Matt Dixon and Jonathan Allen report “Democratic donors hope to recruit NBA legends Grant Hill and Dwyane Wade to run for Senate in Florida” at nbcnews.com. But their article is about more than these two former NBA stars potential senate candidacies; it’s really an update on Democratic prospects for taking away Republican Rick Scott’s senate seat next year.

As for the idea of running popular “NBA legends” as a shortcut to making Florida a purple state once again, why not? The Florida Democratic Party needs help, and a NBA celebrity candidacy just might help to juice turnout, particularly among black voters. I’ve long believed Democrats could benefit for running more jocks and entertainers. Republicans did alright with Reagan, Sen. George Murphy and Schwartzeneggar. Professional sports brings together voters of all races and athletic stars can help do the same for Democrats running in elections.

Sure, it’s a gimmicky substitute for the hard work of party-building. But consider that famous jocks come with name recognition, a ready-made fan/donor base, charisma and lotsa money. Ditto for big name entertainers. Given the importance of black voters as a pivotal constituency for Democrats, NBA stars like Hill and Wade would also bring significant buzz to a senate candidacy.

African Americans are more than 15 percent of Florida’s population, and nearly a third of the residents of Jacksonville, Florida’s largest city. Concentrated in Florida’s major cities, they can be more cost-effectively mobilized for voter turnout than many other Florida constituencies. It’s not hard to imagine Democratic Hispanic and white stars also boosting voter turnout in Florida.

Dixon and Allen write, ““Grant Hill has great name ID. He would raise a boatload of money and is one of the smartest guys you will ever meet,” said John Morgan, an Orlando-based trial attorney and national Democratic donor, who has spoken directly with Hill about his desire for him to run. “Grant Hill would beat the s— out of Rick Scott.”

“Dwyane Wade is a Florida legend, whose leadership past and present has a lot of folks in our state sending feelers out,” said Ray Paultre, the executive director of the Florida Alliance, a progressive donor group that plays a significant role in Florida Democratic politics. “We have seen former athletes, in both parties, bring something special to the political landscape. He hasn’t been officially approached, but he is on the list of four or five dream candidates to challenge Rick Scott.

Incumbency is always an asset. But it’s not like the Republican Senator Rick Scott is Mr. Popularity. “Everything Rick Scott has done while he was trying to make a name for himself in Washington has made him more vulnerable back in Florida,” DSCC Communications Director David Bergstein said. “His agenda to cut — and to cut programs like Social Security and Medicare — is toxic with the voters that decide a general election in a state like Florida.”

The rest of the article discusses the possible candidacies of five other lesser-known Democratic Floridians from more conventional political backgrounds. Certainly, one of them could emerge as a credible, or even popular candidate. Regardless, Democrats should begin to more actively recruit well-known athletes and entertainers to run for the U.S. Senate and House districts, not just in Florida, but nation-wide.

According to polling data, many people want to move on from the endless legal fallout of January 6th. That’s both understandable and unavoidable. It’s unavoidable because there has to be accountability for those who violate American democracy — if we want to keep it. No doubt many voters have simply tuned out from the coverage of the legal deliberations and decisions. But that doesn’t mean Democrats shouldn’t occasionally remind voters of the tally of legal consequences leading up to the election. After all it’s a Republican mess, which really speaks to the moral decay of their party. Zachary B. Wolf rolls it out in his post, “How 2020 election accountability could hit a 2024 roadblock” at CNN Politics. As Wolf notes, “I asked CNN’s Marshall Cohen what we know about the universe of people charged and convicted for involvement in January 6. Combining data from the Justice Department and CNN, he offered this:

At Vox, Nicole Narea explains “Why Biden is deploying more troops to the southern border“: “Set to expire May 11, the so-called Title 42 policy was first implemented by former President Donald Trump on dubious grounds that migrants could be turned away to help prevent the spread of Covid-19. But the policy has continued for more than two years under Biden, has led to lawsuits and the resignation of a senior administration official, and has become a political flashpoint on the left….Now, as Title 42 ends, the new troops will be stationed for 90 days alongside the 2,500 military personnel already at the border. Some Democrats have condemned Biden’s decision to maintain the policy for so long and to further militarize the border. But others — particularly those in purple states who could face tough reelection fights — have backed the president’s strategy, which is designed to protect him from right-wing attacks as he runs for reelection….Progressive Democrats and those who have long been working on immigration issues have been openly critical of the president’s move to further militarize the border….Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), however, has long been pushing the Biden administration to take a stronger stance on the border. Last year, he was among a bipartisan group of senators who introduced a bill that would have temporarily preserved the Title 42 policy. And in an interview with Newsweek on Tuesday, Kelly called for tougher border security measures, urging Congress to take up the issue. He proposed increasing the number of Border Patrol agents, improving technology at the border, and constructing new barriers in places “where they make sense” to deter unauthorized crossings….Border security should be a priority for Democrats as they look toward 2024, rather than capitulating to progressives who have previously called for abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy at the center-left think tank Third Way….“It is important for Biden and congressional Democrats to show voters that they care as much about a secure border as they do about the plight of undocumented immigrants in the country and those now seeking asylum,” he said. “Moving troops to the border in an administrative role is a smart move for Biden, particularly as we near the end to Title 42.”

