In “How Red States Are Fighting Their Blue Cities” at FiveThirtyEight, Monica Potts discusses a political conflict that is being played out in states across the nation. As Potts explains,

Preemption is an old, broadly used tool, and in the past decade, preemption bills have passed across the country, blocking local legislation on everything from culture-war issues to basic city governance. In Florida, a state Senate bill passed last week would prevent local governments from enacting rent control or rent stabilization. This year, other states are considering laws revoking local authority over school curriculum and punishing local district attorneys who don’t prioritize laws passed by the state legislature. Other states are threatening to take over whole chunks of city government. And there may not be much cities can do about it.

The tug of war between state and local power is an old one. Local governments, whose responsibilities are not outlined in the U.S. Constitution, have different levels of authority depending on the state, and it’s not always clear exactly what authorities localities have. “It is very much a gray zone,” said Christine Baker-Smith, a research director at the National League of Cities. “The only place where it’s clearly not a gray zone is when there is clear, clear guidance around a certain policy area.”

What has happened in the past decade is what many experts call a shift from “minimalist” preemption to “maximalist” preemption. An example of a minimalist preemption law is the minimum wage. No state can have a minimum wage that’s lower than the $7.25 set by the federal government,¹ but they can go higher, and cities and counties can pass laws that set even higher minimums than their states … as long as their state hasn’t forbidden it through preemption laws.

Potts notes that the trend accelerated “during President Barack Obama’s presidency,” when Republicans organized their takeovers of many state legislatures. She notes further, that “A 2020 Economic Policy Institute analysis found the use of preemption was more prevalent in southern states.” The conflict plays out in a range of policies, including:

In the past few years, at least 25 states have prohibited local governments from raising the minimum wage. Eighteen states bar municipalities from banning plastic bags. At least 20 states have laws that prevent cities from banning gas stoves. Oklahoma is considering a bill that would prevent cities from banning combustion engines. Forty-two states preempt local legislators from passing gun regulations.²

Florida is one of 34 states that preempts many local housing laws, allowing rent stabilization only in an emergency; the bill that passed the state Senate last weekwould remove even that ability. The bill passed unanimously, but that was likely because the housing preemption was wrapped in a much larger bill, which includes measures to encourage mixed-use zoning and incentivize development of affordable housing. The bill’s proponents said it would help fix the housing shortage.

Potts adds, “This year, as of March 8, at least 493 preemption bills have been introduced into state legislatures around the country on a range of issues, according to the Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC), an organization that tracks certain preemption laws and advocates against them. Potts concludes,

For those who oppose what they call its overuse, preemption undermines the basic idea behind local governance — that communities get to set priorities that reflect their own values. Laurent said that preemption laws have a longer-term, corrosive effect on local participation. State legislatures are often influenced by special interests, she said, and preempting local action removes a tool people have to fight against that. “The entire purpose of having representatives is for folks to go up there and reflect the needs that your community has,” she said. “But unfortunately, that’s being silenced.”

Underlying this conflict is the brutal reality that the states have grossly disproportionate power in America. Thus Wyoming (population 570 thousand) has as many senators as California (population 39 million). Cities are also limited by their political boundaries. Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas statistics are more relevant to the life of cities than tightly-drawn city boundaries, which balkanize urban political power to give state legislatures additional leverage. ‘Greater’ Atlanta, Philadelphia or Orlando are much bigger than their city limits. Los Angeles County, which includes about 140 incorporated cities, has more people than the 20 smallest states put together.

There are some fixes to help rectify this grotesque imbalance of political power, such as filibuster and Electoral College reform, urban annexation, preemption limits,  or admission of new states. But all of them require Democratic landslides to get anywhere. Plenty of Republicans are drinking Trump’s Kool-aid to help set the stage for big Democratic gains. But it’s up to Dems to get smart and close the deal.

There they go again. As Erin Doherty explains in “Why some in the GOP are floating upping retirement age for some Americans” at Axios: “Some Republicans say changes to entitlement programs, like upping the retirement age to prolong the initiatives, should be “on the table.” In other words, ‘Let’s keep seniors in the labor force longer, thereby reducing the employment opportunities for young people who are looking for decent entry-level jobs.” Dherty continues, “The big picture: Entitlement reform is a politically potent topic — and it’s one that could be a key part of presidential candidates’ messaging ahead of 2024….Medicare is one of the largest line items in the U.S. budget, and as the population ages, it’s expected to only get more expensive, Axios’ Caitlin Owens reports….Biden has zeroed in on Republicans’ views on health care and entitlements, saying his GOP foes want to cut Social Security and Medicare….Top Republicans, however, have insisted they are not going to propose cuts to Medicare or Social Security during debt ceiling talks….The retirement age has been raised before. In 1983, Congress voted to phase in raising full retirement age from 65 to 67, citing an increase in life expectancy and workers staying at jobs for longer periods of time….Driving the news: Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R), who is running for president in 2024, said she supports changing the retirement age for Americans who are in their 20s….”It is unrealistic to say you’re not going to touch entitlements,” Haley said on Fox News….”The thing is you don’t have to touch it for seniors and anybody near retirement. You’re talking about the new generation, like my kids coming up,” she added….Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy (R) also said Sunday that lawmakers should discuss raising the retirement age for Americans in their 20s….”Does it really make sense to allow someone who’s in their 20s today to retire at 62?” he added….Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) also said that raising the retirement age when it comes to receiving social security benefits “has to be on the table.”….”We do not want to take away those that are in retirement, or those that are heading into retirement, but if we’re talking about younger generations … then that should be on the table.”…./Go deeper… Biden sets new trap with GOP budget taunt.” If this sounds to you like a garden-variety GOP scam to screw young workers, while kissing up to senior voters, you re not alone.

