Despite widespread concerns about President Biden’s sinking poll numbers, Democrats did really well in yesterday’s elections. With the exception of Mississippi, Democrats pretty much ran the table in the most important elections. From a roundup of ‘takeaway’ articles in different media:

In Virginia, Gregory Krieg reports at CNN Politics, “Gov. Glenn Youngkin – the Virginia Republican who believed he could crack one of the most intractable issues in American politics with the promise of “reasonable” abortion restrictions – will not lead a GOP-controlled legislature in the Commonwealth, which denied the party control of the state Senate and put a swift end to both his plan for a 15-week abortion ban and rumors he might pursue a 2024 presidential bid.”

A.P.’s Bruce Schreiner reports “Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection to a second term Tuesday, notching another significant statewide victory in an increasingly red state that could serve as a model for other Democrats on how to thrive politically heading into next year’s defining presidential election….The governor withstood relentless attempts to connect him to Democratic President Joe Biden, especially his handling of the economy. Beshear insulated himself from the attacks by focusing on state issues, including his push for exceptions to the state’s near-total abortion ban that he said would make it less extreme. His reelection gave pro-choice advocates nationwide yet another victory since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.”

Also at CNN Politics, Arit John writes, “With the passage of the ballot measure Issue 1, Ohio will be prevented from restricting abortion access before fetal viability, which doctors believe to be around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy. After viability, the state can restrict abortion access unless the patient’s life or health are at risk….The vote is yet another sign that abortion access is a key issue for voters across party lines, even in a state like Ohio, which has trended Republican in recent elections.”

Ohio voters also voted for the legalization of marijuana, which was supported by most of the state’s Democratic leaders,  on “Issue 2” by a hefty margin – 57 percent (with 95 percent of the vote counted). (More here)

“On Tuesday, all 120 seats in the Democrat-led [New Jersey] State Legislature were again on the ballot, and Republicans were hoping to tally further gains.,” Tracey Tully reports in the New York Times. “But as of 11:30 p.m., Democrats had held on to win in competitive districts in southern and central New Jersey and were leading in other key races.”

The sole downer for Dems was in Mississippi, where the incumbent Republican Governor took 51.8 percent of the vote to beat Democrat Brandon Presley’s 46.9 percent (another 3.2 percent, and he would have won). Geoff Pender reports at Mississippi Today that “Numerous precincts in Hinds County reportedly ran out of ballots, or of the proper ballots, leaving some voters waiting in line for hours and causing others to give up and go home. This prompted legal filings from multiple groups before normal poll closing time at 7 p.m., and prompted a circuit court judge to order all Hinds County polls stay open until 8 p.m. to allow more people to vote.” Hinds County, which includes Jackson, is Mississippi’s most populous county.

As for the importance of turnout in Tuesday’s results, Julia Manchester notes at The Hill: “Democrats benefitted from high turnout in Tuesday’s off-year elections. This was evident in the red states of Ohio and Kentucky, where Democrats turned out in high numbers. In Ohio, the Issue One ballot measure sparked an early voting surge that clearly benefited Democrats. In Kentucky, Democrats benefitted from strong turnout while Republicans struggled to bring out their base in what is typically a reliably red state….Strong Democratic turnout was evident in Virginia as well. NBC News reported earlier on Tuesday that Election Day turnout at one precinct in Henrico County in the greater Richmond area reached 1,200 people by the middle of the day. There are over 3,200 people registered to vote at that precinct and 800 people cast their ballots during the early voting period.”

Tonight we should know the answer to a question Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. poses, “Will Kentucky’s Andy Beshear show Democrats how to win Trump Country?”  As Dionne writes, “Astonishingly, for a Democrat in a state Donald Trump carried by 26 percentage points in 2020, Beshear has become one of the most popular state chief executives in the nation….He did it with a sterling economic record — bolstered by state spending spurred in part by President Biden’s investment programs — and courtesy of an unusually personal link with voters that he forged through empathetic daily briefings during the pandemic. They were so popular that his sign-language interpreter, Virginia Moore, became a beloved celebrity in her own right, and her death this year was mourned across the state. …With polls showing Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron closing fast by rallying his party’s base with attacks on Biden, Beshear is reminding voters that this election is not about a certain white house some 570 miles away….“What you’re seeing is fear and anger, and even encouraging Kentuckians to violate that golden rule and to get one Kentuckian to hate another,” Beshear told the appreciative crowd here. “Listen, this race is about us. It’s about Kentucky. But if we can send one message to the rest of the country, it ought to be that anger politics ends right here and right now.”….It’s a lovely thought, and it’s a reason Tuesday’s gubernatorial battles in Kentucky and Mississippi matter. Neither state is likely to vote for aDemocratic presidential nominee anytime soon. But Beshear and Brandon Presley, the surging underdog Democrat in Mississippi, have shown that their party’s brand can be detoxified on hostile terrain with a focus on jobs, education and health care — and by intensely personal campaigns that encourage voters to forget culture wars and partisan loyalties.”

“The erosion of Democratic strength in rural areas, especially in Appalachia and the western reaches of the state, echoes national patterns,” Dionne explains. “The decline of the coal industry is part of the story. But so is the collapse of an infrastructure of community that once favored Democrats….“There were labor unions in these areas, there were Democratic clubs in these areas,” Contarino said. “People were hearing alternative messages.” Now, as Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol argue in their insightful book, “Rust Belt Union Blues,” the community-binding messages come from talk radio, conservative churches and other local groups that lean right….That’s why Beshear’s pandemic briefings were so important. They allowed him to crack through those barriers by conveying empathy and cultivating solidarity across the state. “We will get through this,” he said over and over. “And we will get through this together.”….His willingness to admit uncertainty helped him develop a reputation for honesty. “They teach you never to say, ‘I don’t know,’” Beshear told the Louisville Courier-Journal in 2021. “And I had to say ‘I don’t know’ a lot.”….One other aspect of Beshear’s appeal that national Democrats might study: an open religious faith grounded in ideas quite different from those of the Christian right. “For me, faith is about uniting all people,” he told me. “It says all children are children of God. And if you’re truly living out your faith, you’re not playing into these anger and hatred games.”….Democratic state Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, who represents a Louisville-based district, grew up in the foothills of Appalachian Mountains. The author of “Hill Women,” a powerful tribute to her native region’s tenacity, Armstrong said rural voters often feel “overlooked by decision-makers in the outside world.” The Democrats’ “brand problem” in rural areas, she argued, will have to be solved by local Democrats who can make a case for “how these larger policies actually impact people’s lives.”….But this is a long-term project, she added, “best done outside the election contest.”….If he prevails, Beshear could be a powerful voice in that argument. No wonder Republicans are working so hard to beat him.”