“Can Biden Win Over the ‘Meh’ Voters Again in 2024?,” Amy Walter asks at The Cook Political Report. Her response: “For the first time in memory, low approval ratings of a sitting president didn’t cause a disaster for his party in a midterm election. Many Democratic candidates in 2022 succeeded in winning over voters who “somewhat” disapproved of Biden — a group I dubbed last fall as the ‘meh’ voters. Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden both came into their first midterm election with similar job approval ratings (44% approve to 55% disapprove). But, according to exit polls, among those who “somewhat” disapproved of Biden, 49% voted for the Democrat and 45% voted for the Republican. In 2018, those “somewhat” disapprovers of Trump voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate (63% to 34%)….Today, Biden’s job approval ratings aren’t any stronger than they were in 2022. That leads us to wonder if these ‘meh’ voters will again be critical to Democrats’ success in 2024. And, if so, is a president’s job approval rating — once considered a critical metric in assessing his reelection chances — no longer pertinent…” Walter cites several polls indicating President Biden’t unimpressive approval ratings, but writes that “as we saw in 2022, those who “somewhat” disapprove of the job Biden is doing overwhelmingly back him for reelection. According to the Quinnipiac survey, the 13% of voters who “somewhat” disapprove of Biden say they’ll vote for him by an 11-point margin (48% to 37%) over Trump. The Wall Street Journal poll showed similar results. The 8% of respondents who “somewhat” disapprove of Biden on job approval pick Biden over Trump in a head-to-head matchup, 66% to 19%….Trump, meanwhile, does not get support from the “somewhat” disapprovers. According to data from the Wall Street Journal, those who “somewhat” disapprove of Trump picked Biden over Trump, 56% to 18%….Even up against DeSantis — who is not as well known as Trump — Biden still wins over most of the “somewhat” disapprovers. In the Quinnipiac survey, “somewhat” disapprovers supported Biden over DeSantis by 19 points (54% to 35%). In the Wall Street Journal survey, those who “somewhat” disapprove of Biden picked him over DeSantis, 50% to 32%.” Dems won’t find much comfort in the rest of Walter’s article. True, Biden and Democrats’ re-election prospects could be worse. But Dems have plenty of work to do to make their prospects better.

Most politically-attentive people know that the GOP opposes labor unions because their corporate contributors reap billions of dollars in profits by keeping wages low. But Republicans do their best to crush labor unions also because they know that unions make substantial financial contributions to Democratic candidates, and even more important, unions provide significant manpower to boost Democratic voter turnout. So Republicans are not going to like a new study by the Center for American Progress which provides compelling data showing that “being part of a union is associated with greater wealth for working-class families—defined as households without a four-year college degree—and especially working-class families of color. Because of this effect, unions are a crucial means for building wealth among the working class and reducing racial wealth gaps for workers without four-year college degrees. The key findings of this report include:

• Working-class union households hold nearly four times as much median wealth ($201,240) as the typical working-class nonunion household ($52,221), suggesting that membership vastly increases wealth for working-class families.
• Union membership helps close the wealth gap between working class and college-educated households. While the median wealth of working-class nonunion households is just 17 percent that of college-educated nonunion households, the median wealth of working-class union households is 67 percent that of college-educated nonunion households.
• Union membership is tied to large dollar gains for all workers, but working families of color enjoy the largest percentage of gains. White working-class union families hold more than three times as much wealth as working-class nonunion households, while Black families hold more than four times as much wealth, nonwhite Hispanic families more than five times as much wealth, and families of other or multiple races or ethnicities have in excess of seven times as much wealth.
• Working-class families of all races and ethnicities are far more likely to own their own homes when part of a union.

The study concludes:

Unions offer a crucial means for strengthening the wealth of working-class families and narrowing racial wealth gaps among the working class. Policymakers have made strides in starting to craft policies to create quality jobs for the working class, most notably through the economic legislation passed by the Biden administration as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act….While it is possible that union members are simply more likely to work in higher-paying jobs or industries, as union density can vary considerably across sectors, a large body of research has shown that unions increase wages and other factors that allow households to build and maintain wealth.

For a deeper dive into the study, read  “Unions Build Wealth for the American Working Class: Union membership not only increases wealth for working-class families but also narrows racial wealth gaps and offers a path to the middle class” by Aurelia Glass, David Madland and Christian E. Weller at americanprogress.org.

The Washington Monthly’s Bill Scher is pretty confident that “Despite Age, Inflation Biden Is (Probably) Going to Win,” and writes that “Historical evidence suggests that a lot must go wrong for an elected incumbent president to lose.” Scher provides a review of past elections, including the seven times presidents were defeated in their re-election campaigns, and observes “Biden’s economic performance does not resemble any of these examples. Gross domestic product has grown approximately three percent during each of the last two quarters (following two quarters of negative growth at the beginning of 2022 but strong growth in 2021). Unemployment hit a record low of 3.4 percent in February and is only a tick higher in March….Some forecasters see negative growth for 2023, such as Bloomberg’s in-house economists, who project, “Our baseline outlook is for an impending recession—and we see no shortage of additional downside risks.” But other presidents who have been reelected weathered periods of contraction during their first terms. These include Dwight Eisenhower (late 1953 and early 1954, as well as the first and third quarters of 1956), Richard Nixon (parts of 1969 and 1970), Ronald Reagan (late 1981 and much of 1982), and Barack Obama (first and third quarters of 2011, not to the mention the harrowing declines of the Great Recession in 2009). Eisenhower, Nixon, and George W. Bush each had higher unemployment rates when they faced voters for the second time than when they began their presidencies. Despite the imperfections, these presidents could still credibly claim that by Election Day that voters were better off economically than they were four years earlier.” However, “The Biden record does have a glaring weak spot: inflation, which peaked last June at 9.1 percent (meaning prices in June 2022 were 9.1 percent higher than in June 2021). But thanks to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate increases and the restoration of global supply chains, that inflation metric as of March has declined to 5 percent. The Fed’s rate hikes may contribute to weak or negative GDP growth this year. However, if inflation is contained, prompting the Fed to lower interest rates by early next year, healthy growth could resume just in time. As Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove noted in response to the recession forecast, “If a recession hits in coming months, the economy could be back on the upswing by the middle of next year. The conventional wisdom is that’s when voters start making up their minds.” Scher presents more data and analysis to undergird his argument. I always worry about overconfidence leading to complacency, which feeds defeat. But Scher’s article can be milked for well-stated talking points Democratic campaigns can use to good effect.

