From “Biden has running room this summer. It could decide the 2024 race,” by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr.: “The nation is about to witness a bold experiment. It’s a test of whether normal governing — building stuff, spurring economic development and job creation, trying to anticipate future challenges — still plays a significant role in American politics….Informed skeptics, of course, challenge the idea that elections really revolve around how politicians do their work. Political scientists have found that who wins or loses typically depends on long-standing partisan loyalties, group attachments and gut impressions about whether things are going well or badly….Nonetheless, President Biden’s administration is placing a large bet on the idea that voters still care about whether government is succeeding at the basics: constructing roads and bridges; creating well-paying jobs in new green and tech industries; and managing the federal apparatus without excessive drama….To highlight the calmer side of governing seems out of sync with news cycles overwhelmed by Trump’s indictment and the former president’s wild attacks on the Justice Department. But that is part of the point, since Biden’s case is about both substance and style….The investments in infrastructure, green energy and tech, Biden argued at a union-led campaign rally in Philadelphia on Saturday, are promoting shared growth, especially in parts of the country (many of them rural and Republican-leaning) that have experienced decades of economic turmoil….Biden’s team sees the president as having running room after getting past the debt ceiling crisis with minimal concessions to House Republicans. While this is creating problems for Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) with his right wing, and could lead to a new budget showdown this fall, it also means turmoil in Washington is now happening largely on the GOP’s turf.”

“After eight years, Americans have made up their minds about former President Donald Trump,” Nathaniel Rakich writes at FiveThirtyEight. “And it appears that not even a federal indictment is swaying them. According to polls conducted before and after Trump’s indictment on June 8, Trump’s support levels in both the primary and general election don’t appear to have budged, even though a large majority of Americans view the charges as serious. In the Republican primary, he is currently at 53.5 percent support,¹ according to FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average. That’s little changed from June 7, the day before the indictment, when he was sitting at 53.8 percent. (The other candidates have all held roughly steady too.)…It’s not that Americans have somehow missed the news. Trump’s indictment has gotten mountains of media coverage. According to a recent YouGov/CBS News poll, 75 percent of American adults had heard or read at least some about the latest indictment. And overall, they don’t see the content of the charges as frivolous: Sixty-nine percent agreed that, yes, it would be a security risk if Trump had nuclear or military documents in his home after leaving office. Another poll, from Ipsos/ABC News, found that 61 percent of American adults — including 38 percent of Republicans — thought the charges were very or somewhat serious. (Compare that to the 52 percent of adults who thought that about Trump’s first indictment, over hush-money payments to a porn star with whom he allegedly had an affair.)….Per Civiqs/Daily Kos, 50 percent of registered voters believed Trump is guilty of crimes that merit jail time, and 42 percent believed he is not….Trump’s position also hasn’t really changed among the overall electorate. In an average of seven polls² of registered voters taken since the latest indictment, Trump leads Biden in a hypothetical general-election matchup 42.6 percent to 41.4 percent. That’s virtually identical to the average of those seven pollsters’ previous, pre-federal-indictment polls.”

Also at FiveThirtyEight, in “Other Polling Bites,” Rakich notes, “A new Gallup poll has found that Americans have taken a right turn on social issues — or at least, in how they label themselves. Thirty-eight percent of Americans now say they are conservative or very conservative on social issues, while 29 percent say they are liberal or very liberal. In 2022, those numbers were 33 percent and 34 percent, respectively. While independents have gotten a little more conservative over the past year, the shift is primarily being driven by more Republicans identifying as conservative and fewer identifying as moderate….One social issue that that Gallup poll asked about was transgender rights. Fifty-five percent of Americans said that it was morally wrong for people to change their gender, while 43 percent said it was morally acceptable. Americans also said 69 percent to 26 percent that transgender athletes should be allowed to play only on teams that match their birth gender.”

At The Nation, Kate Rader and Carissa Quadron explain “What Running on a Jobs Guarantee Could Mean for Democrats: Candidates hoping to win in 2024 should look to A. Philip Randolph, who knew an economy stuffed with good jobs would gain a political advantage,” and share some of the findings from a new survey launched by the Center for Working Class Politics (CWCP) : “Democrats, regardless of class, overwhelmingly supported the federal jobs guarantee in our survey by a margin of nearly four to one, signaling the popularity of this proposal across the Democratic base. But our results revealed important differences in support for these policies based on the party and class of respondents. First, and most significantly, while both policies were popular across the pool of respondents, the progressive jobs guarantee was most popular among working-class respondents—and not just those who identified as Democrats but also working-class independents and Republicans as well. Importantly, working-class people from either party were more likely to prefer progressive economic policies than their middle- and upper-class counterparts. Working-class independents were also much more likely to support a jobs guarantee than middle-class independents by as much as 20 percentage points. Not only did some Republicans and independents respond favorably to this policy, but the jobs guarantee was also the only economic policy proposal viewed positively by respondents across all parties, which could indicate that it is less likely to generate electoral backlash for a political candidate in a competitive district. In fact, we found that even in the face of Republican opposition messaging, broad support for a jobs guarantee actually increased slightly….A lot has changed since A. Philip Randolph’s push for full employment, but Americans, and particularly working-class Americans, have not stopped craving bold, progressive jobs programs. The issue, however, is that despite serious difficulties engaging working-class voters, progressive jobs policies have not been a priority for today’s Democratic Party. The CWCP’s analysis of hundreds of campaign ads run in competitive districts in the 2022 midterm cycle shows that only 18 percent of Democratic candidates invoked jobs as a key campaign issue….Democrats hoping to win in 2024 should take note: A jobs-focused campaign is not just a winning strategy but also the key to achieving a progressive agenda.”

From “Who are the working class and how will they vote in 2024?” by Lois M. Collins and Suzanne Bates at Deseret News: “America’s working class are still not particularly wowed by the government and are often just plain frustrated. In the poll, 64% of registered voters who identify as part of the working class say the country is on the wrong track, compared to 27% who say it’s on the right track. And a full 52% say their personal financial situation is getting worse, compared to only 20% who say their situation is improving….What makes someone feel like they’re in the working class instead of the middle class? It’s likely related to a feeling of living on the edge financially, according to Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life at American Enterprise Institute….This group has shifted in recent years. While the working class used to be considered solidly in the Democrats’ column, slightly more now say they lean Republican. That was evident in the Deseret News/HarrisX poll, with 40% of working class voters saying the Republican Party best represents their interests and views, compared to 36% who say the Democratic Party is a better fit. Voters who describe themselves as middle class most identified with the Republican Party, at 43% compared to 34% for Democrats, while self-identified upper class voters by far leaned most toward the Democrats, with 56% saying the party best represents their views, compared to 28% saying the same about Republicans….“How people self-identify, and the labels they naturally coalesce around, tells you a lot about their social engagement and the pressures, motivations, and values that drive their voice and their vote,” said Dritan Nesho, CEO of HarrisX, which conducted the poll. “It also defines how politicians speak to them.”….When we polled 2,178 U.S. adults in mid-April, we found 15% identified as “working class,” while another 15% said they’re lower middle class and just 5% categorized themselves as working poor. Some polls lump those together in different configurations — usually the working class and lower middle class, creating a group that includes not quite one-third of Americans. Gallup did that in May 2022 and said about one-third of Americans identify as working class.”