Ever wonder if  discouraged voters who are influenced to stay at home by horse-race reporting are contributing to election outcomes? At Journalist’s Resource, Denise-Marie Ordway  comments on “Projecting Confidence: How the Probabilistic Horse Race Confuses and Demobilizes the Public” by Sean Jeremy Westwood, Solomon Messing and Yphtach Lelkes at The Journal of Politics: “This paper examines problems associated with probabilistic forecasting — a type of horse race journalism that has grown more common in recent years. These forecasts “aggregate polling data into a concise probability of winning, providing far more conclusive information about the state of a race,” write authors Sean Jeremy Westwood, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College, Solomon Messing, a senior engineering manager at Twitter, and Yphtach Lelkes, an associate professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania….The researchers find that probabilistic forecasting discourages voting, likely because people often decide to skip voting when their candidate has a very high chance of winning or losing. They also learned this type of horse race reporting is more prominent in news outlets with left-leaning audiences, including FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times and HuffPost….Westwood, Messing and Lelkes point out that probabilistic forecasting might have contributed to Clinton’s loss of the 2016 presidential election. They write that “forecasts reported win probabilities between 70% and 99%, giving Clinton an advantage ranging from 20% to 49% beyond 50:50 odds. Clinton ultimately lost by 0.7% in Pennsylvania, 0.2% in Michigan, 0.8% in Wisconsin, and 1.2% in Florida.”

“Is the Israel-Gaza war changing US public attitudes?,” Shibley Telhami asks at Brookings and writes: “To probe the issue, the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll with Ipsos asked several questions focused on the role of the United States and the perception of the Biden administration. The poll did not directly ask about attitudes toward the war itself but probed any shifts in public attitudes on the Israeli-Palestinian issue broadly….Here are three takeaways: First, public opinion on U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue remains divided along partisan lines, with an increasing majority of Republicans wanting the United States to lean toward Israel, while a declining majority of Democrats wants the United States to lean toward neither side. Those who want to lean toward Israel increased since last June, the last time we asked about this issue….A majority of Republicans, 71.9%, say they want the United States to lean toward Israel, compared with 47.3% in June, while a majority of Democrats, 57.4%, said they wanted the United States to lean toward neither side, a drop from 73.4% in June. A 53.6% majority of independents also wanted the United States to lean toward neither side, a drop from 71.4% in June….While those who wanted the United States to take the Palestinians’ side remained relatively constant since June, those who wanted the United States to lean toward Israel increased not only among Republicans but also among Democrats, going from 13.7% in June to 30.9% in October; it also increased among independents, going from 20.8% in June to 37.9% in October….It is notable that there was no statistically significant change in the attitudes of young Democrats (under 35). In June, 14% wanted to lean toward Israel, and this increased to 14.7% in October; 17% wanted to lean toward the Palestinians in June compared to 16.2% in October. Among young Republicans and independents, however, there were significant increases among those wanting to lean toward Israel, but also smaller increases among those wanting to lean toward the Palestinians. Overall, a majority of young Americans, 54.5%, wanted the United States to lean toward neither side.”

Among the many charms of the new Speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson, is his eagerness, make that determination, to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits for millions of Americans. As Michael Hiltzik explains in his column, “America’s retirement system is mediocre. The new House speaker wants to make it downright awful” at The Los Angeles Times, “Johnson is a long-term advocate of cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits through changes such as raising the retirement and eligibility ages for the programs….He also has advocated scrutinizing the cost of those programs through a “bipartisan debt commission” that inevitably would place them in the deficit-reduction cauldron along with other spending. After his rise to the speaker’s chair Wednesday, Johnson immediately promised to create this panel….“When Social Security was created in the ‘60s, the average life span was somewhere in the mid-70s,” he said. “Now people live to be 100 routinely. So people are on the program for decades, when it was never structured to be able to do that.”….A few things about this. First and foremost, Social Security was created in 1935, not the ‘60s. Even then, the average American life expectancy for anyone reaching the age of 45 or older was more than 70. For 65-year-olds — that is, those who were eligible to begin collecting benefits — the average life expectancy was nearly 78….Today, the average life expectancy for a 65-year-old is about 85….As for Americans living “routinely” to age 100, one wonders from where Johnson could have excavated that fantastical assertion. In 2021, there were 89,739 centenarians in the U.S., out of a total population of 336 million. That works out to about 2.5 hundredths of a percent of the population. You may debate whether that’s a lot or a little, but by any standard, “routine” it ain’t….In measuring Johnson’s record on 10 legislative measures important to retirees, the Alliance for Retired Americans gave him a 0% score for 2022, and 5% for his entire career. He was the lowest-scoring senator or representative from his state.”

John Ward interviews Ruy Teixeira one week out from the release of his and John Judis’s new book, “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes., and asks Teixeira three good questions. Here’s an excerpt with one of Ward’s questions and Teixeira’s answer: “You say that the radical side of the GOP has propensities for violence and contempt for democracy that far outweigh the foibles of the Democrats’ cultural radicals. Basically, you’re saying that your hopes for democracy and American prosperity and vibrancy rests with the Democrats and with the working class?  [Teixeira responds] Yes, absolutely. That’s the correct way of understanding it. We don’t rule out that the Republicans could right the ship, and there are very interesting intellectual currents in and around the Republican Party. That could bear fruit over the medium to long term. But right now, realistically, looking at our political landscape, we still see the Democrats as being the best bet — if they sort of return to the roots as a party of the people — as a party of the common man and woman, if they shuck off some of this cultural radicalism for more of a centrist approach….At the tail end of another question, Teixeira adds, “We’re trying to make people understand how even though the Democrats are plausibly the best alternative at this point — the sort of the Trumpist Republicans are not a great look — here’s why they can’t seem to beat the other side more decisively. And here’s what they might need to be, to be the party we need to have in America.”

Credit Democrat Brandon Presley for making a gutsy run for the governorship of Mississippi, even though many political observers pronounced the state Democratic Party a near-hopeless cause. As AP’s Emily Wagster Pettus elaborates at The Mississippi Link: “They’re sitting up in that governor’s mansion tonight, I bet you money, tinkling their little glasses, smoking their cigars,” Presley said, imitating someone holding a tumbler of whiskey. “And they’re talking about how, ‘Well, nobody’s going to come vote.’ And particularly black Mississippians. They don’t think you’re going to commit.”….Presley, the 46-year-old second cousin of rock ‘n’ roll legend Elvis Presley, will need a bipartisan, multiracial coalition to vote in unprecedented numbers to accomplish his goal of unseating Reeves….Presley is endorsed by the state’s most powerful black politician, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson. One of the most famous black Mississippi residents, Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman, recently joined him at a campaign event….Presley has raised more campaign cash than Reeves this year, and he’s attracting larger and more diverse crowds than any Democrat running for Mississippi governor in a generation….Presley is pushing for robust turnout among black voters, who comprise nearly 40% of the state’s population and are the base of the state Democratic Party. He also needs crossover votes from people who usually support Republicans but are disenchanted with conditions in one of the poorest states in the U.S….Others are making independent efforts to increase turnout….In speeches and TV ads, Presley talks about being in third grade when his father was murdered and then being raised by a single mom who worked in a garment factory and struggled to pay bills….Presley says rural hospitals are hurting because of Reeves’ refusal to expand Medicaid to people working jobs with no health insurance – roofing houses or waiting tables at the Waffle House. Reeves calls Medicaid “welfare” and says he does not want more people on government-funded health insurance….There’s evidence Presley is connecting with white working-class voters.”