At Axios, Erica Pandey writes, “Young Americans who grew up in an age of mass shootings feel anxious about the future — and nearly half say they’ve felt unsafe in the last month, according to a new poll from the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics….Why it matters: Those fears are mobilizing young people to vote in near-record numbers, says John Della Volpe, director of polling at the institute….Case in point: The 2022 midterms saw the second-highest turnout among voters under 30 (27%) in at least the last three decades, NPR notes….“It’s a critical voting bloc,” Della Volpe says….And it continues to tilt the scales in favor of Democratic candidates — whom young people overwhelmingly support….Young voters’ influence “enabled the Democrats to win almost every battleground statewide contest and increase their majority in the U.S. Senate,” Brookings Institution analysts write….By the numbers: A stunning 48% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 say they’ve felt unsafe recently, the Harvard poll found (2,069 people; margin of error: ±2.86 points)….21% say they’ve felt unsafe at school. And 40% are concerned about being victims of gun violence or a mass shooting.”…They’re also worried about the state of the economy….The Institute of Politics has tracked striking shifts in young Americans’ views on government over the last decade….In 2013, 35% felt that the government should spend money to reduce poverty. Today, 59% do….29% said the government should act to mitigate climate change — even at the expense of economic growth — in 2013. Today, 50% believe the government should take action….The bottom line: This is a generation that feels besieged, says Della Volpe. And their fear will likely become more and more relevant in politics.”

This should help Biden firm up support from left Democrats. As Julia Mueller reports at The Hill: “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday said President Biden, who kicked off his reelection campaign last week, could “win in a landslide” in 2024….Sanders, who ran against Biden in the 2020 race, said it’s “no great secret” that he and the president “have strong differences of opinion,” but stressed that he thinks Biden is the clear choice for voters given the current political backdrop….”We live in a nation where you have a major political party, the Republican Party, where many- not all, but many of their leadership doesn’t even believe in democracy, they maintain the myth that Trump won the last election. They’re trying to keep people from voting. They’re trying to deny women the right to control their own bodies,” Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”…“If you believe in democracy, you want to see more people vote, not fewer people vote, I think the choice is pretty clear. And that choice is Biden,” he said….And if Democrats and the president get stronger on working-class issues and “take on the greed of the insurance companies, drug companies, Wall Street, all the big money interests, and start delivering for working class people,” Sanders said, “I think Biden is going to win in a landslide.” It won’t stop criticism from Biden’s primary opponents. But when the most popular left Democrat  provides a plug like that, some resources can be reallocated to help win a larger share of votes from centrists and moderate voters.

Speaking of taking on the greed of big companies that rip off working-class consumers, in “President Biden Must Appoint More Corporate Skeptics to Federal Courts: Republicans have been blasting right-wing propaganda at the judiciary for 50 years,” Caroline Fredrickson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, writes at The American Prospect: “To his credit, President Biden has worked with determination to advance judicial nominees during his presidency. His nominees include 119 Article III judges: one associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 31 judges on the circuit courts of appeal, and 87 on the district courts. He had another 18 nominees awaiting action as of early April. This record is laudable, especially as Biden has excelled in advancing a diverse group of nominees, with two-thirds being women and two-thirds people of color. Moreover, approximately 53 percent of them worked at public-interest, civil rights, or legal aid organizations, according to an analysis done by Demand Justice, a progressive legal advocacy organization….Unfortunately, President Biden’s otherwise commendable record on nominations has one glaring gap: He has advanced few candidates with a background or even apparent disposition to challenge the anti-regulatory economic agenda and fight corporate consolidation, failing even to advance more than a couple of labor lawyers. The administration is currently in overdrive to nominate and confirm nominees before the next election, so now is the time to address this gap. New appointees would be able to reclaim and elevate the textual and historical commitments of antitrust law, which sought to dismantle oligarchy by looking at how corporate consolidation affects workers, small businesses, innovation, and competition, as well as consumers.”

From “Joe Biden’s 2024 Opening Argument: It’s Me or the Abyss” by John Cassidy at The New Yorker, “Biden’s calling card, the one that identifies himself as a Trump-slayer, and an upholder of normality and sanity, remains his biggest advantage going into 2024. He does have others, though. Inside the Democratic Party, he has proved an adroit coalition builder. Much as he’s an old-school, Irish-American politician and many of his closest political advisers are veteran, white operatives who hail from the moderate wing of the Party, he nevertheless recognized long ago that his party’s center of gravity has shifted, and his Administration has sought to bring on board Democrats who are younger, more diverse, and progressive. This approach is already evident in preparations for the 2024 campaign. On Tuesday, Biden also announced that Julie Chávez Rodríguez, a White House official who is the granddaughter of the labor leader Cesar Chavez, will be his campaign manager, and Quentin Fulks, a thirty-three-year-old Black political strategist, who managed Raphael Warnock’s Senate campaign in Georgia, will serve as principal deputy campaign manager….Though Biden didn’t dwell on the details of his policy record in his launch video, he has some substantial achievements to highlight. Under his leadership, the U.S. economy rebounded more quickly from the coronavirus pandemic than many of its competitors, and the unemployment rate is just 3.5 per cent. In the past year, Congress has enacted historic investments in green energy, electric vehicles, and semiconductor-chip manufacturing. As I pointed out last week, these initiatives are already paying off in announcements to build new factories and create new jobs, many of them in purple and red states….Although his job-approval rating is low, it’s not much different than the ratings that Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan had at this point in their first terms. Also, when pollsters ask people for their opinions about him as a person rather than about his job performance, Biden tends to do better. For example, in a recent YouGov/Economist survey, Biden’s personal favorability rating was forty-seven per cent, five points higher than his job-approval rating.”

