Some observations from “If the Left Doesn’t Channel Populist Resentment, We Know Who Will” by Erica Etelson at The Nation:

The liberal commentariat is miffed. Oliver Anthony, a white down-and-out former mill worker, broke the Internet with a populist country tune called “Rich Men North of Richmond” recorded on his land in Farmville, Va. Folks of all races, from the right, left, and center, are singing its praises.

I’ve watched dozens of reaction videos, many of them by Black music critics visibly moved, sometimes to tears, by Anthony’s extremely relatable lament—“selling my soul, working all day, overtime hours for bullshit pay,” while the powers that be kick us all down, “people like me, people like you.”

After decrying workplace exploitation, Anthony goes after a political establishment whose only use for the working class is to tax and control them while letting inflation, hunger, and greed run rampant. It is the song of a man who feels sad, angry, beaten-down, and all but hopeless. That is to say, it is the ballad of 2023 America.

Etelson notes that some liberal critics fault the song as a wing nut anthem, while right-wing commentators are promoting the song. “The trope of the lazy welfare cheat has been a staple of blame-the-victim, anti-government rhetoric for decades. And right-wing politicians and influencers do have a nasty habit of donning the mantle of working-class crusader while serving the rich and powerful.” Etelson adds,

But here’s what I believe liberal critics are missing when they focus on the song’s discordant notes: People areworking “overtime hours for bullshit pay.” There are “folks in the street with nothing to eat.” And working- and middle-class taxpayers are getting squeezed, because neither party is willing to raise taxes on the rich. Meanwhile, an out-of-touch Democratic establishment is telling us that, thanks to Bidenomics, the economy is thriving, the implication being that there’s little cause for complaint. If we want to reach the people who have made this song their anthem, we have to spend more time hearing what they, and their music, have to say, and less time yucking on their yum.

….The song’s fans are fed up and ready for change, but if the only change on offer is slashing the welfare rolls or sealing the border or banning critical race theory, then that’s what many of them will go with. Others will surrender to apathy and cynicism, convinced that no one in the political class truly cares about them. Populist ferment requires yeast, and right now the left isn’t supplying it.

Etelson adds, “We need to relentlessly put forward a counternarrative that holds the real culprits accountable.” There have been some good protest songs that met this challenge, but they were not as energetically promoted. Check out, for example, James McMurtry’s “We Can’t Make It Here” or going farther back further, to Iris Dement’s 1996 “Wasteland of the Free,” both as well-crafted as “Try That in a Small Town” (see Andrew Levison’s take on this song) and “Rich Men North of Richmond,” but neither of which got much play on country or Americana format stations, iTunes or Spotify.

“Liberals have a habit of denigrating rural and working-class people’s tastes and lifestyles,” Etelson says, which is overstated, since there are many liberals who don’t do that. Unfortunately, those who do so are so obnoxious that they get lots of media coverage. But Etelson is right in arguing that “This kind of elitist condescension is a big reason working-class voters (and not just white ones) increasingly vote Republican or stay home.”

It’s certainly true that Republicans have more effectively leveraged ‘populist resentment’ against Democrats, who should be embarrassed for allowing that to happen without much of a fight. It would also be good if more liberals in the arts – including writers, filmmakers and performing artists – would accept Etelson’t challenge and make more of a priority to hold “the real culprits accountable.”

At Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Alan I. Abramowitz crunches data from major political polls and shares some observations regarding ‘negative partisanship,’ including: “What is perhaps even more surprising than Trump’s domination of the Republican nomination contest is his continued competitiveness in a potential general election matchup with President Biden. Despite all of the criminal charges filed against him, Trump remains locked in a near dead heat with Biden, receiving an average of 43.7% of the vote compared with 44.2% for Biden according to the most recent RealClearPolitics polling average…..the key to understanding both Donald Trump’s domination of the Republican nomination contest and his continued competitiveness in a general election matchup with Joe Biden is negative partisanship. Negative partisanship refers to the growing dislike of the opposing party and its leaders among voters who identify with or lean toward one of the two major parties in the U.S….One of the most important consequences of negative partisanship is that crossing party lines to support a candidate from the opposing party has become totally unacceptable to the large majority of partisans. As a result, defection rates by partisans have declined dramatically in all types of elections, and especially in presidential elections….There is one interesting difference between the ratings given by Democrats and Republicans to their own party’s leader: 16% of Republicans rated Donald Trump below 35 degrees while only 8% of Democrats rated Joe Biden below 35 degrees. These numbers suggest that a somewhat larger share of Republicans than Democrats had serious reservations about the frontrunner for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination….it appears likely that a rematch between Biden and Trump in 2024 will remain highly competitive with the outcome hinging on a small number of swing voters in a handful of closely contested states — an outcome that could lend itself to attacks on the integrity of the election by the former president and his allies.”

In his article, ““What’s the Matter With Florida? The GOP’s doomed war against higher ed,” James Fallows writes at The Washington Monthly: “Community colleges are an exception to the partisan divide over higher ed. According to the New America survey, some 85 percent of Americans, a majority in both parties, believe that community colleges are succeeding in their main role, which is to match people who need opportunities with the opportunities a continually changing economy can open up. As for research universities, their role in spinning off innovations and businesses has been evident from the time of the land grant universities onward. “Researchers estimate that for each new patent awarded to a college, 15 jobs are created in the local economy,” Fischer writes. If you want to boost your region’s economy, the best step would be to establish a research university there 100 years ago. The second-best step would be not to drive that university’s students and faculty away now….In the biggest sense, colleges and universities are increasingly the key to community and regional success. But, as Charlie Mahtesian recently pointed out in Politico, they’re also an electoral threat to a Republican Party seen as anti-knowledge….What’s the matter with Florida at the moment might boil down to Ron DeSantis, and his crass willingness to sacrifice his state’s future to his own culture war campaign. What’s the matter with the GOP’s larger anti-education campaign is that it can do a lot of damage before it ultimately fails….It will fail because it’s based on a losing bet—that a party can permanently ride the grievances of a shrinking minority—and because it’s at odds with the long-term sources of economic, cultural, and civic development. Someday historians will see the anti-college campaign as the death throes of a doomed movement, like the last stages of the Know-Nothing Party in the 1850s.”

