Patrick Healy reports at The New York Times that “Bernie Sanders Is Expected to Endorse Hillary Clinton Next Week.”

“Is the Working Class Really Furious at the Upper Middle Class?” asks Kevin Drum at Mother Jones. ” wouldn’t be surprised if members of the lower middle class are more resentful of elites today than they were in the past. But I’m awfully tired of hearing this asserted endlessly based on nothing much at all. Throw me a bone, folks. Give me some real evidence that the working class is angrier than it’s ever been. Anything will do. Polls. Surveys. NSA wiretaps. Something—other than the fact that Donald Trump has a following among a group of Republican voters who have been mad at the eggheads forever and mad at Democrats ever since the Civil Rights Act was passed. What have you got?”

“My independence is pretty clearly demonstrated when I de-endorsed Donald Trump,” the Illinois Republican told a local radio station. “I felt Donald Trump was too bigoted and racist for the land of Lincoln.” – from Jordain Carney’s post, “GOP senator touts break from Trump” about Sen. Mark Kirk’s 180 degree flip-flop on Trump at The Hill. Political observers believe Democratic candidate Rep. Tammy Duckworth has an excellent chance to defeat Kirk in November.

Esther Yu-Hsi Lee reports that a “New Poll Reveals That Americans’ Anti-Immigrant Attitudes Are Fueled By Racism.” Lee notes “…According to the poll commissioned by Vox in partnership with Morning Consult, a nonpartisan media and technology company, American voters are worried about immigrants mostly because they have racialized fears of crime and terrorism…The poll, which looks at Americans’ views on immigrants from various countries, found that white Americans tend to have negative opinions about immigrants from non-European countries. They’re least positive about immigrants from the Middle East, and also hold negative views about immigrants from Latin America and Africa. At the same time, however, white Americans have a much more positive view of European immigrants and Asian immigrants.”

“Democrats Plan Early Attacks Tying G.O.P. Candidates to Trump” reports Alexander Biurns at The New York Times. Burns explains, “The attacks, set to air on cable television and online, are an unusually early effort to nationalize the battle for control of Congress. They target 10 incumbent Republican lawmakers in areas where Mr. Trump is expected to run poorly, including Denver, San Antonio and the Chicago suburbs…In one of two ads, the Democratic committee accuses Republicans of enabling a “bully” with “ideas that threaten our country’s security.”…“Republicans in Congress are just standing by him,” the ad says. “But shouldn’t they really be standing up to the bully?”

“Trump may be trailing in the polls,” writes Zachary Roth at NBC News, “and his cash-strapped campaign may be struggling to build a viable operation in key swing states. But the new wave of Republican-backed restrictions on voting — which look set to keep Democratic voters from the polls — could wind up being Trump’s ace in the hole if the race is close this fall. Tight voting laws also could boost the GOP in a host of House, Senate, governor, and state legislative races.

Greg Sargent sums it up succinctly at The Plum Line: “Trump’s con game is simple. He is trying to win over working class whites with anti-China, anti-free-trade bluster and a vow to crush the dark hordes who make them feel threatened culturally and economically, while simultaneously retaining just enough good will (via his other proposals) from GOP-aligned elites to remain the nominee and be competitive. This is not ideological heterodoxy. It’s a smorgasbord of policy ignorance and indifference, opportunism, making-it-up-on-the-fly, and of course, good old fashioned flim-flammery….Now, to be sure, Trump probably will win a sizable victory among working class whites. But it is also likely that he won’t be able to win among them by a large enough margin to offset countervailing demographic realities…”

Campaign for America’s Future’s Dave Johnson has more to say on this topic in his post, “Exposing Trump’s Trade Appeal to Working-Class Voters for What It Is” (reposted) at Alternet.

Also at Mother Jones, Patrick Caldwell rolls out the rationale for the play-it-safe Democratic running mate option: “He’s No One’s Idea of a Liberal Hero, But Tim Kaine Is a Natural Fit for Clinton: Behind the Virginia senator’s moderate reputation is a history of quiet progressive activism.”

Dave Weigel’s post at The Fix “Democrats have a bad habit of giving away Senate seats” should be required reading and thoroughly discussed by strategists in the Clinton campaign, as well as the DNC.