For a deeper dive into GOP scams to shred Social Security, check out “Why The Right Hates Social Security (And How They Plan to Destroy It)” at Current Affairs, where Nathan Robinson interviews Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works.  Some highlights: “ROBINSON.  People do not talk enough about Social Security. Republicans want to kill Social Security but don’t like to talk about Social Security, partly because they know the conversation is a losing one for them. But that does not change the fact that every minute of every day, slowly, behind the scenes, they are working to destroy the program.” LAWSON. “Pitting the old against the young by telling the old they’re definitely not going to cut benefits and not to worry, and instead, they’re only going to cut the young people’s benefits; and telling the young Social Security is going to run out of money, they’re never going to get anything, and so they need to cut old people’s benefits—really stoking that intergenerational warfare with a divide and conquer strategy. But the main purpose of that Leninist strategy document is to say: lie to the people about what it is that we’re trying to do, because we have to destroy and gut Social Security, and the only way to do it is to lie. That has been their mantra and MO up to now.”ROBINSON. “It’s understandable why they feel hell-bent on destroying Social Security. As you point out, it’s not just to make exploitation easier—that’s part of it. But also, the success of Social Security disproves so many conservative talking points. It’s the government providing welfare or universal benefits to people, and it works. It makes people’s lives better and reduces poverty. One of the core conservative talking points is nothing government does can be done right. Everything it does to try and fix a social problem will inevitably backfire and cause disaster, misery, and bureaucracy. Social Security really undermines their case. LAWSON. “It’s a universal program of huge magnitude— there’s nothing really else like it, and it does all of that for less than 1 percent in administrative costs. Less than one penny of every dollar that you pay into the system is used to pay for the whole thing. And look at Wall Street—that’s why they hate it. They like people scrambling and not being able to have enough time and comfort to think about, “Why do these guys have all the money?” That’s true, but they’re also just straight up greedy. They look at it and think, “We should be the only ones who offer products like that, and tack on a 35 percent fee….They hate that they can’t get their greedy little hands on it. It really does disprove, backwards and forwards, the entire small “c” conservative, reactionary mindset. Yes, just like what the private health insurance industry operates on, “How can we get sick people to give us a portion of their wealth?”—which they successfully do. And that’s why they hate Medicare For All so much…”

Lawson’s comments continue, “They’re terrified of the people finding out about anything that guarantees healthcare, does a better job, works more efficiently than private insurance. They really don’t want people to find out that the VA [Veterans Affairs], which is fully socialized healthcare—different from Medicare For All, which is just one single payer—is consistently ranked higher than private insurance in terms of outcomes, quality, and what people feel about it….The New Dealers saw that there could be systemic responses, that not only mitigated the immediate effects of the Great Depression, but put in place systems that actually ameliorated all of those negative effects going forward….That’s what Social Security is. It not only took care of this desperate need in the Great Depression era, but it eliminated the poor houses going forward. The philosophical bent of Social Security is an ever-expanding system that delivers greater and greater economic security for more and more people. When FDR signed it into law, he said, “With this law, I laid the cornerstone that future generations can build upon.” And that’s what we have to recognize. For example, Medicare For All or a guaranteed national health system, is the most obvious one—you cannot pretend that you can have retirement or economic security if you can go bankrupt by getting sick or having an illness, especially now in the midst of the pandemic. And what we’ve seen, it’s more obvious than ever….You also, though, can’t have a secure retirement if you’ve been working your whole life for poverty wages. Poverty wages will follow you into poverty in retirement. So we need to increase wages. Instead of the Republican’s North Star of destroying things that work and hurting people, if you use as your North Star Frances Perkins’ vision for an America where if you played by the rules, did the things that most people want to do, and worked hard, the system would be there for you—including if it’s something that no one wants to think about, but happens to far more people than they think, like becoming disabled, ill or injured and can no longer work. Francis Perkins didn’t have that in the bill that was signed by FDR. We added disability later because we saw you can’t have economic or retirement security if you lose your wages because you become disabled….Hear the full conversation on the Current Affairs podcast.”

Sasha Abramsky reports that “The Progressive Takeover of Nevada’s Democratic Party Is Falling Apart” at The Nation, and notes that “Last weekend, the party took its vote and booted [Democratic Party Chair Judith] Whitmer from office, replacing her with Assemblywoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno. The result wasn’t close: Whitmer lost by a more than three-to-one margin. Every one of the candidates for state party office backed by Monroe-Moreno’s “Unity” campaign won; every one of Whitmer’s candidates lost….The sort of posture politics practiced by Whitmer doesn’t cut it—probably not anywhere, certainly not in a complex swing state such as Nevada, with its core group of Democratic voters in Las Vegas and in Reno, and with deeply conservative hinterlands surrounding the big cities….Posturing aside, there’s a lot of good politics going on in Nevada—witness the recently introduced bill to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage for low-income mothers for the first year after they give birth; the cutting-edge water-recycling programs that are in place; the ambitious CO₂ reduction strategythat has been adopted. But that good politics gets put at risk, and the likelihood of GOP election victories grow, when leaders such as Whitmer fail to live up to the expectations of those who put them in power in the first place….Last year, Oregon Democrats nearly fell apart at the seams as their gubernatorial candidate, Tina Kotek, struggled to consolidate support, following the reputational collapse of outgoing Governor Kate Brown. It wasn’t that voters didn’t like Brown’s basic political philosophy; it was more that they saw her as having failed to deliver on basic quality-of-life issues—failing to tackle the housing crisis, to respond to rising crime, and so on. In other words, she talked a good talk but ended up walking a lousy walk. Throughout 2022, she was the most unpopular governor in the country. Kotek did eventually win, but only after a massive effort to distance herself from Brown and her legacy. In California, San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin was recalled, not because he was far to the left of San Franciscans but because he was widely perceived to be incompetent at his job and unable to deliver outcomes that matched his soaring rhetoric….There are lessons in these elections: There is plenty of room for radical politics out West, and plenty of room for candidates looking to shake up the status quo. In many ways, it remains a petri dish in which new, and experimental, political ideas and alliances are cultivated. But at the end of the day, voters also want tangible results. Whitmer’s mediocre tenure, and her election defeat last week, is a wake-up call: If Democrats want to continue to hold power in places like Nevada, they need a party political machinery led by leaders who aren’t just idealistic but are also competent.”

Claim it, Dems, the way David Dayen does in his article, “The American Rescue Plan’s Hidden Triumphs: Medicaid expansion in North Carolina and Eli Lilly’s insulin price cuts are largely due to the March 2021 law” at The American Prospect: “Because of the unlikely prospects for legislative progress between now and 2025 (sigh), pundits are closing the books on Joe Biden’s first-term legacy, which in most accounts begins and ends with three bills: the bipartisan infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. This narrative has a nice symmetry to it, establishing Biden as the restorer of industrial policy, preoccupied with reshoring U.S. manufacturing and improving underlying infrastructure….That’s certainly a big part of Biden’s first-term record, but it leaves out his most wide-reaching bill: the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP), passed with little debate in March 2021. Because inflation happened to spike subsequently, commentary on the ARP has been mostly reduced to whether it was wise to engage in massive fiscal stimulus. (It was.) And because the bulk of the ARP constituted temporary programs, placing it into Biden’s lasting policy legacy might have seemed unnecessary….But over the last week, we’ve seen two unlikely victories for the administration and the public that can be directly traced back to the ARP, proving it to be an underrated piece of legislation that not only changed the government’s blueprint for how to manage a crisis, but altered several unrelated crises in America for good….Last week, the Republican-led legislature in North Carolina announced a deal to expand Medicaid, which, once it’s passed and signed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, will make it the 40th state (plus D.C.) to do so. Over 600,000 people are expected to get health care coverage under this deal, at no cost to the state….Another health care development last week seems at first glance more divorced from the ARP. Eli Lilly announced that it would cap out-of-pocket costs on its insulin medications for patients with private insurance, and reduce list prices for its most-used insulins. As Robert Kuttner explained in the Prospect, the list price change is the most impactful. An out-of-pocket cap means that the patient only pays a certain amount, but the insurer pays the rest, and usually spreads it out to patients through higher premiums. A list price cut means the drug company loses money. The Inflation Reduction Act’s cap on insulin out-of-pocket costs in Medicare certainly had an influence on Eli Lilly mirroring that for private insurance patients.”