Collins and Bates write further, “Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute, is a Democrat who has recently been critical of his party over their treatment of the working class. He said Democrats are preoccupied with what he calls “cultural radicalism,” which has alienated some of the working class voters who once made up their base. This shift gathered steam under Trump, who was a top choice among 48% of working class voters — by far the highest number — when asked to select from a list of which politicians best represent their interests and views, in the Deseret News/HarrisX survey…. Teixeira said many people think Republicans and Trump just appeal to white working class voters, but he said he’s seeing a shift among Latino and Black working class voters as well….Their support for Trump isn’t so much about policy, but rather about his willingness to take on the “elites,” Teixeira said, and for voters who feel alienated, that message resonates….“I thought the failure to understand this, and to basically write off all the Trump voters as a bunch of reactionary racists … I thought was a big mistake, analytically, even politically. And I think nothing has really improved too much since then,” he said….For Democrats to recapture this voting group, they need to focus again on an economic message rather than on cultural issues, he said….His colleague at AEI, Karlyn Bowman, a distinguished senior fellow, echoed his thoughts. After reviewing results of the survey, she said she saw an “extraordinary” amount of pessimism among working class voters….“The economy is the No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 issue for most Americans right now, as it is for the working class, too,” she said….Most working class are not college educated, but more than 1 in 4 are, including Aubrey Mitchell, who got a bachelor’s degree in community health education, and urged Josh to earn his general associate’s degree (30% of the working class have completed some college but did not graduate) although college was never his long-term goal. It’s a good fallback, he said, so he’s glad he completed it, even if he doesn’t use it. The vast majority of the working class have high school diplomas or better, at 95%….Most work or are looking for work, though 22% of the survey’s working class have retired.”

In “Can Democrats Win Back the Working Class? Four ways they can at least help stop the bleeding” at Slow Boring,  Jared Abbott and Fred Deveaux write: “Democrats have begun to recognize that they have a working-class problem, but it remains unclear how to solve it. We ran an experiment to find out (you can find the full report “Trump’s Kryptonite” here)….Our results suggest that Democrats can reach working-class voters by running candidates from working-class backgrounds who center working-people in their campaign rhetoric, call out economic elites, focus on the need for more and better jobs, and distance themselves from the Democratic Party establishment….Although most commentaries on the Democrats’ working-class problem have focused on working-class white voters, the last several election cycles suggest that Democrats have a working-class problem tout court. For instance, the progressive data analytics firm Catalist found Trump’s vote share among working-class (non-college) voters of color jumped six percentage points between 2016 and 2020, with both Black and especially Latino voters shifting toward Trump. Similarly, a comprehensive precinct-level analysis of 2020 voting patterns in high-Latino districts found that support for Trump in 2020 surged even in precincts with the highest number of Latino immigrants. These developments all challenge the widely-held notion that the US’s emerging majority-minority population will save the Democratic Party….What’s more, Democrats’ woes with working-class voters extend far beyond the rural and small-town voters many pundits have placed at the center of this story. Indeed, recent analyses indicate that the party faces a “ticking time bomb” with urban working-class voters in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where both turnout and Democratic vote shares in 2020 were down relative to 2012….Our analysis of data from the Comparative Congressional Election Survey (CCES) and General Social Survey (GSS) survey shows similar trends. First, working-class disillusionment with the Democrats appears to have set in as early as the 1980s, with the percentage of working-class Americans (measured by occupation) who identified with the party falling from a high of around 65% in the 1970s to south of 40% by 2022. And since we find no comparable trend among middle/upper-class Americans—hose identification with the Democratic Party has fluctuated narrowly between the low and high 40s since the early 1980s—it seems this secular dealignment is a specifically working-class phenomenon….”

“So how can Democrats appeal more effectively to working-class voters?,” Abbott and Deveaux ask. “We asked 1,650 Americans to evaluate pairs of hypothetical Democratic candidates. Each candidate was randomly assigned demographic attributes, such as race, gender, and previous occupation, as well as policy positions and a rhetorical style. After comparing each pair, respondents reported which one they preferred. We limited our analysis to focus only on voters who do not describe themselves as “strong partisans,” and therefore are most likely to change their voting behavior from one year to the next and play a pivotal role in deciding elections….Our results indicate that Democratic candidates can do four things to appeal to working-class voters across the political spectrum.

1. Run working-class candidates. All else equal, working-class voters prefer candidates from non-elite, working-class occupations (middle school teachers, construction workers, nurses, and warehouse workers) over those from elite, upper-class occupations (corporate executives, lawyers, and doctors).

2. Focus on messages that champion the working class and critique economic elites. We found that working-class voters prefer candidates who say they will serve the interests of the working class and who place blame for the problems facing working Americans on the shoulders of economic elites. In results we do not show here, we find that this economic populist message is particularly effective among working-class respondents who work in manual jobs, a group that Democrats increasingly struggle to reach.

3. Run on a jobs-first program. Working-class voters viewed more favorably candidates who highlighted a progressive federal jobs guarantee rather than one of the moderate economic policies we included in the survey (a small tax increase on the rich, a $15 minimum wage, and a jobs training program through small businesses). And this result was not limited to working-class Democrats. Indeed, the only policy we tested that was viewed positively by working-class respondents across the political spectrum was the progressive federal jobs guarantee—though working-class Republicans were slightly more favorable toward candidates who ran on the moderate job training program. Candidates who centered jobs were also favored by a range of other key constituencies from whom Democrats need to maintain or improve support, including African Americans, recent swing voters, low-engagement voters, non-college voters, and rural voters. Unfortunately, however, in our analysis of 2022 Democratic television ads, we found that just 18% even mentioned jobs.

4. Take a critical stance towards both parties. Candidates who explicitly criticized the Democratic and Republican Parties for being out of touch with working- and middle-class Americans were viewed more favorably across the board compared to candidates who either said nothing or stressed that Democrats have delivered for working- and middle-class Americans (proud Democrat in the graphic below). Importantly, these results are not simply driven by voters who lean Republican, but also Independents and those who lean Democrat.”

In “If Democrats Win Back the House, They Will Have John Roberts to Thank,”New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall writes: “If Democrats take back control of the House in 2024 after having lost it in 2022, analysts may well look back to a Supreme Court decision announced last week, Allen v. Milligan, as crucial to the party’s victory. This is because the Milligan decision will quite possibly result in the replacement of as many as five majority white Republican districts with majority-minority Democratic districts, and that’s for starters….The court’s ruling in Milligan specifically requires Alabama to create a second House district in order to provide an opportunity for a Black candidate to win. The decision is an unexpected affirmation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a development that immediately scrambled calculations being made about key House races across the nation….David Wasserman, the senior House analyst for the Cook Political Report, announced on Twitter that “in the wake of the SCOTUS Alabama decision, we’re shifting five House ratings in Democrats’ direction. It’s very likely two formerly Solid R seats will end up in Solid D.”….Milligan, Wasserman continued, “could reverberate across the Deep South leading to the creation of new Black-majority, strongly Democratic seats in multiple states.”….While more districts in other states could be added, depending on the outcome of further litigation, the Cook Report changed the “solid R” ratings of two Alabama and two Louisiana districts to “tossup” and the tossup rating of a Democratic-held seat in North Carolina, to “Lean D.”…If Democrats can gain five seats, it will critically affect the balance of power in Washington.”