Sen. Sanders is calling on Clinton delgates to the Democratic convention to clarify their opposition to a vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the lame duck session of congress. Michael Edison Hayden reports at ABC News that “The Clinton campaign responded to ABC News’ request for comment by forwarding a recent statement the candidate made on TPP in response to criticisms from the Trump campaign: “Hillary Clinton opposes TPP today, she will oppose it in November, and she would not move it forward in January. Hillary Clinton has made clear that she is not interested in tinkering around the margins with TPP. As she has said repeatedly, she believes we need a new approach to trade that protects American jobs, raises incomes for American workers, and strengthens our national security.”

“The crown jewel of Obama’s machine, an email list of supporters that included 20 million addresses in 2012, is now fully available to Clinton. That list had been closely held within an Obama campaign committee that still exists to pay off old debt. Democratic groups and even Obama’s Organizing for Action nonprofit had to rent the list for a hefty sum…Now a copy of that list, which helped propel Obama to record-breaking fundraising, is controlled by the Democratic National Committee, which can send emails at will without going through Obama’s campaign…” — from Josh Lederman of the A.P.

Those who would like a little more political wonk with their morning coffee should try Sam Wang’s “The Presidential Meta-Analysis for 2016” at The Princeton Election Consortium. After analysing all of the data, Wang sees only one state, NC, in the toss-up category. Here’s one of his nifty graphics:

Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com is also providing data-driven updates in their feature, “Who will win the presidency?”

Economist Neil H. Buchanan makes a case at Newsweek that “Republicans Should Embrace a Hillary Clinton Presidency” and notes, “They will significantly increase their chances of winning in the future if they are seen as the party that is big enough to put partisanship aside in the best interests of the country…The entire political conversation would change from, “Wow, the Republicans are literally willing to do anything to win,” to an outpouring of plaudits for Republicans’ genuine patriotism.”

At The American Prospect Joshua Holland explains why it is unlikely that Hillary Clointon will move toward the political center to get elected. “..Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the last six elections, and in the past two they did it with what’s been called the “Rising American Electorate”—African Americans, Latinos, urban and suburban college-educated whites, and unmarried women. According to [Stan] Greenberg, those groups constituted 51 percent of voters in 2012, and he estimates that they’ll represent 53 percent of voters this year. But he also thinks that secular voters should be considered part of that new majority. Their inclusion, he says, expands the universe of voters who lean toward Democrats—and who are not moved by conservative messaging—to more like 64 percent of the electorate…“If they are consolidated and voting in large numbers, then that gives you a huge election,” says Greenberg. “For me, step one is to consolidate those voters and energize those voters, and if you look at the margin right now, many of the Sanders voters and many of the millennial voters have not yet consolidated. So [Clinton] has gains to be made by energizing that broad progressive base.”

Allie Yee crunches some numbers at Facing South and explains why “With deportation relief at stake, South’s Latinos could swing presidential race”

At Vox Caleb Lewis reports that “2 weeks out, and Trump’s convention is a total mess. Sad!” But at least it may not be as boring as the last couple of GOP quadrennial conventions, with all of the loons expected to participate.

Greg Sargent’s “The Plum Line Opinion: A Sanders endorsement of Clinton could still make a big difference” reports that a new battleground state poll from Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg’s Democracy Corps finds that “among likely voters in nine key battleground states, Clinton leads Donald Trump by eight points, 49-41.” Further,

…Trump’s Rust Belt strategy may be failing: In the aggregate of five of the states — Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire — Clinton leads by eight, 44-36. A second is that Clinton may be able to expand the map because she’s also doing well in the more diverse remaining states: In the aggregate of North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida, Clinton also leads by eight, 47-39.

In addition, Sargent concludes that ” Sanders’ endorsement [of Clinton] could, in fact, still have a real impact, meaning he may still have some genuine leverage to try to win more concessions designed to continue pushing the party’s agenda in a more progressive direction.”

Sargent notes that, while 89 percent of Democrats in the nine states are already supporting Clinton,

…Peek below the toplines, and it’s clear there’s plenty of room for a Sanders endorsement to help Clinton. This becomes clear when you look at the breakdown of numbers among not just Clinton and Trump, but also with libertarian Gary Johnson factored in, because apparently, a lot of Sanders supporters are now going for Johnson.

The poll finds that among voters who supported Sanders in the primary in the nine battlegrounds polled, 69 percent support Clinton, while six percent back Trump and another 17 percent support Johnson. What’s more, among millennials, it’s even more stark: 46 percent support Clinton, 24 percent back Trump, and 22 percent support Johnson.