Fallows also has some suggestions for “college community—leaders, teachers, neighbors, students,” also good advice for Democratic campaigns to: “Never pull up the ladders. Keep talking about a bigger tent. Yes, these are two different images, and clichés. But they embrace one crucial reality: Even people who “don’t like” colleges mostly dream that their children and grandchildren will go to one. I don’t have New America polling data to back this up. But I do have nearly a decade of traveling smaller-town America with my wife, Deb, talking mostly with people who themselves lacked college degrees. And this is the story the Monthly’s improved college rankings have told….Ask people what they don’t like about the weirdos and lefties who now run colleges and they’ll tell you—as their grandparents might have complained about the weirdo hippies at Berkeley in the 1960s, and their grandparents might have grumbled about the privileged, prissy “college boys” in the era of Stover at Yale. But ask them what they hope for their own grandchildren, and the doors opened by higher education are almost always high on the list….Colleges need to present themselves as holding the doors open, expanding the tent, making sure the ladders are available to people who couldn’t reach them before. Making college sustainably affordable is obviously number one on this list. Number two is making people aware that 99 percent of American colleges are not Darwinian struggles-for-survival in the admissions process but in fact have room for nearly all. Colleges have often portrayed themselves as citadels, and with reason. For now they should emphasize their nearness and accessibility, not their distance from normal life….The Republican war on colleges boils down to the idea that colleges are them—one more object of suspicion, resentment, riling-up, and punishment….America’s higher ed establishment should show day by day why the colleges view America, and the larger public should view America’s colleges, as crucial parts of us.” Of all the discontents felt by Trump’s working-class voters, the limited opportunities for affordable higher education for their kids has to be a leading concern. President Biden’s initiatives to make college and vocational education affordable for all young people are a good start. He and Democrats should push these initiatives louder and harder.

In “A New Poll Has Bad News for the Guy Who Keeps Getting Indicted,” Josh Marshall shares some thoughts at Talking Points Memo on recent polling showing how the public feels about Trump’s legal woes. As Marshall writes, “There’s a new poll out from Politico Magazine/Ipsos the results of which are straight out of Obviousville. But surprisingly few people ever go to Obviousville. So those results are worth discussing. The central finding is that the parade of criminal charges against Donald Trump are not in fact good news, politically or individually, for Donald Trump. More specifically, majorities (albeit bare ones) of Americans want his trials to be held before the election (61%), believe he’s guilty (51%) and believe he should go to prison if convicted (50%)….Critically, Politico notes that a substantial minority of the population (between a quarter and a third) says they’re not that familiar with the charges against Trump. Since the charges – especially those in the Mar-a-Lago case – are quite strong as an evidentiary matter that suggests there’s plenty of room for things to get worse for Trump….For all this, what struck me most in the poll is below the top lines. These 50% or 51% results suggest the same old split down the middle polarization we’re accustomed to. But that’s not quite it. 51% believe Trump is guilty. 26% believe he’s not. That’s pretty lopsided. 22% say they don’t know. 50% say Trump should go to prison if he’s convicted. 18% say he shouldn’t be penalized. The rest are split between probation and some financial penalty….If you step back and ask how many respondents buy what we might call the Republican public line – that Trump’s innocent and the prosecutions are an abuse of power – only a bit over 20% of the population seem to buy that….My hunch is that a substantial part of the ‘don’t know’ group is based on what we might call willed partisan uncertainty. In other words, people who really don’t want Trump to be guilty and are uncomfortable with what would seem to flow from that judgment. But they also can’t square the facts with any belief that he’s innocent. When push comes to shove partisanship has a way of shaping not only our opinions but also how we interpret the facts. I suspect partisanship will bring a significant proportion of those people around.”

The Republican presidential debate is old news already because of Trump’s mugshot and his latest legal mess. But if you have room for just one more take, try “‘Economic Populism’ Was Nowhere to Be Found at the GOP Debate” by Branko Marcetic, who observes at Jacobin:

Remember how the Republican Party is meant to be a “working-class party” that has rejected neoliberal economics? It’s a claim plastered all over the GOP’s branding since the 2020 elections. Well, apparently the Republican candidates themselves forgot, since the new working class–focused, economically populist mood we keep being told has taken over the GOP was nowhere to be found at last night’s Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee.

Republicans have defended the economic interests of wealthy elites over the working-class for well over a century. In Milwaukee, the eight Republican presidential candidates doubled down on their party’s tradition. As Marcetic notes,

America “cannot succeed when the Congress spends trillions and trillions of dollars,” Florida governor Ron DeSantis thundered. “We cannot sit by any longer and allow the kind of spending that’s going on in Washington,” said former New Jersey governor and Donald Trump whipping boy Chris Christie, shortly after boasting about cutting taxes and debt as governor. Tea Party darling and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley attacked Republicans and the Donald Trump administration in particular as wild spendthrifts that “added $8 trillion to our debt,” even at one point comparing Democrats favorably to the GOP in terms of keeping a lid on earmarks. “I think it’s time for an accountant in the White House,” she concluded.

“I was the first person in this race to say we’ve got to deal with the long-term national debt issues,” said Mike Pence as if such a promise were novel, pledging to “restore fiscal responsibility” and complaining that “you’ve got people on this stage who won’t even talk about issues like Social Security and Medicare,” a not-so-subtle nod to the former vice president’s pledge to cut those entitlement programs. This was in response to a question that started out mentioning the rising cost of groceries, by the way.

