’s not hard to see why. Fully 75% of Americans—and similar shares of Hispanics and young adults—believe that Trump’s tariffs will increase prices for what they buy, while only 6% think that these tariffs will lower prices. The president has not persuaded Americans that foreign countries and producers will bear the burden of higher tariffs, or that the gain will be worth the pain…The significance of the survey findings extends beyond the administration’s current travails. In the wake of the 2024 elections, many observers suggested that Donald Trump’s strong showing among Hispanics and young adults indicated a long-term realignment away from the Democratic Party toward the Republicans. But if their current economic disappointment leads them to reconsider their choice, they are more likely to become swing groups in the electorate than parts of the base of either party, and the pattern of closely contested elections yielding narrow and shifting majorities could continue indefinitely.”

In “As Democrats rally around Abrego Garcia case, some worry a due process argument won’t land with voters,” Arit John and Eva McKend explain at CNN Politics: “Democrats’ efforts to land on a winning message against President Donald Trumphave led the party to consider how fully to embrace a new, politically complex cause: pressuring the administration to follow a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia…The party has uniformly spoken in support of Abrego Garcia’s right to due process after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last month. But some have expressed concern in recent days over how it has conveyed the nuances of their argument that a violation of one person’s due process rights – regardless of their personal backstory or legal status – threatens everyone in the US. And as Democrats look to take back power in Washington, starting with next year’s midterm elections, how that message is received by voters matters…Democrats who’ve urged a different approach say they worry that the party isn’t doing enough to broaden the due process argument beyond Abrego Garcia’s case. Others have argued it’s a “distraction” from more politically salient messages on the economy that shifts the conversation to immigration, where Trump holds an advantage with voters.” The controversy provides yet another example of how Republicans go for the cheap shot, rather than address complex human rights issues. Democrats, meanwhile, have no choice but to support Garcia’s repatriation because it is the right thing to do. There are legitimate tactical questions for Democrats to consider, however, including how much to emphasize ‘due process’ arguments, when they are being presented the gift of Trumps cratering economic policies.

Bill Scher writes at The Washington Monthly that “Democrats should not look at poll numbers about general immigration sentiments and conclude the Garcia case and its horrific particulars is a political loser. The party has a moral and constitutional case to make against the Trumpian authoritarian approach to government. For that case to have any legitimacy—for it to not be dismissed as cheap political point scoring—Democrats must act on the principles they have long articulated…Throughout the 2024 campaign, Democrats warned that if elected Trump would behave like a dictator and undermine the foundations of American democracy. They were right, and now he is. It’s not the time to act as if constitutional checks and balances are no longer important because it doesn’t poll as well as some other issue…  Will the 2026 and 2028 elections more likely turn on the economy? Yes. Isn’t it the case that Trump is sandbagging the economy with arbitrary tariffs? Yes. Shouldn’t Democrats focus on that? Yes. But Democrats can do that while also calling out Trump’s abuses of power… In fact, Democrats can easily tie Trump’s disregard for the economy with his disregard for Garcia’s human rights. They can say, “Instead of lowering our prices like he promised to do, Trump and his Republican allies are obsessed with raising the cost of all imported goods and abducting people legally in America and sending them to foreign prisons.”… Fortunately, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have unequivocally stated Garcia should be returned home. They should continue to set that tone and encourage their colleagues to keep up the pressure until justice is done.”