Amee Latour reports at The Hill: “Swing Left, a group that organizes volunteers and donors to support Democrats in some of the most closely watched races, announced its Win Back the House strategy on Tuesday” and notes further that Republicans won the House majority last year by a margin of less than 7,000 well-distributed votes.

Swing Left’s Executive Director Yasmin Radjy has said that “[I]f we raise dollars for candidates to hire their field directors six months earlier, if we get our volunteers knocking on doors a year earlier than we have before, then we think that a lot more is possible.”

Latour notes that “All six of the GOP-held target districts on the group’s list are in blue states California, New York and Oregon.” She reports that the list of targeted district includes,

Democratic-held “hold” targets:

• IL-17 (Rep. Eric Sorensen)
• NC-01 (Rep. Don Davis)
• NM-02 (Rep. Gabe Vasquez)
• NY-18 (Rep. Pat Ryan)
• OH-01 (Rep. Greg Landsman)
• OH-13 (Rep. Emilia Sykes)

Republican-held “flip” targets:

• OR-05 (Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer)
• CA-13 (Rep. John Duarte)
• CA-27 (Rep. Mike Garcia)
• NY-03 (Rep. George Santos)
• NY-04 (Rep. Anthony D’Esposito)
• NY-17 (Rep. Mike Lawler)

Latour reports that “two of the “flip” target districts were among the five closest Republican-won districts in 2022, according to Inside Elections: California’s 13^th and New York’s 17^th….Each of the six “flip” targets is also on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) list of 31 GOP-held targets released earlier this month. And the six “hold” districts overlap with the DCCC’s list of 29 “Frontline” districts.”

Meanwhile Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. shares some blistering talking points Dems can use to attack the GOP’s House leader’s do-nothing strategy behind his debt-ceiling ‘plan.’ As Dionne notes that former GOP House Speaker John Boehner termed Republican obstructionists as “knuckleheads,” “noisemakers” and the “chaos caucus.” Dionne adds, “In 2011’s debt-ceiling fight, Boehner made a deal. This time, there is little reason to trust that McCarthy, who has made himself a prisoner of his party’s right wing, can negotiate effectively or in good faith.”

Dionne adds that President Biden “is not about to upend a growing economy with steep spending cuts. Nor does he want to glorify the absurd bill McCarthy is hoping to push through the House in the coming week that ties a debt-ceiling increase to outlandish budget cuts that have absolutely no chance of passing the Senate.” Dionne notes that “The cap, after all, was suspended three times when Donald Trump was president without much fuss or fanfare.” Further,

The catch? McCarthy is having trouble uniting his caucus behind anybudget proposal, so the speaker has pushed aside governing in favor of theater. And the production is not even worthy of a high school gym. (I apologize to high school thespians who take their work more seriously.)

It is truly astonishing, as my Post colleagues Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman wrote on Friday, that any Republican operating under labels such as “moderate,” “mainstream” or “problem solver” would vote for a McCarthy proposal that hides its ferocity behind sanitized budgetary gobbledygook….

Dionne concludes, “The Economist magazine recently devoted its cover to the U.S. economy as “a marvel to behold.” Allowing the fractious politics of an unstable House GOP caucus to tank it would be unconscionable.”

For Democrats, it’s time to crank up their two-pronged strategy to win back a House majority: Escalate attacks against McCarthy and his entourage of do-nothing extremists, while getting an early start in the ‘flip and hold’ districts targeted by Swing Left and the DCCC.

In “The human cost of McCarthy’s debt ceiling demands would be catastrophic” Karen Dolan, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, writes at The Hill: “President Biden said it well when he called House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) demands to gut the U.S. safety net or force a federal default “wacko.”….Whatever word for it you use, McCarthy and his caucus are holding American families, the full faith and credit of the United States and the global economy hostage to his demands to slash the programs that most of us rely on….Make no mistake — this isn’t about debt….McCarthy and Republicans in both the House and Senate voted three times under Trump to raise the debt ceiling — and even to suspend it — in order to rack up nearly $8 trillion in debt, including about $2 trillion for tax cuts to the wealthy and big corporations. Although bipartisan spending has contributed to the national debt over the years, on partisan votes it’s actually been Republicans who’ve voted to add more to the national debt than Democrats….President Biden, by contrast, reduced the annual deficit in 2022, and his 10-year budget plan for the next fiscal year would lower the national debt by $3 trillion while more robustly funding the programs so many of us rely upon. This is because, unlike the GOP plan, he includes revenues from fair taxation for the nation’s wealthiest….Biden wants the wealthy to pay their fair share to fund social programs that address ever-deepening inequality — while also reducing deficits and debt. If McCarthy simply voted for that budget, he’d reduce the debt. Instead, Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill refuse to raise the cap unless underfunded programs — for health care, food and housing, education, veteran’s health and Meals on Wheels —  are slashed to make way for even more tax cuts for the already very wealthy.”

