In “Ro Khanna Psychoanalyzes His Own Party” the Silicon Valley congressman, who is one of the sharpest thinkers of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, is interviewed by Puck’s Tara Palmer. Some excerpts: “Ro Khanna: I’ve had very good conversations with the White House. I’m hoping they will act on some of them. In addition to some of the ones I mentioned in the Times op-ed, I think having a temporary export ban would go a long way to reducing prices, and here’s how I know that: we did it before 2015. But if you look at the unfortunate explosion that happened in Louisiana, where natural gas was not able to be exported right after that, you had a massive decline in price in the United States. So there are tools that we have….Every day he [President Biden}has to be talking about the economy, the economy, the economy. He needs to be talking about prices and what he’s doing to lower prices. He needs to talk about what he’s going to do to put money in the pockets of Americans who are struggling. He needs to go much more aggressively against big oil and their price gouging. And he needs to mobilize the government in ways on baby formula. I mean actually start buying the baby formula from Europe. Tell the F.D.A. that if it’s safe enough for European babies, it’s safe enough for American babies. Start funding mass production of critical supplies. Give an Oval Office address on the semiconductor shortage, asking why we’re not passing this bill in Congress?….I think we need to spend 80 percent of our time, 90 percent of our time, talking about the domestic economy, and what we’re doing. I respect his foreign policy on Russia and his leadership, but I think that the key is to be talking about the economy, the economy, the economy….I would like him to see him be much bolder on economic policy and more focused on it, more imaginative. ”

Khanna continues, “I’m supporting the president. I believe everyone should try to strengthen the president because I fully expect him to run. It does us no good in my view to speculate on alternatives when he’s clearly said that he’s running….I think there’s a lot of talent in the party. Maybe other people could beat Trump, but I don’t think that they are going to beat Joe Biden in the primary….But to become president you have to have a vision, and you have to connect with people at an emotional level. Trump had a dystopian vision: They industrialized you, they shipped your jobs offshore, I’m going to bring them back! Now, he didn’t deliver, but I don’t see DeSantis, in my view, as having an emotional connection with the electorate. I think Biden could speak much more about how he’s going to improve the lives of people in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin….We can pay attention to the state legislatures in a way that we haven’t. We need to pay attention to grooming a new generation of young law students, like The Federalist Society, but on our side. We need to take judicial appointments much more seriously. Hillary Clinton was right that even if you disagreed with her, not voting for her was giving up the Supreme Court.”

Harry Enten reports that “Democrats get bounce in polls after Roe v. Wade is overturned” at CNN Politics: “Last week, Monmouth University released its latest survey results on the generic congressional ballot. Among registered voters, Republicans still led by 2 points, 48% to 46%. The result closely matches the average of recent polls, which has Republicans with a 1-point advantage on the generic ballot, which usually asks respondents some form of the following question: “If the elections for Congress were held today, would you vote for the Democratic or Republican Party?”….The latest Monmouth result, though, marked an improvement for Democrats who had trailed 50% to 43% when the university last polled on the generic ballot in May….Normally, I’d dismiss movement from one poll to the next as statistical noise. These two Monmouth results are within the margin of error of each other….But a look at all polling shows the same thing: Democrats have been gaining on the generic ballot since Roe was overturned….By my count, there have been eight different pollsters who ask about the generic ballot and conducted a poll before and after the Supreme Court found there was no federal constitutional right to an abortion. Every single one of them found Democrats doing better in their poll taken post-abortion ruling compared with the one taken pre-abortion ruling. The average shift was about 3 points in Democrats’ favor….This 3-point change may not seem like a lot, and it could reverse itself as we get further away from the ruling. Still, it puts Democrats in their best position on the generic ballot in the last six months.”

In “Maybe Dobbs Did Change The Race. We’ll Need More Time To Know For Sure,” Nate Silver takes a similar view at FiveThirtyEight: “Usually, the generic ballot is a noisy measure, and if you know nothing about what’s causing the changes, the best empirical strategy is to be quite conservative in updating the average. If the polls move by several points and there’s no real underlying cause, it’s probably just noise….After all, most people — even most people who vote in congressional elections — are not following the news intensely on a day-to-day basis. Cable news ratings, for instance, reflect a tiny fraction of the American population: The most-watched cable news program is seen by something like 1 percent of Americans on a typical night….So, in figuring out whether shifts in a polling average represent signal or noise, the model averages out lots of times when there’s nothing much going on and a fewtimes when there is. The safe bet is usually “probably mostly noise, awaiting more evidence of signal.”….But given that we do have a huge story on our hands, let’s do a direct before-and-after comparison. Six pollsters¹ have released generic ballot polls both before and after the Dobbs decision.² All six of those polling firms have shown a shift toward Democrats. On average, Democrats trailed by 1.3 points in the pre-Dobbs version of these polls but led by 1.5 points in the most recent ones, a shift of almost 3 points toward the party….If this persists, then our generic ballot average — and also our midterm model — will eventually catch up and move toward Democrats. Of course, that might not happen. The change could still be a statistical quirk. Or it could be temporary, an artifact of partisan nonresponse bias. That is, if Democrats are more engaged than Republicans by news of the Supreme Court’s decision — and there’s evidence to suggest they are — they may be more likely to respond to polls for some period of time, at least until the next news story takes hold. Then again, if Democrats are more motivated than Republicans to vote by the decision, that could help them in a real way in November, too….Bottom line: Most of the time, polling averages are exceptionally useful, but be wary of using them in ways in which they weren’t intended. The FiveThirtyEight generic ballot polling average is designed to be conservative and slow-moving and not really equipped to deal with breaking-news developments.³ That our generic ballot polling average is steady in reaction to the news doesn’t really prove anything either way, then. But because of the Dobbs decision, there may be some electoral upside for Democrats beyond what our model currently shows.”

In “Progressives: Take the fight to the states, right now. It’s the only way to win,” Gaby Goldstein writes at Salon: “For decades progressives have over-invested in federal strategies, including legislation, advocacy and litigation. While conservatives have been consistent and ruthless in their efforts to build power at different levels of government, progressives have almost entirely neglected state-level power. Now, with state power dramatically expanding, progressives are structurally and rhetorically unprepared….It’s time for progressives to challenge their thinking about state power. It’s time to reject outdated and ahistorical nostalgia for a Supreme Court that stands on the side of rights and justice — something that only briefly and intermittently existed. It’s time to embrace the fight for state power as a necessary part of the progressive project, and it’s time to commit to reallocating energy and resources downward to political and policy battles in the states….Conservatives have spent generations building an entire political apparatus designed to stack the courts with ideological judges. At the same time, they have focused on winning state legislative races, knowing that these overlooked venues of power are the key to redistricting and voting rights, and that once the judiciary had been captured by conservative ideology, it would give states more discretion to write regressive laws. Republican power in state capitals accelerated dramatically after the post-2010 gerrymandering strategy known as Project REDMAP, which resulted in Republican control of 25 state legislatures. There’s a direct line between that state-level power and this wave of Supreme Court decisions, including the fall of Roe.”

“But while the right has woven state-level strategies into the very fabric of its efforts,” Goldstein adds, “the left has been almost exclusively preoccupied with federal strategies and an aversion to state-level power. For decades, Democrats prioritized federal elections over state-level races, and left-leaning interest groups — including national abortion advocacy organizations — often focused on federal strategies and institution-building, to the near exclusion of local and state ones….Democrats routinely invest far too much money in unwinnable federal elections, while underinvesting in state and local candidates who actually have a chance. FEC filings for federal candidates show that Democrats running in noncompetitive Senate races have raised more than $119 million for their 2022 races so far. To gain some perspective on that, in 2020 Arizona Democrats fell just four seats shy of flipping the state legislature, and raised less than $10 million. This year, Arizona’s Republican trifecta — both houses of the state legislature, plus the governor — passed and enacted an abortion ban….by ceding both institutional and narrative control about the importance and value of state power to their opponents, progressives have directly aided the conservative cause. Progressives’ staunch unwillingness to recognize the interdependence between state and federal power has created a false mutual exclusion between state and federal power-building efforts. That was never a good choice, and now it’s disastrous. We have to build power, sustain it and wield it at both levels of government. We’re behind, and we’ve got to work fast….That understanding can and must fuel a massive redistribution of progressive efforts, strategy and resources toward our states — beginning immediately….Let us reimagine what our states could do for us, envision them as expansive and transformative venues of positive power, and demand that our states create the conditions in which reproductive justice, climate justice and so much more can be achieved.”