Marcetic adds, “Trump’s gargantuan 2017 tax cut for the rich featured prominently in the debate, but not as a focus of attack for letting the richest of the rich pay lower rates than working-class Americans and eventually hiking rates for lower- and middle-income earners. Instead, candidates fell over each other to attach themselves to that legislative love letter to plutocrats (whose December 22, 2017 signing, incidentally, coincided with maybe the worst period for Trump’s approval rating), as when South Carolina senator Tim Scott took credit for the law — and deservedly so — and Pence brought it up in response to, of all things, a question about crime in US cities.”

Also, notes Marcetic, “Haley complained that Trump had “left us with ninety million people on Medicaid” and “forty-two million people on food stamps” by signing the CARES Act in March 2020. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson bragged about slashing his state’s government employee rolls by 14 percent, before affirming that as president, “we need someone who can actually constrain the growth of federal government, that can actually reduce the size — and I’ve pledged to reduce by 10 percent our federal, nondefense workforce.”

Summing up, Marcetic writes, “So let’s go over what the Republican candidates were pledging to do as president in 2023: slash spending, gut entitlements, shrink government, bust unions, and cut taxes for the rich — all while maintaining current funding for the cartoonishly large US military.”

It is no surprise that the Republicans deployed their usual strategy of emphasizing culture war distractions to overshadow their reactionary economic policies. Yes, we know, Jacobin is a hard left rag. But Marcetic hits the most significant takeaway squarely.

I watched as much as I could stand of the GOP’s Fantasy Island debate. I did see Nikki Haley’s well-publicized rant, which, who knows, may have clinched her a veep slot. The others yammered on much as expected, though I was a tad surprised at Christie’s weak performance, other than his ChatGPT zinger. Nowhere in evidence were any inklings of a candidate with Liz Cheney’s principled commitment to democracy or Adam Kinzinger’s decency. As for the elephant in the room, there should have been a really big empty chair. If you want to read a fresh take on the Republican front-runner, check out Drew Westen’s TDS strategy white paper, “All the President’s Mental Disorders.” Otherwise, there are plenty of debate takeaway screeds out there, including “34 Things You Missed at the First Republican Debate,” “Who Won the First Debate, “The Fox GOP Debate Melted Down When the Word “Climate” Was Mentioned,” “Republican Debaters Agreed on One Thing: They Hate Vivek Ramaswamy,” and “Who won, who lost and who fizzled in the first Republican debate.” All in all, not an impressive night for the political party that was once rooted in conservative principles, instead of personality cult derangement.

However, there are many other political articles worth reading, such as NYT columnist Thomas B. Edsall’s “Trump Voters Can See Right Through DeSantis,” in which he writes: “DeSantis has turned out to be a stiff on the stump, a man without affect. He speaks in alphabet talk: C.R.T., D.E.I., E.S.G. His attempts to outflank Trump from the right — “We’re going to have all these deep state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on day one” — seem to be more politically calculated than based on conviction….[Joan C.] Williams described DeSantis’s approach to campaigning as “a clumsy color-by-numbers culture-wars formula” accompanied by a speaking style “more Harvard than hard hat, as when he talked about ‘biomedical security restrictions’ in his speech to the Republican Party convention in North Carolina (whatever those are??).” Linda Skitka, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois-Chicago, wrote to Edsall by email that “DeSantis, “is very specific and consistent about policy, and he is too extreme for many on the right. To ice the cake, he appears to be really bad at retail politics — he just isn’t likable, and certainly isn’t charismatic. Together, I don’t think DeSantis can compete to overcome these obstacles, even if he were to start using Trump-like rhetoric.” Edsall quotes Cornell political scientist David Bateman, who observes that everything about DeSantis “seems calculated. He’s the Yale and Harvard guy now complaining about intellectuals and elites. He’s talking about wokism and critical race theory, when no one knows what those are (even Trump noted no one can define woke, though he yells against it himself). When he tries to be as visceral as Trump, he just comes off as weird. DeSantis saying he’s going to start “slitting throats” reminded me of Romney’s “severely conservative.” While DeSantis’s is a dangerous escalation of violent imagery, they both sound bizarre and unnatural.”

Edsall continues, “Bateman suggested that insofar as DeSantis is seen as “an establishment Trump, who I expect most voters will see as fully aligned with G.O.P. orthodoxy but even more focused on the priorities of racial and social conservatives (taking over universities, banning books, or attacking transpersons), he starts to look more like a general election loser.”….Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, argued in an email that DeSantis has adopted an approach to the nomination fight that was bound to fail: “DeSantis’s strategy, and that of any candidate not named Trump, should be to consolidate the Maybe Trump voters. But DeSantis has seemed like he was going after the Always Trump voters with his aggressive language (“slitting throats”), his comment that Ukraine was just a “territorial dispute,” his suggestion that vaccine conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. would be a good candidate to head the Centers for Disease Control, and his doubling down on whether slavery might have been beneficial to some enslaved people.”….Robert Y. Shapiro, a political scientist at Columbia, elaborated on the difficulties facing DeSantis’s bid to position himself to the right of Trump. “The DeSantis strategy is weak in that there are not enough Republican voters to be gained to the right of Trump,”….Dianne Pinderhughes, a political scientist at Notre Dame, wrote by email that an image of DeSantis at a campaign event captured for her the weakness of his campaign for the nomination.“He has no affect,” Pinderhughes wrote. “My favorite example is a photo of him. He’s surrounded by a group of people, campaign supporters, but every face in the photo is flat, unexcited, unsmiling (including of course the candidate).”