Dolan adds, “According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, McCarthy’s “Limit, Save, Grow Act”  demands the following as ransom for the full faith and credit of the United States:

• Leaving many more veterans, families and elderly people homeless, hungry and unable to access health care or college.
• Eliminating tens of thousands of teachers and hundreds of thousands of Head Start and child care slots.
• Increasing interest on credit cards, car payments and mortgages, while preventing any student loan relief.
• Scaling back tax incentives for green energy and making it easier for oil and gas companies to pollute.
• Making it easier for rich folks to cheat on their taxes.

This is simply no way to run an economy, serve our people or be a responsible global partner. It’s a formula for the opposite….The package is dead on arrival in the U.S. Senate…The debt ceiling should be abolished. It has no connection to the real economy and it’s of no use except as a weapon to take the government hostage. McCarthy’s faction couldn’t care less about the debt ceiling when it comes to unfunded wars, tax cuts for the wealthiest and ballooning the Pentagon budget. But let it be about doing their job and keeping the rest of us afloat and they go into full fiscal terrorist mode….But if the ceiling can’t be abolished, it must be raised as required by the Constitution — without conditions. McCarthy and his cadre should be pressured to immediately pass a clean new debt limit. Anything else is just “wacko.”

“Support for abortion rights has grown in spite of bans and restrictions, poll shows,’ Laura Santhanam writes at pbs.org, and explains, ” Support for abortion rights overall has increased as state legislatures and courtrooms have instituted a growing number of restrictions and bans, according to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll. Sixty-one percent of U.S. adults say they support abortion rights, marking a 6-percentage point increase since last June….Nearly a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, U.S. opinions about that consequential decision remain largely unchanged in this latest poll. A majority of U.S. adults – 59 percent – still say they oppose the justices’ decision, which removed federal protections for many reproductive health care services, while another 40 percent of Americans agree with the nation’s highest court….Those who say they mostly support abortion rights include 84 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents. At the same time, 37 percent of Americans overall oppose abortion rights, including 67 percent of Republicans….When asked whether abortion should be allowed up until 24 weeks – around when the fetus can be viable outside the womb and before which almost all abortions are performed – 44 percent of Americans said yes. Such laws, favored by a majority of abortion-rights supporters in this poll, saw a 10-percentage point increase since May….While a majority of Americans – 66 percent – say abortion should be prohibited after the first three months of pregnancy, that attitude has diminished from 84 percent nearly two decades ago….Meanwhile, a growing number of Americans — 34 percent — think abortion should be allowed at least up until the first six months of pregnancy, if not throughout the entire pregnancy. That support has more than doubled since May 2009, when 14 percent of Americans felt that way….At the far ends of the spectrum, two in 10 Americans think abortion should be permitted at any time during pregnancy (especially true among Democrats, Biden voters, adults aged 44 or younger and people who graduated from college), while one in 10 Americans think abortion should never be allowed under any circumstances.”

Kyle Kondik probes a question of concern, “Is Biden’s Approval Rating Too Weak for Him to Win? Just like in 2022, “soft” disapprovers are a key bloc” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and observes: “Remember that in 2022, Democrats held their own despite Biden’s poor approval rating in no small part because they did better with Biden disapprovers than Republicans did with Biden approvers. According to the 2 major exit polls of the 2022 election — the Edison Research survey done for several media entities as well as the NORC at the University of Chicago VoteCast done for the Associated Press and Fox News — Biden’s approval/disapproval split among the midterm electorate was 44% approve/55% disapprove (Edison) or 43% approve/57% disapprove (VoteCast). Democratic House candidates won the Biden approvers 94%-5% (Edison) or 90%-8% (VoteCast), while Republican House candidates won the Biden disapprovers 86%-12% (Edison) or 82%-15% (VoteCast)….Both polls also asked voters whether they strongly or somewhat approved or disapproved of Biden’s job performance, and both found that Democrats narrowly won the 10% (Edison) or 13% (VoteCast) of voters who somewhat disapproved of the president….Unless Biden’s approval improves significantly, rising to around 50% or better by the time of his reelection, the “soft” Biden disapprovers are probably going to decide the election. If they vote against Biden en masse, he is likely doomed, particularly because Biden may have to win the popular vote by a few points in order to win if the current bias toward Republicans in the Electoral College endures. But these cross-pressured voters are also going to consider what the alternative to Biden is. As we noted after Biden’s State of the Union address in early February, Biden is very reliant on the Republican Party nominating a presidential candidate who does not have much appeal to these voters — and the GOP may deliver for Biden on that account.”

From “As Biden officially launches his re-election bid, inflation remains a top worry for voters” by Victor Reklaitis at Marketwatch: ”

President Joe Biden has formally kicked off his re-election campaign, with the move coming even as most Americans don’t approve of his performance, while he talks up the strong job market and his legislative record.

In a video message released on the fourth anniversary of when he declared his candidacy in 2019, Biden said the U.S. remains in a battle for its “soul.” The video heavily features footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, and Biden declares that the question Americans are facing is “whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer.”

About 54% of Americans don’t approve of Biden’s performance, while 43% do, according to a RealClearPolitics average of job-approval polls….Rising food costs rank as the most pressing financial worry for Americans, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll. Other inflation-related concerns include mortgage or rent payments, healthcare XLV, -1.07% costs and energy NG00, -2.64% bills, the poll found.

Reklaitis also notes, “On the plus side for Biden, the Democratic incumbent has the best chance of winning the 2024 presidential election, according to betting market PredictIt, which puts his odds at around 48%. That’s ahead of former President Donald Trump at about 33%, and Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 16%….To be sure, betting markets are not that reliable as a predictor, and they got the 2022 midterm elections wrong. They had suggested a red wave, but Democrats kept their grip on the Senate, and the GOP won just a slim majority in the House.