If Presley can pull off an upset, future statewide victories for Democrats will become more of a possibility and perhaps lure needed funding and activism for the party’s candidates. Pettus notes one major change in election law which could help Presley: “One source of optimism in the Presley camp is a change in how Mississippi elects its governor. Until this year, winning a governor’s race required overcoming a unique legal challenge that was written into the state constitution during the Jim Crow era and repealed by Mississippi voters in 2020….Under the old method, a gubernatorial candidate had to win a majority of the statewide popular vote and and prevail in a majority of the 122 state House districts. Without both, the race would be decided by the Mississippi House….That process was written in 1890….The separate House vote allowed the white ruling class to have the final say in who holds office, and it fueled lingering cynicism among black Mississippians about whether their votes would ever matter….Mississippi was the only state in the U.S. with this process for electing statewide officials, and the vote to repeal the provision came only after former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sued the state on behalf of some Black residents….Winning a governor’s race now requires a majority of the popular vote. If nobody receives that Nov. 7, the race goes to a Nov. 28 runoff. Although an independent candidate, Gwendolyn Gray, recently announced she is dropping out and endorsing Presley, she did so after the ballot had been set….Presley says the new method of electing a governor gives him a better chance than the old one. He doesn’t have to strategize to win a majority of House districts mostly drawn to favor Republicans….“For the first time, candidates of all political parties can truthfully emphasize voter turnout, where before it had to be such a scattered approach,” Presley said last week at Tougaloo College, an historically black school in Jackson. “This will be the first time particularly that black voters’ votes will count to an extent of 100%, where before, an argument could be made that they were very much diluted.” Here’s a fridge magnet Gandhi quote for Presley and other Democratic underdog candidates: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Some nuggets from “The races to watch next week and why 2024 is already here” by Daily Kos Staff:

It’s not a midterm or a presidential year, but voters in Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, and other states all face important state or local elections, and everyone should watch closely to see what the results presage for 2024.

In blood-red Kentucky, Republicans are struggling to gain traction in the governor’s race, where popular Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear remains the favorite. Indeed, after months of trying to make “the radical transgender agenda” a thing, the Republican candidate is now claiming that “Andy Beshear is a nice enough guy.” Attacking transgender people remains an electoral loser for Republicans, even in one of the most evangelical states in the country.

In Ohio, a ballot initiative to guarantee a right to abortion is headed toward a landslide victory, with a Public Policy Polling survey finding support at 55-38. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine must be looking at similar polling: He’s now trying to convince people to vote against the measure by saying he’ll loosen Ohio’s oppressive abortion restrictions. Are there any abortion-rights supporters brainless enough to fall for that trap? Hopefully not. After all, DeWine signed the state’s six-week ban, which lacks exceptions for rape and incest. Why would anyone trust him to do better? This election will demonstrate the continued potency of reproductive rights heading into next year.

In Virginia, Democrats can retake control of the state House of Delegates by picking up just a handful of seats. You can still make a difference in these races by supporting these five great Democratic candidates. And by doing so, you can help quell the insufferable Beltway narratives that somehow it is Democrats who are currently in trouble.

You know who is in trouble? Republicans. And not just because they picked a radical weirdo as their new House leader. There are few states more conservative than Mississippi, where its racialized politics means that roughly 90% of white voters vote for Republicans no matter what. Yet infighting among Magnolia State Republicans could offer Democrat Brandon Presley an opening for a surprise victory. And like the GOP civil war happening inside the U.S. House of Representatives, a divided Republican Party could pay big electoral dividends for Democrats next year.

The post didn’t really address New Jersey’s election, in which Republicans hope fallout from Sen. Menendez’s indictment will help them. As Matt Friedman notes at Politico,

New Jersey Republicans are practically giddy at a prospect that had been virtually unthinkable until now: Could they retake control of one or both houses of the state Legislature?….It’s a longshot scenario in a state where Democrats have a nearly one million voter registration advantage and have controlled the Statehouse for two decades….buoyed by Republicans’ surprising gains in the 2021 election — and the sudden fallout of Sen. Bob Menendez‘s indictment — GOP leaders see a narrow path to scoring key upsets that could put them on top in Trenton….“We are looking at a razor-thin proposition of holding the majorities in both houses this year. It’s going to come down to a few districts,” Kevin McCabe, the Middlesex County Democratic chair and one of the leading power brokers in the state, said at a party meeting in June….Democrats hold a 25-15 majority in the Senate and a 46-34 majority in the Assembly. Flipping either chamber would take an extraordinary run in swing districts and at least some upsets.

It’t undoubtedly too much to hope for that Dems will pull the inside straight and win all five elections. But three or four out of five would be something to crow about.

How is the war in Gaza affecting public opinion of President Biden’s policy toward the conflict? The most recent polling data indicates a significant decline in young voter support, although it is unclear how these attitudes will play out a year from now. Alexander Sammon notes in “Biden Has a Youth-Vote Problem. His Israel Policy Is Making It Worse” at Slate that “A recent Quinnipiac poll underscores Biden’s disastrous standing with the youth vote. The president’s favorability rating has cratered out at an almost-unbelievable 25 percent among registered voters under 35 years old. A few weeks prior, a Washington Post–ABC poll had Trump winning voters under 35 by 20 points. (The Post’s story notes that the poll differs from others taken recently, and that it may be an outlier. It’s not the only recent presidential poll that’s made publishers raise an eyebrow.)….In 2020, 60 percent of 18-to-29-year-old voters, by far the most Democratic-voting group by age, threw in for Joe Biden….That same Quinnipiac poll found that 51 percent of voters under 35 say they disapprove of the United States’ sending weapons and military support to Israel—a much higher figure than the 28 percent of Americans who oppose such a policy. Only 21 percent of voters under 35 say they approve of Biden’s Israel policy; 42 percent of voters across all age brackets approve….A CBS News poll conducted last week came to an even starker conclusion. When asked if the U.S. should send weapons and supplies to Israel, 59 percent of respondents under 30 said it should not. An even more resounding 64 percent of those between age 30 and 44—a bracket more likely to vote that carries the whole millennial generation and part of Gen X—said the U.S. should not….Earlier this year, Gallup polling found that among Democrats, net sympathy for Palestinians outweighs net sympathy for Israelis, a change that has occurred during Biden’s time in office. The aforementioned CBS News poll shows that a slim majority of both Democrats and independents feel that the U.S. should not send weapons and supplies to Israel. Data for Progress found that 80 percent of Democrats currently believe that the “US should call for a ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza.”