Edsall also quotes Harvard Law professor Nicholas Stephanopolis, who says: “First, it means that Section 2 remains fully operative as a bulwark against racial vote dilution; second, it signals to conservative lower courts that they need to rule in favor of plaintiffs on facts like those in Milligan; third, it takes off the table arguments that Section 2 must be narrowly construed to avoid constitutional problems; and fourth, if Section 2 is constitutional, so should be other laws targeting racial disparities….It’s near-certain that Alabama will have a new Black opportunity (and Democratic) district by 2024, and this is also likely in Georgia and Louisiana. There may now be successful Section 2 claims in Texas, too. Milligan further complicates the looming Republican partisan gerrymander in North Carolina. And Milligan weakens Florida’s defense for eliminating a Black opportunity district around Jacksonville, which hinges on race-conscious districting being unconstitutional. Put it all together and at least 2-3, and quite possibly more, congressional districts are likely to change hands because of Milligan.”

Edsall quotes another Harvard professor, Lawrence H. Tribe, who cautioned in an email to Edsall, “First, nobody should believe the hype that this June’s Milligan decision has definitively rescued the Voting Rights Act from the dustbin to which the Roberts Court has been busy relegating it ever since Shelby County v. Holder cut the preclearance heart out of the Act a decade ago on constitutional grounds” Edsall explains, “In practice, Tribe argued, Milligan “left the preclearance provision of Section 5 a dead letter and kept in place the crippling interpretation of Section 2 set forth in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee.” But, Tribe continued, “Allen v. Milligan remains highly significant as an essential reminder that the court doesn’t exist in an isolation booth, unaffected by public reactions to its decisions that venture too far from the mainstream of legal and social thought.”….Roberts and Kavanaugh, in Tribe’s view, chose not to press the case against race-based redistricting in part because of “the controversy unleashed by the court in its shattering abortion ruling in Dobbs last June, coupled with other unrestrained shocks to the system delivered by the court in the landmark cases involving guns and climate change, and aggravated by the ethical stench swirling about the court as a result of improprieties.”….These developments, Tribe continued, “almost certainly had an impact, however subconscious, on the chief justice and on Justice Kavanaugh, who has increasingly sought to distance himself from the hard right.”….”Tribe warned that respite will be brief:

In a court that seems poised in the Harvard University and North Carolina University cases to interpret the Equal Protection Clause as a demand that government be blind to race, there remains a distinct danger that Section 2 will eventually be held flatly unconstitutional, a possibility that the Milligan ruling did not permanently foreclose and that several Justices pointedly underscored.

Even a cynic, Tribe wrote, “would have to concede that the court, and the country, dodged a deadly bullet in Milligan, something I view as worth celebrating. But that the gun remains loaded remains a cause for deep concern.”

If you are wondering how Trump’s legal meltdown is playing out with voters, Domenico Montanaro explains at nor.org: “There is a strange political divergence taking place that’s made possible by American information echo chambers….Republicans, whose main source of information comes from conservative media, are saying they believe Trump. But the opposite is true for the rest of the country, including the group of voters who largely decide elections – independents who only lean toward one party or the other….Swing voters view Trump as toxic, and Republican strategists and pollsters say he’s a main reason why the party has underperformed in the last three election cycles.That electability message hasn’t filtered down to the rest of the party though….”There’s this phenomenon that happens every time Trump is impeached or indicted, and I call it the ‘rally-round-Trump effect,’ where voters sort of share his grievance,” GOP pollster Sarah Longwell told NPR’s Morning Editionon Monday….Longwell is no Trump fan. But she hosts focus groups of Republican voters and is clear-eyed about Trump’s hold on the party. She told Morning Editionthat only two of the 50 voters she’s talked to over several months said another indictment would make them deviate from Trump. Nineteen said it would endear them more to him….In the limited polling since the indictment came out, that has been born out. A CBS/YouGov poll found that double the number of likely Republican primary voters said an indictment would change their view for the better (14%) than for the worse (7%). (Sixty-one percent said it wouldn’t change their view of him.)….The CBS poll found 80% of Republicans said Trump should still be able to be president even if he’s convicted….A minority of Republicans also said they believed it was a national security risk if Trump kept nuclear or military documents, but 80% of everyone else said it was serious. That just so clearly shows the fork in this political road….An ABC/Ipsos poll showed that the percentage of people saying this indictment is serious went up from 52% to 61%, as compared to the charges in New York stemming from hush-money payments Trump made to allegedly cover up affairs he was having….More than 6 in 10 independents said they think the charges were serious compared to slightly more than half after the New York indictment in April. And there was some movement among Republicans, too — 38% described these charges as serious compared to just 21% in April….But, importantly, there was no statistical change in how many thought Trump should or should not be charged. It’s nearly identical after the New York charges — half say he should be charged, a third or slightly more say he should not. And half also think the charges are politically motivated with independents split, which signals a big messaging fight ahead….”The question is, is how many more indictments are going to come,” Longwell asked, “and is it going to be a case where, because of all of Trump’s legal troubles, he’s the only person who ever gets talked about?”

At Axios, Alex Thompson has some tips re “Trump’s survive-the-unsurvivable plan,” which Dems may want to check out: “Trump has had a lot of practice surviving the unsurvivable. So his team has developed a playbook to repeat during bad news.

• Pre-release: Trump will preempt any damaging announcement by releasing new information himself beforehand to try to blunt the impact of coming revelations.
• Whataboutism: Trump will try to muddy the waters by pointing to any mistakes — real, exaggerated, or false — by his opponents.
• Martyrdom: He will tell his supporters that any allegations against him are part of a larger conspiracy against his cause to fight the establishment.
• Solidarity: Even before all the facts are known, Trump has his allies hit the airwaves to claim that he is innocent or his enemies are corrupt.
• Shamelessness: Trump never hides or acts embarrassed, even in the face of damning information.
• Flood the zone online: Trump’s team prepares large volumes of content ahead of time to pump out on social media.
• Raise big money: Never waste a chance to raise money — especially if the Justice Department indicts him for obstruction and mishandling classified materials.
• Go apocalyptic: “In the end, they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way,” Trump said Saturday at a rally in Columbus, Ga., in his first appearance since the Florida indictment. He also said: “This is the final battle.”

The big picture: Trump is the only president in U.S. history to be impeached twice. He’s the only former president to be indicted on federal charges. And he expects to be indicted at least once more — this time as part of his efforts to overturn his election loss in 2020….Zoom in: Former and current Trump aides often don’t defend Trump’s conduct — but believe that politics are on his side in part because of his ability to frame himself as a martyr for his voters’ larger cause.”