I’m still a bit surprised that there is not more grumbling about Trump chickening out of the first debate, not that he had much to fear from the 8 munchkins. Perhaps it is more understandable in light of his complicated legal problems, which merit more media coverage than the Milwaukee drivelfest. Stephen Collinson rolls it out well in “Trump’s looming surrender will kill the buzz of the first GOP debate” at CNN Politics: “The idea that the front-runner for a major party nomination would boycott the first televised clash between candidates, then the next day surrender to authorities over his fourth criminal indictment would have been unthinkable at any previous moment in history. But that’s the reality as an unprecedented presidential election unfolds under the shadow of Trump’s criminal peril – and his extraordinary strength in the GOP primary that, at least for now, allows him to ignore all the normal rules of campaigning….the melee in Milwaukee was like a prize fight that lacked the reigning champion, as Trump stayed home, reasoning that he is so far ahead in the GOP primary that he had nothing to gain by showing up. At best, the debate turned into an audition for second place in a race that, on the current trajectory, looks likely to catapult Trump to his third consecutive Republican nomination….the ex-president might have won by staying away – even if his unwillingness to submit to debating his policies before voters on live television smacks of the same contempt for democracy that has landed him with four criminal indictments….Trump, exploiting his unrelenting support among GOP primary voters, has pulled off the feat of wielding multiple indictments as a political shield….the spectacle of Trump’s big jet with his name on the side heading to Georgia for processing at the Fulton County jail will soon overshadow the rest of the race….”

By now it is obvious to most swing voters that there is only one political party that is doing anything to improve health care for America’s working people, and the other political party has provided zero leadership for needed health care reforms. That realization is paying off in a big way in a key swing state. In her article, “With prescription drug costs, Nevada Democrats believe they’ve found a winning issue,” Gabby Birenbaum writes in The Nevada Independent: “As Democrats have fanned out across the country this summer to sell voters on the president’s agenda a year out from the election, Cabinet members and elected officials have honed in on a specific theme in appearances in Las Vegas — the cost of prescription drugs…..The bulk of the IRA, passed just over a year ago, focused on kickstarting clean energy production across the country, providing incentives for companies and consumers alike to go green. But it also included health care policies from Biden’s broader domestic agenda, referred to as Build Back Better. The IRA capped the price of insulin at $35 per month for Medicare beneficiaries, which went into effect in January. Eli Lilly, the largest manufacturer of insulin in the U.S., announced it too would cap the cost of insulin for private insurance users in March….Additionally, out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for seniors will be capped at $2,000 annually beginning in 2025. And the law will allow Medicare to negotiate lower prices of 10 drugs with pharmaceutical companies, with negotiated prices to be implemented by 2026; further drugs will be subject to negotiation each successive year. (Medicare’s list, which is due September 1, is expected to include the most widely prescribed drugs for common conditions including blood disorders, arthritis  and heart disease.)….Democrats say the messaging is part of a concentrated effort to highlight what has proven to be one of the most popular elements of the party’s signature policy achievement, hoping to bring the campaign to the comfortable turf of health care while also signaling engagement on the issue of rising costs.”

Birenbaum continues, “And in a legislative landscape in which the infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing efforts spurred by Democrat-passed laws will take years to implement, the focus on prescription drug pricing provides what party members say is a simple, effective electoral message….“Historic legislation is fantastic, but it’s conceptual,” White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients said to a group of regional reporters last week. “That’s why we need to be on the ground, and be comfortable being repetitive about telling the story … $35 insulin is resonating so quickly with people. It’s immediate savings.”….By retroactively applying the IRA’s $2,000 out-of-pocket cap to 2020 costs paid by Nevadans, HHS estimates that 143,000 Nevada seniors will save $434 per year on the cost of their prescription drugs in 2025. On the cost of insulin, nearly 11,000 Nevadans qualify for the $35 cap, saving an average of $439 annually per person….“It’s incredible,” Becerra said at an event in Las Vegas. “This is going to be a game-changing law.”….In a press conference, Horsford said he’s unsurprised by these provisions’ popularitybecause he hears from constituents and family members about how beneficial the insulin caps have already proven. He said he had family members who saw their monthly payment go from over $300 to $35….“They were explaining it to me at the dinner table, and I said ‘Yeah, I voted for that!’” Horsford said. “That’s real money that people can use to pay the cost of rent, of putting food on the table, of spending time with their kids and doing other activities with their grandkids.”….With Nevada’s population of seniors 65 and older growing — having seen an increase of 40 percent between 2011 and 2018 — the political calculus of the law’s appeal is straightforward. The IRA passed without a single Republican vote in either chamber, meaning Democrats will own the law next November, for better or worse.”

Birenbaum adds, “A July poll of registered voters from Navigator Research and Democrat-aligned Global Strategy Group found that the insulin cap was the most popular provision in the bill, with 82 percent support. Allowing Medicare to negotiate drugs was similarly well-received, with 81 percent approval, and the $2,000 out-of-pocket cap earned 77 percent support….Most of the voters polled were also able to identify the prescription drug provisions as being part of the Inflation Reduction Act — 81 percent of respondents agreed the IRA allowed Medicare to negotiate the price of drugs, compared to only 51 percent of voters who think the IRA provides tax incentives for manufacturing job creation….As the biggest health care law since the ACA, strategists said that Medicare negotiating the price of drugs and prescription drug cost caps have the benefit of being easily understood, as opposed to the ACA, and thus far, have had a smooth rollout, the lack of which plagued the Obama administration….The Biden campaign is banking on the popularity of a prescription drugs-based message….“Simple policies can go very far,” White House National Economic Council Deputy Director Joelle Gamble said to reporters. “And I think this is a policy that people understand. They know how much they pay; they know the president and Democrats in Congress are lowering [those costs.]”….With the insulin cost caps already in place, that message should be easy to promote. But Democrats will have to be proactive in advertising the negotiation and out-of-pocket cost caps, given that they will not kick in until after the election….Peter Koltak, a Democratic strategist who’s worked on several Nevada campaigns, said the cost of prescription drugs should be a winning issue for Democrats….“This is already popular — this starts way more popular than the ACA was,” he said. “It’s only going to get more popular … it’s all upside, really.”….Koltak added that several key swing demographics — Latinos, seniors and suburban voters among them — shift toward voting for a generic Democrat who supports capping the cost of prescription drugs when juxtaposed with a standard Republican who does not, citing state data from Democratic pollsters Global Strategy Group.”