Sammon continues, “Although the data seems overwhelming on this point, the anecdotal evidence in Washington appears to mirror it. An open letter, signed by 411 congressional staffers, took the rare move of calling publicly for a cease-fire. Meanwhile, HuffPost has reported that the State Department is in turmoil over Biden’s unequivocal support for Israel. “There’s basically a mutiny brewing within State at all levels,” one department official told the outlet….those 400-odd staffers are overwhelmingly not senior-level or senior age. They’re young people expressing a widespread conviction of their generation….Look, too, at the slowly growing list of representatives sponsoring the House’s cease-fire resolution. They’re not all young, but the list includes the House’s most prominent left-wing millennial in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the chamber’s only Gen Z member, Maxwell Frost….If Biden hopes to win reelection, he desperately needs to run up the score with the youth vote as he did in 2020; we can comfortably say, even 13 months from Election Day, that there are only narrow, unlikely paths back to the White House for any Democrat without that….Meanwhile, joining the congressional calls for cease-fire is hardly a safe bet. Certainly, significant percentages of the electorate would welcome that, but the same polling indicates that nontrivial percentages would also be enraged. It’s a divisive issue, and domestically, there’s no “safe” option for a U.S. president.” At The Guardian, Lauren Gambino reports that “A Gallup poll released on Thursday found that Biden’s approval rating among Democrats plummeted 11 percentage points in one month, to a record low of 75%. According to the survey, the drop was fueled by dismay among Democratic voters over Biden’s support for Israel….Meanwhile, a poll released last week by the progressive firm Data for Progress found that 66% of likely US voters strongly or somewhat agree that the US should call for a ceasefire.” Gambino adds that “So far no senator has backed a ceasefire. Warren, Sanders and several other Democratic senators have urged a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid, food and medical supplies to flow into Gaza after Israel ordered a “complete siege” of the territory.”

“Today’s polls aren’t predictive of an election that’s more than a year out,” Will Marshall writes in his article, “For victory in 2024, Democrats must win back the working class” at The Hill. “But they are indicative of how little headway the president and his party have made since 2020 on their central political challenge: enlarging their party by winning back working class voters.” Marshal, founder and CEO of the Progressive Policy Institute, adds “…it’s not unreasonable for Democrats to believe that, despite his abysmal approval ratings, Biden could yet parlay public anger at the Republicans’ anti-abortion crusade and Trump’s accumulating legal wounds into a second presidential term next November….Yet even if he manages to eke out a win, a Biden-Trump rematch would likely leave the parties at rough parity. Until that changes, Democrats’ path to victory will be exceedingly narrow….  To break this political deadlock, Democrats need to start reaching across the “diploma divide.” They’re doing fine with college graduates; Biden won 61 percent of them in 2020…. But Trump won white non-college voters by a massive, 25 point margin. The New York Times reports that “In nearly 20 Western and Southern states, Democrats are virtually shut out of statewide offices largely because of their weakness among the white working class.”….What Democrats really need is more voters. The only way to break today’s partisan stalemate and build a solid center-left majority is to target non-college voters, who are expected to be nearly two-thirds of eligible voters in 2024. Democrats must whittle away at Trump’s huge margin with white voters and stop hemorrhaging support among Black and especially Hispanic non-college voters….The push for loan forgiveness also highlights a glaring disparity between Democrats’ solicitude for college students, who are already on track toward higher lifetime earnings, and their comparatively modest investments in the majority of young Americans who don’t have college degrees….  Educational polarization also manifests itself in cultural politics. As the liberal political demographer Ruy Teixeira has documented, the progressive left has saddled Democrats with “genuinely unpopular positions” on crime, immigration, race, gender and schooling….it’s not too late for Democrats to start reorienting their cultural and economic policies around what working families actually want rather than what progressive elites think they should want. Their ability to keep Trump or a Trump clone out of the White House just may depend on it.”

In “The group Biden and Trump both want, because it might win them the presidency,” Los Angeles Times syndicated columnist Doyle McManus writes, “The battle for working-class voters is on, and it could well decide the outcome of the 2024 election….The battle for autoworkers’ hearts is a microcosm of a larger struggle for working-class voters, a category typically defined by pollsters as voters without a college degree. They make up about 60% of the electorate….Working-class voters, especially union members and their families, were once the cornerstone of the Democratic Party. But over the past half-century, as Democrats became more liberal, millions of white, non-college-educated voters moved toward the GOP and its conservative social policies — a phenomenon political scientists call a “class inversion.”….In 2016, Trump won the presidency partly by winning almost two-thirds of white non-college voters, a major reason he prevailed in former Democratic strongholds such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton won only 28% of those voters….In 2020, Trump won 65% of white working-class votes, but Biden improved on Clinton’s dismal performance by winning 33%, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. That was enough to move Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania into the Democratic column….So Biden doesn’t need to win a majority of non-college-educated voters to keep his job in 2024, he just needs to do about as well as he did in 2020….He especially needs to maintain his support among union members and their families, most of whom still vote Democratic. In 2020, Biden carried union households in Michigan by a whopping 25-percentage-point margin, 62% to 37%….Census Bureau estimates suggest that real household income, which began falling in 2020, hasn’t yet returned to its pre-pandemic high….Biden’s answer has been an array of economic stimulus, investments in infrastructure and clean energy, and policies to promote higher wages — a package he has dubbed “Bidenomics.”….”The term ‘Bidenomics’ seems perfectly designed to annoy voters rather than win them over,” said Ruy Teixeira, a centrist Democratic political scientist….Better, he suggested, for Biden to focus his pitch on the ways he’s nudging businesses to raise wages, including federal regulations requiring overtime pay for more workers.”

New York Times opinion essayist Thomas B. Edsall provides some insightful commentary that should be of interest to Democrats who are doing ‘oppo’ analysis to better formulate their own strategy. Edsall’s latest essay reads like it was written just before the Republicans confirmed Mike Johnson as the new Speaker, but his take on the Republicans’ floundering is still instructive. For example, “There are 18 Republicans who represent districts President Biden carried in 2020. These members, more than others, were forced to choose between voting for Jordan and facing sharp criticism in their districts or voting against him and facing a potential primary challenger. This group voted 12 to 6 for Jordan, deciding, in effect, that the threat of a primary challenge was more dangerous to their political futures than the fallout in their Democratic-leaning districts from voting for Jordan….Or take the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, which describes its members as “tired of the obstructionism in Washington where partisan politics is too often prioritized over governing and what is best for the country.” Jordan’s approach to legislation and policymaking embodies what those members are tired of….Despite that, the Republican members of the caucus voted decisively for Jordan, 21 to 8, including a co-chairman of the caucus — Brian Fitzpatrick, Republican of Pennsylvania — and Tom Kean, the son and namesake of a distinctly moderate former governor of New Jersey….Each time the Republican Party has had an opportunity to distance itself from Trump, Brownstein continued, “it has roared past the exit ramp and reaffirmed its commitment. At each moment of crisis for him, the handful of Republicans who condemned his behavior were swamped by his fervid supporters until resistance in the party crumbled.”