From Dan Brodey’s Daily Beast profile of Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, who is running for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican Ted Cruz: “In an interview with The Daily Beast, Allred previewed all the themes his challenge will feature: Cruz’s objection to the 2020 election outcome after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, his opposition to legislation to prevent a default on the debt and to fund high-tech manufacturing, his coziness with far-right culture warriors, his zeal for the conservative media spotlight, and, yes, Cancun….The indelible image of Cruz returning to a storm-stricken Texas—where millions of his constituents were cold and without power in February 2021—from a family vacation in the Mexican resort city is, unsurprisingly, the apotheosis of Allred’s case against the incumbent. He calls it the “perfect encapsulation of how Ted Cruz sees himself as a public servant.”….Allred is also quick to mention he has won tough races before—he flipped a traditionally Republican seat in the Dallas suburbs in 2018….Allred, a Black man raised by a single mother who went from playing in the NFL to being a voting rights lawyer, is a polished communicator, said Rottinghaus, someone who “can deliver a really good message, is young and engaging, has a good story, and has bipartisan chops.”….In the 2024 election cycle, in which Democrats are defending their narrow Senate majority in daunting states like West Virginia, Texas actually represents the party’s best chance to flip a Republican-held seat, meaning the race will likely draw national attention…..In 2018, he defeated longtime incumbent Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) in a historically Republican suburban district by six points, one of the key data points of the Trump-era partisan political realignment. The people who voted for him that year, Allred said, “are no longer going to be voting for Ted Cruz.”….To underscore his broad appeal, the congressman is quick to note that he has been endorsed by both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and organized labor, traditionally two redoubts for the center-right and the center-left, respectively. “I’m not a generic Democrat,” Allred said. Brodey notes that Allred will likely have primary opposition. “Roland Gutierrez, a state senator who represents the gun violence-scarred community of Uvalde, is reportedly very likely to run against Cruz. Like O’Rourke, he has grabbed headlines for confronting Texas GOP leaders who have refused to pass gun reforms, and could capture enthusiasm among Democratic voters.”

In “The Rise of Independent Voters Is a Myth: A recent poll found that nearly half of Americans identify as independent. But they’re hiding the real truth about how they vote,” Alex Shepard writes at The New Republic: “America’s largest, fastest-growing political party isn’t led by Joe Biden or Donald Trump. It’s the Independent Party. At least, that was one of the biggest takeaways from a Gallup poll this spring. It found that 49 percent of Americans—roughly the same amount as the number of voters who identify as Democrats and Republicans combined—think of themselves as “independents.” (An identical poll a month later found slightly less eye-catching numbers.) That’s a huge jump from just 20 years ago, when less than a third of respondents identified that way….“The interesting thing about independents is that they do have affiliations to political parties,” said University of Michigan political scientist Yanna Krupnikov—who, with the University of Arizona’s Samara Klar, literally wrote the book on political independents, 2016’s Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction. “They typically have a preference, but it’s potentially different from the deep-seated attachment that a strong partisan might have. But a large portion of them do seem to prefer one party or the other.” Roughly three-quarters of independent voters are known as “leaners”—they typically turn out to vote for one party or the other. Most independents, in other words, aren’t so independent….Rather, “I think what this reflects is that most Americans have a pretty negative view of the party system in general and of what’s happening in our politics,” Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz told The New Republic. “There’s a reluctance to openly identify oneself as a partisan and to say, come right out and say, ‘I think of myself as a Republican or a Democrat.’”….more than 60 percent of independents who lean Republican or lean Democrat have “very” or “somewhat” cold opinions of the other party, according to a 2017 Pew Research poll….Regardless, the idea that these voters are a secret army of moderates waiting to be unlocked by a centrist party is likely a myth. Many do think the parties are too extreme; certainly most believe that they’re too disputatious. And yet they hardly represent a sizable “third party”: They’re not shopping around.”

On the other hand, Julia Manchester reports that “Democratic fears grow over third-party candidates” at The Hill, and writes: “The bipartisan group “No Labels” has been working toward building the foundation to launch a “unity ticket” to run as an option separate from Democrats or Republicans as polls show a rematch between Biden and former President Trump is likely. And Cornel West, a progressive activist, became the first relatively well-known third-party candidate to enter the race….The developments come as polling shows Americans souring on the prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch. A NewsNation/DDHQ poll released this week found 49 percent of respondents said it was somewhat or very likely they would consider voting for a third-party candidate in 2024 if Trump and Biden were the nominees….Meanwhile, an NBC News poll released last month found 70 percent of Americans said they did not want Biden to run for president next year, while 60 percent say they do not want Trump to run for president in 2024….“It’s almost universal,” said former Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who is involved with No Labels. “People are just saying ‘350 million Americans, can’t we have a different match?’”….While West’s chances of being elected president are slim, his candidacy, like past third-party bids, could impact the results of the election….Groups like Third Way and the Lincoln Project, a group critical of the state of the GOP under Trump, have come out strongly against the prospect of a third-party candidate. The groups have particularly taken aim at No Labels….“It is a guaranteed spoiler and the risk is all on the Democratic side,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way. “It’s notable that Democrats are concerned about No Label’s third-party bid and no Republican is concerned, at least no Republican who is a Trump partisan or would support another Republican nominee. All of that concern is on the Democratic side.”….“Democrats rely far more on moderate and Independent voters than Republicans in national elections,” he added….No Labels has maintained a third-party bid is viable, citing polling that shows voters do not want a Trump vs. Biden rematch. The group says its polling shows 59 percent of voters say they would consider a moderate, independent ticket in 2024 if Trump and Biden are the nominees. The group is on the ballot in Arizona, Alaska, Colorado and Oregon.”

It’s too early to assess the political damage to Trump resulting from his recent and pending indictment(s), and more importantly for Dems to define a new 2024 strategy. But the damage looks substantial enough for Dems to begin thinking about it.

In “How Trump’s new indictment could affect 2024,” WaPo’s Aaron Blake limns the damage to Trump, as revealed by previous opinion polls: “

What seems clear is that more Americans, Republicans included, view these charges as serious. And while another indictment might not be enough to sink Trump in a GOP primary, this one for now appears more problematic, especially for his general-election hopes.

….The first thing to note: As with previous polls, people are less concerned about the charges Trump faces in Manhattan. While 52 percent of Americans regard it as a “serious crime” to falsify business records to conceal hush money payments to an adult-film star — the lowest percentage of five issues tested — 65 percent say the same about taking highly classified documents from the White House and obstructing efforts to retrieve them….Among just Republicans, while 28 percent say the former is serious, 42 percent say the latter is.

Much also depends on how much people would regard a conviction as being disqualifying. And that’s where this poll is especially helpful.

The survey also asked whether people thought Trump should be allowed to serve as president if he’s convicted of a “serious crime.” Just 23 percent overall said he should be, while 62 percent said he shouldn’t be. Republicans were more evenly split, with 39 percent saying a serious crime would be disqualifying.