At The Nation, Chris Lehman observes, “In making his reelection pitch, Biden has set a challenge for himself that few recent incumbent presidents have faced: He’s betting that he can defy the overall trend of public opinion and demonstrate that government can actually work, delivering material improvements in the everyday lives of Americans….On paper, that shouldn’t be a tall order for a president who has a battery of ambitious economic achievements to promote—not only the infrastructure package but the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act’s many subsidies to the tech sector, not to mention an economy performing close to full employment. But American politics has long pivoted on a wholesale distrust of government—or, perhaps more accurately, a commitment to divert it to blunter ideological aims, such as the great rolling hellscape known as Ron DeSantis’s policy agenda, or Donald Trump’s own fledgling reelection crusade to marshal federal resources behind right-wing education demagoguery. In a political era of movement-baiting viral memes, Biden’s infrastructure tour felt a bit like a civics class filmstrip….Still, there are potential hidden strengths in Biden’s focused appeal to government-directed enterprise. “I think he’s savvy enough to know the traditional paradox that Americans complain about government and don’t trust it, but they like its specifics,” says Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University. “I would think that an effective strategy is to keep telling people what he’s given them. I don’t know if he’ll do it, though. Democrats are still nervous about playing in the shadow of Republican presidents….Having been vice president when Obama pushed a big stimulus program and didn’t get credit for it—or even take credit for it—is on his mind. Second, I think he saw how, with the Affordable Care Act rollout, the more people experienced the benefits, the more popular it became—to the point that Republicans didn’t want to cut it. And finally, his age puts him in an era when that’s what you did: You boasted about what you did. That was just politics. He’s a different generation.” Lehman  continues, “But even if Biden is the man for this particular message, it’s still far from clear that the message will resonate in this historical moment. Despite his record, polling consistently shows that the public is underwhelmed by Biden’s Oval Office tenure so far, with more than 62 percent of Americans agreeing that he’s done little or nothing over the past two years. Especially troubling is the steady stream of polling indicating that majorities don’t think Biden has performed well in precisely the sort of economic initiatives that he’s going to run on—measures like infrastructure renewal and job creation….Of course, this is also what political campaigns are for—to hammer home achievements and policy agendas across the national landscape—and the 2024 cycle has yet to begin in earnest.”

Charles Pierce has some incisive comments on the soaring popularity of Kentucky’s Democratic governor at Esquire: “Politico spent several hundred words on Wednesday expressing wonder and awe that Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is favored in his run for re-election in a state the former president* carried by 26 points. The very fact this is considered remarkable is, in and of itself, remarkable….I know I’m just spitballing here—and I realize that this is completely contrary to the spirit of the age—but maybe it’s just because the guy is good at being governor and people like the job he’s doing?” Pierce quotes from the Politico article, which notes “Beshear will have all the advantages generally granted to incumbent governors: the power of the bully pulpit, sky high name ID and approval, and a deep warchest — as of the end of last year, he had over $4.7 million in the bank. A late January survey from Mason-Dixon Polling found that 61 percent of voters in the state approved of the job he was doing, and he had notable leads over potential challengers. Beshear has hosted regular “Team Kentucky” updates and has been ever-present for Kentuckians, who during his tenure in office have navigated the coronavirus pandemic and a string of natural disasters. And Democrats in the state point to a boom of economic growth during his tenure in office. A page on Beshear’s official website brags about delivering “the highest and second-highest revenue surpluses in the history of Kentucky, thanks to strong fiscal management and a hot, record-breaking economy,” which is anticipated to be a major theme in his campaign.” Pierce adds, “I suspect that Beshear’s popularity is enhanced by his resemblance to New Deal Democrats who did so much for Kentuckians in the hard times.”

Here’s a stunner: “More Americans now favor legal cannabis than legal tobacco, surveys show, signaling a sharp societal shift from an era when cigarette-smoking was legal pretty much everywhere and pot-smoking was legal absolutely nowhere,” Daniel De Vise reports at The Hill. ” Fifty-seven percent of American adults would support “a policy prohibiting the sale of all tobacco products,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in a research brief last month….A slightly larger majority, 59 percent, believe marijuana should be legal for both medical and recreational use, according to a Pew Research surveyconducted in October. Another 30 percent approve of cannabis for medical use alone. Only 10 percent of the American public believes marijuana should not be legal at all. …The findings reflect growing public consensus that cannabis is safer than tobacco, which the CDC considers the leading cause of preventable death. Studies have found marijuana less addictive than cigarettes and marijuana smoke less harmful to the lungs, although doctors caution that cannabis still poses many potential health hazards….Recent years have seen a remarkable rise in public opinion toward marijuana, whose legalization as a product for recreational sale began with the passage of state measures in Washington and Colorado in 2012.” Although cannabis is still illegal under federal law, “State by state, the national prohibition against cannabis is eroding. Marijuana remains entirely illegal in only three states, Idaho, Kansas and Nebraska, according to the National Council of State Legislatures. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have legalized cannabis for recreational use. Thirty-seven states allow medical marijuana, and 10 more permit low-potency marijuana derivatives.” The political fallout of the poll could get a bit tricky, since three of the top seven tobacco-producing states are purplish, NC, VA and GA.

Some statistical nuggets from the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) regarding the increase of women in state legislatures:

• As a result of the 2022 election, a record number of women serve in state legislatures, holding 32.7% of all seats.
• The net gain in women’s state legislative representation as a result of election 2022 matched that of 2020, but the partisan trend differed. Gains for Democratic women were up in 2022 from 2020, while Republican women’s gains were smaller as a result of election 2022 than they were as a result of the 2020 election.
• A record number of women were state legislative nominees in 2022, but women were still just one-third of all state legislative nominees. While women were 48.3% of Democratic state legislative nominees, they were 24% of Republican nominees.
• The number of women in state legislatures went up in 32 states, down in 12 states, and stayed the same in six states between 2022 and 2023.
• In 2023, Colorado became the second state in U.S. history whose state legislature reached parity in women’s and men’s representation. Women maintained a majority in Nevada, the first state to reach gender parity in 2018.
• As of February 2023, women match or exceed men’s representation in six state legislative chambers: the Nevada House and Senate, the Arizona Senate, the New Hampshire Senate, the Colorado House, and the New Mexico House.
• CAWP’s data on women state legislators by racial and ethnicity will be available later this year upon receipt of racial/ethnic self-identification from newly-elected women legislators.