Further along, Edsall writes “There is little doubt that the three-week struggle, still unresolved, to pick a new speaker is quite likely to inflict some costs on Republicans….First and foremost, if, as appears possible, the government is forced to shut down because of a failure to reach agreement on federal spending, Republicans have set themselves up to take the fall when the public decides which party is at fault….Previous government shutdowns, especially those in 1995 and 1996, backfired on Republicans, reviving Bill Clinton’s re-election prospects to the point that he won easily in November…I asked Kevin Arceneaux, a political scientist at Sciences Po Paris and the lead author of the 2021 paper “Some People Just Want to Watch the World Burn: The Prevalence, Psychology and Politics of the ‘Need for Chaos,’” about the role of Gaetz and his seven allies. Arceneaux emailed back that he has no way of knowing, without conducting tests and interviews, how the eight “would answer the need for chaos survey items.”….But, Arceneaux added, “their behavior is certainly consistent with the burn-it-all-down mentality that we found associated with the need for chaos.”….He continued: “We also found that a drive to obtain status along with a sense that one’s group has lost social status increases one’s need for chaos. It would be interesting to study whether Freedom Caucus members are more preoccupied with concerns about status loss relative to other Republicans. If so, that would offer some circumstantial evidence that a need for chaos could at least partly explain their willingness to damage their own party.”

If you have friends or associates who like to get on the high horse about liberals smothering free speech on college campuses and elsewhere, give a read to Edsall’s previous column, in which he points out: “These civil libertarian claims of unconstitutional suppression of speech come from the same Republican Party that is leading the charge to censor the teaching of what it calls divisive concepts about race, the same party that expelled two Democratic members of the Tennessee state legislature who loudly called for more gun control after a school shooting, the same party that threatens to impeach a liberal judge in North Carolina for speaking out about racial bias, the same party that has aided and abetted book banning in red states across the country….In other words, it is Republicans who have become the driving force in deploying censorship to silence the opposition, simultaneously claiming that their own First Amendment rights are threatened by Democrats….One of the most egregious examples of Republican censorship is taking place in North Carolina, where a state judicial commission has initiated an investigation of Anita Earls, a Black State Supreme Court justice, because she publicly called for increased diversity in the court system….At the center of Republican efforts to censor ideological adversaries is an extensive drive to regulate what is taught in public schools and colleges….In an Education Week article published last year, “Here’s the Long List of Topics Republicans Want Banned From the Classroom,” Sarah Schwartz and Eesha Pendharkar provided a laundry list of Republican state laws regulating education: “Since January 2021, 14 states have passed into law what’s popularly referred to as “anti-critical race theory” legislation. These laws and orders, combined with local actions to restrict certain types of instruction, now impact more than one out of every three children in the country, according to a recent study from U.C.L.A.”

“In a February 2022 article, “New Critical Race Theory Laws Have Teachers Scared, Confused and Self-Censoring,” Edsall continues, “The Washington Post reported that “in 13 states, new laws or directives govern how race can be taught in schools, in some cases creating reporting systems for complaints. The result, teachers and principals say, is a climate of fear around how to comply with rules they often do not understand.”….From a different vantage point, Robert C. Post, a law professor at Yale, argued in an email that the censorship/free speech debate has run amok: “It certainly has gone haywire. The way I understand it is that freedom of speech has not been a principled commitment but has been used instrumentally to attain other political ends. The very folks who were so active in demanding freedom of speech in universities have turned around and imposed unconscionable censorship on schools and libraries. The very folks who have demanded a freedom of speech for minority groups have sought to suppress offensive and racist speech.”….“Post makes the case that there is “a widespread tendency to conceptualize the problem as one of free speech. We imagine that the crisis would be resolved if only we could speak more freely.” In fact, he writes, “the difficulty we face is not one of free speech, but of politics. Our capacity to speak has been disrupted because our politics has become diseased.”….We cannot now speak to each other because something has already gone violently wrong with our political community,” Post writes. “The underlying issue is not our speech, but our politics. So long as we insist on allegiance to a mythical free speech principle that exists immaculately distinct from the concrete social practices, we shall look for solutions in all the wrong places.”

Could this be the year Democrats score a big win in Mississippi, the state with the highest percentage of Black residents? Taylor Vance explores the possibilities in his article, “Inside the Democratic Party’s coordinated effort to turn out Black voters for the Nov. 7 election” at Mississippi Today. Some excerpts from Vance’s article:

The get-out-the-vote efforts from Democratic Party officials have continued into late October and have been focused across the state, not just in the Jackson metro.

This past weekend, state party leaders attended multiple events on the Gulf Coast, including a get-out-the-vote rally Sunday night at First Missionary Baptist Church Handsboro in Gulfport. The event, which organizers titled “Wake the Sleeping Giant,” was keynoted by Bishop William James Barber II, co-chair of the national organization Poor People’s Campaign.

The party will host a virtual organizing event called “Souls to the Polls” on Oct. 28, which is the first day of in-person absentee voting. The party has also hosted several town hall-style events in multiple Mississippi towns over the past few weeks focused on the state’s hospital crisis before mostly-Black audiences, culminating with a final stop on the tour in Jackson on Oct. 25.

And while party leaders organize their own events, Democratic candidates are benefitting from the independent electoral work of numerous third-party progressive organizations that are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to knock doors and target hyper-local Black communities. These groups, many of which have long organizing histories in Mississippi, are pumping money this cycle into door-knocking, phone banking, direct mailing, and digital and radio advertising.

Vance adds that “the party’s work of the past few weeks marks a noticeable shift in strategy to energize its base ahead of the 2023 election. Lackluster efforts with Black voters during the 2019 statewide election cycle from former state party leaders notoriously left candidates frustrated and Democratic voters feeling left behind..” Vance notes that “Black Mississippi voters make up the overwhelming foundation of the Democratic Party — about two-thirds of the party’s voting base.”

Vance explains further,

The bulk of media attention and national party resources during the election cycle has focused on [Brandon] Presley, the Democratic nominee for governor who has mounted a formidable campaign against Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and recently outraised the incumbent governor in campaign donations.

But most of the recent Black voter outreach events have not been framed exclusively around Presley’s race or any specific candidate. Rather, they have served as a repudiation of conservative policies over the last four years that, in the Democratic leaders’ view, harm Black communities. The events have served as a call to action to elect all Democrats on the ballot.

However, there have been instances when Presley’s work as north Mississippi’s public service commissioner was lauded, and his attendance at predominantly Black churches, HBCU football games and other places over the past few weeks was clearly noticed.

Presley has a powerful ally in Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), who President Biden has credited with providing pivotal support for his election to the presidency. Clyburn is campaigning for Presley in Mississippi and advising him on strategy and tactics to win a pivotal share of the Black vote.

While the contest for governor is Mississippi’s marquee race, Vance writes, “The governor’s race aside, several progressive officials proclaimed the slate of Democratic statewide candidates was strong, and they were building a better foundation for the party that can continue to be stronger in future years.”

As a moderate Democrat, Presley has a good chance to take away some votes from the Republican incumbent. In addition, Clyburn notes that Presley was instrumental in securing substantial funding for the inclusion of broadband for rural communities in the bipartisan infrastructure bill congress passed in 2021.