Christopher Kang argues that “Democrats Are headed for Disaster With Unfilled Judicial Vacancies” at Slate, and writes: “It’s time for Senate Democrats and the Biden White House to push beyond their current practices in order to fill all of the judicial vacancies by the end of this Congress. As someone who worked on judicial nominations in the Senate and the Obama White House, I know how hard it can be for Democrats to challenge norms, but we have seen Republicans stop at nothing in their relentless push to take and retain control of the federal judiciary to impose their extreme, partisan agenda on a majority of Americans who oppose it. Our federal courts are so far out of balance that we need the president and the Senate to do everything in their power to ensure justice and equality. That means filling every vacancy, even if it means breaking with the few remaining judicial confirmation process norms left in McConnell’s wake or standing up to Republican senators. Beginning to bring balance to our judiciary is more important than respecting Senate traditions….A more aggressive approach to judicial confirmations starts at the White House. Today, there are more than 80 judicial vacancies without nominees, out of 119 announced vacancies. One of the driving causes for this is too much White House deference to senators—both Democratic and Republican. The Biden administration needs to take a more assertive approach and show it is willing to bypass Senate tradition if senators are not proving good partners….The White House must not undermine its well-earned legacy on the courts by curbing its focus on professional diversity or accepting deals that would include conservative extremists. Instead, it must rally Democrats together—at every stage of the nomination and confirmation process—to fill every vacancy with judges dedicated to justice and equality. More than 30 national organizations already agree.”

Noting recent polls indicating a slight bump for Democrats in the wake of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, Amy Walter writes at The Cook Political Report: “It’s not that these surveys are necessarily wrong. It’s that they are measuring the initial reactions of voters. As we go forward, the durability of this reaction is the more important. If Democrats’ interest and enthusiasm in the election has indeed been fundamentally impacted, we should see a generic advantage for Democrats hold over the course of several polls taken over several weeks. More importantly, we would see it hold once pollsters move to a tighter “Likely Voter” screen….However, given our polarized electorate, the generic ballot test is not always the best gauge for whether the issue of abortion will have a meaningful impact on the election….Instead, watch for where Democrats decide to ‘lean in’ on the issue (and where they don’t). If you want to know where Democrats think Roe v. Wade ruling could help, look at the states and districts where Democrats and/or Democratic-aligned outside groups are already advertising on the issue. Seven of the twelve states and districts where we’ve seen ads explicitly mention the overturning of Roe v. Wade (via the ad tracking firm AdImpact), are blue states: Connecticut GOV and SEN, Illinois GOV, Washington SEN, Rhode Island GOV, Maryland GOV, MI-11 (Stevens/Levin) and Vermont SEN. The other four states where we’ve seen these ads are in three swing states and two swing congressional districts: Nevada SEN, New Hampshire SEN, Pennsylvania SEN and GOV, NV-03 (Rep. Susie Lee) and WA-08 (Rep. Kim Schrier)….In other words, this issue will play much differently in certain states and districts than in others. Or, as one Democratic strategist put it to me the other day, this is an issue that has “has power in pockets” of the country.”

Brent Budowsky writes at The Hill: “Fateful and indescribably important moments in the history of our democracy will occur from former President  Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election, the 2022 midterm elections, and — presumably — the 2024 presidential election. These also will shape the next decade of American democracy and American life….These matters will have a profound  impact on  our politics and  elections — more than experts think, because they  powerfully  and  personally  affect  either  every  one  of  us, either directly  or  the  people  we  love  deeply.  Upon  such  things  voters  will  vote,  our nation  will  rise,  and  change  will  come….I  doubt  that  our  troubled  nation  will  stand  with  five  Supreme  Court  justices,  on  a  court  with  only  25  percent  approval  according  to  Gallup,  packed  by  Senate  Minority  Leader  Mitch  McConnell  (R-Ky.),  whose  average  approval  rating  is  only  25.5  percent,  according  to  RealClearPolitics….Even  today  McConnell  threatens,  shamefully,  that  if  Republicans  win  power  in  the  Senate,  he  may  refuse  to  give  President  Biden’s  nominees  a  vote.  Biden  should  challenge  McConnell  aggressively  about  this.  If  he  does,  he  will  prevail….I  doubt  our  troubled  nation  will  stand  with  five  Supreme  Court  justices  who,  according  to  their  opinions,  might  next  outlaw  same-sex  marriage  and  contraceptives,  in  their  rigid  view  of  how  all  Americans  must  exercise  the  lifestyle  rooted  in  their  faith. These five Supreme Court justices  promised  the  opposite  of what  they  are  doing  now,  when  they  were  confirmed  under  oath….The legal  extremism  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  Roe, which follows an attack against gun control, after another mass murder that destroyed the lives of American children, has set  loose  a  hyper-motivated  movement  for  change  that  is  happening  in  towns,  cities  and  communities  across  the  nation. …Women  and  the  men  who  love  them  are  organizing,  registering,  voting,  speaking  at  town  meetings,  supporting  state  initiatives  and  pressuring  Congress  to  act.”

In “Americans’ Views On Abortion Are Pretty Stagnant. Their Views On The Supreme Court Are Not” at FiveThirtyEight, Zoha Qamar takes a deep dive into public opinion about the Supreme Court’s abortion decision and writes, “According to a poll conducted by YouGov/The Economist from June 18-21, 50 percent of Americans did not want the court to overturn Roe. And when YouGov ran a survey after the release of the Dobbs decision on June 24, it found that the same percentage of Americans disapproved of the court overruling Roe. (Support for overruling Roe didn’t waver much, either: Thirty-two percent were in favor of overturning Roe in the earlier survey, compared with 37 percent in the later survey.)….But it’s not just that Americans largely disapprove of the Dobbs decision. A third YouGov poll, this one fielded June 24-25, gave respondents 11 different choices to describe their reaction to the decision, and Americans reported feeling disgusted (34 percent) at a higher rate than any other emotion. This was closely followed by feeling sad (33 percent), angry (32 percent) and outraged (31 percent). A far smaller share of Americans reported positive emotions about the decision, such as feeling satisfied (19 percent), grateful (18 percent), happy (17 percent) and thrilled (12 percent). Notably, only 20 percent of Americans said they felt surprised by the decision, perhaps due to the notorious leaked draft opinion from early May as well as the court’s recent track record, which has been very conservative….the breakdown of Americans who believe abortion should be always legal, mostly legal, mostly illegal and always illegal has been relatively stable since then….While public opinion on abortion has remained fairly steady, public opinion on the Supreme Court has not. According to Gallup data, Americans’ confidence in the court has been trending mostly downward since peaking in 1988, but it nosedived in the past year. Last June, Americans’ confidence in the court sat at 36 percent; however, in June 2022 — ahead of the Dobbs decision but after its draft opinion was leaked — it plummeted to 25 percent. This is the lowest confidence level since Gallup began the surveys almost 50 years ago, and it was driven primarily by a dramatic drop in confidence among Democrats and independents.”

Cognitive dissonance researchers may want to explore the disconnect between Biden’s low approval rates and public attitudes toward Republican policies. In “Other Polling Bites,” FiveThirtyEight notes, “As the Jan. 6 hearings continue, 51 percent of likely voters agreed that Trump-supporting Republicans’ challenges to the results of the 2020 election, including during the Capitol insurrection, were “[a]n attempt to claim and hold power and overturn the will of the people,” according to a poll from Data for Progress conducted June 15-21. Among Democrats, a whopping 87 percent agreed with that view. Only 19 percent of Republicans thought so, however. By contrast, 66 percent of Republicans agreed with the idea that Trump-supporting Republicans’ challenges were “[b]ased on legitimate evidence of fraud, illegal voting, and false results.”….Most Americans also disagreed with its ruling that New York’s gun-control law was unconstitutional, according to a recent survey from Monmouth University. Fifty-six percent said that states should be allowed to limit the ability of people to carry concealed handguns through permits and other protocols.”