Birenbaum notes further, “Strategists said the issue marries health care and rising costs, the latter of which typically benefits Republicans more. Combining the two allows Democrats to address a potential weakness while campaigning on an area that voters trust them on….“[Health care] is kind of a bread-and-butter Democratic issue,” UNLV political science professor Dan Lee said….The fact that it targets seniors — a group with high voter turnout — is another political appeal….Though AARP Nevada is nonpartisan, it plans to engage all elected officials during the campaign season and beyond on the prescription drug provisions of the IRA, which Jessica Padrón, the organization’s associate state director of advocacy and outreach, said has resonated with members….“Older Americans are tired of promises to tackle these issues,” she said. “And they’re thrilled that Congress finally took action. We’re getting a lot of positive feedback.”….An analysis of per capita prescription drug spending between 2004 and 2019 from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Peter G. Petersen Foundation found that Americans, on average, spend $1,126 annually on prescription drugs, double the average of peer nations. Democrats argue these high prices are because, up until next year, the government can not negotiate drug prices the way it can in Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, for example….The next step for Democrats is to expand the program to institute maximum prices for those not on Medicare. That can only be done with majorities in both chambers and Biden re-elected to the White House — making it an explicit part of their campaign appeal….And it’s not just Congress that can bring the benefits to Nevadans younger than 65. Democrats in the Legislature passed a bill to apply the Medicare-negotiated price caps statewide in 2026, allowing private insurance beneficiaries to take advantage of the new lower costs as well, though Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) vetoed the bill.” Birenbaum’s article focuses on Nevada, but the very substantial economic and health benefits she cites apply nation-wide.

At The Hill, Tara Suter reports that a “Majority of voters think Trump ‘did something illegal,” and writes: “In a recent Fox News poll, a majority of registered voters said they think Trump “did something illegal” related to “efforts to overturn the 2020 election.”….The poll, released Wednesday, also found that 20 percent of registered voters think Trump “did something wrong” but “not illegal.” Another 24 percent said the former president “did nothing seriously wrong.”….The same poll revealed a drop in the number of voters who think the Department of Justice’s “treatment” of the former president “is politically motivated,” from 55 percent in June to 51 percent this month. Parallel to those findings, there was a rise in those who said the DOJ’s actions against the former president are not “politically motivated.”….The poll was conducted between August 11 and 13, with a margin of error of 3 percent and a sample size of 1,002 registered voters.” Suter did not report any numbers indicating what percentage of survey respondents would vote for him anyway.

In similar vein, G. Elliot Morris, editorial director of data analytics at ABC News, writes at FiveThirtyEight that “two weeks after Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, polling data suggests he has been unable to convince voters that his latest boogeyman — the United States Department of Justice — is really out to get him. Instead, polls show that while it may not be putting a serious dent in his lead in the Republican primary, voters overall view his latest indictment as serious and believe that Trump’s actions related to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, merit criminal charges. And among both adults and Republicans, Trump’s favorability rating fell after he was indicted in June for illegally retaining classified documents and refusing to return them to the U.S. officials when asked….In the two weeks after federal prosecutors unsealed the classified-documents indictment, Trump’s net favorability rating among Republicans fell from +57.1 to +55.3, a drop of 1.8 percentage points….Over that same time period, Trump’s net favorability rating among all adults fell from -11.9 percentage points — the high point for him in 2023 — back down to -14.8, a slightly larger dip than among Republicans….Two studies of election results in the 2022 midterms found that the Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives who received endorsements from Trump or voiced support for his election denialism performed worse than Republican House candidates who did not. In a CBS/YouGov poll conducted Aug. 2-4,  a majority of adults said the indictments against Trump were “upholding the rule of law” (57 percent) and an effort to “defend democracy” (52 percent), although more than half also said the indictments and investigations were trying to stop the Trump campaign (59 percent).”

Voters who are concerned about big corporations picking their pocket will probably find the efforts of President Biden and Democrats of significant interest. At least that’s one of the big bets Democratic Party leaders are placing in the 2024 campaign. As Madison Hall reports at The Insider, “House Democrats are increasingly embracing what could be a winning strategy as the 2024 election approaches by joining in on the Biden Administration’s crusade against “junk fees.”….In October 2022, the White House announced its plans to go after junk fees — “fees designed either to confuse or deceive consumers or to take advantage of lock-in or other forms of situational market power” — which it said could save consumers more than $1 billion each year….According to a recent report from the Associated Press, with assistance from the Progressive Change Institute, some House Democrats have already held events addressing junk fees and there are at least a dozen or more planned across the country….Then, five months later, Biden addressed the issue again during his 2023 State of the Union speech, where he made a point to note how he personally understands “how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and gets away with it.”….And after the Biden Administration’s push in part led to some airlines changing policies to allow family seating without additional fees and Live Nation Entertainment to introduce a more “transparent” pricing model, House Democrats have entered the fight as well….According to a recent report from the Associated Press, with assistance from the Progressive Change Institute, some House Democrats have already held events addressing junk fees and there are at least a dozen or more planned across the country.”

In “Will Biden Have Enough Chips in 2024? Today on TAP: His industrial-policy programs are great. How much of an election year difference can they make?,” Robert Kuttner writes at The American Prospect: “Biden’s big public programs, including the CHIPS and Science Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and the bipartisan infrastructure law together spend about $2 trillion over ten years—about 1 percent of GDP. If you compare the relative scale, as well as the longer lead time of Biden’s public investments, you can appreciate why Biden does not get the credit he deserves….The White House fact sheet on CHIPS, released August 8, tells us: “In the one year since CHIPS was signed into law, companies have announced over $166 billion in manufacturing in semiconductors and electronics, and at least 50 community colleges in 19 states have announced new or expanded programming to help American workers access good-paying jobs in the semiconductor industry.”….as Ronnie Chatterji, who recently stepped down as White House coordinator for the CHIPS and Science program, points out, these new publicly subsidized investments do make a concentrated difference, with high local media visibility, in some states and regions….These include Ohio, where Intel has broken ground for a massive new campus and several thousand new jobs, and upstate New York, where Micron will invest billions. Other key places with large new semiconductor investments are Arizona and Indiana….The challenge, beyond election year visibility, is that the administration has only so much leverage. These are global companies that can produce anywhere in the world; they have never had union production workforces….That said, the Biden semiconductor program is a genuine achievement that will revive a key domestic industry and relieve supply chain pressures, as well as a monumental ideological reversal. The political question is whether it’s sufficient, even with the best messaging in the word, to overcome the long-term sense of government having failed to deliver for working-class voters who face worsening terms of engagement with the economy.”