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain has an article at Jacobin, in which he writes: “In the labor movement, at our best, we have a different way of doing politics. We don’t make politics about personalities or parties; we see politics as a negotiation. We don’t sit down to negotiate with corporate executives because we like them or trust them. We focus on what we need as a working class and what the hell it’s going to take to get it, and we do that whether we’re sitting across from the friendliest CEO or the meanest Wall Street con artist…Politics is just like contract negotiation. You win what you have the power to fight for, and that’s exactly the situation we find ourselves in right now…We’re negotiating with the Trump administration; our approach to President Donald Trump is no different than our approach was to President Joe Biden, and it’s no different than our approach at Stellantis or Columbia University or General Dynamics…I keep hearing people say, “UAW loves Trump now,” or “The UAW only supports Democrats.” It’s all bullshit. Our union has a clear North Star, and that’s the working class. The working class’s issues don’t change because somebody has a D or an R next to their name…We’ve seen some reckless and chaotic activity on trade from this administration, and there’s a lot of fear of disruption. But what we have to remember is that disruption is not new to factory workers in this country — disruption is what we’ve been living with for thirty years under a free-trade disaster…It doesn’t mean we support reckless random tariffs. I don’t believe that’s the answer to all this. But there is a reason for tariffs, and it’s also a mistake to just defend the status quo, especially when it comes to free trade…We have to end this free-trade disaster, and we don’t care if it’s a Democrat or a Republican who ends it.”

Fain continues, “It’s not enough for politicians to talk a good game about wanting to bring back jobs — they need to be good union jobs, with good standards. And we have good reason to be suspicious that the Trump administration is not interested in supporting the right to organize or bargain…Because here’s what we’ve seen so far from the Trump administration: we’ve seen the destruction of bargaining rights for a million federal workers. That’s not good for the working class. We’ve seen attacks on the National Labor Relations Board, including illegally firing a board member, leading to deadlock on workers’ cases. That’s not good for the working class. We’ve seen attacks planned on Social Security,Medicare, and Medicaid, programs that millions of workers depend on. That’s not good for the working class…We’ve seen the absolute trampling of constitutional rights. We have seen the First Amendment go up in smoke at college campuses — with detentions, deportations, expulsions, and firings of people who dared to speak out against and protest against a war, just to call for a cease-fire. We have seen the right to due process disappear as working people are deported for no crime and no reason. That’s not good for the working class…When we speak out against these actions, we get called liberals by the right-wingers; when we speak out in support of tariffs, we get called right-wingers by the liberals. People say we’re flip-flopping or doing a 180. The truth is, what we are doing is acting with integrity…We disagree with 99 percent of what the Trump administration is doing, when it comes to attacks on labor and working-class people and attacks on free speech…But no matter what party you voted for, understand there is a direct line between the free-trade disaster and the political chaos in this country. Plant closures and mass layoffs resulted in intense pain and suffering and anger for hundreds of thousands of working families in our country. All that pain and anger had to go somewhere — a lot of it went to support Donald Trump for president…We need to build a political movement that can put the working class first, and to do that we’re going to need working-class people to step up, to speak up, and take on corporate America, from the bargaining table to the ballot box.”

In “The daunting task facing Democrats trying to win back the working class,” Christian Paz writes at Vox, via yahoo.com: “It’s perhaps the most urgent reason Democrats lost in November: The party has solidly lost the support of working-class voters across the country and doesn’t have a solid sense of how to win them back…Now, a group of Democratic researchers, strategists, and operatives are launching a renewed effort to figure out — and to communicate to the rest of their party — what it is that these voters want, where they think the party went wrong, and how to best respond to their concerns before the 2026 election cycle…Led by Mitch Landrieu, former Democratic lieutenant governor of Louisiana and former mayor of New Orleans, the Working Class Project plans to offer guidance over the next few months on how to build “a more sustainable majority” in future elections…Last year marked the first time in nearly 60 years that the lowest-earning Americans voted for the Republican presidential candidate over the Democratic one…“Since President Obama was first elected in 2008, Democrats have seen over 25 percent in net loss of support among working class voters,” Landrieu explains in the project’s launch announcement. “In other words, for two decades, Democrats have been on a downward slide among the very voters whose interests we champion and who benefit most from our policies.”…Housed within the liberal opposition research firm and Super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, the Working Class Project is primarily focused on research, polling, and focus group works. They’re focused on reaching and listening to voters in 21 states: the traditional seven battleground states, seven safely Democratic states with large shares of white and nonwhite working-class voters (which drifted right last year), and seven solidly Republican states.”