Also, “As of February 2023, a record high 2,414 (1,583D, 805R, 20NP, 6Ind) women serve in state legislatures, holding 32.7% of all seats; 1,822 (1,199D, 616R, 2NP, 5Ind) women serve in state houses and 592 (384D, 189R, 18NP, 1Ind) women serve in state senates, both record highs.1 Women are 20% of Republican and 48.4% of Democratic state legislators….Of all women serving in state legislatures as of February 2023, 65.6% are Democrats and 33.3% are Republicans, representing almost no change in the partisan gap in women’s state legislative representation; as of Election Day 2022, 66% of women state legislators were Democrats and 33.1% were Republicans. In contrast, nearly two-thirds of men state legislators are Republicans.”

Looking ahead, the CAWP report on state legislatures concludes:

“As a result of the 2022 election, women are nearing one-third of state legislators nationwide. While this is a notable milestone, gender parity in state legislative representation – achieved in only two states to date – remains distant. Partisan differences contribute to this reality, with Democratic state legislators almost at gender parity while women represent less than one-quarter of Republican state legislators nationwide. Expediting gender parity in state legislative representation will require closing this party gap from candidacy to officeholding.

Women’s state legislative power is not determined by numbers alone. Already in 2023, many women have ascended to key leadership posts in state legislatures, including 18 women who hold the top leadership position (speaker, senate president, or senate president pro tem) in their chambers. In these roles, women have even greater capacity to shape legislative agendas, determine policy strategy, and influence the trajectory of major policy issues that have been delegated to states from the federal government.

State legislative elections in 2023 – to be held in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia – offer the next opportunity for monitoring women’s representation as candidates, nominees, and officeholders. Moreover, being attentive to the retention of women already in state legislatures is important to understanding the overall progress toward gender parity. Finally, making significant gains in women’s state legislative representation will require identifying and taking advantage of opportunities for growth, building and/or bolstering in-state support infrastructures for women candidates and officeholders, and expanding focus beyond statewide and federal offices to make clear the importance of increasing women’s representation in state legislatures for both policymaking and building the pool of potential candidates for higher office.”

The state legislative figures for Democratic women are encouraging, since Democratic women lost one seat in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, while Republican women picked up two seats in both the Senate and House.

Some insights from “Biden gets a rare hand from Big Business in quest to ease consumer pain: The bully pulpit has produced some interesting results. But how consequential are they?” by Adam Cancryn at Politico: “Just weeks after Biden used his State of the Union to call for crackdowns on insulin prices and “junk fees,” a handful of companies are starting to comply on their own. They’re taking voluntary steps meant to lower patients’ medical bills and make it easier for families to fly together.” This is kind of a BFD. When was the last time you remember a President persuading big biz to lower prices on life-saving meds? Cancryn continues, “The moves have handed Biden a surprise set of wins ahead of an expected reelection bid likely to hinge on his handling of the economy and elevated consumer prices. And within the White House, they’ve injected fresh momentum into a broader domestic agenda built on delivering what the president frequently describes as “a little bit of breathing room” for cash-strapped families….“The president has made clear for over a year now that a top priority is bringing down costs for folks,” said Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council and one of the officials spearheading the junk fee initiative. “The fact he’s willing to sharply call out certain behavior and highlight it is encouraging these corporations — at least some of them — to come along with us.”….In a similar vein, three major airlines — United, American and Frontier — are eliminating extra fees often faced by parents wanting to ensure they can sit with their children on flights, a practice Biden slammed last month as akin to treating kids “like a piece of luggage.” Still, they’re keeping the web of other seat and baggage charges that have become the industry norm.” True, such jawboned reforms are not as solid as legislative reforms, and they can be retracted any time. But considering the GOP’s obstructionist posture, credit Biden with doing what he can help consumers and people with health issues, while Republicans can’t come up with even modest health care or consumer reforms. The challenge for Dems is to publicize it.

James G. Chappel discusses “The Frozen Politics of Social Security” at The Boston Review, and writes: “Social Security is back in the news. Some Republicans are angling to reduce benefits, while Democrats are posing as the valiant saviors of the popular program. The end result, most likely, is that nothing will happen. We have seen this story before, because this is roughly where the politics of Social Security have been stuck for about forty years. It’s a problem because the system truly does need repair, and the endless conflict between debt-obsessed Republicans and stalwart Democrats will not generate the progressive reforms we need….More than any other single institution, Social Security keeps the United States from becoming a truly Dickensian world of poverty and despair….Social Security, believe it or not, has a utopian heart: the idea that all Americans deserve a life of dignity and public support once they become old or disabled. This vision does, for now, remain utopian: many Americans are right to worry that, without savings or private pensions, their older years will be just as precarious and austere as their younger ones. Social Security is nonetheless the lynchpin of the U.S. welfare system, such as it is. In 2022 some $1.2 trillion flowed from the system to nearly 66 million people. Most of those people are retired workers, but not all of them. Millions are the spouses or dependents of retired workers; millions more are disabled people, or the spouses or dependents of the disabled. All in all, about one in four Americans over the age of eighteen receives benefits from Social Security. If not for Social Security, almost 40 percent of older Americans would be living in poverty….It is not going too far to say that the Social Security system, more than any other single institution, keeps the United States from becoming a truly Dickensian world of poverty and despair.”

“Despite this dire situation,” Chappel continues, “there has not been a congressional vote, even in committee, on major reforms to Social Security since 1983. This has not been for lack of trying, at least among Democrats. In both the House and the Senate, there are serious bills, with significant support, to salvage the program. The most well-developed, known as Social Security 2100, has more than 200 cosponsors in the House. It’s an audacious bill, planning to expand Social Security benefits for the first time since the 1970s, focusing especially on the caregiving workforce. And in the Senate, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have put forth an even more ambitious plan, which would raise taxes and benefits while expanding the program’s solvency for decades….Still, the odds of anything happening with these bills are low, at least for now. In addition to the expected Republican intransigence, Democrats themselves are not united. The relevant division is between a politics of incrementalism and a politics of bold reform and expansion. Social Security 2100 is on the less ambitious end of the spectrum, especially as it has recently been rewritten to keep Biden’s promise of not raising taxes on people making less than $400,000 per year. As such, the bill does little to address the solvency issue. The Social Security Expansion Act in the Senate is bolder and does more to address both equity and solvency—but few Democratic senators have cosponsored the bill, leaving it oceans away from the required votes….For all their differences, these bills in the aggregate show that Social Security is perfectly capable of providing a vehicle for progressive welfare reform: any of them would do wonders, most obviously for seniors and disabled workers. But all of us, too, would benefit from knowing that something like a livable income was headed our way at the tail end of a serpentine labor market that has almost completely stopped providing traditional pensions. Despite all this, the enormous energy in recent years around expanding Medicare and Medicaid has not been matched by attention to Social Security: the politics around it have languished.” Chappel has much more to say about the history of Social Security, the reasons for the current predicament and potential fixes in this political moment. read his article for more observations.