The overlap between these two questions — how many people view serious crimes as disqualifying and regard these particular things as serious crimes — is also crucial.

Blake goes on to cite a YouGov poll which “combined the data” and found:

Those numbers go up to 49 percent and 50 percent, respectively, in the classified documents case.

At FiveThirtyEight, Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux writes that “the GOP’s push to tighten abortion laws is generally at odds with public sentiment overall. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that in areas where abortion was prohibited in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, the share of people who think it should be easier to get an abortion rose from 31 percent in 2019 to 43 percent in 2023. There was a similar uptick in states where abortion was restricted or the law was being disputed in the courts. The poll also found that a majority of Americans (62 percent) think that states are making it too hard to get an abortion, including a substantial minority (39 percent) of Republicans. A majority (53 percent) of Republicans also think it should either be easier (20 percent) or about as difficult as it is now (33 percent) to get an abortion in their area, while less than half (44 percent) think it should be harder. And a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that Americans overall are much more likely to say that the Democratic Party represents their view on abortion (42 percent) compared to the Republican Party (26 percent)….None of this polling points to much of an appetite for more abortion restrictions, even among a solid chunk of Republicans. And it’s especially difficult for presidential candidates to find a position that both pleases anti-abortion advocates and isn’t broadly unpopular. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in April found that only 21 percent of Americans support a national ban on abortion without exceptions, and just over one-third (35 percent) are in favor of a national ban at six weeks’ gestation. The idea of banning abortion nationally — even at a later point in pregnancy, like 15 weeks — seems to be fairly politically toxic: A YouGov/Economist poll conducted last fall found that there was more support for establishing a national right to abortion (51 percent) than banning abortion at 15 weeks, while allowing states to enact stricter laws on their own (39 percent).”

In her article, “Moving Beyond the Good Ol’ Boys Club: Recent Trends in Women’s Representation in State Legislatures” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Carah Ong Whaley writes: “The percentage of women in state legislatures has increased in recent years. However, there is still a significant gender gap in most states as women have not reached parity in representation….The majority of women in state legislatures are Democrats. While more Republican women ran for office in 2022 than in previous years, that didn’t amount to closing the gender gap in representation….The percentage of women in state legislatures has increased more in Western and Northeastern states than in Midwestern and Southern states. This is likely due to a number of factors, including the political climate, the level of motivation and activism among women, and the availability of resources for women’s campaigns….Good politics and policy depend on diverse perspectives and lived experiences, but women remain underrepresented at all levels of government. As this analysis shows, the number of women in state legislatures is increasing, and this is a positive trend. However, as this analysis also demonstrates, progress is not a given and there are clearly states where more attention to closing the gender gap in representation is needed….For women to achieve parity in representation, there are structural challenges that states can address, including for example, by increasing salaries for legislators and providing stipends for childcare. There are also ways in which political parties and organizations can address the challenges women and other minoritized candidates face by expanding recruitment, encouragement, and training efforts, while increasing financial support for women to run for office. Openings and incumbency are also issues, and may require encouraging more women to challenge candidates from their own parties in primaries.”

In “As the Suburbs Go, So Goes America,” New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall writes, “Over the past half century, the percentage of Black Americans living in the nation’s suburbs has doubled, a shift that is changing the balance of political power in key regions of the country….“Since 1970, the share of Black individuals living in suburbs of large cities has risen from 16 to 36 percent,” Alexander W. Bartik and Evan Mast, economists at the University of Illinois and Notre Dame, write in their 2021 paper “Black Suburbanization: Causes and Consequences of a Transformation of American Cities.”…“This shift,” they point out, “is as large as the post-World War II wave of the Great Migration.”….In 1990, 33.9 percent of Black Americans in what are known as metropolitan statistical areas lived in the suburbs. By 2020, that grew to 51.2 percent, a 17.3-point shift over the same period; the share of Asian Americans in metropolitan statistical areas living in suburbs grew by 13.2 percentage points; and the share of Hispanics by 13.8 percentage points.” Commentators used to talk about “white flight” to describe the phenomenon of large numbers of white families moving from the cities to the suburbs and exurbs, usually implying out-migration driven by racism. But the Black exodus from the cities described by Edsall raises the possibility of something new. Call it “green flight” — families of all races simply wanting more of the natural world to enjoy, the forests, clean air and reduced traffic that you can still find in many rural communities.” There are political reverberations.

Edsall continues, “A study of the shifting politics of suburbia from the 1950s to the present, “Not Just White Soccer Moms: Voting in Suburbia in the 2016 and 2020 Elections,” by Ankit Rastogi and Michael Jones-Correa, both at the University of Pennsylvania, found that from the 1950s to the start of the 1990s,

Residing in racially homogeneous, middle-class enclaves, White suburban voters embraced a set of policy positions that perpetuated their racial and class position. Since the 1990s, however, the demographics of suburbs have been changing, with consequent political shifts.

As a result, by 2020, “suburban voters were more likely to back Biden, the Democratic candidate, than his Republican counterpart Trump.”…Why, the authors ask?

White suburban precincts showed greater support for Biden in 2020 than for Clinton in 2016. Our analysis indicates, however, that if all suburban voters had voted like white suburbanite precincts, Trump would have carried metropolitan suburbs in 2020.

So what saved the day for Biden? “Democrats carried metropolitan suburbs in 2020 because of suburban voters of color.” Edsall concludes, “America is undergoing a racial and ethnic upheaval that will profoundly shape election outcomes. On first glance, the trends would appear to favor Democrats, but there is no guarantee.”

Ronald Brownstein presents a case for “widening the pathways for legal immigration” at CNN Politics” and also writes: “Admitting more immigrants, many experts believe, is the most feasible way to expand America’s stagnating labor force after years of historically slow growth in the nation’s working-age population. And creating more opportunities for legal entry into the US – while maintaining strong penalties for illegal entry – may be the best long-term lever to reduce pressure on the border by encouraging more migrants to pursue legal means of entering the country and seeking work….With or without more legal immigration, experts agree, deteriorating economic and social conditions in multiple countries across Latin America guarantees difficulty in controlling the flow of migrants trying to cross the Southern border. But, to a degree that hasn’t been fully recognized, President Joe Biden and his administration are betting that creating more legal options will reduce the number of people looking to cross illegally and reduce pressure at the border, while also responding to the economy’s need for more workers. “That’s the theory of the case,” said Angela Kelley, chief policy adviser to the American Immigration Lawyers Association and former senior adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas….The Biden calculation is that more opportunity for legal entry creates more leverage for tougher enforcement. If potential migrants conclude they have no realistic chance to enter and work in America legally, the White House believes, they are less likely to be dissuaded by penalties under US law that can bar them from entry for years when they are caught trying to enter illegally. Migrants, after all, may not view such a prohibition on legal entry as much of a risk if there was virtually no chance of legal admission anyway. In the eyes of the administration, and like-minded immigration advocates, it takes a plausible carrot (the prospect of legal entry) to create an effective stick (with the entry ban of five years or more for illegal crossings that the administration announced when it ended the Trump administration’s pandemic-era Title 42 policy at the border.)”