Centrist contrarian Doug Schoen opines in the Orange County Register that “First and foremost, it is highly unlikely that abortion replaces inflation or the economy as the top midterm issue. While abortion access is becoming a more salient issue as of late, Americans are still nearly three times more likely to cite economic issues (41%) – like inflation – as their top national voting concern this year over women’s issues (16%) – including abortion access – per a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll….Moreover, nearly two-thirds of voters blame President Biden’s policies for inflation (64%) – including a majority of Independent Voters, as well as of Democrats – according to recent IBD/TIPP polling….The second major reason that the decision to overturn Roe will have a muted impact on midterms is that Democrats’ own messaging on abortion has often times been varying. The party has struggled to come together around a cohesive stance – beyond their standard ‘choice’ articulation – about when and under what circumstances abortion should be legal…This failure, along with the electorate’s general lack of knowledge on the subject, has made it possible for G.O.P.-led states around the country to pass very restrictive abortion laws – i.e., banning abortions after six weeks, which is effectively a complete ban – without much national political blowback….Though the public broadly supports abortion legality, Americans want some limits. Even among abortion rights supporters – 61% of the public – a majority (68%) say that, in some cases, abortion should be illegal, per data collected by Pew Research Center….Thus, some of the messaging on the left from the progressive wing – about legalizing abortion access in all cases – is at times out of touch with the American public, and could be harmful to Democrats’ political prospects in swing-states….To that end, there is also a real chance that Roe ends up backfiring on Democrats politically, as President Biden is now calling on Congress to end the filibuster to codify Roe into law….This is one of the worst political and practical moves that Democrats could make. Talk of killing the filibuster shifts the national conversation away from Republicans being anti-choice and anti-women’s health to Democrats being anti-bipartisanship….Moreover, doing so would contradict the administration’s claim that they are willing to work across the aisle, damage their credibility, and negate Democrats’ ability to sell their bipartisan successes on infrastructure and gun control.” After the midterm elections, however, the argument for ditching the filibuster might make more sense — in the unlikely event that Democrats get a net gain of 2 or more Senate seats.

Li Zhou writes at Vox “This past weekend, more than 30 Democratic senators had a message for President Joe Biden: They want him to do more to protect abortion rights, and they want him to do it now. “There is no time to waste,” they said in the letter, which was led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and sent one day after the Supreme Court announced its decision to officially roll back Roe v. Wade. “You have the power to fight back and lead a national response to this devastating decision.”….This letter is the latest indication of growing pressure on the White House to take additional executive actions in response to the fall of Roe. While Biden is not able to reinstate the protections offered by Roe without Congress, lawmakers and activists have clamored for the president to take other steps, such as finding ways for the federal government to defend abortion access in every state…..Many of these proposals would likely be challenged in court, but proponents emphasize that they’d like to see the administration give them a try before forgoing them completely. For months, some abortion rights advocates have felt that the White House hasn’t been doing enough to address the urgency of the situation, whether that’s weighing more ambitious policies or simply speaking out more forcefully on the subject. Many were disappointed, for instance, to find that Biden hadn’t used the word “abortion” in any presidential speech until recently….Additional ideas that have been suggested include a proposal championed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) that would establish abortion clinics on federal lands in states where there are existing bans. Because federal lands aren’t subject to states’ civil laws and there’s room to interpret criminal laws, clinics could theoretically establish themselves on places like military bases without having to deal with a state’s bans….Other ideas that have been floated include using federal money to provide vouchers to people traveling across state lines for abortions and enforcing the use of federal Medicaid dollars to provide coverage in the narrow instances in which they can be used. These schemes also face implementation questions, with the first possibly running afoul of the Hyde Amendment and the second facing uncertainty about enforcement.”

Some observations from “Politics in the Post-Roe World” by Kyle Kondik at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “It is not surprising that, in the immediate aftermath of the ruling, Democrats appear to be enjoying something of a bounce. The NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College poll, out Monday morning, hadDemocrats up 48%-41% on the House generic ballot. Most other recent generic ballot surveys have shown Republicans leading. The generic ballot did not really change when the Dobbs opinion was leaked back in early May, although that was a hypothetical decision, whereas this is a real one. We’ll have to see whether this is the start of a new trend, or just a blip….abortion is such a huge issue, and Republicans (through the court) have changed the status quo so dramatically, that one cannot just assume the issue won’t matter….it seems obvious to us that many key state legislators don’t possess the kind of expertise and nuance, particularly on abortion, to legislate in nuanced ways. The likelihood of Republicans overplaying their hand is high….there are opportunities for both parties to accuse the other of being extreme on the issue. It just may be that in the immediate aftermath of Dobbs, Republican extremism on abortion will be easier to pinpoint because of the coming flood of anti-abortion activity in the states and because the status quo has changed in the direction of their position….To be crystal clear: We still favor Republicans to flip the House, as they only need to win 5 more seats than they did in 2020 to win the majority. And we think we would still rather be Republicans in the race for the Senate, although we continue to have questions about the strength of GOP candidates in key states. The abortion issue could exacerbate those problems. For instance, former football star and Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker (R) opposes abortion even in the case of rape or incest (and he’s far from alone among Republicans in that regard). Perhaps that stance becomes difficult to defend as the salience of the abortion issue now increases….Elections are rarely ever just about one thing. Abortion is going to be a bigger deal in 2022 than it otherwise would have been, but it may not alter the basic trajectory of the election….The 2022 election will get the nation started down a future path on abortion, but the ultimate destination is very much unclear.”

Let the finger-pointing begin. Those who are looking for something more substantial than ‘it’s the Democrats fault’ should read Scott Neuman’s “The abortion ruling has forced progressives to confront past missteps in strategy” at npr.com. As Neuman writes, “With abortion already banned in at least seven states and more than a dozen others expected to either prohibit or severely restrict the practice in the coming weeks, progressives are being forced to confront their missteps in the defense of Roe as they assess how to move forward on abortion rights and other issues in the wake of the court’s landmark decision last week in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization….What occurred was “a failure to fight on a lot of different fronts,” [NYU Professor Melissa] Murray says….The overturning of Roe was, in large measure, the pinnacle of a methodical and highly effective conservative strategy patiently carried out over the past half-century. Murray points to the gradual stacking of the Supreme Court in favor of conservatives and state laws severely restricting abortion….But equally important was “an inattentiveness to the lower federal courts” on the part of progressives — as these courts were routinely upholding state-level anti-abortion legislation, Murray says….To that list, Murray adds an erosion of voting rights that made it more difficult for women of color — likely the group most affected by the reversal of Roe — to have a say at the ballot box….Samuel Lau, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, concurs. “Disenfranchising people, gerrymandering voters out of meaningful representation, confirming federal judges with records hostile to civil and reproductive rights, and instituting undemocratic voting restrictions is in large part how we arrived here — especially when you look at the erosion of abortion rights on the state levels,” he says….Many Black women see a connection between voting rights and efforts to end abortion, Murray says. But instead of fighting on both fronts, abortion-rights activists remained focused solely on abortion….Carol Sanger, a professor at Columbia Law School, says it is also important not to discount the anti-abortion movement’s deep pockets. Thanks to donors such as the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, there was no lack of funding, she says….”That’s a failure of the progressives not to have had [their] own Koch brothers,” Sanger says. “[But] I don’t know how you get [your] own Koch brothers.”….Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health (NIRH), agrees. “This really was about the degree of funding and diligence and focus,” she says. The anti-abortion rights campaign “had multiple layers and was exceedingly well funded and well executed,” Miller says. “That’s really where the blame should lie. [Abortion opponents] were very clear about their goals. They were incredibly determined and refused to ever give any ground,” she says.”….Meanwhile, a majority of Americans have consistently supported abortion rights and, according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll that came out on Monday, that still holds….Progressives “have some advantages,” [Florid State University professor Mary] Ziegler says. “Namely that this is not a decision that’s in line with popular opinion, including in some red states.” The states are likely to be the prime battleground for abortion-rights advocates moving forward, Miller says….”The path forward really is through the states,” she says. “I believe that that is really the place where if greater attention had been paid, perhaps we wouldn’t have seen quite the tsunami in 2018 or the number of bills restricting access to abortion and now banning abortion.”