Rachael Russell shares an update on abortion polling and politics at ‘The Downballot” at Daily Kos. Among her observations: “So we’ve done a lot of polling on abortion, like a lot of other groups in the last year or two. We actually started back in September of 2021 when Texas enacted its crazy vigilante abortion bill for a six-week ban. And since then we’ve really been tracking pretty consistently around abortion rights and access and perception of those, how there has been a steep increase in Americans feeling like the right is at risk in their own state, and nationally….We have consistently found that Americans support access to abortion, and don’t believe the government should take that decision from a patient seeking care. Most recently with the attacks on prescription abortion medication at the state level, we have been tracking support for keeping this medication legal and support for allowing patients to access this medication….We found that by, I believe it was a 37-point margin, Americans support allowing women to legally use prescription abortion medication to end an early abortion at home. This was, I believe around three in five, almost two in three Americans saying that they support this right. This included independents, Democrats and very narrowly Republicans are split, though Republican women have also said that they support this access to abortion medication by a 10-point margin. So we’ve tested some messages to see what Americans view as the most convincing reason to support or to keep abortion medication legal, and we found the most successful message is to focus on its safety and effective record for over 20 years, and being FDA-approved as well as being able to be used as lifesaving treatment for miscarriages….I believe it’s seven in 10 Americans found that those reasons were convincing to keep medication abortion legal. Americans overwhelmingly support the right to access abortion. They absolutely oppose national abortion bans, and this sort of backdoor national abortion ban is something that the American public, if it is to happen, is not going to be happy about. Along with our abortion tracking, we’ve also been tracking favorability of the Supreme Court. While this is a federal court, I know it’s different, but I think it’s really instilling a federal court as a political institution. If these federal courts as well as the Supreme Court continue to curtail access to abortion, we’ll continue to see a decline in their favorability and trust in the institution just generally.”

In one of his recent Washington Post columns, E. J. Dionne argued that “President Biden and the nation’s Democratic governors want to talk about jobs, incomes, child care, health care and who wields economic power. Republicans, led by many of their own governors, want the fight to be all about a packet of cultural issues connected to race, LGBTQ rights, the schools and religion — “woke fantasies,” in the shorthand of Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s response to Biden’s State of the Union address.”Further,

“There is a subtext to this debate: Leading figures in both parties have decided that the future of American politics rests in the hands of working-class voters. With the most affluent voters now largely sorted by ideology, the “working middle class” in the poll-tested phrase popular among politicians, will be getting a lot of love.”

Biden’s bet — and it’s a wager many successful Democratic governors made last year — is that Democrats can win back blue-collar voters. This means not just gaining ground among Whites without college degrees but also winning back Hispanic voters who have drifted toward the GOP, and boosting turnout among the Black working class.

Dionne says “Declining faith in government’s capacity to make a difference in their economic lives has pushed many working-class voters to cast ballots on cultural issues, some closely connected to race….And many Democrats argue that non-economic issues, particularly abortion rights, have been key to the party’s advances among suburban swing voters.”

“Non-economic issues” its a useful term,. especially for abortion rights, which is far more real to most voters than any of the other issues lumped in the sloppy “culture war” basket. It also highlights the importance of economic issues, which remain the Democrats’ best hope for electoral success.

Republicans are masters of the art of political distraction. It is essential for their political survival. They love talking about ‘critical race theory’ and ‘the transsexual agenda’ and making phony claims about duly-certified elections being a conspiracy against everyone who isn’t a self-identified liberal. Republicans hate talking about economic issues because they have nothing to offer in that all-important category, other than the lower taxes, which they end up giving to the already wealthy far more often than the ‘working middle class.’

Dionne makes a convincing case that Democrats should look to their Governors, who think of themselves as “the get-stuff-done caucus,” not without good reason. Republicans hold a House majority and Senate Democrats can’t get any traction anyway, thanks to the idiotic 60-vote requirement for cloture. But there are a very few states, Michigan being exhibit “A,” in which Democrats have the authority to pass popular legislation.

The Senate is paralyzed. Maybe Tim Ryan should be glad he isn’t stuck on that hampster wheel. It’s not a great place right now for Democrats who want to get stuff done. All that could change if Dems take back a House majority in ’24 and somehow hold their Senate majority, against the odds. Until then, it’s Governors, like Whitmer, backed by a Democratic legislative majority, who are in a position to shine.

Dionne quotes NY Governor Kathy Hochul, waxing nostalgically about FDR’s superpower, connecting with working-class voters. FDR was a unique rich guy, who actually cared about working people and it showed. JFK tried to mine that vein, before he was cut down, and LBJ actually delivered some meaningful reforms to help the ‘working middle class,’ before he got bogged down in Vietnam.

But maybe Democrats shouldn’t talk so much about their great leaders of the past, since it highlights their absence in the present. Intelligent voters know that there are no more Lincolns and FDRs, and that today’s situation is very different anyway. What hasn’t changed is the need for political leaders who, rather than get distracted by culture wars, stay focused on economic reforms that can help improve the lives of the ‘working middle-class’ and also support abortion rights. Therein lies the path to Democrats’ future success.

In her article, “Why Are Republicans Going After ‘Wokeness’ Instead of Going After Biden?,” Amy Walter writes at The Cook Political Report: “What makes Americans angry also propels them out to vote. The key for political campaigns, however, is to make sure that the issue motivating their base isn’t also: a) getting the other side’s base super engaged; and/or b) turning off independent-leaning voters you need to win a general election….After the 2020 election, for example, many moderate Democrats blamed their losses at the House level on liberals’ over-emphasis on things like “defunding” the police and support for fewer restrictions on immigration. While those issues may have motivated younger voters and/or voters of color to show up to the polls for Democrats, they also turned off swing voters in battleground districts….In 2022, the abortion issue—normally a base motivator for the GOP—did more to turn out the Democratic base than to motivate an already engaged GOP one….For example, a post-election survey by the progressive group Navigator Research found that among those who “somewhat” disapproved of President Biden’s handling of the economy—13 percent of the electorate—voters backed Democrats over Republicans by a greater than two-to-one margin (net +36; 65 percent Democratic candidates to 29 percent Republican candidates)….I asked Bryan Bennett, the senior director of polling analytics at the Hub Project (the sponsor of the survey), for a profile of these somewhat disapprovers to try and figure out what may have caused them to vote for a Democratic candidate, even as they were “meh” on Biden….What they found was that these voters “pretty overwhelmingly voted for Biden in 2020 (net +40; 68 percent Biden to 28 percent Trump to 4 percent other) and had a more Democratic-leaning profile.” In other words, these are the types of voters who Democrats should be getting to vote for them….The Navigator survey found that the overall electorate picked inflation as the top issue (45 percent), with abortion and jobs tied for second place at 30 percent. However, among those “somewhat disapprovers,” abortion was their top issue at 41 percent, with inflation a close second at 37 percent. In other words, for the overall electorate, inflation was 15 points more important than abortion, while for ‘somewhat disapprovers’, abortion was four points more important than inflation.”