Sargent quotes Greenberg, who adds

“It’s quite possible that many Sanders voters and millennials may be identifying as independents…Millennials, and white millennials in particular, are still out there and have not consolidated behind her.”

“Of his vote, there’s still a significant bloc voting for the Libertarian Party,” Greenberg continues. “Ninety percent of Sanders voters should be voting for Hillary.” If Sanders were to succeed in consolidating his voters and millennials behind Clinton, Greenberg adds, “it could kick her lead into double digits.”

And a double-digit victory for Clinton in November, some political observers believe, would result in a wave election that would likely provide Democratic majorities in both houses of congress and many state legislatures now controlled by Repubicans.

A strong endorsement by Sanders, who has already stated he will vote for Clinton, could well make the difference between a Clinton victory checked by continued Republican obstruction in congress, and a Democratic landslide which launches a new era of progressive change that improves the lives of millions of Americans. Providing the leadership needed to achieve the latter result would make Sen. Sanders one of the most influential political figures of our times.

At Sabato’s Crystal Ball Alan I. Abramowitz, author of The Polarized Public: Why American Government is So Dyfunctional, addresses a question on the minds of many political observers: Could Trump’s unique candidacy produce “major shifts in the voting patterns that have characterized recent elections?”

Abramowitz taps into data from the 2016 American National Election Study Pilot Survey, which queried 1,200 eligible American voters between Jan. 22-28, 2016. Read the post to review his methodology, and then evaluate his conclusions.

Abramowitz sets out to determine whether Democratic and Republican voters “remain sharply divided” on economic, cultural and racial issues. He also analyses the ANES data to see if there were “substantial divisions on major issues between supporters of different candidates within each party and whether these intra-party divisions were larger or smaller than the inter-party divisions.”

Among his conclusions:

The largest difference between Clinton and Sanders supporters was not on economic issues, as one might have expected given Sanders’ focus on income inequality, but on cultural issues. This may reflect the fact that Sanders did best in this survey, as in just about every other national survey as well as exit polls of Democratic primary voters, among Democrats under the age of 30 — a group that tends to be somewhat more liberal than older Democrats on cultural issues. However, Clinton supporters were far more liberal on cultural issues than supporters of any Republican candidate.

Not surprisingly, given Trump’s frequent attacks on immigrants and his questioning of Barack Obama’s citizenship and patriotism, the largest difference between Trump supporters and supporters of other GOP candidates was on racial issues. Trump supporters scored significantly higher than other Republicans on our racial resentment scale. However, even supporters of other Republican candidates scored far higher on racial resentment than supporters of either Democratic candidate.

Getting down to numbers, Abramowit devises a “liberal-conservative issues scale,” which “runs from 0 to 10, with a score of 0 representing consistently liberal attitudes and a score of 10 representing consistently conservative attitudes.” He notes:

…On the Democratic side, 89% of Sanders supporters were located to the left of center as were 77% of Clinton supporters. The average score on the scale was 3.0 for Clinton supporters compared with 2.5 for Sanders supporters. On the Republican side, 81% of Trump supporters were located to the right of center as were 78% of supporters of other Republican candidates. The average score on the scale was 7.3 for Trump supporters compared with 7.1 for supporters of other Republican candidates.

Noting the polarization and straight-ticket voting that has characterized presidential elections in recent years, Abramowitz crunches the data into an “ANES feeling thermometer scale” and finds,

…Democrats gave Clinton an average rating of 71 degrees and Republicans gave Trump an average rating of 65 degrees. But the data show that Democrats and Republicans gave the opposing party’s frontrunner extremely negative ratings — Democrats gave Trump an average rating of only 19 degrees and Republicans gave Clinton an average rating of only 12 degrees. Supporters of both parties, but especially Republicans, disliked the opposing party’s frontrunner more than they liked their own party’s frontrunner — a phenomenon that reflects the prevalence of negative partisanship in the contemporary American electorate.

Comparing the voting patterns of 2016 in the data with the 2012 presidential election, Abramowitz finds  “an extremely high degree of consistency in group voting patterns between these two elections. There is a correlation of .99 — an almost perfect relationship — between Obama’s margin over Mitt Romney in the [CNN/ORC] 2012 exit poll and Clinton’s margin over Trump in the 2016 CNN/ORC poll across these voter groups.”