Will Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the January 6th insurrection committee affect the midterm election results? Also at Vox, Ben Jacobs notes, “In conversations with a half-dozen Republican strategists who represent a spectrum of opinion within the party and were granted anonymity to speak frankly, there was a broad consensus that, yes, this might have an impact on Trump — but probably not on Republicans in the midterms. There was a sense that this would inflict real damage on Trump’s long-term ambitions, even if it did nothing to shift the needle for now…..”What more do you need to believe crimes were committed?” one Republican strategist asked, before also conceding that “There have been a million times when people say Trump is finished, but this could be the millionth and one, but I don’t see a way for him to come back from this testimony.”….As to where that breaking point was, the Republican operative noted the silence from most national Republicans. “It’s fascinating how little you’re hearing from people like Ron DeSantis,” they said, and marveled at “how few members of Congress have stepped in” to defend Trump since Hutchinson’s testimony….Whatever the impact on Trump, none of the Republicans I spoke to thought the testimony would damage Republicans in the midterms. As one veteran operative pointed out, “people right now are really focused on $5 to $6 a gallon gas and I think that’s where people’s heads are at. By and large people have tuned this out. … Maybe this would be different if the economy was better but people are focused on their own welfare right now.”….That was echoed by another Republican working on 2022 races, who said, “No one is going to vote based on something that is happening within Washington regarding something that occurred a year and a half ago.”

One of the top progressive organizers, Heather Booth, rallies activists in the wake of the SCOTUS decision in her article, “Fighting for Abortion Rights All Over Again: This Supreme Court decision is a call to action. And the key message is—ALWAYS—if we organize, we can change this world, and we need to” at The American Prospect: “The Supreme Court decision is outrageous, but not surprising. The Court has taken away the ability of people to control their own bodies and lives and turned that power over to politicians. It is outrageous because it is against the popular will, against morality, against precedent, against the expansion of freedom….This is an undermining of the most basic freedom and most intimate decision of a person’s life: when or whether or with whom to have a child. It is against the popular will. Eighty percent of people in this country believe that no politician should come between a woman and her doctor in this most intimate decision. Seventy-five percent of people do not think Roe should be overturned….One in five people who can have a child will have an abortion in their lifetime. One in five. This means it could be your friend, your sister, your mother (and the majority of people who have abortions already have one child—and so know what it means to bring a child into this world). It could be you.” Booth shares some moving personal memories of her involvement in the movement for reproductive rights, and adds “Now we are on a knife’s edge in this country—not only about reproductive freedom, but about freedom to vote, freedom to marry who we love, freedom itself. But we do have the majority of the country on our side. We do have morality on our side. And now we need to organize to have the power to make these decisions to reflect the popular will….But just imagine what two more senators and holding the House could do. We could overturn the filibuster and codify Roe—and have sensible gun laws, and expand voting access, and address climate, and more. And the same is true at every level—including in the states and local areas….We need to use every tool at our disposal….We need to tell our stories, educate, activate, agitate, elect, and organize….We need the 4 M’s: Members, Message, Money, Movement.” Booth goes into more detail about the 4Ms and “When we organize, we have changed this world—won voting rights, expanded participation in the society, and elected a Senate and president who made Roe the law of the land. And we can do that again … but for that we need to organize. And if we organize, we can change the world.”

In “Dems hope to harness outrage, sadness after abortion ruling,” AP’s Steve Peoples and Mike Catalini report on the immediate political fallout of the Supreme Court decision and note, “Pregnant women considering abortions already had been dealing with a near-complete ban in Oklahoma and a prohibition after roughly six weeks in Texas. Clinics in at least eight other states — Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, South Dakota, Wisconsin and West Virginia — stopped performing abortions after Friday’s decision….In Pennsylvania, the future of the procedure could hinge on November’s elections. For now, women here will continue to have access to abortion up to 24 weeks. Republicans are poised to change state law, however, should they maintain control of the legislature and seize the governorship in November. Doug Mastriano, the GOP nominee for governor, opposes abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. Democrats in Pennsylvania and beyond initially appeared to unite behind their collective outrage, fear and sadness. They planned widespread protests. From the White House on Friday, President Joe Biden urged protesters to keep the peace, even as he described the court ruling as “wrong, extreme and out of touch.”….The Democratic president also called on voters to make their voices heard this fall: “Roe is on the ballot.”…At the same time, members of the Democratic National Committee raised the prospect of a silver lining within the high court’s historic gut punch….“Democrats have a real opportunity right now to harness this anger, to harness the sadness,” Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee said during a meeting of a DNC subcommittee. “We are setting the foundation to ensure that Democrats stay in the White House, so that the next time, there’s an opening on the bench, on the federal bench anywhere, that we’ve got a Democratic president making that appointment.”

It’s a non-starter until Democrats win an actual, not just a nominal, working majority of the U.S. Senate. But on ABC News ‘This Week,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren made a case for increasing the size of the Supreme Court, as reported by Julia Cheney at abcnews.com: “In a Friday decision, the high court overturned the landmark holding in Roe, instead ruling that there was no constitutional guarantee to abortion access. Justices voted five to four to reject Roe and six to three in favor of Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, in the underlying case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization…The Supreme Court has “burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had” with their ruling last week overturning Roe v. Wade, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on Sunday….”They just took the last of it and set a torch to it,” Warren, a Democrat, told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz in an exclusive interview. “I believe we need to get some confidence back in our court and that means we need more justices on the United States Supreme Court. We’ve done it before, we need to do it again.” (Warren has previously called for expanding the number of justices, including in an op-ed in The Boston Globe in December.)….[ABC’s Martha] Raddatz asked Warren on “This Week” why abortion should not just be decided by individual states and their elected officials, rather than ensured as a constitutional right….”‘Go to the polls,’ you say. President [Joe] Biden says, ‘Go to the polls.’ But look at the states outlawing abortion,” Raddatz pressed. “Those are largely conservative states, Gov. [Kristi] Noem had a point there — people go to the polls. They went to the polls just like your constituents in Massachusetts where abortion is legal, so why not leave it to the states?”….”We have never left individual rights to the states. The whole idea is that women are not second-class citizens and the government is not the one that will decide about the continuation of a pregnancy,” Warren responded. “Access to abortion, like other medical procedures, should be available across the board to all people in this country….”We [need to] get two more senators on the Democratic side, two senators who are willing to protect access to abortion and get rid of the filibuster so that we can pass it,” Warren said. “John Fetterman, I’m looking at you in Pennsylvania. Mandela Barnes, I’m looking at you in Wisconsin. We bring them in, then we’ve got the votes, and we can protect every woman no matter where she lives….the Republicans have been very overt about trying to get people through the court who didn’t have a published record on Roe but who they knew, wink, wink, nod, nod, were going to be extremist on the issue of Roe v. Wade and that is exactly what we have ended up with.”

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. comments on the irony of the Supreme Court decisions on abortion rights and New York’s “open carry” law just as congress, led by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) passed the most significant gun safety reform in decades, signed in to law by President Biden on Saturday:  “The Supreme Court’s right-wing majority is so pro-life that it is willing to risk more killing by making it easier for people to carry concealed firearms. It extolled states’ rights in overturning Roe v. Wade but showed no such solicitude a day earlier for state gun regulations….The court’s precedent-shattering decision on Roe will dominate our public debate, but its irresponsibility on guns cannot be forgotten. Supporters of smarter, tougher weapons statutes should be very afraid that the Supreme Court’s radical conservatives will abuse their power to impose the gun lobby’s jurisprudence. But they should also take heart that a decade of organizing and public pressure has culminated in congressional passage of the first meaningful gun reform in 26 years….The upshot: Proponents of stronger gun control need to keep pushing — to restore the ban on assault weapons, to enact universal background checks, to raise the age for gun purchases, to establish gun buyback programs and much more. And friends of democracy need to challenge the justices’ arrogant overreach by strengthening support for enlarging the court and, where possible, containing its jurisdiction….Which brings us to the irony of the court issuing its gun ruling on the same day the Senate passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. House passage followed on Friday, and President Biden signed it into law on Saturday, declaring that “lives will be saved.” Do not underestimate the significance of this victory. The bill is certainly not all we need, but it takes major steps in the right direction….It strengthens background checks, imposes tougher regulations against illegal “straw” purchases of guns, tightens rules on access to guns by those accused of domestic abuse and promotes state red-flag laws that allow authorities to confiscate guns temporarily from people deemed dangerous. It also provides for reviews of juvenile and mental health records of gun purchasers younger than 21….In a democracy, public opinion matters. Organizing matters. Persistence matters. They finally paid off this week in modest but landmark gun reform. All three must be brought to bear in battling a partisan Supreme Court majority unwilling to acknowledge any limits to its power.”