Brownstein also notes, ““If you have legitimate consequences for unlawful entry combined … with easy to access legal pathways, these two things together reduce irregular migration,” said one administration official, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal policy deliberations. “But one without the other has proven to be [ineffective].”….By itself, a more robust system of legal immigration “won’t solve the current crisis,” said Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the US Naturalization and Immigration Service under President Bill Clinton. But such a system, she believes, can contribute to stabilizing the border – and enhancing the credibility of enforcement efforts….“If there are realistic ways of coming to the country – a range of them – it makes the enforcement and something like a five-year ban, much more salient” to migrants, said Meissner, now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a center-left think tank….Conservatives, meanwhile, remain dubious of any steps to increase legal immigration – even in the name of reducing illegal migration….The backdrop for this immigration debate is that the US is living through one of its longest sustained periods of sluggish population growth. In fact, from 2010 to 2020, the population grew more slowlythan in any ten-year span in US history except during the Great Depression, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Metro think tank….The slowdown has been especially acute in the youth and working-age population. The size of the US labor force (essentially the population 16 and older available to work) grew by almost three-fifths from 1960-1980 and rose again by more than a third from 1980-2000. But from 2000 to 2020 it increased by only around one-sixth. The labor force has been growing even more slowly since 2020.”

Further, Brownstein adds, “Using executive authority, Biden has done more to pave those legal pathways than generally recognized. Biden has doubled the number of migrants admitted under permanent employment visas by using his statutory authority to reallocate unused family-based visas to the employment category. He’s significantly expanded the number of temporary guest workers admitted for both agriculture and seasonal employment in businesses like fisheries and hotels, and targeted some of those extra visas to Latin American countries, including Guatemala and El Salvador, where difficult domestic conditions heighten pressure for illegal migration. Biden has also substantially increased the number of people designated for “Temporary Protected Status” that allows them to stay and work (or study) in the US because of unsafe conditions in their home country….Most ambitiously, Biden has used the federal government’s so-called “parole” authority to legally admit large numbers of migrants from countries facing acute crises. Presidents of both parties previously have used the parole authority to admit, for instance, Vietnamese immigrants after the fall of South Vietnam or Cubans after the communist takeover of the island. After first applying the parole authority to people from Afghanistan and Ukraine, the Biden administration subsequently announced it would admit up to 30,000 migrants a month from four countries in this hemisphere experiencing high levels of chaos: Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba. Those using the program must be sponsored by someone legally present in the US and fly to America; they are then authorized to work for two years. (The administration is developing a similar parole system to speed entry for migrants from Haiti, Cuba and four Latin American countries who are eligible to reunite with family members already in the US.)….The administration and its allies point out that illegal border crossings by migrants from the four countries designated for parole have plummeted since the program went into effect. “The evidence is promising,” Kelley says, that the availability of parole “disrupts the smuggling operation” by encouraging more people instead to seek a legal pathway….Still, the parole power is limited as a tool, since it only authorizes those admitted under it to stay in the US for two years.”

Nicole Lafond shares some choice observations in her post, “Where Things Stand: Save This Clip For Next Time They Pretend They Don’t Wanna Cut Soc Security, Medicare” at Talking Points Memo.” Lafond reports that Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy is catching a lot of heat from his right flank, which is very disappointed that Biden protected Asocial Security and Medicare from cuts. As Lafond reports: “House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is seemingly trying to get a handful of far-right members of the Freedom Caucus to chill out and stop threatening to redo the speakership election. They’re not likely to successfully depose him, but no one is eager for a redo of the January spectacle as a few loud members seek to reassert their authority. And, so, in what is seemingly a half-hearted effort to throw them a bone, McCarthy went on Fox News and promised to create some vague “commission” that’ll review further cuts to next year’s budget….The speaker then took it a step further. Instead of just promising that “this isn’t the end” and proposing some sort of additional amorphous cuts to quell a hardliner uprising, McCarthy doubled down, raising the possibility that this next step commission could look into gutting Social Security and Medicare. Music, in theory, to the ears of a salivating Freedom Caucus….Here’s the full exchange quickly:

McCarthy: “We only got to look at 11 percent of the budget to find these cuts. We have to look at the entire budget. The Congress has done this before after World War II –“

Harris Faulkner: “Why didn’t you see the whole budget?”

McCarthy: “The president walled off all the others. The majority driver of the budget is mandatory spending. It’s Medicare, Social Security, interest on the debt.”

Faulkner: “And he wouldn’t let you see? Wow.”

….Broadly speaking, Republicans have been trying to hollow out both Medicare and Social Security for decades, only to reverse course when the public catches on and paint their fixation with gutting the programs as innocent efforts to reform entitlements. In most recent memory, this about face played out live on television….This latest round of the GOP’s Medicare/Social Security-gutting fake out came to a head during this year’s State Of The Union address, when President Biden rather skillfullycornered Republicans into agreeing not to push for cuts to either program mid-speech.” What hasn’t changed is that the GOP is still the party that wants to reduce earned benefits for senior voters. Democrats should remind voters of this reality at every opportunity.

For a good lefty take on the debt ceiling deal, check out Harold Meyerson’s well-titled “You Go to War (or Not) With the President You Have” at the American Prospect. Among Meyerson’s observations: “Like the world according to T.S. Eliot, it ended with a whimper. Which is about the best progressives could have hoped for, given Republicans’ control of the House and the president’s limited ability to transcend that unfortunate state of affairs with some powerful messaging….This is not a president who does—who can do—powerful messaging….Joe Biden’s strengths and weaknesses are those of a workhorse senator. He can deal. He can keep lines of communication open to his fellow pols. He can’t use the powers of speech to reframe a debate or lift it to a higher level where his position becomes the obvious solution.Had he been so able, he might have gone on television to tell the nation why the very existence of the debt ceiling was an affront to both the Constitution and the nation’s standing. He would have laid out the reasons why he was inviting the Court to rule on it….But in his 50 years in the public eye, Biden has never delivered a speech with the power to alter the public’s understanding of a major issue. That wasn’t really a problem when he was a senator or even a vice president. It is, however, a genuinely limiting factor on his de facto powers as president….What he can enter into (a lot better than Donald Trump ever could) is the art of the deal. The concessions that Biden made are not only much less damaging than those of the 2011 arrangement—which ensured that the recovery from the 2008 crash would take a full decade—but might provide some political advantages in battles yet to come. Consider, for instance, one of the deal’s most egregious provisions, which my colleague David Dayen has termed the Pipeline Payoff. By ensuring that Joe Manchin’s pet pipeline is completed, now magically empowered to leap all remaining judicial and agency reviews in a single bound, Biden strengthens Manchin’s prospects for re-election next year, which the Democrats need if they’re to retain control of the Senate. He also lessens the prospect that Manchin will wage an independent presidential candidacy on the No Labels line, which would almost surely boost Republicans’ chances to win that election. For that matter, he makes it harder for No Labels to pretend that he’s a dangerous leftist who must be replaced. And, of course, he avoids the biggest obstacle to his own re-election, which was the economic implosion that would have followed a default, remote though the chance of an actual default actually was….This is not to say that Biden’s deal making didn’t come with a cost. From my perspective, its greatest cost was the omission of any permitting deal that would have sped the construction of electric transmission lines, absent which it could be a very long time before wind and solar power can light up distant cities and farms. That task now falls to a better Congress than the one we have now….He can’t speak but he can deal. As presidents go, we’ve done better, and we’ve done lots, LOTS worse.” You want more eloquence, find another Obama. You want a shrewd poker-player, Biden can deal.