“Based on these findings,” concludes Abramowitz,  “voting patterns in the 2016 general election should closely resemble those seen in recent presidential elections.” For Democrats, that’s reason for optimism, not an excuse for apathy. For the challenge of 2016 is not only to win the white house, but also to build a wave election that can give President Clinton a working majority in congress and Democratic take-overs of state legislatures nationwide.

Bernie Sanders has some pointed advice for Democrats in his New York Times op-ed,  “Democrats Need to Wake Up,” including “The notion that Donald Trump could benefit from the same forces that gave the Leave proponents a majority in Britain should sound an alarm for the Democratic Party in the United States. Millions of American voters, like the Leave supporters, are understandably angry and frustrated by the economic forces that are destroying the middle class…In this pivotal moment, the Democratic Party and a new Democratic president need to make clear that we stand with those who are struggling and who have been left behind. We must create national and global economies that work for all, not just a handful of billionaires.”

Sam Stein reports on a strategy memo provided to HuffPo which indicates that “The RNC Plans to Turn Bernie Sanders Backers Against Hilary Clinton’s VP Pic.” Stein notes, “The goals, the memo says, are to “drive wedges between these top contenders and either Clinton and/or traditional Democrat constituencies, such as labor, environmentalists, and gun control advocates, and other traditional left-wing constituencies;” and “[w]here applicable, frame the choice as an insult to the large, deep base of Bernie Sanders supporters who are struggling with the notion of supporting Hillary Clinton as the presumptive Democrat nominee.”

The Upshot’s Nate Silver explains why comparing pre-election polls to exit polls doesn’t work and notes that “pre-election polls always show Democrats doing better among white voters than the exit polls.”

American Bridge, the firm which did such an effective job of providing fodder for attack ads against Republican senate candidate Todd Aikin in Missouri in 2012 is on Trump’s  case in a big way, report Maggie Haberman and Ashley Parker in the New York Times. “In 2016, the group is taking every opportunity to do the same thing with Donald J. Trump. It is maintaining an archive of digital video footage, with 6,500 clips of Mr. Trump speaking or being mentioned, going back to the 1980s, and 17,000 hours of footage over all. It has also compiled more than 5,000 pages of research on the presumptive Republican nominee and has 25 trackers monitoring him.”

In their Wall St. Journal article, “Democrats Launch Push to Regain North Carolina,” Colleen McCain Nelson and Valerie Bauerlein preview President Obama’s joint appearance with Hillary Clnton in the swing state.

Thomas B. Edsall discusses “The Changing Face of Urban Power” in his NYT op-ed and explores an under-reported demographic development, “the migration of African-Americans from center cities to the suburbs.”

Maya Rao reports at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that Democratic “Party leaders are urging members to conduct similar sit-ins around the country as they try to sustain the flash of hard-core activism on the gun issue.” More protest against the enablers of gun violence would be good. But why limit it to sit-ins? Might it also be a good idea for gun safety advocates to picket the homes of the politicians who have taken the most money from the NRA?

Isn’t it pathetic when big media laps up spoon-fed tidbits from the Republicans’ Benghazi nothingburger? Erik Wemple nails the lapdogs and their GOP trainers, and dishes out this slam for Politico’s redolent role as their aggregate tipster: “…In his “Playbook” newsletter this morning, Politico’s Mike Allen alerted readers to a crop of pieces on the much-anticipated report of the House Select Committee on Benghazi: “….LOOK FOR embargoed scoops from Politico’s Rachael Bade, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, Fox’s Bret Baier and Catherine Herridge, and Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes…’Playbook,’ in other words, had the exclusive scoop on spoon-fed Benghazi non-scoops.”

As a friend puts it, “This is the best thing I’ve seen since Ramsay Bolton got eaten by his dogs last week on Game of Thrones.”

Aaron Blake reports at the Fix that “…We have some bad news for the Trump campaign. Sanders supporters aren’t just rallying around Clinton; they’re doing it rather quickly. And it’s a big reason Clinton just extended her lead over Trump into the double digits, 51 percent to 39 percent…A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that Sanders backers, who polls have shown were reluctant to jump over to Clinton and even flirted with supporting Trump, are coming home faster than we might have expected.”

Having read George Will’s columns for decades, I’ve been wondering if this might happen. Will believes Trump’s policies are not genuinely conservative and Trump’s utter lack of integrity, gravitas and general rectitude are repulsive an old-school conservative like Will. But in a way, Speaker Ryan’s character flaw sealed Will’s departure, as indicated by the video clip below. There may be soon others. Thomas B. Edsall discusses polls showing that a growing percentage of Republican rank and filers say they may sit out the 2016 presidential election.