There is a pretty good counter-argument to the belief that the January 6th investigation will not help Democrats in the midterms. In his article, “Truth about Trump “starting to sink in” for Republicans, says Morning Joe” at Salon’s Raw Story, Travis Gettys flags some comments by former Republican congressman and now MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough regarding the political fallout of the January 6th investigation. As Gettys writes, “Scarborough was shocked by the results of a new [ABC/Ipsos] poll showing a majority of Americans — including one in five Republicans — think Donald Trump should be prosecuted….The survey conducted after the first week of public hearings by the House select committee found 58 percent of Americans believe the former president should be charged with a crime for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and the “Morning Joe” host found the results astonishing….”You look at the number — only 19 percent of Republicans, let’s stop for a second and think about this,” Scarborough said. “In this world of small margins that we play by every election, whether it was 2016 or 2020, let’s just stop for a second and go, oh, wow. Only 19 percent of Republicans think he should be charged with a crime and go to jail. That’s one in five Republicans.”….”Now, I must say, I ran four times and won easily four times,” he added. “But if one in five of my base thought I should have been charged with a crime and gone to jail, I mean, I would have gone and practiced law a lot earlier. Again, this is starting to resonate, this is starting to sink in. I just — we love to knock around Washington institutions. I’m not saying you, but all of us, we love to talk about how ineffective people in Congress or committees are. This committee has gotten the truth out to the American people, and even at the beginning of the summer, they’re listening….”

Dylan Scott reports that “A new study claims Medicare-for-all could have saved more than 200,000 lives during the pandemic” at Vox, and notes: “….a new study from a group of scholars at Yale and UMass-Amherst says the US had more deaths per capita than most economic peers due to something more specific: the lack of universal health care….According to that paper, published this month in PNAS, at least 212,000 fewer Americans would have died of Covid-19 in 2020 alone if the US had a single-payer health care system similar to the Medicare-for-all plan proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The country would have also saved $105 billion in pandemic-related health care costs….The researchers ticked through different factors that would have reduced the number of Covid-19 fatalities under a system in which the government insures everyone and pays almost all of their health care costs:

• Nobody would have lost health insurance as a result of job loss from the pandemic’s shock to the economy. (The study estimates about 14.5 million Americans lost employer-based coverage in March and April of 2020, though some of those people would end up being covered by Medicaid.) Research has repeatedly shown being uninsured leads to patients delaying health care and worse health outcomes. More insured people would have meant more cases being diagnosed and getting treated sooner, reducing the likelihood of severe disease or death.
• Vaccination rates would likely have been higher — and therefore there would have been fewer severe cases and deaths — if more Americans had a relationship with a primary care doctor, which one in four people in the US don’t.
• And by reducing the number of Covid-19 hospitalizations through more vaccinations and earlier diagnoses, US hospitals would have come under less strain. That would have made it easier for them to manage all of their patients, rather than the situation last summer — after vaccines were widely available — when people showed up at hospitals with no room or staff to treat them. Some of those people died.

….And if you take a look at countries that have universal health care systems — the UK, Taiwan, Australia, and the Netherlands, countries we covered in our Everybody Covered series on universal health care, plus France and Germany — they have experienced fewer deaths per capita than the US has.”….Countries with universal health care did outperform the US during the pandemic — that part of the paper’s conclusion appears beyond dispute. But they have deployed different programs to achieve that goal. It’s not clear to me that Medicare-for-all would necessarily lead to better outcomes than, say, a system modeled on the Australian or Dutch approach.” It won’t be much of an issue for the midterm elections, but leaning toward some form of M4A may get some traction for Dems in 2024.

Democratic strategists would be wise to enhance their dossiers on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. As Chris Ciliizza reports at CNN Politics: “A new poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire has some startling news for Donald Trump: He’s no longer the big dog on the block (at least in the Granite State)….Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis takes 39% in a poll of the Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire, while Trump is at 37%. No other potential GOP contender manages double-digit support, with former Vice President Mike Pence in third place at 9%….That’s a MAJOR change from where the race was last fall. A UNH poll in October 2021 showed Trump with 43% to DeSantis’ 18%….Another interesting nugget from the poll: Just 6 in 10 self-identified Republicans (62%) want the former President to run again in 2024. Which is, well, sort of low?…Now, this is just one poll in a state expected to be one of the first to vote in the 2024 primary season. If you look at all the polling done in the broader Republican White House race, Trump still leads in the preponderance of it. And he would start a third bid for president as the favorite for the GOP nomination….(Check out my rankings of the 10 Republicans most likely to win the 2024 nomination.)…And DeSantis just got the New Yorker profile treatment. (The headline: “Can Ron DeSantis Displace Donald Trump as the G.O.P.’s Combatant-in-Chief?“) That story includes this telling line: “Articulate and fast on his feet, he has been described as Trump with a brain.” Expect a hard-fought, maybe a vicious Republican presidential primary season in 2024, but don’t assume that they won’t unify at the end of it.

In “Yes, Democratic Messaging Sucks. But It’s Harder to Fix Than You Think.It’s a lot easier to be the party that wants to break government than it is to be the one that wants to use it,” Editor Michael Tomasky observes at The New Republic: “Democrats simply give the impression of being afraid of a fight. They want to be the party of comity. Even Biden is still trying to give Republicans a path to redemption in this regard….Democrats and their consultants need to think outside the box in which they’re trapped. Show elected Democrats doing things and going places you wouldn’t normally expect to see a Democrat, things that reinforce that they’re on the side of working people of all kinds, even those who don’t vote for them. And name names. Take on enemies. Every time you name an enemy you also name the people you’re trying to defend. People have a much better sense of what you stand for when you tell them what, and who, you’re against. They’ll trust you more if they think you’re on their team….I submit that this kind of approach will help address the structural problems I laid out above. Democrats across the ideological spectrum—from the conservatives to the very liberal—will respond favorably to a politics that emphasizes the idea, “We’re against the powerful interests that are scheming against you.” If people see liberal politicians taking creative and brave stands, we might even bump that liberal number up above 25 percent, since liberalism will stand for something positive again to your average person. This kind of politics can also slice through the media chatter: Republicans understand that the media loves conflict, so they serve up some new ones every week. The public always knows who the GOP is mad at, and they don’t pay a price for being the “angry” party….We don’t know if Biden will run in 2024. He often looks tired. But I’ll say this for him. He is more unambiguously on the side of working people than any Democratic president in a very long time. He’s an old-school, Truman-type Democrat. He and his team need to do more to show it.”

At The Cook Political Report, Amy Walter argues “it’s more important to focus on the vote share each candidate is getting than it is to obsess about the margin that separates the two candidates.” It’s a good point for campaign-watchers. But Walter also shares some cogent insights about two marquee senate races in making her point: “I was reminded of how important it is to keep this “vote share vs. the margin” framing in mind as I watched political Twitter react to two recent polls taken in the battleground states of Georgia and Pennsylvania….The headline of the Georgia poll, conducted by Eastern Carolina University, was that GOP Gov. Kemp was leading Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams by 5-points but that the Senate race between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and GOP nominee Herschel Walker was tied. Looking at the race through that framing, you would think that Warnock is getting a higher percentage of the vote than Abrams; after all, she’s losing, but he’s still in the game. However, Abrams and Warnock are getting similar support; Abrams was at 45 percent, and Warnock at 46 percent of the vote. In other words, the ‘margin’ isn’t telling us the full story….What is important (and impressive) is that both Democrats are outperforming President Joe Biden’s dismal job approval ratings by seven to eight points. However, to win in the fall, they need to win over even more of those Biden-disapprovers….the cross-tabs of the ECU poll show that Warnock is getting almost all of the voters (94 percent) who approve of Biden. Walker, however, is only getting 81 percent of those who disapprove of Biden. It’s easier to convince a voter who is unhappy with the president (and the current state of the country) to vote to change horses than it is to try to convince that voter that change is the bigger risk….To be sure, Walker has a lot of political baggage that Warnock and Democrats will use to paint the former UGA football star as ‘risky change.’ But, given 40-year high levels of inflation and increased talk of a “Bear Market” and a looming recession, staying the course is likely to look like the riskier choice for many voters.”