However, “In addition, the commander-in-chief can point to a robust U.S. labor market, with the unemployment rate at 3.5% in March.”

At Forbes, Derek Saul; reports “The most headline-driving economic development under Biden, the U.S. consumer price index surged from 1.4% on an annual basis in January 2021 to 5% in March, reflecting an overall increase of 15%—far more than the 10.9% increase in average wages during the timeframe….Gas prices soared to their highest levels ever last year amid shock from Russia’s invasion from Ukraine, and though the price at the pump has come down dramatically, the $3.66 average cost per gallon last week was 54% higher than the week preceding Biden’s inauguration despite crude oil prices slipping.”

“Nevertheless,” Saul adds, “Biden has latched onto the job market’s resilience as a key economic talking point, declaring last year the labor market was “the strongest it’s been since just after World War 2,” and saying Americans “can tackle inflation from a position of strength….Biden has latched onto the job market’s resilience as a key economic talking point, declaring last year the labor market was “the strongest it’s been since just after World War 2,” and saying Americans “can tackle inflation from a position of strength.”

Yet, “A recession is “not at all inevitable,” Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told Forbes in a phone interview. The U.S. can avoid a recession “with a little bit of luck and some reasonably good policymaking because the fundamentals of the economy are good.” Zandi also blamed high inflation on supply chain constraints and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which led to a staggering surge in energy prices last year. Inflation is “high everywhere in the planet” and has “little to do with Biden’s policies,” he said.”

Here’s an interesting poll, as reported by Andrew Romano at yahoo news: “With President Biden reportedly set to announce his reelection campaign early next week, more Americans say they feel “exhaustion” over the prospect of a 2024 rematch between Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, than any other emotion, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.….The survey of 1,530 U.S. adults, which was conducted from April 14 to 17, found that 38% chose exhaustion after being shown a list of eight feelings and asked to select all that “come to mind” when considering another Biden vs. Trump campaign….Among registered voters, the number is even higher: 44%….No other sentiment — not fear (29%), sadness (23%), hope (23%), anger (23%), excitement (16%), pride (8%) or gratitude (7%) — cracks the 30% mark among all Americans.” One reason not to take this too seriously is that, if the pollster picked 8 different words, number one would have been something else. Blue words have different meanings for different people. Romano adds, “Fatigue is an understandable response to what could be the first general election for president since 1892 to feature the incumbent and his defeated predecessor competing as the major-party nominees — and the only White House race in U.S. history in which one candidate is facing indictment and possible criminal prosecution for conspiring to overturn his prior loss.” I would agree that “exhaustion” is the best choice of the selected “feelings” to describe the prospect of such a rematch, in my case 100 percent because of Trump, who is the most obnoxious president I can remember. I suspect few would hang the “exhausting” label on Biden, through his detractors would undoubtedly have some choice words of their own. Romano has lots more numbers for those who want to check out the poll.

Say what you will about President Biden. But he may be the ‘greenest’ president we have ever had, at least according to the number of trees his administration is planting across the nation. At The World Economic Forum, Stephen Hall reports that “The US is planting a billion trees to fight climate change,” and writes: “As a solution to global warming, “tree restoration can be a powerful tool for drawing carbon from the atmosphere,” according to ecologist and professor Tom Crowther, from Swiss university ETH Zürich….It’s a potential fix that is already being implemented in earnest by governments and institutions around the world. In July 2022, the Biden administration announced that the US government aims to plant over a billion trees to replace millions of acres of burned and dead woodlands….More than $100 million has been set aside by the US Government for reforestation this year, which is more than three times the investment of previous years, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a statement….Over 4 million acres of forest now need to be replanted over the next decade. This equates to 400,000 acres of forest annually, which, if successful, will significantly exceed the 60,000 acres planted last year.” Many would point to Teddy Roosevelt, who started the national parks, FDR’s CCC or President Jimmy Carter’s environmental initiatives. But, for sheer scale, Biden’s tree-planting initiative is unprecedented. Of course, where the trees are planted is really important for quality of life. The hope is that plenty of them are/will be planted where most people actually live, and create more urban parks. Biden also deserves some credit for other environmental policies, even though many progressives would fault him for not moving fast enough to de-carbonize our energy dependence.

In “Here’s the Gutsy, Unprecedented Campaign Biden and the Democrats Need to Run: The party needs a clear hold on power in Washington to deliver big economic boons to the American people. To do that, they need to make a big promise to voters,” Michael Tomasky writes at The New Republic: “A poll released Friday showed that just 47 percent of Democrats want Joe Biden to run for reelection. That’s a grim number. And here’s a grimmer one: Overall, just 26 percent of respondents said he should run again….But Biden is running—with an announcement coming this week, possibly. There’s nothing the Democrats can do about it. And in fact, there’s nothing they should do about it. Yes, he’s 80 years old. But he has a terrific record of accomplishments both domestic and foreign, and there’s no one in the party who would obviously be a better candidate right here and right now….Democrats appreciate that he ran in 2020 and beat Trump and that he’s passed some impressive bills. Under normal circumstances, that would be enough. Incumbents usually run on some version of “stay the course”; we’ve moved things in the right direction, and this is no time to switch. But that won’t be enough this time. The “wrong track” number in this Morning Consult daily poll (69 percent last Monday) has been higher on average for the last year than it was during most of Trump’s presidency. And there could be a recession coming—one rather inconveniently timed from the Democratic point of view. If additional economic headwinds start to blow, that wrong track number is likely to go even higher….So no—the circumstances don’t call for a stay the course campaign.