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains why “The GOP’s speaker chaos is a blessing in disguise,” and writes: “The chaotic Republican-led House of Representatives has a rather poor sense of timing. The United States is in the midst of two international emergencies and faces the threat of a government shutdown next month. President Biden’s prime-time speech on Thursday pressing for aid to Ukraine and Israel underscored the exorbitant costs of the GOP meltdown….But the embarrassing exercise could prove to be a blessing because it’s exposing a crisis in our politics that must be confronted. The endless battle for the speakership is already encouraging new thinking and might yet lead to institutional arrangements to allow bipartisan majorities to work their will….The House impasse was precipitated by both radicalization and division within the Republican Party. Narrow majorities in the House have enabled right-wing radicals to disable the governing system. Normal progressives and normal conservatives, in alliance with politicians closer to the center, are discovering a shared interest in keeping the nihilist right far from the levers of power….The GOP doesn’t want to recognize that McCarthy gave Democrats no reason to save him — he flatly refused to negotiate with them in his hour of need — and many reasons to believe he’d continue to kowtow to party extremists….The last straw came after Democrats gave more votes than Republicans did to pass McCarthy’s bill to avoid a government shutdown last month. The next day, McCarthy turned around and bizarrely claimed that Democrats “did not want the bill” and “were willing to let government shut down.” That dishonest nonsense sealed his fate.”

“Democrats are going out of their way,” Dionne adds, “to say they are ready to deal. “We are willing to find a bipartisan path forward so we can reopen the House,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said at a news conference on Friday, after Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) went down in his third and decisive defeat in the speakership vote. Republicans, Jeffries said, had a choice: to “embrace bipartisanship and abandon extremism.”….The Democratic rank and file has quietly been working in this direction. Rep. Annie Kuster (N.H.), chair of the New Democrat Coalition, told me that moderate Democrats “were talking to any reasonable Republican we had a relationship with” in an effort to empower Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) to bring up bills that have broad support in both parties….She noted that the Democrats’ conditions were minimal and hardly left-wing: to agree to avoid a government shutdown; to pass spending bills along the lines of the fiscal accord McCarthy and McHenry themselves made with Biden in May to avert a debt default; and to provide military aid to Ukraine and Israel and humanitarian aid for Palestinians….All friends of democratic rule should be grateful. With a regiment of nine lesser-known Republicans pondering a now wide-open speaker’s race, a new version of the McHenry option might gain appeal….Bipartisanship is no magic elixir, but bipartisanship in pursuit of majority rule is a worthy cause. Pushing Republicans to confront extremism in their ranks is both good politics and essential for governing. The Democrats’ offer to help Republicans through their intraparty struggle will either hasten the day of reckoning or expose the GOP’s refusal to stand up to its nihilists.”

“Former President Obama issued a new statement Monday on the ongoing violence taking place in Israel and Gaza as the death toll continues to tick up,” Lauren Sforza writes in “Obama issues new statement on Israel and Gaza” at The Hill. “In a lengthy statement, Obama again condemned the deadly attacks launched by the militant group Hamas on Oct. 7 in what he called an “unspeakable brutality.” While he maintained Israel had a right to defend itself against the attacks, he reiterated the need to abide by “international law.”….“But even as we support Israel, we should also be clear that how Israel prosecutes this fight against Hamas matters. In particular, it matters — as President Biden has repeatedly emphasized — that Israel’s military strategy abides by international law, including those laws that seek to avoid, to every extent possible, the death or suffering of civilian populations,” Obama wrote….He said upholding international law is “vital for building alliances and shaping international opinion.”….The attacks on Israel have resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians across the region. More than 1,400 Israelis have been killed, mostly in the initial attack launched by Hamas on Oct. 7. The U.S. and other countries have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization….More than 5,000 Palestinians have been killed so far in the conflict in Gaza, including an estimated 2,055 children and 1,119 women, with more than 15,000 injured, the Gaza Health Ministry reported Monday….“The Israeli government’s decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive civilian population threatens not only to worsen a growing humanitarian crisis; it could further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations, erode global support for Israel, play into the hands of Israel’s enemies, and undermine long term efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region,” he wrote….He also recognized Israel has “every right to exist,” but Palestinians have “also lived in disputed territories for generations.”….“But if we care about keeping open the possibility of peace, security and dignity for future generations of Israeli and Palestinian children — as well as for our own children — then it falls upon all of us to at least make the effort to model, in our own words and actions, the kind of world we want them to inherit,” he concluded.”

You may not be shocked to learn that “Voters under 30 are trending left of the general electorate,” as Monica Potts and Holly Fuong report at FiveThirtyEight, via ABC News. “Voters under the age of 30 have largely been part of the Democratic camp since former President Barack Obama won two-thirds of them in 2008. That same age group may have helped put President Joe Biden over the top in 2020, and assisted Democrats in broadly overperforming expectations in the 2022 midterms. And there’s some evidence that these young voters are staying liberal even as they age, defying the trend of previous generations. That’s especially true of millennials, the now-27 to 42 year-olds who were so taken with Obama’s first campaign. (Throughout this analysis, we use the Pew Research Center’s definitions of millennials and Generation Z.)….Young voters are consistently more liberal than the general electorate is on a range of issues, according to a 538 analysis. We took a look at data from the Cooperative Election Study, a Harvard University survey of at least 60,000 Americans taken before the 2020 elections and the 2022 midterms, and found notable differences between younger voters and the general electorate on key issues like the environment, abortion and immigration. That could make a big difference in the general election — that is, if young voters actually show up to vote….In 2020 and 2022, voters under 30 made up 21 percent of the electorate, according to our analysis of the CES data. In both of those elections, the cohort of 18 to 29 year-olds was composed of a mix of millennials and Gen Z, those born after 1996. More of Gen Z will be eligible to vote next year than ever before, and so far, they seem to be voting like the millennials that came before them. If history holds, they are likely to become more politically active as they age, and if they keep the political preferences they exhibit now, then like millennials, they’ll have a bigger and bigger impact on elections to come. That impact may begin as soon as 2024….Turnout among millennials and Gen Z, many of whom will be voting in their first presidential election, will be key in 2024. The youngest voters in any given election year have historically been the least likely to vote, with around 46 percent in that age group voting in 2016, more than 15 percentage points lower than the general electorate. Turnout rose in 2020, as it did for all groups, when an estimated 50 percent of young voters and 66 percent of the general electorate voted, but declined some in 2022 compared to the previous midterm in 2018.”