By almost any measure that statisticians cook up, more than 40 percent of America’s labor force is employed in small businesses (Go ahead and ask Siri, Alexa or Google). Some of them are managers and more of them are blue collar or office workers. But they are all significantly affected by the climate of economic uncertainty created by Captain Chaos.

In the stub of the Bulwark interview we recently ran, GOP strategist Sarah Longwell noted that a lot of small business owners and employees “understand supply chains…They really understand tariffs…they thought he would be better for their small business in the economy. And those are the people right now who are like, well, this kind of uncertainty makes it impossible for me to run my business…uncertainty is the worst condition for a small business because…you got to order things in advance.”

Democrats would be smart to pounce on this insight and ride it to the midterms with unbridled gusto. Here’s a few recent articles to peruse for ammo:

Small businesses sue Trump administration over authority to impose tariffs by Matthew Kaufman, CNN.

Small business owners speak out about effects of Trump tariffs: ‘Unsustainable‘ by Daniella Genovese, FoxBusiness.

Two-Thirds of Small Business Owners Say Tariffs Will Hurt Their Company  by and at pymnts.com.

A doomsday scenario’: CEO says Trump’s China tariffs could shutter his business ‘within months by Tom Huddleston, Jr. at CNBC.com.

Tariffs create costly chaos for Amazon sellers — including the Trump supporters: Small businesses that depend on overseas suppliers have endured a week of stressful uncertainty by Caroline O’Donovan at The Washington Post.

Do ​Tariffs Mean Raising Prices? The Question For Small Businesses by Rohit Arora at Forbes.

Trump’s China tariffs are slamming small businesses — the heart of our economy and his own voters by The New York Post Editorial Board.

Tariffs have small business in ‘survival mode’ by Kai Ryssdal and Nicholas Guiang at Marketplace.

‘We’re in a New Reality’: Small Business Owners Suffering from Tariffs Are Speaking Out On social media, entrepreneurs are expressing confusion and concern about what import duties mean for their supply chains by Brian Contreras at Inc.

In his first big speech since leaving the white House, former President “Joe Biden accuses Trump and Musk of taking ‘hatchet’ to social security.” So reports Lauren Gambino at The Guardian, and continues: “Joe Biden on Tuesday accused Donald Trump and his billionaire lieutenant, Elon Musk, of “taking a hatchet” to the social security administration as they moved at warp-speed to dismantle large swaths of the federal government…In his first public remarks since leaving office, the former president avoided any explicit mention of Trump – his predecessor and successor – but he was sharply critical of the new administration for threatening social security, which Biden called a “sacred promise” that more than 70 million Americans rely on each month…“In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage and so much destruction,” Biden said, addressing the national conference of Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicago. “It’s kind of breathtaking that it could happen that soon.”…On Tuesday, Democrats across the country held a day of action to “sound the alarm” over the Trump administration’s plans to downsize the social security administration, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier on Tuesday. Biden referenced the sweeping cuts to the agency’s workforce and its services in his remarks…“In the 90 years since Franklin Roosevelt created the social security system, people have always gotten their social security checks,” Biden said. “They’ve gotten them during wartime, during recessions, during a pandemic. No matter what, they got them. But now for the first time ever, that might change. It’d be a calamity for millions of families.” Read on here.

Aging and somnolent Democratic members of congress alert: The younguns are coming for your seat. That’s the gist of “In unprecedented move, DNC official to spend big to take down fellow Democrats” by Elena Schneider at Politico, who writes: “David Hogg, a controversial Democratic National Committee vice chair, is pledging to upend Democratic primaries by funding candidates who will challenge “ineffective, asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats…The move puts Hogg, the now 25-year-old who first gained national stature as an outspoken survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, on a collision course with his own party and some Democratic House members…Leaders We Deserve, which Hogg co-founded in 2023, announced plans on Tuesday to spend $20 million in safe-blue Democratic primaries against sitting House members by supporting younger opponents. In an interview with POLITICO, Hogg said the group will not back primary challenges in battleground districts because “I want us to win the majority,” nor will it target members solely based on their age…“We have a culture of seniority politics that has created a litmus test of who deserves to be here,” Hogg said. “We need people, regardless of their age, that are here to fight.” Some may grumble about ‘ageism.’ But isn’t that what is going on right now, effectively locking out capable young people who want to become Democratic office-holders? In any case, few sentient Dems would doubt that their party could benefit by a makeover featuring a more youthful look, or at least a less ossified one. Hogg is doing something about it, and it looks like he has the smarts do it intelligently. We sure as hell could use more young voters.