As regards the PA senate race, Walter writes, “Now take a look at Pennsylvania. The top-line takeaway from the USA Today/Suffolk poll: Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is leading GOP nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz, by 9 points. On its face, that is great news for Democrats. Like his Democratic colleagues in Georgia, Fetterman is ‘outperforming’ President Biden’s job approval rating by a significant margin (7 points). But, look under the hood and see the challenges ahead for Fetterman in turning his 46 percent vote share to 50 percent. For one, Fetterman has consolidated the Democratic vote (82 percent of Democrats are supporting the Lt. Gov). In other words, he already has support from the people inclined to support him in the first place. But Oz, who squeaked through a contentious primary, is getting just 76 percent of the GOP vote. How does Oz unify the base to support him? Well, he makes the race a referendum on Biden. Or, more specifically, makes it about being a check on Biden. When asked if they wanted their vote to “support the direction President Biden is leading the country” or to “change the direction President Biden is leading the nation,” 50 percent of respondents — including 87 percent of Republicans — chose “change.” Independent voters are also more open to the “change” message; 49 percent of independents picked change to just 14 percent who said they wanted to stay the course….Fetterman, unlike Warnock, doesn’t have the baggage of incumbency. That, plus the fact that the 6-foot-8 guy with tattoos and a goatee and doesn’t look like a cookie-cutter politician, gives him credibility to run as an ‘outsider.’ A recent Fetterman TV ad called the Lt. Governor someone who has “looked different and been different his entire life..Now, the big guy is running for Senate to take on Washington.” And, like Walker, Dr. Oz is a first-time candidate whom Democrats can label as a risky choice. But, Fetterman’s ability to win will depend on convincing enough voters who want to see “a change in direction from the way Biden is leading the country” that Fetterman’s independence is more than just cosmetic. Republicans, of course, are working hard to tie Fetterman to the national Democratic brand. A recent attack ad by the NRSC charges that “Fetterman admits he will always vote with Democrats. In this economy, that’s the last thing we need.”

Luck is often a significant factor in election years, and it can be argued that Democrats have not gotten many breaks in 2022, particularly in light of the fallout from Covid. But Democrats have gotten one major break, in the form of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s bad judgement. As E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains in his Washington Post column, “In a perverse way, the country owes a debt to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). He made this refreshing presentation possible. In an astonishingly foolish decision, McCarthy withdrew all his appointees to the committee after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rejected two of his five nominees. She refused to seat Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.) because they actively spread disinformation about 2020 — and because Jordan was closely involved in Trump’s efforts to challenge the election….In defending Pelosi’s decision at the time, Rep Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) turned out to be prophetic. “The speaker is making clear we’re going to have a serious comprehensive investigation,” Raskin said. “This will not be just another run-of-the-mill, partisan food fight.” It wasn’t, thanks to the exclusion of Trump’s bomb-throwing apologists….It’s often forgotten that Pelosi approved McCarthy’s other GOP picks: Reps. Rodney Davis of Illinois, Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota and Troy Nehls of Texas. None of them could be characterized as liberals, and Nehls had joined Banks and Jordan in objecting to the certification of the 2020 election….McCarthy thought that by walking away entirely, he would be able to discredit the work of the committee as “partisan.”….Bad call. With none of his allies there to throw sand into the gears, the committee — which still included two Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — was able to organize a seamless presentation. Cheney has played a star role, and mostly Republican witnesses are telling the story….a normal congressional hearing, with full participation from members picked by the pro-Trump House GOP leaders, could never be as informative, deliberate or free from distractions as the Jan. 6 presentation has been.” If Republicans do win a House majority in November, Dems could do worse than having McCathy calling the shots for his party’s House strategy.

McCarthy’s blundering notwithstanding, Nathan J. Robinson makes a case at Current Affairs that too much focus on January 6th 2021 right now is a mistake: “I really struggle to find words to describe how stupid and suicidal this strategy is. Republicans are about to overturn abortion rights, with the Supreme Court getting rid of a fundamental constitutional protection. We have just seen children massacred by the score because Republicans take the despicable position that massacres are an acceptable price to pay for the right of teenagers to own weapons of war. Gun violence and the stripping of abortion rights affect people directly. The public doesn’t want Roe v. Wade overturned and doesn’t want weapons of war on the street. Why not hold primetime hearings on gun violence? If you’re going to hire a TV executive and organize watch parties, why not try to show the country the human consequences of Republican policies, with testimony from victims’ families? But on abortion, for example, Congressional Democrats have declined to take the kind of aggressive stand necessary to meaningfully affect the issue. Politico reports that “state-level Democratic officials and abortion-rights advocates are discouraged by how little their allies in Congress and the White House have done since a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade became public.” Nancy Pelosi even (appallingly) helped an anti-abortion Democratic congressman beat his progressive challenger. (He is currently ahead by under 200 votes, meaning that Pelosi almost certainly made the difference.) When Democrats in Congress do nothing about the issues that matter to voters, why should voters turn out for them?….Democrats are going to lose in November not because it was inevitable, but because they have made it very clear that they care more about Jan. 6 than the bread-and-butter issues that Americans are practically begging the party to show they care about….If Democrats want to win, the solution is to take actions that help people, such as forgiving their student debt, giving them a child allowance, lowering rather than raising their Medicare costs, and keeping their children safe from assault weapons. Then you’ll have a “message” to run on, and you won’t have to hire TV executives to “refocus” voters on an issue they clearly don’t care about.”

From “A windfall profits tax idea that could actually work: Some administration officials have an idea that deserves more attention” by Matthew Yglesias at slowboring.com: “Democrats’ private polling, from what I’ve heard, tells a pretty clear and consistent story: the only thing voters really care about right now is inflation Republican ads and paid messages are all focused on inflation, and there is no “message” from the incumbent party that works very well in the face of prices that are objectively rising faster than incomes….In other words, it’s much more a problem of substance than of message….And yet, if you’re in politics, you do need to say things. And of the various messages that Democrats could deliver, the ones that resonate most with the public are the ones that emphasize the huge profit-taking opportunities that inflation is presenting for many companies. Unfortunately for Democrats, one consequence of education polarization is that all the people who care what fussy highbrow journalists think are now on their side, so when they say things about economics that aren’t true and then Catherine Rampell complains, those complaints hurt them. And in being an annoying complainer, she has in fact strengthened the hand of the more rigor-inclined members of the administration who are now able to argue that even well-testing messages could backfire via media effects….I am less fussy, and I am a believer in the idea that you can’t take the politics out of politics. The current inflation really has created profit windfalls for certain companies, and it is fine to feel and express annoyance about this. My big concern with greedflation is that it’s important for policymakers not to get high on their own supply. Oil companies are currently enjoying huge profit margins, but if they cut prices to reduce margins it would generate shortages, and Biden would be even worse off in a universe with gas lines and rationing. So what Bharat Ramamurti says here is a fine observation about the cosmic injustice of life, but I’m not sure it’s a basis for policy….Optimistically, moving to directly subsidize domestic production along with reversing prior efforts to squelch domestic output would lead to meaningful economic changes. It’s true that these changes would take time to filter through.” So the gesture might help a smidge for the midterm elections, but any policy effects would likely be more beneficial for the 2024 election.