In his Washington Post column, “Immigration can be fixed. So why aren’t we doing it?,” Fareed Zakaria unveils a common-sense approach to solving a problem that has bedeviled Democrats for too long. As Zakaria writes,

In May, it seemed obvious that the United States was going to face an unmanageable border crisis. In the previous fiscal year, there were about 2.4 millionapprehensions of people trying to enter the United States at the southern border. And the authorities were about to lose the provision of Title 42 implemented in March 2020 that allowed them to swiftly expel migrants at the border as a pandemic-prevention measure. But the end of the pandemic meant that temporary power also had to come to a close.

In fact, as it turned out, there was no crisis. The number of encounters with migrants at the southern border actually dropped by a third, from about 7,100 per day in April to about 4,800 per day in June, according to the latest available data. Why did this happen?

Here’s an excerpt from a worthy screed, “Trump’s Kryptonite: How Progressives Can Win Back the Working Class” by The Editors of Jacobin: “In November 2021, together with Jacobin and YouGov, the CWCP [Center for Working-Class Politics] published findings from our first original survey experiment, designed to better understand which kinds of progressive candidates, messages, and policies are most effective in appealing to working-class voters….Among other things, the survey found that voters without college degrees are strongly attracted to candidates who focus on bread-and-butter issues, use economic populist language, and promote a bold progressive policy agenda. Our findings suggested that working-class voters lost to Donald Trump could be won back by following the model set by the populist campaigns of Bernie Sanders, John Fetterman, Matt Cartwright, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, and others….we designed a new surveyexperiment in which we presented seven pairs of hypothetical candidates to a representative group of 1,650 voters. We assessed a vast range of candidate types (23,100 distinct candidate profiles in total) to better understand which candidates perform best overall and among different groups of voters….Our aim was to test which elements of economic populism are most effective in persuading working-class voters, how the effects of economic populist messaging change in the face of opposition messaging, and how these effects vary both across classes and within the working class….Overall, we find that progressives can make inroads with working-class voters if they run campaigns that convey a credible commitment to the interests of working people. This means running more working-class candidates, running jobs-focused campaigns, and picking a fight with political and economic elites on behalf of working Americans.”

Jacobin Editors continue, “Running on a jobs platform, including a federal jobs guarantee, can help progressive candidates. Virtually all voter groups prefer candidates who run on a jobs platform. Remarkably, respondents’ positive views toward candidates running on a jobs guarantee were consistent across Democrats, independents, and even Republicans. Candidates who ran on a jobs guarantee were also popular with black respondents, swing voters, low-propensity voters, respondents without a college degree, and rural respondents. Across the thirty-six different combinations of candidate rhetoric and policy positions we surveyed, the single most popular combination was economic populist rhetoric and a jobs guarantee….Populist “us-versus-them” rhetoric appeals to working-class voters, regardless of partisan affiliation. Working-class Democrats, independents, Republicans, women, and rural respondents all prefer candidates who use populist language: that is, sound bites that name economic or political elites as a major cause of the country’s problems and call on working Americans to oppose them….Running more non-elite, working-class candidates can help progressives attract more working-class voters. Blue- and pink-collar Democratic candidates are more popular than professional and/or upper-class candidates, particularly among working-class Democrats and Republicans. Non-elite, working-class candidates are also viewed favorably by women, Latinos, political independents, urban and rural respondents, low-propensity voters, non-college-educated respondents, and swing voters….Candidates who use class-based populist messaging are particularly popular with the blue-collar workers Democrats need to win in many “purple” states. Manual workers, a group that gave majority support to Trump in 2020, favor economic populist candidates more strongly than any other occupational group. Low-propensity voters also have a clear preference for these candidates.” The Jacobin Editors have more to say on this topic, and you can read the full report on which the editorial is based here.

At The New Republic’s ‘The Soapbox,” Alex Thomas explain how “Direct Democracy Is Upending the GOP’s Radical Agenda.” As Thomas writes, “Like the Kansas vote on abortion a year ago, the Ohio vote yielded a much higher voter turnout than Republicans had hoped for. And make no mistake: The defeat of Ohio’s Issue 1 is undoubtedly due to that large turnout. However, there’s little evidence to show that ballot measures drive turnout in general elections. In the upcoming general election—which seems destined for a rematch between Biden and Trump—experts generally agree that ballot measures’ effect on turnout will be difficult to quantify as the top of the ticket offers such a divisive matchup….But that doesn’t negate the importance of ballot issues or their effect on the political landscape. Professor Daniel Smith of the University of Florida told me that ballot measures “have these spillover effects; it could be not only turnout but increasing political knowledge and civic engagement. Increasing political participation more generally because citizens are now being asked to exercise their voice.”….On Tuesday, Ohioans turned out in droves to exercise their voices and to retain their ability to exercise their voices. The early voting figures alone tell a story—at least 578,490 Ohioans turned in early ballots for the Issue 1 vote. Only 288,700 Ohioans voted early in the 2022 election, according to The Columbus Dispatch. But while the effort to limit direct democracy was defeated in Ohio, there’s no indication that Republicans are likely to slow their efforts to silence the will of their constituents….Of course, the political landscape of America is much different than it was at the turn of the century. Voters are more engaged. The 2020 election featured the second-highest percentage of voter participation in American history. And in post-RoeAmerica, there’s no indication that voters are more likely to stay home—even if Republicans in Ohio, and other state legislatures around the country, dearly wish that they would.”