As regards transgender rights, “One of the biggest targets for “anti-woke” legislation is transgender issues and kids,” Walter continues. “According to the website Track Trans Legislation, 38 states have seen anti-trans bills proposed in 2023, including 107 bills that focus on health care restriction for youth and 75 bills that address school/curriculum issues….On its face, this is an issue that not only gets support from conservatives, but also finds acceptance across a more broad cross-section of the public. Washington Post columnist David Byler wrote that the public “has recently become less open to transgender rights” quoting surveys showing that “sixty percent of American adults reported last summer that they oppose including options other than ‘male’ and ‘female’ on government documents. Fifty-eight percent favor requiring transgender athletes to compete on teams that match their sex at birth. Forty-one percent say transgender individuals should be required to use the bathroom corresponding to their sex at birth (31 percent disagree and 28 percent don’t have a position). And Americans are roughly evenly split on whether public elementary schools should teach about gender identity.”….One of the reasons to talk this up, of course, is not simply to motivate the base, but to lure Democrats into a fight on terrain that is more challenging for them. Democrats would rather fight Republicans on issues where they have a noted advantage, like protecting Social Security and Medicare, than on things like gender identity where their coalition is divided….the Economist’s G. Elliot Morris noted that a recent Economist/YouGov poll found that while 58 percent of independents say “whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth,” almost 75 percent of independents also think there is “a little” or “a lot” of discrimination against transgender people in the US….The survey also found, Morris said, that “independents are generally opposed to things like puberty blockers for minors and transgender kids playing on sports teams, but also oppose banning books about trans youth.”….In other words, independent voters see a line between keeping kids safe and discriminating or targeting kids.”

From “The Five Day Workweek Is Dead” by Christian Paz at Vox: “And the pandemic has only intensified that push. Record numbers of Americans across economic sectors quit their jobs in what was eventually dubbed the Great Resignation. Whether it’s hourly retail workers frustrated with contingent schedules or more highly paid salaried employees tired of working 60-hour weeks, there is “a broader consensus now that our work should sustain us,” Deutsch said. “Our whole life should not be at the mercy of a job that does not allow us to thrive.”….More livable schedules have had success elsewhere in the world. Companies in Japan, New Zealand, and elsewhere have experimented with shorter workweeks in recent years, often reporting happier workers who are actually better at their jobs. But one of the largest and most high-profile recent experiments took place in Iceland, where local and federal authorities working with trade unions launched two trials of a shortened workweek, one in 2015 and one in 2017. In the trials, workers shifted from a 40-hour work week to 35 or 36 hours, with no cut to their pay. It wasn’t just office workers who participated — the trials included day care workers, police officers, care workers for people with disabilities, and people in a variety of other occupations….The results were impressive, according to a report on the trials published by Autonomy, a UK-based think tank that helped analyze them. Workers reported better work-life balance, lower stress, and greater well-being. “My older children know that we have shorter hours and they often say something like, ‘Is it Tuesday today, dad? Do you finish early today? Can I come home directly after school?’” one father said, according to the report. “And I might reply ‘Of course.’ We then go and do something — we have nice quality time.” Democrats would be wise to pay close attention to the movement for a shorter workweek. People want more time with their families, and for personal growth and development, and the shorter workweek is the key reform that can bring it to them.

You have probably read or heard about the daunting odds Democrats face in holding on to their U.S. Senate majority in 2024. In the House, however, Dems have better prospects, as Kyle Kondik writes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “The overall battle for House control in 2024 starts as a Toss-up….Relatively similar numbers of Democratic and Republican seats start in the most competitive Toss-up and Leans categories, although Republicans start with a few more targets in large part because of the likelihood that they will benefit from redistricting in North Carolina and Ohio….Big blue states California and New York, where Republicans have made key gains over the past couple of cycles, loom large as Democrats plot a path back to the House majority….Sources on both sides of the aisle generally believe that the House playing field is not going to be that large. Part of it is that redistricting slightly reduced the number of truly competitive districts, and the North Carolina and Ohio maps could chip away at that number a little further. But Republicans also probably will not be casting as wide of a net as they did in 2022, as they came up empty in many districts where Biden did better than he did nationally. That includes arguably red-trending but still blue districts like the ones held by Reps. Frank Mrvan (D, IN-1), Henry Cuellar (D, TX-28), and Vicente Gonzalez (D, TX-34). Republicans were hoping that another turn of the realigning wheel in these places after Donald Trump made them more competitive in 2016 and/or 2020 would flip them red in 2022, but that didn’t happen. So Republicans may not push as hard in these districts as they did last time….Our overall ratings show 212 seats rated Safe, Likely, or Leans Republican, 201 rated Safe, Likely, or Leans Democratic, and 22 Toss-ups. Splitting the Toss-ups evenly, 11-11, would result in a net GOP gain of a single seat. Democrats need to net 5 seats to win the majority. Again, we think this is reflective of an overall Toss-up House race to start.”

“Why isn’t Joe Biden getting credit for the economic recovery?” Christian Paz probes the possible answers at Vox, and writes: “President Joe Biden has a lot to be proud of. Riding off a State of the Union speech earlier this month that felt like a victory lap, he and his Cabinet have been blitzing across the country to sharpen his economic message. The Biden administration has sought to contrast Republican threats to Social Security and Medicare with its own legislative work to invest in infrastructure and manufacturing, and bring down the costs of education, health care, and energy….The image of the accelerating “Biden boom” that the White House has been trying to project is rooted in economic data: unemployment is now at its lowest level since 1969, January saw the seventh straight month of slowing inflation, the economy has continued to grow despite fears of a recession, and over 12 million jobs have been created since Biden took office two years ago….But why doesn’t it feel that way? The average American is still likely to say the economy is in relatively dire straits, according to Gallup polling data, and large numbers fear worsening inflation, higher interest rates and unemployment, and the possibility of a recession in 2023. Some 80 percent of American adults think the economy is either in poor or fair shape, according to January data from Pew Research Center….The short answer is, of course, inflation. Prices are still much higher at this point than they were two years ago, and news about expensive eggs and expensive housing are likely still putting a damper on our collective sense of an improving economy….“The bad news of the economy (rising inflation, declining real incomes) has outweighed the good news (mostly consistent growth in GDP, low unemployment),” John Sides, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University, said. “Negative economic news is both more prevalent in news coverage and is also more salient to consumers, relative to positive economic news. So even in an economy with mixed signals, the bad news wins out.”