“Clinton’s campaign is advertising heavily in eight swing states with soft-focus spots designed to rehabilitate her image. These three Rust Belt states [MI, PA and WI] are not on the list, despite the campaign’s organizing presence on the ground here, raising concerns among allies who fret that she cannot afford to take any of them for granted….The key for Clinton in the Rust Belt, her allies say, is to discredit Trump and to demonstrate that she has concrete proposals to better their lives — all while connecting emotionally with people’s anger.” — from “Democrats see danger signs in states where Clinton has not fully engaged” by Phillip Rucker and John Wagner of the Washington Post.

At The New York Times Sunday Review Frank Bruni spotlights “14 Young Democrats to Watch.”
He doesn’t address all of the counter-arguments, but HuffPo’s Earl Ofari Hutchinson makes a strong case for Clinton picking Elizabeth Warren for her running mate: “Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is Hillary’s best bet for VP. Why? Despite the relentless lampooning, ridiculing and name-calling of Trump, and the smug writing of his political obituary, the election will be a close run up. The big GOP donors and handlers, the hate driven passion to beat Hillary, Trump’s skilled fear mongering and pander to bigotry, the never-ending media fawn over him, and GOP dominance in the majority of the state’s legislatures and state houses will insure that…The fatal mistake is to assume that simply painting and then writing off Trump as a kook will be enough to scare millions to storm the polls to defeat him. Clinton’s campaign is a political textbook study in business like organization, precision, and professionalism. But it’s not a campaign of passion…Its passion that pushes people, especially young people, and minorities, out the door and to the polls on Election Day. These voters made the White House a wrap for Obama in 2008 and 2012. But Clinton is not Obama, and in the handful of swing states that will decide the election, the numbers and turnout will mean everything.”

Writing at The Upshot, Brendan Nyhan cautions “Don’t Assume Donald Trump’s Supporters Believe All His Words.” As Nyhan observes, “Many don’t take his promises literally — for instance, only 42 percent of Republicans believe Trump will succeed in making Mexico pay to build a wall. A number of these voters instead support him because he would move policy in their preferred direction, albeit not nearly as far as he suggests. (Some might not even want him to succeed in carrying out those proposals — for example, a March poll found that 37 percent of Trump supporters disagree with his plan to deport all illegal immigrants currently in the United States.)”

Bloomberg View’s Albert R. Hunt explains why the 2016 “Ballot Is Expected to Offer Stark Choice on Economy.”

At The American Prospect Peter Dreier offers “Three Strategies to Beat the NRA: Gun safety advocates who until now have relied largely on traditional lobbying need to broaden their strategy to include partnerships with gun owners and civil disobedience.” Dreier makes a compelling case that “The Orlando massacre may be a turning point in galvanizing a stronger movement for sensible gun control. Three strategies–traditional advocacy, mobilization of sensible gun owners, and civil disobedience–point the way. Even as we grieve, we can move forward. We can stop the madness.”

Speaker Paul Ryan adjourned the House, but the Democrats conducting the sit-in to protest GOP/NRA obstruction of even a vote on popular gun safety measures will continue. More details are expected today, report Deirdre Walsh, Manu Raju, Eric Bradner and Steven Sloan at CNN Politics. “The tension exploded onto the floor just after 10 p.m. ET when Republican Speaker Paul Ryan gaveled the chamber into order to hold a procedural vote on an unrelated matter. A dramatic scene unfolded as throngs of Democrats — some holding signs with the names of victims of gun violence — remained in the House well chanting “no bill, no break” and “shame shame shame.” They also sang the protest anthem “We Shall Overcome.”…They could keep their protest going on a smaller scale between now and July 5. Democrats vowed to restart their protests in full once the House returns in July, and they could look for other ways to force Republicans’ hands…”When we come back in July, we will start all over again,” [Rep. John] Lewis said…”We made some progress. We crossed one bridge, but we have other bridges to cross,” he said just after 3:30 a.m., calling the effort “a major down-payment on ending gun violence in America … and we will continue to fight.”… Overall, more than 170 Democrats took part in the sit in, lawmakers said.”