Excerpts from “Democrats Really Need to Win Back Young White Male Voters From the GOP” by Ameshia Cross at The Daily Beast: “It’s commonly known that younger voters lean more liberal, which is a major part of why Democrats make stronger appeals to get young people to the polls when compared with Republicans. But one large group of younger voters currently tilts in the opposite direction—18-year-old white males….Twelfth-grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservativeversus identifying as liberal, according to a survey by Monitoring the Future….This is a big deal. In the latter term of the George W. Bush presidency and into the early days of Barack Obama’s time in the White House, liberal boys outnumbered conservatives. Those days might be long gone. Conversely, more young women continue to identify as liberal. Teen girls have doubled their support for Democrats in the decade between 2012 and 2022….But why are 18 year-old boys leaning more conservative, and what about the age of Trump appeals to them? Part of the answer is an embrace of toxic masculinity ….Though the Fox News juggernaut—and lesser-watched conservative counterparts like The Blaze, Newsmax, and OAN—are predominately viewed by an older generation of white male conservatives, their talking points are regurgitated on new media that’s more likely to be seen by younger people….With thin margins of victory in races from the presidency to city councils, even slight changes in voter attitudes are worth a second look. Democrats need to find a message to these voters that the toxic masculinity of Trump and the MAGA movement is not the way forward for this country, and that they are not victims of modernity….Democrats cannot simply hope that as the older Fox News-viewing population dies off that their politics will go with them. The newfound growth in conservative identification among young white males shows that the battle for justice, equality, and a sustainable future is far from over.”

In addition to the damage the Ohio abortion referendum would have done if it passed to women’s rights and future referenda in the state, it also pissed away an estimated $20 million taxpayer dollars, according to Republican state senate president, Matt Huffman, on a project that was doomed to fail. But that’s probably a conservative estimate of the true economic cost of the election, because making the threshold for referenda passage 60 percent could have set the stage for cascading taxpayer costs well into the future. As Spencer Kimball reports at cnbc.com, “More than just abortion rights were at stake in Tuesday’s vote. The 60% threshold could have also threatened efforts to raise Ohio’s minimum wage to $15 through a referendum that is expected to be on the ballot in November of 2024….If approved, the wage hike would go into effect in stages, and reach $15 in 2028.” The would translate into lost tax revenues and lost disposable income for a lot of Ohio citizens. Then there is the cost of making future referenda that could save Ohio taxpayers money a bad bet. And if the measure had passed, Ohio taxpayers would surely be shelling out more millions for state and local education, medical care and welfare programs. But it is a safe bet that none of the groups who lobbied so hard for the doomed referendum would be making contributions to help cover such expenses to any state entitlement programs.

Some ‘looking ahead’ considerations on Ohio’s political future from “Don’t Look Now, But Ohio Might Be A Swing State Again” by Phillip Elliott at Time: “Ohio, objectively, has grown more partisan in recent years. Rural counties have deepened their hue of red and the urban ones have gone darker blue. But the shift leftward in Ohio’s cities is lagging others in the region. (A terrific London School of Economics political science blog explains that data here.) But the basic gist is this: Ohio’s three biggest cities—Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati—are politically closer to Des Moines and Indianapolis than reliably blue Philadelphia, and thus insufficient offsets in otherwise red states. For instance, strategists can count on 70% support for Democratic nominees in Philadelphia, while Cincinnati broke for Biden with 57% support. And, unlike other states that went blue, Ohio’s three biggest counties account for just 44% of the population; Philadelphia makes up for 57% of Pennsylvania’s population. Ohio skeptics argue there just aren’t enough voters in Ohio’s big Democratic cities to offset deficits in suburban and rural areas….Yes, but this might not be the whole story. Brown, the state’s senior Senator, is on the ballot next year, and he’s one of national Democrats’ top priorities for defense-at-all costs. Democrats can afford to lose just one of the 23 incumbent seats on the map next year and stay in power. Brown already announced he is running again, and the Republican race to challenge him is likely to become a messy affair on par with the nasty 2022 primary for the seat being vacated by Sen. Rob Portman. For Democrats facing a tough map of defending seats in Montana, West Virginia, and Arizona, any breathing room in Ohio is a welcome development….With both Biden and Brown on the ticket in Ohio in 2024, Democrats might just have a shot at breaking the Trumpist hold over the Buckeye State. The abortion-minded vote this week only adds to the optimism—perhaps ill-placed, admittedly—that Ohio may be poised to roar back to swing-state status. After all, Brown has been preaching Ohio’s competitive nature to anyone who will listen, and his ear on Ohio’s political tuning fork is as good as they come.”

FiveThirtyEight’s Geoffrey Skelley addresses a question of interest to southern Democrats, “Could A Democrat Actually Win Mississippi’s Governorship?” As Skelley writes, “Mississippi’s contest for governor will offer little primary drama because Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and Democratic Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley are all but guaranteed to face each other in November. But their impending clash will test how Republican-leaning Mississippi is, as Reeves isn’t especially popular and Presley has about as good a résumé as Democrats could hope for in the Magnolia State….First elected in 2019, Reeves is seeking a second term as governor, but his tenure hasn’t exactly attracted rave reviews. Morning Consult’s polling in the second quarter of 2023 found that he was tied for the dubious title of least popular governor in the country with a +6-point net job approval rating (48 percent of registered voters approved of him and 42 percent disapproved). Such middling ratings have been a regular thing, as Reeves has never surpassed 52 percent approval in Morning Consult’s surveys. Back in January, 57 percent of voters told Siena College/Mississippi Today that they’d prefer someone else to be the next governor, while just 33 percent backed Reeves….Presley, who I’m mandated by the journalism deities to report is a second cousin of Elvis Presley, is completing his fourth term representing the northern third of Mississippi on the state’s three-member Public Services Commission….Presley has won all four elections for his post by double digits (he was unopposed in 2019) despite his district’s sizable GOP lean: In 2020, then-President Donald Trump carried Presley’s seat by 23 percentage points. Presley’s moderate image — he describes himself as “pro-life” — and focus on less divisive issues like expanding broadband access have undergirded his success. Along those lines, Presley has made tax reductions a central feature of his campaign, including an ad in which he cuts a car in half with a metal saw to talk up his proposal to halve the state’s license plate tax.” However, Reeves does have better head-to-head poll numbers and more money. “The election is about three months away,” notes Skelley, “and Presley can’t be written off entirely, but Reeves is clearly favored.”