Paz adds, “Sides, who has studied the relationship between political prospects and economic news extensively, uses the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment to analyze how down people are on the economy. The index, which measures how people feel about the general economic climate from a monthly random survey of Americans, tells an unsurprising story: though consumer sentiment remains way below the historical average, it has been steadily rising for three consecutive months, and is significantly higher than it was a year ago, matching the trend of cooling inflation. That matches up pretty closely with how people feel about Joe Biden as a president….For most of the time that index has been collecting data, there was a straightforward correlation between presidential approval ratings and feelings about the economy: better economic news reliably translated into higher approval ratings. But Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s presidencies disrupted this relationship, Sides found. Higher consumer sentiment didn’t translate into a political advantage for either of them, despite the post-Great Recession recovery under Obama and the Trump economic boom…“Inflation is an everyone problem and unemployment is a some-people problem,” the economic columnist Annie Lowrey argued in the Atlantic last year. When things were bad during the Covid recession in 2020, everyone felt fear, but only some people lost their jobs. “The pain was uneven. In contrast, nobody escapes inflation, even if rising prices affect some people far more than others,” Lowrey wrote….Speaking to the New Yorker, Biden’s recently departed chief of staff, Ron Klain, alluded to a larger problem across the world….“We’re just at a place where, in democracies, we’re going to find that forty-three or forty-four [percent] will turn out to be a very high approval rating, just because people are polarized: the people on the other side are never going to say you’re doing a good job, and for the people in the middle it’s just easier to say, ‘Eh’,” he told the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos….The better measure of success is elections, Klain said. And Biden will have another chance to prove his messaging and agenda are working next year.”

In “Most Americans Think House Republicans Aren’t Investigating Real Problems,” Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux writes at FiveThirtyEight: “According to a Fox News/Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research poll conducted in late January, more than two-thirds of registered voters said it’s at least somewhat important for Congress to investigate the origins of COVID-19, federal agencies’ potential bias against conservatives and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. But Republicans’ targets don’t really line up with the issues that registered voters are most concerned about, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted in November. When voters were asked about their “top priority” for congressional investigations, fentanyl trafficking into the U.S., operations at the U.S.-Mexico border and the infant formula shortage of summer 2022 topped the list. This suggests that the Republicans’ border-security investigation could have some legs — but other issues, like the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impeachment of Mayorkas and Hunter Biden’s finances, were ranked lower….Other polls, meanwhile, suggest that Americans are concerned that Republican investigations will focus too much on digging up dirt on political rivals. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in January found that 65 percent of Americans were concerned that the GOP will focus too much on investigating the Biden administration, while only 32 percent were worried that the GOP wouldn’t focus enough on Biden. And when a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll asked about the GOP’s investigation into so-called targeting of conservatives by federal agencies, Americans were much likelier to say that the investigation is an attempt to score political points (56 percent) than a legitimate investigation (36 percent). Similarly, a USA Today/Suffolk University poll conducted in December found that a majority (51 percent) of registered voters agreed with a statement that impending House GOP investigations will be “mostly a political effort to embarrass the Biden administration,” while 38 percent called the investigations “an appropriate way to hold the Biden administration accountable.”

Thomason-DeVeaux notes further, “To be clear: Republicans’ investigations are going to happen whether Americans want them or not. Congressional investigations of presidents during periods of divided government are something of an American tradition. Two political scientists, Douglas Kriner and Eric Schickler, looked at congressional-investigation data between 1969 and 2014, and found that the number of days the House spent investigating the executive branch spiked whenever the two were controlled by different parties….Kriner and Schickler found that, in the past, aggressive investigations were pretty effective for attacking a sitting president. According to their analysis, 20 days of investigations in a month caused a drop in the president’s approval of about 2.5 percentage points. But it’s also possible that congressional investigations don’t pack the punch they used to. After all, Trump’s first impeachment didn’t do much to change Americans’ perspectives on him. And if Americans are already skeptical about Republicans’ investigations, GOP House members will have an even higher bar for convincing the public to pay attention….When Democrats took control of the House in 2019, Americans were similarly suspicious that their investigations for Trump would be politically tinged. A Suffolk University/USA Today poll conducted in December 2018 found that nearly half (49 percent) of registered voters thought Democrats would go too far in their investigations of Trump, while 36 percent thought that Democrats wouldn’t go far enough. And by the end of Democrats’ four-year stint in control of the House, one of their biggest investigations hadn’t made a huge impact on public opinion: According to a Public Religion Research Institute poll published this past October, 56 percent of Americans said that their views of Trump hadn’t changed because of the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol….So while some Republicans will no doubt cheer the House GOP’s investigative zeal, the inquiries will probably seem to most Americans like more political noise.”

At FiveThirtyEight’s “Other Polling Bites,” Monica Potts notes, “Sixty-three percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the level of immigration to the country; of that group, a 64 percent majority say they want the level of immigration to decrease, according to a Gallup survey from January. Overall, the number of Americans who want immigration to decrease stands at 40 percent, more than double the number two years ago. There’s also a partisan split in how Americans view immigration: 71 percent of Republicans say there should be less immigration. Only 19 percent of Democrats agree. And while that’s a jump from only 2 percent of Democrats two years ago, Americans seem to be aware of a partisan split on this issue: An Ipsos poll from Feb. 3 to 5 found that 78 percent of adults think Americans are far apart on the issue of immigration, ranking it as one of the more divisive political issues asked about.” Democrats, take note that the high-turnout senior demographic is significantly more “dissatisfied with level of immigration and wanting it decreased” than other age groups, according to the Gallup Poll data.

Nonetheless, David J. Bier and Alex Nowrasteh report that “Biden’s Plan to End the Border Crisis Is Already Working” at The Daily Beast, and note: “In December 2022, the last full month before humanitarian parole, Border Patrol had 84,176 encounters with migrants from those four countries which accounted for over 36 percent of all encounters that month at the U.S.-Mexico border. In January, the number had already dropped to 11,909—an 86 percent decline. As a result, overall U.S.-Mexico border encounters are down 42 percent….This was similar to the decline in Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion showing up at the Southwest border in Spring 2022 after a similar program was announced. Their numbers dropped from 20,118 in April 2022 to 375 in May, a 98 percent reduction, after the Uniting for Ukraine parole program allowed them to come directly from abroad with a U.S. sponsor….The Ukrainian program was the model for Biden’s Latin American humanitarian parole and it’s having similarly dramatic effects on improving border security.” The authors, both affiliated with the libertarian Cato Institute, note some of the problems of the policy, but conclude: “The Biden administration has turned a massive flow of illegal immigrants into a smaller flow of legal immigrants using a 71-year-old legal power granted to him by Congress. Migrants on humanitarian parole are legal migrants, lawfully allowed to live and work in the United States….By extending humanitarian parole to other countries, increasing the numbers, attaching work authorization to parole, and reinstituting normal immigration fees, President Biden can be the first president to gain control of the border in generations.”