The Democrats’ strategy is to dramatize the fact that Speaker Ryan won’t even allow a vote on enormously popular gun safety measures, some of which are supported by upwards of 80 percent of Americans in opinion polls. Ryan is providing cover for his cowardly fellow Republicans who meekly do the NRA’s bidding, but don’t want to be held accountable for it by voters. The Democrats are committed to making sure that the NRA Republicans can no longer hide in the shadows and escape voter accountability.

At The Fix Chris Cillizza’s “Five things House Democrats’ sit-in on guns will change. And one it won’t” mulls over some of the possible ramifications of the sit-in. I hope he is right about his first assertion: “The Democratic base will be energized beyond belief…The organic nature of the sit-in — most Democratic members outside of Reps. John Lewis (Ga.) and Katherine Clark (Mass.) were unaware of it before it launched Wednesday afternoon — is just the sort of thing that will thrill rank-and-file Democrats. The Democratic party committees will fundraise like crazy off of this event. So will Hillary Clinton, who will highlight it the next time she speaks publicly. Democrats had been privately concerned about the enthusiasm of their party base when compared to Republicans during the primary voting process. A high profile event like this one should help narrow that gap.”

Richard Gonzales reports at NPR that “The owner of Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, where 49 people were shot and killed on June 12, says she and her staff will host a “Latin Night” street party on Thursday.” But to make it more meaningful, they should launch a statewide voter registration campaign at the event, since Florida is one of the worst states for voter suppression.

The Atlantic’s associate editor Clare Foran explores a question on the minds of many “Can Hillary Clinton Turn Red States Blue?” and reports on Clinton’s efforts to launch a ’50-state strategy.’

At Sabato’s Crystal Ball Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley have an updated projection, “The Electoral College: Map No. 2: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The authors still see the Democrtatic nominee, Clinton’s most likely electoral vote total as 347 (270 needed to win the election), vs. Trump’s 191. The authors add, “…Party unity within the Republican family is a non-starter. Two former presidents (both Bushes), the previous party nominee (Romney), and a host of other top GOP officials, donors, and commentators will never get on the Trump bandwagon. News media coverage is bound to stress who does not come to Cleveland, not just who does…As much as many Republicans dislike Trump and fear he will lead to catastrophic losses in the fall, he won the nomination fair and square…Bluntly put, the GOP is stuck with Trump. And a substitute nominee, should one be installed somehow, would be asked to lead a viciously divided party with no real chance of victory.”

At New York magazine’s Daily Intelligencer Ed Kilgore explains why “Why Trump Can’t Afford to Let Clinton Dominate the Political-Ad War.” Kilgore notes, “it should serve as a warning to Team Trump that one of the political scientists most associated with disrespect for paid ads in presidential elections, Lynn Vavreck, also insists that letting one’s opponent run uncontested ads is a path to a slow, but sure, political death. Kilgore sums up Vavreck’s key points, “Unopposed ads do indeed shape impressions of candidates, and those impressions affect polling numbers which in turn affect actual voting in the end.”

Marco “AWOL” Rubio missed another important Senate Foreign Relations Comttee hearing — this time to announce that he has changed his mind and will now run for senate, despite numerous recent statements to the contrary. “Democrats immediately circulated opposition research on Wednesday showing Rubio has missed the bulk of his committee hearings in addition to the votes he missed while running for president.

That’s likely to be a theme of the Senate campaign against him,” reports Burgess Everett at Politico. Ed Kilgore notes, “There are two very recent polls of this race that point in different directions. Quinnipiac has Rubio up 47-40 over Murphy (and 48-4o over Grayson). But PPP has Murphy up 42-41, with Rubio well underwater with a 30-49 job approval rating and his ability to stay even with Murphy depending on the temporary phenomenon of higher name ID.”

In his NYT op-ed article, “How Low Can the GOP Go?“, Thomas B. Edsall notes, “Polls are also showing an increase in the percentage of Republicans who are indicating that they might sit out the 2016 election. The Reuters-Ipsos tracking poll measures how many voters refuse to say whether or how they will vote. Among Republicans, the percentage of these voters has risen since early May from 17.2 percent to 26.6 percent. Among Democrats, the percentage has remained relatively constant, fluctuating between 19 and 21 percent.”