“Working-class voters respond to arguments about protecting America from foreign “invaders” because being American is blue-collar people’s strongest boast; it’s the source of their status, so they like politicians who emphasize it,” Joan C. Williams, author of “White Working Class” and the forthcoming “Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back,” writes in “Democrats need to speak to cultural concerns as well as economics” at The Los Angeles Times. She notes further, “A 2020 poll found that being American was an important part of the identity of 79% of Americans with (at most) high school degrees, but only 43% of predominantly college-educated progressive activists. The college-educated, in contrast, prefer to stress their top-of-the-heap membership in a globalized elite. Working-class voters also define their communities geographically, where they have networks based on neighborhood and kinship. By contrast, the “Brahmin Left” (to use Thomas Piketty’s term) see themselves as part of an international community characterized by “feeling rules” that mandate empathy for immigrants and racial minorities but less often for class-disadvantaged citizens of their own countries…People’s values reflect their lives, and their lives reflect their privilege — or lack of it. This is a message progressives, with their acuity about racial and gender privilege, should be able to hear. It could help them come to terms with an uncomfortable fact: Non-college voters of every racial group are less liberal than college grads of the same group…But moderates need to expand their cultural awareness too. When moderates like commentator Ruy Teixeira and the advocacy group Third Way argue that Democrats should throw identity politics under the bus and abandon their strong views on trans rights and climate change, they too are overlooking the cultural dimension of contemporary politics. Just as members of the Brahmin Left need to acknowledge that the logic of their lives differs from the logic of working-class lives, moderates need to acknowledge that progressives won’t just give in on issues like climate change. Those issues are deeply etched into progressives’ identities: The Brahmin Left is truly worried about the end of the world, even as non-elites are more concerned about the end of the month.”

Maeve Reston writes at msn.com that “Matt Bennett, executive vice president for public affairs at the centrist group Third Way, said the size of Sanders’s crowds has been impressive. But he argued they are driven largely by anger about the Trump administration’s policies rather than any sudden embrace of Sanders’s agenda of controversial policies like Medicare-for-all…“The problem with the far left is that they have scored their victories only against other Democrats. They have yet to flip a single House seat, not to mention the Senate,” Bennett said…Bennett said the only way to stop “the absolute catastrophe of Trumpism” is “to win majorities, and the only way to win majorities is with moderates in purple and red districts and states…But Faiz Shakir, a longtime Sanders adviser who ran for Democratic National Committee chair earlier this year, said Sanders is ascendant in this moment because he is channeling the wrath of regular people toward the billionaire class and “the hubris and lack of humanity” in people like Musk. Sanders remains popular at a time when the Democratic brand has hit historic lows because he’s known as “a class-based populist warrior against concentrations of wealth and power,” Shakir said…The Democratic brand, by contrast, Shakir said, is still “unsure of the class prism, far more focused on left versus right, social racial justice issues that are not on the main highway of the thing that millions and millions and millions of people are upset about.”

Here we have a lucid discussion between two Republican apostates about how to defeat Trump at their website, The Bulwark, which provides a full transcript, a stub of which is cross-posted below. You can also watch the discussion by clicking on this link. 

 Many will recognize the interviewer, Bill Kristol, as a venerable conservative commentator and analyst, who frequently appears news discussion shows. The interviewee, Sarah Longwell is a Republican strategist, who is strongly committed to defeating Trump. Her perceptive insights deserve serious consideration by Democrats.