Some insights from “‘He wants to take us back’: Democrats eye new strategy against Trump’s attacks on Harris: The former president’s attacks have proven to be effective in the past at sucking up the political oxygen” by Myah Ward and Megan Messerly at Politico:

It didn’t take long for former President Donald Trump to return to his well-worn playbook of resorting to attacks based on race and gender — familiar tactics he has used against political rivals, including in his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton.

But it’s not 2016 anymore, and Democrats assert that the lessons learned from Trump’s campaign eight years ago guide their strategy now: Respond aggressively, use his attacks to bolster the campaign’s message and don’t let them distract from the issues.

That thinking guided their response to Trump’s interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago on Wednesday, where he questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’ Black ancestry and suggested she was chosen for the job only as a “DEI hire.”

Harris was quick to counter: On Wednesday night, she dismissed Trump’s attacks as “divisiveness” and the “same old show,” in what Democrats and campaign allies pointed out was the new framework for the party’s strategy.

Harry Enten explains “How Kamala Harris can beat Donald Trump” at CNN Politics: “Kamala Harris seems to have more appeal among voters of color and younger voters than Joe Biden did before he got out of the presidential race. Still, the 2020 results show that Harris can make up even more ground with these groups in her expected matchup against Donald Trump….Take a look at our newly published CNN/SSRS poll. Harris leads Trump among Black voters 78% to 15%. Among these same voters (the poll recontacted the same respondents), Biden was ahead by a smaller 70% to 23% in CNN polling data from April and June….The same holds to a somewhat lesser degree among Hispanic voters. Harris comes in at 47% to Trump’s 45%, while it was 50% for Trump to 41% for Biden among these same respondents in the April and June data….Voters under the age of 35 demonstrate a similar shift. It’s Harris 47% to Trump’s 43% now. In April and June, these same voters put Trump up 49% to 42% over Biden….Despite the improvement, the results should leave much to be desired for Harris. She is doing at least 5 points worse than Biden did among these same groups in the final 2020 polls….Among Black voters, Biden led Trump 84% to 9% at the end of the 2020 campaign. Even more notable is that Biden led among Hispanic voters by a 58% to 32% spread….Finally, even as Harris has become a meme favorite among young voters, Biden’s 60% to 31% advantage over Trump at the end of the 2020 campaign is massively larger than where Harris is right now….This may seem like bad news for the Harris campaign, and, in one clear way, it is. Without improving among these groups, Harris likely cannot win against the former president….The good news for Harris, though, is that she’s showing that she can make up some ground with this group relative to how Biden was doing earlier this year….As Harris continues to define herself separately from being Biden’s vice president, there’s a real chance she could carve out her own political identity that may appeal more to voters of color and young voters….A big reason Biden struggled in those Sun Belt states is that each has a significant share of either Black or Hispanic voters. By doing better with those groups, Harris may reopen the possibility of more electoral paths….If, for instance, Harris won all four Sun Belt battlegrounds mentioned above, she wouldn’t need to carry Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin….Perhaps more likely, Harris could get to 270 electoral votes by winning some mixture of northern battlegrounds and Sun Belt swing states….Harris now has a bunch of paths toward victory, while Biden’s options seemed to be closing rather quickly.”

“Florida’s ballot initiative to protect abortion is winning and has more support among voters than either Vice President Harris or Democratic Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a new poll shows,” Nathaniel Weixel writes in “New poll shows Florida abortion amendment winning, outperforming Democrats” at the Hill. “According to the poll from University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab (PORL), 69 percent of respondents said they would vote for Amendment 4, which would prohibit laws from restricting or banning abortion until fetal viability. …Constitutional amendments in Florida need 60 percent of the vote to become law…. “We have yet to see campaigns on either side of this really get moving,” PORL faculty director and political science professor Michael Binder said in a statement. “Factor in the highly contested and contentious financial impact statement recently added to the ballot summary, and I would expect to see support for this amendment drop before November.”….The poll also showed an amendment to legalize recreational cannabis has enough support to pass, with 64 percent of respondents supporting it….If the presidential election were held today, 49 percent of respondents said they would vote for former President Trump, while 42 percent said Harris….Respondents were also asked about the Senate race between incumbent Sen. Rick Scott (R) and Mucarsel-Powell (D). The poll showed 47 percent said they would vote for Scott, and 43 percent said they’d support Mucarsel-Powell….The polling differences between candidates and the amendments show why abortion supporters have been trying to keep the issue separate from party politics out of fear it will sink their effort….Among backers of the abortion amendment, 53 percent identified as Republican, and 51 percent said they voted for Trump in 2020. There are almost 900,000 more registered Republican voters in Florida than Democrats.”

At Politico, Christopher Cadelago writes “Harris tripped herself up in 2019 by straying too far from what was then her political North Star: crafting an image as a tough-minded and empathetic prosecutor….In the run-up to the Democratic primaries, Harris allowed “Kamala is a cop” critiques from activists and members of her own party to get inside her head. While Harris was progressive by the standards of her era in law enforcement, she was nowhere near as permissive as today’s crop of liberal district attorneys. Still, she readily submitted to the left’s endless purity tests, and backtracked on key pieces of her record as a prosecutor and attorney general. In doing so, she undermined what Harris and her closest advisers viewed as one of her greatest strengths: her career-long commitment to pursuing justice through the legal system….The act of creating a policy platform on the fly while simultaneously trying to prove her ideological bona fides yanked her further left and outside her comfort zone. At different moments in the primary, you could almost see her calculating answers in real time during TV interviews, which had the effect of making her appear wishy-washy….Harris won’t need to worry about liberal carping about her prosecutorial background anymore. It may have been a liability in a Democratic presidential primary, but in a general election, it’s more likely to be an asset. And whereas she once struggled to articulate her views on broader issues like health care, she now can largely rely on the policy framework created under the Biden-Harris administration….One of the most serious flaws of Harris’ 2020 bid was the inability of the messenger to settle on a consistent, coherent and compelling message….Now that she’s about to be handed the Democratic nomination, Harris doesn’t need to compete for eyeballs against a massive field of serious competitors. She’s free to focus on a straightforward mission….It won’t be enough for Harris to just be the anti-Trump candidate. Her task will be laying waste to Trump while also articulating a forward-looking vision of a brighter future….Balancing those ideas and integrating them into a cohesive message won’t be easy. But Harris has already gotten started, showing a zeal for attack in her characterization of Trump as a fraudster and an abuser of women while wrapping her campaign around the theme of fighting for the middle class.”