Plenty has been said about the Biden-McCarthy debt ceiling deal, which just passed the House of Reps, and should sail through the senate. We’ll just add a snippet from “The good, the bad, and the ugly of the debt ceiling deal” by MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor Hayes Brown: “…The final vote — 314 — 117, with Democrats providing the majority of the votes in favor — highlighted just how much the final agreement changed versus when the GOP passed its “Limit, Save, Grow Act” in April….Tellingly, the vote reflects the fact that the deal is bipartisan in the sense that it’s gotten votes from both parties, not that it is a win for both parties equally. Likewise, it is a compromise in that only some Americans will have their lives impacted for the worse. The alternative was either a massive hole Republicans tried to cut into the social safety net with their original bill, or widespread economic chaos a default would have caused….the bill could have been much worse. The Republican priorities it contains have been significantly pared back and there are a few Democratic priorities that were unexpectedly worked into the deal….Its budget provisions also get us through the next two fiscal years, which means the odds for a potential government shutdown have shrunk significantly. And, importantly, no matter what happens in 2024, the debt limit revision expires when Democrats will still control the Senate and White House….The bill is proof that Biden successfully defended the vast majority of his agenda passed by the last Congress. For example, there were only minor tweaks to the Inflation Reduction Act; the climate and health care provisions it contained were left intact. And a set of spending caps in the bill are pegged to the current year’s budget, not to fiscal year 2022’s budget as the GOP sought.”  Well-played, Mr. President.

One more mini-screed from Emily Brooks and Mike Willis at The Hill, who have one of those ‘Five takeaways’ posts. An excerpt from their subsection, “Jeffries, Dem leaders keep a tight ship“: “McCarthy was not the only untested congressional leader heading into the debt ceiling fight….Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the newly tapped Democratic leader, was also under heavy pressure to deliver for the party in his first major battle with a tight deadline and the economy in the balance…. That gave Jeffries and his leadership team the delicate task of protecting Biden, an unpopular president who’s running for reelection, from charges that he gave away too much, while also giving rank-and-file members of his caucus free rein to air their protests with the deal — and even vote against it when it hit the floor. There was no whip operation on final passage….“Members will make the decision that is best for them,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus, said Wednesday morning….Jeffries also orchestrated several deft maneuvers throughout the debate….In January, Democratic leaders very quietly launched the process, known as a discharge petition, to force a vote on a clean debt ceiling bill as an emergency hatch if the talks went sideways. Behind Jeffries and Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the Democratic whip, party leaders then secured unanimous support for that petition, which heightened the pressure on Republicans to cut a deal with Biden….And Wednesday, when McCarthy failed to secure the necessary Republican votes to pass the rule governing the bill, Jeffries mobilized Democrats to buck tradition and fill the void to ensure the measure could pass — but only after it was clear that Democrats would be needed to rescue the vote….Even McCarthy was impressed with that strategy….“I probably would have done the same [thing],” McCarthy said. “Good play.” And great teamwork, Dems.

Another good post at The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner’s “Biden, Student Debt, and the 2024 Election: Today on TAP: The president could make generational justice a big winner for basic decency—and for his re-election” provides some worthy insights, including: “Buried in the text of the debt deal is a provision codifying in law Biden’s plan to end serial student debt pauses as of September, pending a Supreme Court ruling on his partial debt cancellation. If the Court rules against him, the result will be a massive jolt to younger Americans (and not-so-young Americans) saddled with debt, as well as a big macroeconomic contraction to the economy….Thanks to the debt payment pause, which began in the bipartisan CARES Act of March 2020 and was extended indefinitely by executive order on Biden’s first day in office, some 48 million former students have had a three-year respite from this financial burden, which now totals over $1.7 trillion. By September, all could be paying the full tab….When Biden announced his plan for debt cancellation in August 2022, the decision was carefully poll-tested. Strategists weighed the benefit to those saddled with debt against the annoyance of those who either never attended college or who had already repaid their debts in full….Biden needs to embrace a broad agenda of generational justice for the young. A young adult today pursuing upward mobility is not only saddled with student debt. Many are unable to buy a house, or afford rent without multiple roommates. The young have difficulty finding a stable payroll job with benefits and career prospects that are more than a gig. The calculus is even worse for African Americans and for those who did not complete college and are still stuck with debt….My generation—and Biden’s—faced nothing like this. Student debt hadn’t even been invented; college and housing were affordable; and there were plenty of career-track jobs….Young people are precisely the segment of the electorate who are somewhat skeptical of Biden’s geezer-hood and who need to be motivated to vote, big-time. The youth vote turned out big and broke heavily for Democrats in 2018, allowing a takeback of the House….We need that in 2024, and more. The old guy needs to be a radical champion of the young….Go big again, Joe.”

Republican 2024 candidates will be interested in “Can Republicans Hope To Outrun Trump In 2024 House Races?” by Amy Walter at The Cook Political Report. But Democrats should also give it a read, and flip the question into “Can Democrats Make Sure Republican 2024 candidates are branded as Trump’s lapdogs?” Of course, there is no guarantee Trump will win the GOP. But that is the most likely scenario at this juncture.

Here’s an excerpt from Walter’s article:

Last week, POLITICO’s Ally Mutnick and Holly Otterbein reported on how former President Donald Trump’s “early dominance” in the GOP presidential primary has “spooked some potential down-ballot candidates” and made the job of recruiting top-tier talent into key swing seat contests difficult. I’ve heard similar hand-wringing from GOP strategists, including the polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, which released the results of a swing-state survey they conducted showing a ticket led by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis produced a generic ballot advantage of one point for Republicans, while a Trump-led ticket produced a down-ballot advantage to Democrats of three points.

So, how worried should GOP candidates be about the “Trump drag” in 2024?

Walter reviews the history of Trump drag for both times he has been on the ballot and the midterms during his presidency and she sees some significant ‘Trump Drag.’  Further,

In 2022, Republicans narrowly won control of the House thanks to the fact that 18 Republicans won in districts Biden had carried in 2020. However, Republicans’ failure to flip other high-profile seats that Biden narrowly carried two years earlier (like MI-08, MI-07, PA-07, CO-08, NM-02 and OH-13) cost them a more robust majority.