From “Both White and Nonwhite Democrats are Moving Left” by Alan I. Abramowitz at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Growing partisan-ideological congruence has been one of the most important trends affecting American politics over the past several decades. The ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans has increased dramatically since the 1970s as Republicans have grown increasingly conservative and Democrats have grown increasingly liberal. This increase in partisan-ideological congruence has affected rank-and-file voters as well as party elites and activists….In this article, I use data from American National Election Studies surveys to examine trends in partisan-ideological congruence among Democratic and Republican voters since 2012. To measure partisan-ideological congruence, I examine trends in ideological identification and policy preferences among Democrats and Republicans. In addition, I examine whether there is evidence of an emerging ideological divide between white and nonwhite Democratic voters. The findings indicate that from 2012 to 2020, there was a dramatic increase in liberalism among Democratic voters. This leftward shift has been somewhat greater among white Democrats than among nonwhite Democrats. However, both white and nonwhite Democrats moved to the left over that timespan. As a result, for the first time in recent history, partisan-ideological congruence is as great among Democrats as among Republicans. This trend has important implications for voting behavior….The sharp leftward movement among Democratic voters in recent years has led some political observers to suggest that Democrats need to be concerned about a growing racial divide in political ideology.

Abramowitz continues, “Nonwhites make up a large share of Democratic voters — 43% in 2020 according to the ANES data — and nonwhite Democrats have traditionally been less likely than white Democrats to self-identify as liberal. A growing racial divide in ideology could lead to an erosion in support for Democratic candidates among nonwhites, who have been some of the most loyal Democratic voters….Nonwhite Democrats continue to be somewhat less likely than white Democrats to self-identify as liberal and to support abortion rights. However, they are just as liberal as white Democrats on other issues such as government responsibility for jobs and living standards and aid to Blacks. The most significant trend in attitudes on these issues has been a dramatic shift to the left among white Democrats.” In his conclusion, Abramowitz explains, “The increase in loyalty among white Democratic identifiers is due largely to their increased liberalism because defections among white Democrats have been heavily concentrated among those with relatively conservative ideological orientations. This increased loyalty has also been apparent in other types of elections including those for U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. In 2022, according to data from the American National Election Studies Pilot Survey, 96% of Democratic identifiers, including leaning independents, voted for Democratic candidates for U.S. House and U.S. Senate. Growing ideological congruence among Democrats, and especially among white Democrats, suggests that these high levels of loyalty are likely to continue in 2024 and beyond.” Abramowitz establishes that the trend is clear. But centrist Democrats see the party’s left lean as more of a problem, because it gives the Republicans much more opportunity to win votes from moderates.

Democrats should aspire to be the party of a majority of working-class voters of all races. But that isn’t going to happen overnight; it will take a few election cycles, and that is an optimistic scenario.

It should nonetheless remain a primary long-term goal of the party. If Democrats don’t represent working-class people, then what are they really about? Abandoning that goal would guarantee continued political impotence and stagnation. Demographic realities do not support a “skip the white workers” strategy.

White workers, narrowly defined as non-college voters, are about 40-45 percent of the most recent electorate, nation-wide. But let’s keep in mind that “non-college” is a statistically-useful designation, but not a perfect definition of working-class voters. There are substantial numbers of white, college-educated workers doing service work and ‘pink collar’ jobs in the U.S. economy. It’s likely that a majority of today’s voters hail from the white working-class.

Moreover, the morality of seeking a work-around the white working class is pretty shameful. Democrats must keep moving toward becoming a party that workers of all races can look to for leadership that can make their lives better.

In the short term, however, a more achievable goal is needed to prevent disaster for Dems: Democrats should try hard to win a modestly-larger share of working-class voters: taking away just 5 percent of white working-class voters from Republicans in 2024 would be a great victory. Taking 10 percent of their white worker voters would be politically-transformative, and go a long way toward enacting a full-blown progressive economic agenda.

These percentages can be even smaller if Democrats do a better job of mobilizing a larger turnout of sizable Dem-friendly constituencies, like Black voters, Mexican Americans, college students and women concerned about reproductive rights. It won’t be easy, since turnout of some traditionally pro-Democratic groups has declined in recent elections. But there is so much room for turnout improvement with all of these constituencies that abandoning that goal would be political malpractice.

Few Democratic elected officials and Democratic voters actually embrace unpopular policies like ‘open borders’ or ‘defunding the police.’ Some organizations do, they are very loud and big media amplifies their voices. That gives the impression to many that most Democrats are in favor of such policies, and that screws up the Democratic ‘brand.’

Some progressive Democrats advocate policies that are unpopular with white workers, like banning fracking, gun control or tuition-free college education, to name a few. Their views are usually tailored to appeal to their particular constituencies and they are sometimes right. But the arrogant way they sometimes express their views too often invites hostility from blue collar workers. Hence the bumper sticker, “Drill everywhere: My truck won’t run on unicorn piss.”

However, few who advocate culturally ‘progressive’ views are going to change because of anything commentators say about them. Nor will many Democratic moderates change their views because of anything progressive Democrats say. That debate is never going to be resolved, and that’s not a bad thing. We’re supposed to have vigorous policy debates, unlike Republicans who don’t stand for much besides tax give-aways to the wealthy, cuts in social spending and deregulation.

Meanwhile, Democratic strategists should explore promising approaches, like developing targeted policy mixes and pitching strategies that can appeal to small business entrepreneurs, seniors or rural voters. Democratic elected officials already support an impressive range of policies that benefit white working-class voters. But they have to do a better job of spelling out these reforms, publicizing their support and calling out Republican opposition. Picking off a percent or two of Republicans share of the vote here and there can make a big difference.

Democrats are not going to suddenly become ‘the party of the working-class’ in time for next year’s elections. That’s going to take longer. But Dems must implement a short-term 2024 strategy that can win or at least prevent Republicans from being able to further gerrymander Democrats out of power. That has to include a full range of short-term tactics, including potentially-risky projects like opposition primary meddling where it will work – while making steady progress toward becoming the party working-class voters trust.

Democrats have to play a better short game as well as a more effective long-term one. There are overlapping strategies for both, but Dems must stay nimble and be ready to seize every short-term opportunity to make gains in the next election.