“To comment on this intra-left controversy risks distorting the political stakes,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes in his Washington Post column, “Empathy for Palestinians cannot mean sympathy for Hamas.” Dionne cites “a rare consensus in mainstream politics that Hamas’s terrorism was “an act of sheer evil,” as President Biden said in his powerful speech on Tuesday. Little pockets of sympathy for Hamas will have no effect on U.S. politics going forward. The important contrast is between the moral and strategic seriousness of Biden’s response and the petty, unhinged and self-involved rantings of Donald Trump. Maybe, just maybe, Americans pondering a vote for the former president will see more clearly that returning him to the White House would be an act of democratic suicide….The sharp turn to the right in Israel that Netanyahu engineered has undercut support for the country among younger Americans in the United States. Most of these increasingly vocal critics have resisted supporting Hamas, but the gut liberal sympathy for Israel has largely disappeared among those born after Biden’s generation and mine. If Hamas’s shameful attack has mostly restored consensus in the Democratic Party around the need to defend Israel against mass terrorism, the underlying opposition to Israel’s settlement policies and its refusal to engage with Palestinian demands for self-determination remains….The shock of these traumatic events should shake everyone into a reassessment rooted in moral realism. As my Post colleague Max Bootargued last week, the imperative of accountability should lead eventually to Netanyahu’s ouster. Even as supporters of Israel stand up for its right to self-defense, analysts with long experience in the Middle East, including Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times and The Post’s David Ignatius, warn of the dangers of overreach in Gaza. Having reported alongside them and learned from them during the war in Lebanon in the 1980s, I share their skepticism of grand military plans that promise to settle a conflict for good. We have seen too many such promises fail in the Middle East. And Biden was right in his speech to call attention to moral obligations that apply even in legitimate wars of self-preservation….The left should not stop advocating on behalf of justice for Palestinians. And Israel’s center and left should not stop demanding that Netanyahu’s plans to undercut the country’s judiciary be shelved permanently. But terrorism will not create a more democratic Israel or lead to self-determination for Palestinians. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute is rife with ambiguities and conflicting moral claims. This cannot be said of what Hamas did. Its actions are, exactly as Biden said, unambiguously evil.”

NYT columnist Thomas B. Edsall flags an important study, “24 for ’24: Urgent Recommendations in Law, Media, Politics, and Tech for Fair and Legitimate 2024 U.S. Elections,” and here are some excerpts from the Executive Summary: “Over the last two decades, hyperpolarized politics and very close elections have led to fights over election rules and controversy over the administration of U.S. elections. The emergence of these “voting wars” has caused some people, especially those on the losing end of election battles, to question the fairness and integrity of the systems and rules used for conducting elections and tabulating results. This crisis of confidence emerged even as election administration has become more professionalized and even after some of the worst-performing voting systems were taken out of service….Concerns about election fairness and legitimacy exploded during and after the 2020 elections. That election was conducted during a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic and as one of the two major presidential candidates, Donald J. Trump, repeatedly made false and unsubstantiated claims against the integrity of the electoral process. After losing the election, Trump and his allies engaged in an unprecedented series of maneuvers in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential results. All reliable evidence indicates that the election was conducted without widespread fraud or irregularities under difficult circumstances….No longer can we take for granted that people will accept election results as legitimate. The United States faces continued threats to peaceful transitions of power after election authorities (or courts) have declared a presidential election winner….Variation and fragmentation of authority leave ample room for litigation in the case of close election results….After public meetings and further online deliberations, this Committee makes the following 24 recommendations for immediate change that should be implemented to increase the fairness and help bolster the legitimacy of the 2024 elections. These recommendation are aimed collectively at assuring access to the ballot for all eligible voters, protecting election integrity, and enhancing the public’s confidence in the fairness of the election and the accuracy of the results.* Read the report here for the specific 24 recommendations.

Should Democrats get more involved in helping to pick the next House Speaker? It’s a tricky strategic question. It’s so much fun to watch the Jim Jordan follies. And there is the saying, “When your adversary is committing political suicide, get out of the way.” But at a certain point, might the public get pissed off that Democrats don’t use what leverage they can muster to prevent the next government shutdown from happening. Perhaps the strategy is to let the Republicans keep branding themselves as incompetent and incapable of governing for a while, and then create a coalition that can elect a more moderate Republican speaker. It’s doubtful that the House is going to pass anything anyway. As Justin Papp writes at Roll Call, “In fact, there’s some shiny silver lining visible in the depths of Republican dysfunction, Crockett and other Democrats said. “There is no campaign slogan, there is no messaging the Democrats could ever do, to better demonstrate who the modern day Republican Party is,” Crockett said….“It’s not good for our country, and it’s not good for the world,” said New Hampshire Democratic Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, who chairs the New Democrat Coalition, of a potential Jim Jordan speakership. “But winning the majority in 2024 just got a whole hell-of-a-lot easier.”….with an important election approaching next November and a razor-thin GOP House majority, some Democratic lawmakers and strategists are salivating over what they view as unforced Republican errors….“There’s almost no doubt that this type of dysfunction and chaos among Republicans will benefit Democrats,” said Brad Woodhouse, a Democratic strategist….“By tying their political futures to an election-denying, anti-law enforcement, pro-shutdown far-right extremist, these so-called moderates are hand-delivering the DCCC content for campaign ads ahead of next year but, more importantly, they are doing a grave disservice to their country,” said Viet Shelton, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee….“There will be tens of millions of campaign dollars making sure voters are aware of the GOP’s further lurch toward autocracy and lunacy,” Jeff Timmer, a senior adviser with the center-right Lincoln Project, said via email Monday. “Not only will this doom the 18 Rs in Biden districts, it’s going to imperil other marginal Rs … in ways they don’t yet comprehend.”

Papp continues, “Democrats, in response, have begun making their own chess moves, launching campaigns Monday targeting Jordan and drawing attention to his role in spreading lies about the 2020 presidential election in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol; his staunchly antiabortion stance; and the allegations that he turned a blind eye to sexual assault while he coached wrestling at Ohio State University in the 1980s and 1990s….On Monday, House Majority Forward, the nonprofit wing of House Democrats’ leading super PAC, launched robocalls in 11 districts — many of which are seen as highly competitive in 2024 — urging House Republicans to vote against Jordan as speaker….“Republicans have nominated Jim Jordan for Speaker, who voted to overturn the 2020 election, defended the criminals who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, and is in favor of an extreme agenda to ban abortion nationwide, cut veteran benefits by 22%, eliminate health insurance for 21 million Americans, and fire 108,000 school teachers and aides,” the robocall says….The calls targeted Reps. David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, Bill Huizenga and John James in Michigan, and Nick LaLota, George Santos, Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro, Elise Stefanik and Brandon Williams, all from New York….Also on Monday, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee announced a six-figure ad buy in support of Virginia state Democrats in response to the “silly, yet predictable Republican speaker fight.”…. “If national Republicans continue to show they won’t govern, why would Virginia Republicans be any different?” Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Communications Director Abhi Rahman said in a statement announcing the investment in local races….Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has called for a bipartisan end to the impasse, in which Democrats would supply votes in exchange for concessions on rules and House procedures to better foster bipartisan governing….By and large, Republicans have rejected calls for a bipartisan solution, though Kuster said as recently as Monday that some Republicans were still interested in working across the aisle, though they’d need to first hit “rock bottom” first before turning to their Democratic colleagues.”