To hold the House in 2024, Republicans first have to limit their losses in Biden-held districts. The most vulnerable Republicans are the five freshmen who outperformed Trump’s 2020 showing in their districts by double digits: John Duarte (CA-13), George Santos (NY-03), Anthony D’Esposito (NY-04), Mike Lawler (NY-17) and Lori Chavez DeRemer (OR-05). For example, Biden won the Central Valley-based 13th District by 11 points. Freshman Rep. John Duarte carried it by just under one point.

Walter concludes, “To hold the House, Republicans are going to need to beat Democrats in districts where Trump will likely lose.” Also,

In 2016, when Trump was a novelty, 23 Republican candidates won in districts Trump lost. Four years later, only nine Republicans were able to do the same thing. In 2022, Democrats effectively branded the GOP as the party of MAGA and Trump, helping them to pick up a Senate seat and hold down their losses in the House.

This is why many Republicans are correctly worried that Trump on the top of the ticket could risk their majority.

So, in the event of Trump’s winning the GOP nomination, Democrats should get out their branding irons and make sure GOP candidates have “Trump lapdog” emblazoned their foreheads. But save a little room for “anti-choice puppet,” which could come in handy, — especially if Trump tanks, and some other extremist gets the Republican nod.

It’s true that the ‘Trump Lapdog’ brand has not hurt some of his most obsequious minions, like Sens. Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham in the recent past. But keep in mind that demographic transformations, though modest from year to year, favor Democrats in many states and congressional districts. Graham does not have to run in 2024. But Cruz is facing a charismatic Democrat, Colin Allred. A good Democratic branding effort in Texas, for example, could help flip a couple of points – and win an Allred victory – for Dems.

In his latest Washington Post column, E. J. Dionne, Jr. provides a succinct as you are going to find description of GOP strategy: “The playbook is quite consistent: Harvest votes from less affluent social conservatives and pursue policies that benefit well-off economic conservatives.” Dionne adds, “This weekend is surprisingly instructive about how these two brands of politics overlap and reinforce each other.” Dionne digs into the history of Memorial Day (“Decoration Day), going back to the Civil War, and then writes, “The arguments around the budget and the debt ceiling in 2023 reflect a similar interaction of fiscal issues and questions of social and political equality (with the two parties largely switching sides)….One of the thorniest issues in the negotiations between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) involved so-called work requirements for the recipients of various public benefits….Because such requirements don’t get anyone a job and mostly create bureaucratic obstacles for working people entitled to benefits, Biden sought and won sharply narrower provisions affecting fewer programs and individuals while increasing help for veterans and the homeless. The work requirements shouldn’t have survived at all. The fact that McCarthy made them a bottom line speaks to the power of the signal they send about who is “worthy” of public help and who is not, with racial stereotypes lurking in the background….At the same time, said Johns Hopkins political scientist Lilliana Mason, author of “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity,” the rhetorical strategies of Trump and DeSantis move attention away from “broadly unpopular cuts” to “extremely popular programs.”….Under these circumstances, it’s easier to advance a general attack on government spending, thereby evading debate on the merits of particular government benefits and investments….The good news about the debt ceiling deal is that the country will not default on its debt (avoiding a fight of this sort for the remainder of Biden’s presidency) and will escape the extreme cuts right-wing Republicans originally hoped for. This is balanced by the reality that divided control of Congress will foil social advances through 2024.”

“Defying the adage among practitioners and scholars of politics that voters become more conservative as they age,” writes Thomas B. Edsall in his New York Times column, “— millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) and Gen Z (those born in 1997 and afterward) have in fact become decidedly more Democratic over time, according to data compiled by the Cooperative Election Study.“….“I think it’s a real shift,” [Tufts political scientists Brian] Schaffner wrote in an email, quoting an analysis from December 2022 by John Burn-Murdoch of The Financial Times, “Millennials Are Shattering the Oldest Rule in Politics”:

If millennials’ liberal inclinations are merely a result of this age effect, then at age 35 they too should be around five points less conservative than the national average and can be relied upon to gradually become more conservative. In fact, they’re more like 15 points less conservative and in both Britain and the U.S. are by far the least conservative 35-year-olds in recorded history.

Schaffner noted that Burn-Murdoch’s article “is pretty convincing and focuses on not just vote share but also issue positions, so I don’t think it is just a Trump thing.” However, Schaffner explains, “Because the population is very big and turnout rates tend to be much higher for older adults, these trends can be slow to lead to significant gains. For example, in 2018, I applied a life expectancy model to our C.E.S. data and using that model I calculated that it would take more than 20 years for Democrats to gain just 3 percentage points on their vote share from differential mortality….Those gains could easily be offset by Republicans doing a bit better among other groups. For example, part of what has helped them in recent elections is that even while the share of the population who are non-college white people is in decline, it is still a large group that (1) has come to vote more Republican in the past decade and (2) has seen its turnout rate increase during the same period.”

Edsall adds, “In a report published this month, “What Happened in 2022,” Catalist, a progressive data analysis firm, found more developments among young voters that favor Democrats: “Gen Z and millennial voters had exceptional levels of turnout, with young voters in heavily contested states exceeding their 2018 turnout by 6 percent among those who were eligible in both elections.”….What’s more, as the Catalist report noted,

65 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 supported Democrats, cementing their role as a key part of a winning coalition for the party. While young voters were historically evenly split between the parties, they are increasingly voting for Democrats. Many young voters who showed up in 2018 and 2020 to elect Democrats continued to do the same in 2022….Women voters pushed Democrats over the top in heavily contested races, where abortion rights were often their top issue. Democratic performance improved over 2020 among women in highly contested races, going from 55 percent to 57 percent support. The biggest improvement was among white non-college women (+4 percent support).

Edsall also quotes Notre Dame political scientist Geoffrey Layman, who “cited 2000 and 2020 data from American National Election Studies to prove his point:”

White working-class people, white evangelicals, white Catholics and white Christians in general all voted significantly more Republican in 2020 than in 2000. White people with no college education: 56 percent for Bush in 2000, 68 percent for Trump in 2020. White evangelicals who regularly attend church: 75 percent for Bush in 2000, 89 percent for Trump in 2020. White Catholics who regularly attend church: 56 percent for Bush in 2000, 67 percent for Trump in 2020….Those countervailing trends have left the two parties in about the same competitive balance as in 2000. However, as the pro-Democratic sociodemographic trends continue, it will become increasingly difficult for the G.O.P. to stay nationally competitive with a base of just white working-class people, devout white Christians and older white people. The Republicans are starting to max out their support among these groups.

Edsall writes further, “The white backlash to the growing strength of liberal constituencies not only prompted conservative voters to back Republicans by higher margins; they also turned out to vote at exceptionally high rates to make up for their falling share of the electorate.” Unfortunately, “The Catalist report points to gains by Trump and Republican candidates among racial and ethnic minorities. The level of Hispanic support for Republican House candidates rose from 29 percent in 2016 to 38 percent in 2020, where it stayed in 2022. In a separate report on the 2020 election, Catalist found Black support for Republican candidates rose by three points from 7 percent in 2016 to 10 percent in 2020.”