“Almost Every GOP Senator Just Voted to Keep Letting Terror Suspects Buy Guns: Once again, gun safety measures fail to move forward in Congress after a massacre,” reports Becca Andrews at Mother Jones.
“Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg says Republican candidates for the House and Senate would risk large defections from their base if they are seen as sabotaging Trump…Moreover, Greenberg sees a focus on Trump’s personal volatility as having helpful ricochet effects with other constituencies. To the extent that Trump is forced by the party to tone down his rhetoric – just watch his flat, Teleprompter-driven address from last Tuesday – he may start losing some of his magic with working-class voters…Greenberg argues that Clinton knows she has to offer a strong economic message with a populist feel to win over the millennial voters who flocked to Sanders. Appeals aimed their way will simultaneously help earn Sanders’ blessing and pick up the white working-class votes she’ll need.” — from E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s syndicated column.
“Hillary Clinton Is On A Mission To Rebuild The Democratic Party: A 50-state strategy has been tried before. Her staff think they can do it right this time,” according to Sam Stein, writing at HuffPo.
Steve Benen reports at msnbc.com that “Clinton moves forward with a ’50-state strategy‘.”
At The Monkey Cage Gabriel Sanchez and Alan I. Abramowitz explain why “Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls may be larger than it seems…” The authors noter, “Why were so many of the polls wrong? In part, because they failed to capture how minorities would vote. Unfortunately, some pollsters may be making the same mistakes in 2016 — and thereby underestimating Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls…In 2012, many polls underestimated how many minorities would vote and how many would vote for Obama…In 2016, the country is even more diverse. Pollsters need to take steps to more accurately estimate the political attitudes and behavior of black, Latino and Asian American voters…If Clinton does as well with minority voters as Obama did, then her lead in the poll would be 10 points (see here).
At salon.com Sean Illing explains why “The Republicans’ November fantasy: A glance at the GOP’s swing state strategy ought to delight Democrats everywhere: The Republicans’ strategy for November is based on wishful thinking. Hillary could win this election in a rout.”
Also at salon.com, read Gary Legum’s “Don’t rule it out: Thanks to Donald Trump, the Democrats have a slight chance of taking back the House: The Democrats need to win 30 seats to get control of the House — it’s unlikely but definitely not impossible.”
NYT’s Lynn Vavreck afforms that “Yes, Political Ads Are Still Important, Even for Donald Trump” and notes, “A study estimated that most of the impact of an ad in a presidential election is gone within a day or two of its airing (I am one of the authors of this paper). In governor, congressional and Senate elections, the effects last a bit longer: three or four days. Fleeting effects on campaigns have been shown by various authors in the lab; in Canada; in the 2000 and 2004 general elections; in the 2006 midterm elections; in the 2012 general election; and in field experiments in a Texas governor’s primary in 2006 and a general election in 2014.”
The title, as well as the content, of Joan McCarter’s Daily Kos article delineates one major difference between the two parties: “The consequences of an election in Louisiana: 200,000-plus people now have Medicaid.”

The 2016 presidential campaign has generated a lot of media coverage speculating on the role of social class in the upcoming presidential election. Philip Bump’s article, “Donald Trump’s strategy centers on working-class whites, but even they don’t like him” at The Fix provides an informative update on the speculation, as both parties prepare for their nominating conventions. As Bump notes,

Donald Trump’s reasonable argument* for how he’ll win in November centers on white, blue-collar voters — the sort of voters he thinks can propel him to victories in the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. (Sometimes, Wisconsin gets looped into that list, but that looks unlikely at the moment.)
Winning white, blue-collar voters doesn’t necessitate that those voters like him, of course, but it would help. And while that group (loosely defined as whites without a college degree) likes Trump better than anyone race/education split, more than half still view him unfavorably.

Bump goes on to note that a majority of white men without college degrees view Trump favorably. It’s white working-class women women who tilt his unfavorables upward with the working-class demographic.
All of this is rendered somewhat problematic by defining adults without college degrees as working-class, excluding many who have college degrees — or “some college” in some definitions — who are working at jobs that are essentially working-class. Quite a few recent college graduates, for example, are waiting on tables, walking dogs, driving cabs and doing other jobs most would consider essentially blue collar work.
There are also skilled — and even unskillled — manual workers with no college degree who are making more money and living more upscale lives than adjunct professors, for example. I know a former adjunct professor at a community college who quit her job because she could easily make more money stitching together dog-walking and baby-sitting gigs.
As always, the reality is more complicated than the simplistic definition, which is more intended for ‘ballpark’ socio-economc and political analysis. That should be kept in mind when pondering generalizations about political attitudes. The point is to get a rough idea about how social class is affecting American politics. In Trump’s unique case, gender clearly provides the pivot point that qualifies even simplistic generalizations about ‘the white working-class’ vote.
Further, let’s not assume that Trump voters can all be correctly pidgeon-holed into any one social class. As Dave Anderson notes in a Boulder Weekly op-ed,

Nate Silver, in a May 3 posting on his FiveThirtyEight website, says Trump voters are economically better off than most Americans: “The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data. That’s lower than the $91,000 median for Kasich voters. But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It’s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.”