An excerpt from “What Friends Owe Friends: Why Washington Should Restrain Israeli Military Action in Gaza—and Preserve a Path to Peace” by Richard Haas at Foreign Affairs. “The case for the United States working to shape Israel’s response to the crisis and its aftermath rests not just on the reality that good if tough advice is what friends owe one another. The United States has interests in the Middle East and beyond that would not be well-served by an Israeli invasion and occupation of Gaza, nor by longer-term Israeli policies that offer no hope to Palestinians who reject violence. Such U.S. aims are sure to make for difficult conversations and politics. But the alternative—of a wider war and the indefinite continuation of an unsustainable status quo—would be far more difficult and dangerous….The United States should urge Israel, first in private, then in public if necessary, to orient its policy around building the context for a viable Palestinian partner to emerge over time. By contrast, Israeli policy has, in recent years, seemed intent on undermining the Palestinian Authority so as to be able to say there is no partner for peace. The aim should be to demonstrate that what Hamas offers is a dead end—but also, just as important, that there is a better alternative for those willing to reject violence and accept Israel. That would mean putting sharp limits on settlement activity in the West Bank; articulating final-status principles that would include a Palestinian state; and specifying stringent but still reasonable conditions the Palestinians could meet in order to achieve that aim….Getting there would require a U.S. willingness to take an active hand in the process and show a willingness to state U.S. views publicly, even if it means distancing the United States from Israeli policy. ” And if Biden’s leadership can make a significant contribution to peace in the Middle East, it will provide a boost to his image as the adult in the room when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.

In “The House GOP Is Irretrievably Broken” at The Nation,  Joan Walsh suggests a new approach for Dems: “No Republican is likely to get 217 votes from Republicans only. Everybody in that party hates everybody else, and some of them seem to hate everybody. The next speaker will have to be elected with Democratic votes, perhaps just a handful of moderate defectors. If a GOP candidate gave Democrats some concessions—bigger roles on committees, a way to avert a government shutdown in November, calling off or at least slow-walking the bogus Joe Biden impeachment inquiry—maybe they’d win more than a handful of Democratic votes, but they’d almost certainly lose even more Republicans….I’ve said this many times: In a sane world, reporters and pundits would be hammering Republicans about one solution that should be obvious: that five or so Republicans join all 212 Dems and back Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. People laugh at me when I suggest that, but here’s my point: Of course it’s virtually impossible given the current political gridlock. But it’s not the job of reporters to be cynical and rule out solutions; it’s their job to posit solutions and ask why they’re not on the table….If Republicans do find a sacrificial moderate—some are surfacing Oklahoma Representative Tom Cole, one of McCarthy’s most loyal lieutenants—you’ll hear the pundit class bleating for Democrats to make him speaker. As I was writing, former Meet the Press host David Gregory, now a CNN analyst, proved me right, telling Poppy Harlow: “I actually have my eye on Democrats. How long are Democrats going to stand by in the world of identity politics, and zero-sum politics, and not be part of any solution?” There is not even a GOP speaker nominee yet, but Gregory thinks Democrats are part of the problem anyway….I’ll be here pushing the obvious solution—that some combination of Republicans in districts Biden won and those about to retire break ranks and join Democrats to elect Jeffries as speaker. It’s highly unlikely. But it shouldn’t be. The media has helped create the climate in which it’s unthinkable.”

“Last week, I wrote a column puzzling why no mainstream Democrat is challenging President Biden for the nomination, given the strong demand among Democrats for a different and younger nominee.”  Jonathan Chait writes at New York magazine. “It remains mysterious to me.”….Dan Pfeiffer offers a reasonably strong response that still fails to satisfy my curiosity. Pfeiffer, a former aide to President Obama, argues that the main challengers are largely unknown. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, and Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker “were mentioned but still have relatively low name ID among the Democratic electorate,” in a CNN poll. He concludes, “a primary challenge would be a massive longshot with potentially devastating consequences for the primary challenger and the incumbent.”….I think that argument may capture why private polls might not show an alternative standing a strong chance to beat Biden. And perhaps it would also explain why challengers have stayed out of the race — if they are surreptitiously taking polls and finding Biden holds a commanding lead, which some insiders have speculated but remains unknown, they would sensibly decide not to run against him….But I think this misunderstands the nature of such a race. Name recognition is extremely important in an ordinary presidential primary. Contested primaries typically involve a lot of candidates, and a big component of winning is getting the media to give you a lot of coverage so voters think of you as a contender. 2020 had an enormous field of contenders, most of whom never received serious coverage…But a race with one main contender against Biden would have a different dynamic. (This assumes the contender had a credible background, such as having won statewide office or some other well-established record.) The campaign would draw a lot of media attention. Name recognition would pretty quickly cease to pose a major obstacle. The question would be whether the candidate could look to Democrats like a better candidate than Biden….Yes, it’s early, and yes, the polling has limited value this far from an election. An improving economy offers a highly plausible scenario for how the dynamic of the race could change for the better….That said, I can’t escape the conclusion that Democrats are treating a highly risky plan as though it were a safe one, locking themselves in to a single-track strategy, and leaving themselves little recourse if the plan falters.”

Harold Meyerson writes in “Investing in Disinvested AmericaThe Biden administration’s manufacturing subsidies are disproportionately flowing to red states and districts” at The American Prospect: “Like Lyndon Johnson once he became president, Joe Biden has deliberately sought to build on Roosevelt’s New Deal legacy. He is surely the most pro-union president since FDR; he is reviving the long-overdue regulation of big business; his social proposals in the Build Back Better bill of paid sick leave, affordable child care, and free community college would have extended the social provisions of the New Deal; and his commitment of funds and tax credits to revive America’s industries and infrastructure has clear echoes of Roosevelt’s public investments….That those commitments of funds also have a specific regional focus, though, isn’t often viewed as a central feature of Bidenomics. A Washington Post article from this August headlined “5 Key Pillars of President Biden’s Economic Revolution” said that the five were: Run the economy hot; Make unions stronger; Revive domestic manufacturing through green energy; Rein in corporate power; and Expand the safety net….,Those are indeed five key Bidenomics pillars. But there’s a sixth, or, at least, a crucial addition to the one about reviving domestic manufacturing: Locating that revival in regions that private capital has long abandoned….I don’t for a moment think that the Biden people believe investments of any size will enable Biden to carry South Carolina, Tennessee, or other solid-red states in 2024. I do think they believe it can help him in swing states like Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina, and add an insurance point or two in a state like Michigan. That said, most of his campaign jaunts have been to states and districts where he can claim credit for a new plant springing up. Even if he’s in the reddest of red states, the thinking goes, his message can seep across state lines and may swing some votes that really matter….By revitalizing communities with the shops and eateries and everything needed to serve a new workforce, these projects, if they continue to spring up as they’ve done so far, can bring new life to Disinvested America. Placed alongside Biden’s pro-union actions, his campaign against monopolies and overpriced medications, his as-yet-unrealized plans to help families navigate child care and sick leave and the costs of college, his resurrection of American industry and the places from which it fled affords him just one more way he can answer the question of Which Side Are You On….Biden has yet to convince most Americans—especially those whose local economies will benefit the most from those policies—that he is, in fact, very much on their side. His resurrection of American manufacturing comes with no guarantee of electoral success. But in its long-term effect on American well-being, as Biden once famously said, it’s a big fuckin’ deal.”