In “3 In 10 Americans Named Political Polarization As A Top Issue Facing The Country,” Geoffrey Skelley and Holly Fuong write at FiveThirtyEight: “Political division has been on the rise for years in the U.S. The gap between the two parties has only grown more sharply in Congress, while the share of Americans who interact with people from the other party has plummeted. Furthermore, many Americans only read news or get information from sources that align with their political beliefs, which exacerbates fundamental disagreements about the basic facts of many political problems….In other words, hatred — specifically, hatred of the other party — increasingly defines our politics….Polarization and extremism ranked third across a list of 20 issues that we asked about in the latest FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll, which was conducted from May 26 to June 6. Using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, we interviewed the same 2,000 or so Americans from our previous survey, and of the 1,691 adults who responded, 28 percent named “political extremism or polarization” as one of the most important issues facing the country,¹ trailing only “inflation or increasing costs” and “crime or gun violence,” the latter of which surged in the aftermath of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas….Almost 3 in 10 Americans said they were worried about extremism and polarization, which is essentially unchanged from our poll last month….most Americans (62 percent) still want the U.S. to actively reduce political polarization. Only 9 percent think that the U.S. should let things be.”

At The Cook Political Report, Amy Walter writes, “In many ways, Democrats have an easier path to driving up motivation among their base than Trump did in 2018. A roll-back of federal abortion rights; the events of January 6th; and Trump’s continued attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election are the kinds of things that should ensure solid Democratic turnout in November. But, thus far at least, we haven’t seen signs that these issues are either improving opinions of Biden, or increasing interest among Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. Democratic in-fighting between progressives like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and moderates over the best way forward (leaning into a more expansive progressive agenda versus keeping a focus on kitchen table issues like the rising cost of living), doesn’t help to inspire Democratic interest or support in the upcoming election, either….In a briefing with reporters this week, Guy Cecil, head of the Democratic SuperPAC, Priorities USA, admitted that “too many Democrats are tuned out of politics,” and that his organization was committing significant resources to “increase and quicken their outreach” to these voters. Other progressive organizations are doing the same….Many Democratic strategists also contend that they can use these same issues to motivate and turnout voters who aren’t necessarily Democrats, but who were roused to vote in 2018 and/or 2020 by their opposition to Trump….“There’s no question that persuadable voters are worried about economic security,” Cecil said. “But, we do see issues of January 6th as example of extremist ideology and ongoing extreme behavior [that are] useful in raising the stakes of the election.”…Democrats, he said, need to convince these voters that not only can things “get better with Democrats in power, but things can get worse with Republicans in charge.”…Democrats still have five months to “raise the stakes” in this election by drawing sharp contrasts with their GOP opponents around issues like abortion rights, and attacks on our democratic institutions. But, for many of the voters Democrats are trying to turnout, the rising cost of food, gas and housing are  “high stakes” impacting their day to day lives most acutely.”

Dems who are looking for a good coalition issue that can unite Black and rural voters should check out Nassem S. Miller’s report “National study highlights rural-urban and racial disparities in cancer survivorship” at The Journalists Resource. As Miller observes, “A May 2022 study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute examines the potential impact of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act on the two-year cancer survival among newly-diagnosed patients. It finds that Medicaid expansion is associated with improved cancer survival, particularly among Black patients and in rural areas. The association was also strong for lung, pancreas, liver and colorectal cancers, which can be detected by screening….The findings provide “further evidence for the importance of expanding Medicaid eligibility in all states, particularly considering the economic crisis and health-care disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the authors write. They add that the study highlights the role of Medicaid expansion in reducing health disparities….Medicaid is the United States’ public health insurance program for people with low income. It covers one in five Americans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health policy research group….The authors of the JAMA Network Open study also call for more funding through National Cancer Institute grants for cancer control and management in rural areas. The number of funded grants solely focused on rural populations rather than rural-urban differences are also low, and policy reform that targets rural cancer control remains minimal, they add.”

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. shares some insights about the January 6th investigation: “Using less than two hours of prime-time television, the committee issued an urgent plea: Americans must understand the violence they saw on that winter day in 2021 as nothing less than what Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee chair, called “an attempted coup.”….Attempted coups have authors, and with a steely, matter-of-fact eloquence worthy of history’s most able prosecutors, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair, indicted Donald Trump in every sense but the formal one….After watching Cheney pile fact upon fact and make connection after connection, the actual prosecutors in the Justice Department (and local prosecutors in Georgia) will have little choice but to issue the actual legal indictments that the treasonous conspiracy of Jan. 6 requires….The nation must be clear on this: Failing to achieve accountability for the Jan. 6 insurrection, in the courts and at the ballot boxes, will amount to issuing a license for the enemies of democracy to do this all over again….One man set this attempted putsch in motion. “President Trump,” Cheney declared, “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”….It was devastating to see former attorney general William Barr on video calling Trump’s assertions “bulls—,” and to learn that the former president’s own data mavens told him they were false. Trump’s daughter Ivanka was on video saying she believed Barr, not her father….If holding Trump accountable is “partisan,” that makes standing up for one of the most conservative Republican vice presidents in history “partisan,” too. And if the story being told is “partisan,” why are so many of the credible witnesses Republicans?”

If you were wondering which Republican U.S. Senators are supporting the bipartisan gun safety reforms, read “Here are the 10 Senate Republicans who are backing the bipartisan gun bill” by Olafimihan Oshin at The Hill. The list includes GOP senators who are either retiring or not running in 2022: Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas); Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.); Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.); Rob Portman (R-Ohio); Richard Burr (R-N.C.); Mitt Romney (R-Utah); Bill Cassidy (R-La.); Susan Collins (R-Maine); Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.); and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). In short, none of them have anything to lose in 2022, except maybe some of their future NRA money. But it’s equally possible, if not more likely, that the NRA will reward those who are running in future years for their blockade of more substantial reforms. Brendan O’Brien of Reuters has a good summary of the ‘framework’ in “Factbox: What’s in and what’s out of the Senate’s gun-safety plan.” If you want to measure the Senate package against the much stronger House gun safety reform package, check out Kristin Wilson’s “House passes sweeping gun reform package though it’s unlikely to move in the Senate” at CNN Politics.

“Over 40 Percent Of Americans Now Rate Gun Violence As A Top Issue,” according to Geoffrey Skelley and Hoilly Fuong, writing at FiveThirtyEight. They note, “There have already been 248 mass shootings this year,¹ according to the Gun Violence Archive. At this point in 2021, there had been 258 mass shootings; in 2020, 173. Mass shootings are defined by the Gun Violence Archive as incidents in which at least four people — not including the shooter — are injured or killed, and they have been on the rise in recent years.It is often a select few mass shootings, though, that capture national headlines and spark outrage. Public opinion often shifts in favor of stricter gun laws after high-profile mass shootings, like the one on May 14 that killed 10 people in a racist attackin Buffalo, New York, and the one on May 24 that killed 19 children and two teachersat an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. …It should be no surprise, then, that the latest FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll, which was conducted from May 26 to June 6 and went into the field two days after the shooting in Uvalde, found that concerns regarding gun violence had surged. Using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, we interviewed the same 2,000 or so Americans from our previous survey, and of the 1,691 adults who responded, 42 percent named “crime or gun violence” as one of the most important issues facing the country, up 19 percentage points from the first wave of the poll released in early May.² This was by far the largest increase for any one issue we asked about, putting it behind only “inflation or increasing costs” as Americans’ top concern for the country….A solid majority of Democrats, 58 percent, named the issue as a top concern, up from 33 percent in early May, while 41 percent of independents said the same, up from 19 percent.³ Republicans also became more worried about crime and/or gun violence, but the uptick was much smaller, going from 19 percent in May to 29 percent now.”

Skelley and Fuong add, “Nothing changed quite as much as Americans’ concern around crime and/or gun violence in our poll, but there were a handful of other important changes regarding which issues Americans felt were most pressing for the country. Abortion, for instance, saw the second-largest change on net, likely thanks to increased media coverage of the issue in early May following a leaked draft Supreme Court opinionthat suggests the court might be ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, which established the constitutional right to abortion in 1973. Nine percent of respondents in our survey named it as a top issue, up from just 4 percent a month ago. That said, abortion isn’t the issue that Americans in our poll are most worried about….Rather, that distinction still belongs to inflation. Americans are most worried about inflation, with even more respondents (56 percent) naming it as a concern than in our last survey (52 percent). This was in large part driven by Republicans, as 75 percent cited inflation as a major concern, up from 65 percent a month ago. Independents were also somewhat more likely to name it as a concern, 56 percent now versus 50 percent in May. Roughly 40 percent of Democrats named inflation as a concern, but this barely changed from our previous survey….Finally, political extremism and polarization remained a top issue overall, ranking third behind inflation and crime/gun violence after ranking second in our last survey. We dug more into this issue, too, and Americans’ attitudes around political extremism and polarization in this survey, so we’ll examine those results more in-depth in an article early next week. But as we’ve outlined here, there’s no question that the big, topline finding in our second FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll is that more Americans are concerned about crime and/or gun violence — at least for now.”