Bump also points out that working-class disapproval of Hillary Clinton remains high. Clinton’s campaign strategy of keeping a relatively low media profile up till now, while Trump self-destructed, has begun changing in a big way. As the Democratic nominee, she will be increasingly visible leading up to November, and voters will get a much better look at her impressive qualifications in stark comparison to Trump.
By November, Trump’s shrinking constituency could be reduced to a hard core of mostly white male ideologues of all social classes. In that event, a wave election favoring Democrats will become a reality.

Democrats should not hesitate to emphasize the fact that nearly all Republican U.S. Senators voted against a measure to let the attorney general deny firearms to suspected terrorists. It would be wrong for Democrats not to leverage public outrage to secure life-saving reforms.
Reena Flores reports at cbsnews.com that “In the wake of the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, a new CBS News poll has found that a majority of Americans now support a nationwide ban on assault weapons…The survey, conducted in the days following the massacre at a popular Orlando gay night club, shows 57 percent of Americans now favor such a ban. That’s up from 44 percent in December, when the question was last asked in CBS News polling. Now, 38 percent of respondents oppose the legislation, compared to the 50 percent who opposed it in December.”
At gallup.com Jim Norman has stats showing that ‘terrorism’ is an issue that historicaly has a short shelf life. However, calling the Orlando massacre “the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. since 9/11,” Norman concludes “It happened in the middle of a bitter presidential contest already marked by harsh exchanges between the candidates on the issues of terrorism and gun control. The combination of these factors almost guarantees that terrorism and gun control will be major, persistent themes in the candidates’ campaigns over the next five months.”
A new addition to the GOP’s “somebody but Trump” list: “Republican Maryland Gov. Hogan says he won’t vote for Trump” by Jeremy Diamond at CNN Ppolitics.
Re Sean Illing’s “Letting Trump and the GOP self-destruct: Hillary and Democrats have the right strategy by laying low: Harry Reid is encouraging Dems to sit back and watch Trump discredit himself — and he’s exactly right” at salon.com, that’s a good strategy — to a point. But there will also be times when Clinton and/or surrogates should weigh in with sharply-stated comments and soundbites to clarify issues and maximize coverage.
At The Plum Line Greg Sargent puts the torch to an oft-repeated false equivalency meme: “In reality, for now, at least, there’s no real equivalence between the negative views of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. While Clinton certainly has problems in this regard, Trump fares far, far worse…The new Washington Post/ABC News poll illustrates this neatly. It finds that Donald Trump’s unfavorable numbers have climbed to a new high: 70 percent of Americans have an unfavorable impression of Trump, versus only 29 percent (fewer than one-third!) who have a favorable impression. Clinton’s negatives, too, have hit a new high of 55 percent.”
In his NYT op-ed “Sanders, the Windows 95 of Progressive Politics?,” Mark Schmitt, director of the political reform program at New America, criticizes the economic proposals of Sen Bernie Sanders, but acknowledges “Mr. Sanders’s achievement has been to show the leadership of his recently adopted party that Democrats and many independents under 35 — that is, those who weren’t adults during Bill Clinton’s administration — are eager for a full-throated progressive agenda and are unafraid of backlash. While Democrats in the 1990s — notably Bill and Hillary Clinton — worried about the party’s mistakes of the 1970s, many in this decade worry more about triangulation and the cautious politics of the 1990s.”
At The Wall St. Journal Laura Meckler and Colleen McCain Nelson report that “Bernie Sanders Not Being Vetted as Hillary Clinton’s Running Mate: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is among a group of Democratic officials being considered.” The authors add, “Beyond the Massachusetts senator, other prospective candidates include Labor Secretary Tom Perez; Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro; Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Cory Booker of New Jersey; Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, and Reps. Xavier Becerra of California and Tim Ryan of Ohio, several Democrats said.”
David Cay Johnston presents “New Evidence Donald Trump Didn’t Pay Taxes” at The Daily Beast.