Tomasky continues, “Biden should do something bigger and bolder. He and the Democratic candidates for Senate and House should run a unified campaign. They should say to America: Elect us—give us the White House, 52 Senate seats, and a House majority—and we’ll reform the filibuster and by Memorial Day 2025, we’ll pass a platter of bills all aimed at helping the middle class and fulfilling the Biden motto that the economy grows from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down….That’s an interesting campaign. That’s a campaign about the future. It implicitly acknowledges that things aren’t great right now, but it does so obliquely enough that it doesn’t sound like an admission of any kind of failure. It says, “We’ve done some good; now, we want to do better. But you have to give us the run of the place.”….This is key. Swing voters, the 5 or 6 percent who aren’t locked in and have gone from Obama to Trump to Biden and could go back, have a very old and hard-wired habit. Distrustful of both parties, they split their votes. Okay, they reason, I’ll go for Biden, I guess, because I don’t want Trump back in there; but I’ll vote Republican for Senate to keep him honest….This seems, to the swing voter, to make a kind of sense. But in reality, it’s the precise cause of our current dysfunction. Giving this Republican Party any degree of power is a surefire recipe for nothing getting done. Democrats need to explain this to swing voters and get them to break that old habit. You don’t have to love us and everything we stand for, they could say. But give us full power in Washington, and we’ll use it to make your life better….what Democrats have to do is get swing voters to understand a very simple truth: Joe Biden can’t make these things happen alone. He has to have a Democratic House and Senate (and in the latter, he needs a couple extra seats to spare to get filibuster reform done).” Tomasky proposes an 8-point agenda that could win the support of Democrats from Rep Ocasio-Cortez to Sen. Jon Tester —  “A unified, parliamentary-style campaign in which they all run on the same economic agenda is their best shot at holding the Senate, because it gives a rationale for why they need unified power and what they’ll do with it.” Read his article for more details.

At The Hill, Keith Naughton probes the efficacy of President Biden’s “zig zag strategy” and observes:

In 1996, President Clinton pursued a reelection strategy of “triangulation” — politically, a made-up term that meant running to the middle in order to win, a tried-and-true strategy that worked for Clinton as it has for many others in American presidential politics.

For President Biden, “triangulation” is not on the table given the highly polarized nature of American politics. His own progressive left base won’t hear of it. Instead, Biden is pursuing a more modest “zigzag” strategy, throwing favors from time to time to the middle and to labor.

Recently the Biden administration approved (rather, failed to oppose) a huge new hydrocarbons project in Alaska. Just weeks later, Biden proposed a set of automotive tailpipe emissions that will severely limit the number of gasoline-powered cars sold starting in 2027. This neat zigzag was perfect for Biden. He gets to take credit with labor for approving a big job-creating project in time for the next election, while giving the environmentalists a big future regulatory win.

But will this strategy work?

Naughton thinks it has done well so far, and notes, “Catering to significant parts of the progressive left — along with a big helping of Republican incompetence — has taken care of any real party primary opposition.”

In terms of public opinion, Naughton writes, “In spite of his occasional apostasy, Biden still scores well with liberals. Biden has an approval rating of 84 percent with Democrats generally, and 82 percent with self-described liberals. He does have some erosion in the ballot test with Trump, scoring 77 percent of Democratic votes (9 percent of Republicans), but 70 percent of liberals (11 percent of conservatives). Seven percent of Democrats said that they would not vote, as opposed to 8 percent of liberals. This erosion does seem like more than a little posturing. It is difficult to see liberals voting for Trump or sitting out 2024 once they get another dose of Trump on the campaign trail.”

However, Naughton adds, “There is bad news and good news for Biden….”

The bad news is the public does not want Biden to run. In last week’s YouGov benchmark, 58 percent of Americans did not want Biden to run again, including 31 percent of Democrats. Trump fares about as bad with 57 percent opposing another Trump run. Independents, however, are somewhat less enthused about a Biden run (65 percent opposed) than a Trump run (59 percent opposed).

Respondents rated Biden’s worst job performance on economic matters. He was underwater at 36 percent approve to 56 percent disapprove on inflation and 42 percent approve to 50 percent disapprove on the economy. This contrasts to his overall approve/disapprove of 47 percent to 49 percent. With economic issues perennially at the top of voter concerns, Biden’s poor ratings are a big structural problem.

The good news for Biden is mostly all the bad news surrounding Trump. Trump remains less popular than Biden with a 45 percent to 51 percent deficit in the YouGov poll. The RealClearPolitics approval average has Trump 17.4 points under water, while Biden’s deficit is 10.3 points.

Looking ahead and drilling down, Naughton adds, “Expect a re-run of the 2020 campaign for Biden, where he just ran as “not Trump.” For Democrats, this strategy seems likely to work. If anything, Trump is getting more chaotic….The good news for Biden is mostly all the bad news surrounding Trump. Trump remains less popular than Biden with a 45 percent to 51 percent deficit in the YouGov poll. The RealClearPolitics approval average has Trump 17.4 points under water, while Biden’s deficit is 10.3 points.”

However, “Respondents rated Biden’s worst job performance on economic matters. He was underwater at 36 percent approve to 56 percent disapprove on inflation and 42 percent approve to 50 percent disapprove on the economy. This contrasts to his overall approve/disapprove of 47 percent to 49 percent. With economic issues perennially at the top of voter concerns, Biden’s poor ratings are a big structural problem.”

On the other hand, “Republicans cannot count on the economy staying bad forever, and they should probably expect a burst of interventions to improve conditions leading up to the election.”