David Dayan explores some of the reasons why “It’s Natural That People Feel Bad About the Economy Right Now” at The American Prospect, including: “The dominant economic story in the country during the Biden presidency is the spike in inflation. While the jobs numbers are prodigious, changes in employment by definition affect a smaller number of people than the price of everything, which affects everyone….When inflation “goes away,” that doesn’t mean that every price reverts back to its previous level. For the most part, the rate of price increases just levels off. Anyone pissed off about prices at the grocery store is still going to be pissed off, because they’re still high relative to where they were in 2021. In fact, companies continued to raise prices on food in the second quarter of this year, even as supply disruptions eased. An opportunistic trend of volume dropping and profits rising, which means that companies are taking more margin per unit, has taken hold. We may finally be seeing the limits of this profit-skimming, however; Wall Street investors are starting to punish companies that aren’t increasing sales. If companies chase volume with discounts, consumers will see some relief….The main prices that have fallen already are on gas and energy, but that has ended, in part because of the ongoing heat wave, which prevents refineries from running at full capacity and increases demand for air-conditioning. The positive trends on consumer sentiment are if anything going to go down in the near term, as the most publicly visible posted prices in the country rise….It takes time for these sentiments to fade, even when the economy really has turned around. Ronald Reagan didn’t see the benefits of a stronger economy until a year or so after unemployment began to fall; Bill Clinton and Barack Obama saw the same dynamic. Those rebounds were slow, about a point a month between the summer before their re-elections and Election Day. (Obama’s was even slower, as his economy rebounded more slowly.) You could see this kind of imperceptible change for Biden, if consumer confidence continues on its upward path.”

There are lots of good reports about yesterday’s vote in Ohio on the Republican plan to undermine both reproductive rights and democracy in the state. But Howard Wilkinson’s “Ohio’s GOP just learned voters are not as gullible as they think” at wxvu.org explains it with panache:

Nice try, Ohio GOP.

Issue 1, the incredibly bad deal you were offering Ohioans, failed miserably.

A solid majority could not figure out why, for heaven’s sake, they would agree to allow 41% of voters to shoot down an idea for a state constitutional amendment.

The 60% threshold was a miserable flop; and so too was another piece of Issue 1, which would have made it nearly impossible for any citizen-driven initiative to get on the ballot.

And the only thing you accomplished was to make Ohio taxpayers foot the bill for an August special election and waste the tens of millions of dollars both sides spent on this pointless campaign.

With 99 percent of the vote counted, the GOP measure was defeated by nearly 14 percent. Calling the vote a “GOP disaster,” Wilkinson adds, “Kyle Kondik, an Ohio native with the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said “This is a classic example of the old saying in politics, ‘pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered.’ ”

This was an election that never should have happened. In fact, last December, the Republicans in the Ohio legislature did away with August elections altogether.

[Republican Secretary of State Frank] LaRose was all in favor of that. But when it became clear that the only way they could stop the November abortion rights amendment was with the 60% ballot initiative, he was all for the legislation to hold an Aug. 8 special election.

A coalition of over 250 organizations from across the political spectrum in Ohio were busy declaring victory early Tuesday night.

In recent years, Ohio has morphed into a reddish state. Democrat Sherrod Brown still holds a U.S. Senate seat, but he has a tough re-election campaign for November 2024. However, this vote shows the power of coalition building for Democrats, as well as the folly of the GOP’s efforts to undermine democracy. Further,

The Ohio Democratic Party has become very good at getting people out since the Obama wave of 2008. This special August election was no exception. It drew 642,000 early voters and the results skewed heavily Democratic.

The Ohio Republican Party has struggled in trying to convince its base to cast ballots early at the boards of elections or by mail. Republican voters tend to vote on Election Day, and that was the case in Tuesday’s results.

….The 60% threshold may be too high a bar for abortion rights groups to reach — although a USA Today/Suffolk University poll shows 58% support for abortion rights in Ohio.

….As odious as the 60% threshold was to opponents of Issue 1, the requirement about gathering petition signatures to place a constitutional amendment was even worse.

The standard since 1912 has been that petitioners have to gather the signatures of 5% of voters from 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties. Issue 1 would apply that to all 88 counties, which proponents believe would give more power to Ohio’s smaller, rural and reliably Republican counties….It would mean that one county — one — out of 88 could effectively prevent any proposed constitutional amendment, good or bad, from reaching the ballot.

Also this:

The most effective tool the One Person/One Vote campaign came from an unknown source — a meme that went viral on social media a month or so ago that made the issue plain and simple, and probably had a big impact on undecided voters or voters who were having a hard time understanding what exactly Issue 1 would do.

It was very simple: A box which showed the score of a fictional football game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Michigan Wolverines. The score said, “Ohio State 59, Michigan 41.”

Then it pointed out that, under Issue 1, the team with 41 points would be declared the winner.

Simple and understandable.

And a gut punch for anyone who roots for the Buckeyes.

But not nearly the gut punch this election turned out to be for the Ohio GOP.

Ingenious.

The Republicans have deployed football metaphors in politics for ages. They must be grinding their teeth at being creamed by Dems using one so creatively in a football-crazy state.