Politico’s media critic Jack Shafer shares some insights about the January 6th hearings that will begin tonight in his article, “The Democrats Plan a Full Media Blowout Over Jan. 6.” Shafer writes, “When you turn on your television Thursday night to watch the kick-off of the January 6 congressional hearings, you won’t get the usual over-lit, droning Capitol Hill proceedings to which you’ve become accustomed. Instead, the committee intends to mount a grand media event, to pinch a phrase from scholars Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, a publicity extravaganza orchestrated like a product launch or political campaign to engage, dazzle and obsess the minds of the masses….This is not to say the hearings will be without substance. To the contrary, everything we’ve been told so far about the committee’s findings indicates they will bring real proof of a conspiracy to subvert the election of Joe Biden and stage a coup to reinstall Donald Trump as president. Talk about the greatest political story ever told! But while ingesting the substance of the hearings, which promise to be nourishing, don’t overlook the platter on which it has been served. The committee has assigned James Goldston, former president of ABC News and veteran of Nightline, to present a slickly produced work of political entertainment, featuring live testimony as well as prerecorded segments, that will permanently cast the events of January 6 as an attempted coup. According to the New York Times, Goldston’s mandate is to fashion the hearing into six succinct episodes. Sort of like a bingeable Netflix series….Even without the show-making skills of someone of Goldston’s caliber, a congressional hearing like the January 6 committee’s would qualify for the rubric, and it would be as worthy of our attention as previously televised proceedings from Congress — Kefauver’s organized crime hearings, Army-McCarthy, Iran-Contra, Benghazi and the doomed-before-the-final-vote impeachments of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump (twice)….NBC, ABC, CBS, and the cable news networks have joined forces with Goldston to preempt their scheduled programming for the January 6 show, according to Axios’ Mike Allen, who broke the story of Goldston’s involvement. The timing of the hearings, just as summer rerun season starts, and the committee’s decision to present them as a “show,” couldn’t be more perfect from the television industry’s viewpoint. TV adores content that costs them almost nothing to air and attracts large audiences, media scholar Michael Socolow tells me, pointing to Trump rallies from the 2016 campaign….Even Rupert Murdoch intends to broadcast them, albeit on his less-watched Fox Business Network channel….Nobody should doubt the inherent newsworthiness of the January 6 hearings. Attempted coups matter. Nobody should seek to invalidate the hearings as a sophisticated media pageant before they convene. But the January 6 hearings deserve our advance scrutiny for the new ground they appear to be breaking. ”

At The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein asks, “Is This the End of the George Floyd Moment?: The Los Angeles and San Francisco election results add pressure on Democrats to balance criminal-justice reform with public safety.” Brownstein observes: “Since the massive nationwide protests that erupted in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, the debate over crime and public safety in the Democratic Party has been dominated by urgent calls for reforming police departments and confronting entrenched racial inequities in the criminal-justice system. History might record yesterday’s elections in San Francisco and Los Angeles as the end of that moment….The decisive recall of progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, and the strong showing of the billionaire former Republican developer Rick Caruso against Democratic Representative Karen Bass in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, likely will pressure Democrats at all levels of government to rebalance their message on criminal justice going forward. The results in California—combined with the former police officer Eric Adams’s victory in the New York mayoral race last fall—send a signal to Democrats that, even in some of their most reliable strongholds, voters are demanding a shift toward policies to combat crime and restore public order….“What you are really seeing is the Democratic base in cities is asserting its fundamental moderate values of prioritizing safety,” says Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University….The rising public demand for safety doesn’t mean Democrats are about to abandon the cause of criminal-justice reform and return to the “tough on crime” ethos of the 1990s. But it might prompt more leaders in the party to pull back from policies that appear to prioritize reform over public safety—the perception that doomed Boudin and also has triggered an ongoing recall effortagainst Los Angeles County’s progressive district attorney, George Gascón.”

Brownstein continues, “It was a brief moment and an excessive swing,” Will Marshall, the president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank, says of the push to reduce incarceration and reimagine, or even defund, policing. After Floyd’s murder by the Minneapolis police, Marshall says, “we had this progressive reaction, and a lot of utopian thinking crept in. But the problem was to view a strong response to crime and public disorder through the narrow lens of racial politics. That missed something big, which is that low-income and minority communities are on the front lines of crime—they are the No. 1 victims. They don’t want police beating up on their sons, but they also don’t want to be ignored.” Polls in Los Angeles have shown high levels of concern about crime and disorder across racial lines.” However, brown stein notes, “Yesterday’s results do not represent a decisive lurch toward the right for these cities. In Los Angeles, Caruso was about five percentage points ahead of Bass as of this morning. But Bass remained close enough that many local observers believe she will remain highly competitive in November’s runoff, when the electorate will be larger and likely younger and more racially diverse. Also yesterday, Alex Villanueva, the scandal-plagued L.A. County sheriff who has become a hero to conservatives by blaming crime on “woke” liberal policies, was forced into a runoff that he might struggle to win after attracting only about one-third of the vote in the early returns. And young leftist challengers denouncing the police department and city efforts to clear homeless encampments mounted strong primary races against several centrist Democrats on the L.A. City Council, including Gil Cedillo and Mitch O’Farrell, with the latter likely headed to a runoff….Still, the results in the marquee contests—the San Francisco D.A. recall and the L.A. mayoral race—show how much discontent over crime and homelessness has shaken the political landscape in what are ordinarily two of America’s most liberal cities….Even if Caruso falls short in November, it would be a mistake for Democrats to ignore the message of his strong performance, combined with Adams’s victory last year and the backlash against Boudin and Gascón. All are reminders that, as Marshall puts it, most Americans believe “public order is the primary responsibility of government.” After yesterday’s primary results, it’s clearer than ever that in order to confront the criminal-justice system’s undeniable racial inequities, reformers must convince voters that they are equally committed to confronting threats to public safety.”

What are the prospects for gun safety reforms at the state level? Nicole Narea reports that “Red states aren’t following Florida’s lead on gun control” at Vox, and writes: “Republicans typically respond to mass shootings by loosening gun laws, not tightening them. But after the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the state became a model for how Republicans could implement gun control….Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law, later signed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott, that raised the age to buy long guns, including AR-15-style rifles, from 18 to 21; required a three-day waiting period between when a firearm is purchased and when the buyer can get access to that gun; allowed trained school staff to carry guns; and put $400 million toward mental health services and school security. It also created an extreme risk law, or “red flag law,” that can bar individuals who are believed to pose a danger to themselves or others from possessing firearms — a measure that has gotten increasing attention in the wake of the recent streak of mass shootings as a policy solution that could draw bipartisan support nationally and in other states….The Florida law is a guidepost for ongoing negotiations over gun policy in the US Senate, led by Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX)….“The template for Florida is the right one,” Murphy told CNN on Sunday. “Sen. Scott, then-Gov. Scott, passed that law in Florida because it was the right thing to do, but also because Republicans saw it as good politics. We have to make the case for Republicans that right now this is good politics.”….Florida’s red flag law has been identified as a potential model for other red states. But at the moment, it doesn’t seem as though there is a critical mass of Republicans who are interested in enacting red flag laws in states that don’t already have them. That’s true even in Texas and Oklahoma, where Republican lawmakers haven’t budged in the wake of the Uvalde and Tulsa shootings.” However, “Today, said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, “Republicans have momentum, and I think that there’s just not a lot of interest in spending political capital on a gun safety bill, despite the fact that there are lots of reasons for it.” Democratic candidates in some congressional and state legislative districts may be able to get leverage from red state parents, who are fed-up with Republican candidates who cower at the NRA’s every whim.