Naughton concludes, “For Biden, keeping his own squabbling party unified, combined with facing Trump, is the recipe for reelection. And so far, that is working.” And it could also help Democrats to hold their own down ballot.

In “Medicaid is popular. So why are Republicans still trying to cut it?,” Dylan Scott notes at Vox: For years, Republicans have believed that Medicaid, which primarily serves low-income Americans, is less politically potent than Medicare or Social Security, two of the other core features of the US social safety net, and therefore a safer target for proposed cuts….There may be some truth to that notion — but Medicaid is plenty popular on its own terms. Over the past two decades, the health insurance program has become an increasingly crucial part of the safety net. Enrollment has roughly doubled from about 46 million people in 2007 before the Great Recession to more than 92 million today. More than 75 percent of the US public says they have very or somewhat favorable views of the program. Two-thirds say they have some kind of connection to Medicaid, either because they themselves or a loved one was enrolled….In state after state, when the question of expanding Medicaid to working-age, childless adults has been put to voters in red states, they’ve voted in favor of giving more people access to health insurance. Even the Republican legislature in North Carolina recently made peace with expanding the program….The last time Republicans tried (and failed) to pass significant cuts to the Medicaid program, in the first year of the Trump presidency as part of their Affordable Care Act repeal plans, they paid the price during the 2018 midterm elections.”

New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall takes a sobering look at the drift toward authoritarianism in America, and writes: “In an April 2021 paper, four scholars, Samuel Wang of Princeton, Jonathan Cervas of Carnegie Mellon, Bernard Grofman of the University of California, Irvine, and Keena Lipsitz of Queens College, address the basic question of what led to the erosion among a substantial number of voters of support for democratic principles in a nation with a two-century-plus commitment to this tradition:

In the United States, rules and institutions from 1790, when voters comprised white male landowners and slave owners in a nation of four million, were not designed to address today’s governance needs. Moreover, existing rules and institutions may amplify background conditions that drive polarization. The decline of civic life in America and the pluralism it once nurtured has hastened a collapse of dimensionality in the system.

Americans once enjoyed a rich associational life, Wang and his colleagues write, the demise of which contributes to the erosion of democracy: “Nonpolitical associations, such as labor unions, churches, and bowling leagues, were often crosscutting, bringing people from different backgrounds into contact with one another, building trust and teaching tolerance.” In recent years, however, “the groups that once structured a multidimensional issue space in the United States have collapsed.”

Edsall writes further, “Two senior fellows at Brookings, William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, explore threats to American democracy in a January 2022 analysis, “Is Democracy Failing and Putting Our Economy at Risk?” Citing data from six surveys, including those by Pew, P.R.R.I., Voter Study Group and CNN, the authors write:

Support in the United States for political violence is significant. In February 2021, 39 percent of Republicans, 31 percent of independents and 17 percent of Democrats agreed that “if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.” In November, 30 percent of Republicans, 17 percent of independents and 11 percent of Democrats agreed that they might have to resort to violence in order to save our country.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Galston and Kamarck observe:

Even though constitutional processes prevailed, and Mr. Trump is no longer president, he and his followers continue to weaken American democracy by convincing many Americans to distrust the results of the election. About three-quarters of rank-and-file Republicans believe that there was massive fraud in 2020 and Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president.

In fact, Galston and Kamarck continue, “the 2020 election revealed structural weaknesses in the institutions designed to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process,” noting that “if Mr. Pence had yielded to then-President Trump’s pressure to act, the election would have been thrown into chaos and the Constitution placed in jeopardy.”….If democracy fails in America, they contend,

It will not be because a majority of Americans is demanding a nondemocratic form of government. It will be because an organized, purposeful minority seizes strategic positions within the system and subverts the substance of democracy while retaining its shell — while the majority isn’t well organized, or doesn’t care enough, to resist. The possibility that this will occur is far from remote.”

Should Senate Democrats ditch the “blue slip” tradition”? Jake Johnson makes the case for doing so at salon.com: “The Democratic chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday that he is not ready to ditch the arcane tradition that has given individual Republican lawmakers veto power over nominees for federal court seats in their home states….”We’re not at that point yet,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told HuffPost when asked if he’s considering scrapping the so-called “blue slip courtesy”—a non-binding rule that Republicans tossed aside for circuit court nominees when they last controlled the Senate….When a senator returns a blue slip, they are indicating they will allow a judicial nomination to proceed. Earlier this month, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., announced she would not be returning a blue slip for Scott Colom, who President Joe Biden nominated to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi….But Hyde-Smith’s decision, which effectively tanked Colom’s nomination even though he had bipartisan support in the Senate, wasn’t enough for Durbin to abandon the blue slip process—though he said earlier this week that “her conduct and the timing of her decision have made it extremely difficult” to preserve the tradition….On top of the extended and indefinite absence of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Durbin’s continued adherence to the blue slip rule has allowed Republicans to dramatically slow the judicial confirmation process, leaving open dozens of vacancies as right-wing judges they’ve approved in recent years wreak havoc across the country….”Democrats returned more than 130 blue slips during the Trump admin, confirming 84 district judges in states with at least one or two Dem senators,” [HuffPo’s Jennifer] Bendery wrote on Twitter. “More than two years into the Biden admin, Republicans have returned 13 blue slips. That’s as of last month.”….”Progressive judicial groups are practically shouting from the mountaintops to ditch blue slips,” Bendery continued. “Republicans did it for years with Trump’s court picks, as Dems fumed from the sidelines. The result? Trump confirmed a massive [number] of right-wing ideologues to lifetime court seats.”