From “Old and quite weird”: Democrats finally discover new effective attack — and Republicans hate it” by Charles R. Davis at Salon. The Democratic meme about Trump and Vance being just plain weird got a pretty good workout during the last week. As Davis explains, “President Joe Biden won in 2020 largely by promising to a return to normalcy and baseline competency. In 2024, Democrats are making a similar argument but more forcibly: They’re pointing, laughing and dismissing Trump and his circus as a total freak show to which we can’t return….“The fascists depend on fear,” as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz put it over the weekend. “The fascists depend on us going back. But we are not afraid of weird people. We’re a little bit creeped out, but we are not afraid.”….They’re strange guys with sick obsessions, as the two-term Democratic governor and former congressman put it on MSNBC last week….“You know there’s something wrong with people when they talk about freedom — freedom to be in your bedroom, freedom to be in your exam room, freedom to tell your kids what they can read,” Walz said. “That stuff is weird. They come across as weird. They seem obsessed with this.”….Republicans, including Fox News anchors, “will take a look at Donald Trump and say he’s perfectly fine, even though he seemed unable to tell the difference between Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi; even though he’s rambling about electrocuting sharks and Hannibal Lecter; even though he’s clearly older and stranger than he was when America got to know him,” Buttigieg said….The Harris campaign, if anything, is leaning into what works. In a press release over the weekend, addressing a “78-year-old criminal’s Fox News appearance,” the vice president’s staff noted Trump’s failed attempt to distance himself from his ally’s hard-right Project 2025 agenda. But there was also a fact that the campaign did not want reporters to miss: the man with 34 felony convictions to his name is also “old and quite weird.” They are weird and pretty creepy, especially to younger voters, who don’t appreciate neo-fascist meddling with their reproductive rights. Democrats should rock that meme.

Pass the political humility, please. Many people who live in conservative communities are hyper-sensitive to liberal arrogance. More rural conservatives than you would think share at least some liberal views. But you are probably not going to hear them say so because those who advocate liberal views frequently broadcast their political attitudes in a way that condescends to or disparages non-liberals. As a rank-and-file problem, this probably intensifies polarization between liberal and conservative voters. There is no quick fix for bridging this particular gap between ideological voting groups. That’s a long-term project. But there is a hard lesson that must be learned, and quickly, by Democratic political candidates. Leaders may not be able to do much to stop their supporters from condescending toward those who disagree with them on particular policies. A visit to any social media outlet will quickly confirm the reality of liberal to conservative disparagement at the rank-and-file level. What can and must be changed, however, is that candidates who want to win elections have to do better. They must become hyper-sensitive about not projecting liberal arrogance. It falls to Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting Kamala Harris to set the instructive example here. She must be ever on-guard against projecting liberal condescension, not only making comments about “deplorables” or bashing conservative cultural icons, but also a whole range of lesser blunders, like cutting people off in conversation, or anything that says “I don’t have time for your nonsense,” which former prosecutors often do. Presidents Obama and Biden both did a good job of avoiding such self-set booby traps, which are the surest road to defeat. Yes, it is true that conservatives, leaders as well as rank-and-file, also often disparage liberals in equally-arrogant ways. But that is their problem, not something Democrats can do anything about. Let them hurt their own cause. But our candidates need not serve their campaigns as clueless accomplices. The key behavioral consideration is to treat all adversaries with respect, humility and courtesy, no matter how abusive they may become. MLK was the Zen master of leveraging these values to build bridges of goodwill across chasms of division. Avoid at all costs the temptation to pander to rude supporters who do otherwise.

Yes, he went there….again. “In four years, you won’t have to vote again. we’ll have it fixed…”

Thomas B. Edsall has a scary essay about “What the Trump-Vance Alliance Means for the Republican Party” air the New York Times. He quotes scholar Ariel Malka, who notes, “A notable segment of the U.S. population combines a culturally based conservative identity with some degree of affinity for left-leaning and protectionist economic policy. Trump’s brand of populism — combining anti-immigrant nationalism with worker-oriented economic appeals within a framework denouncing left-wing and globalist elites — is attractive to these citizens.” Edsall continues, “I asked Malka what share of the electorate simultaneously holds culturally conservative and economically liberal views. He replied that when measured by specific policy preferences, “a substantial segment of the population reveals a culturally conservative and at least somewhat economically left-leaning attitude combination,” citing one study showing that over a quarter of voters fit this combination….Voters holding these views, Malka noted, “were a good deal more inclined to support the Republican than the Democratic Party.” Edsall adds, “Economic attitudes, according to Malka, are more complicated. Those “high in need for security and certainty tend to show a leaning toward left economic attitudes, when they are not highly exposed to political discourse that cultivates a right versus left attitude organization. When they are highly politically engaged, however, they have tended to move their economic attitudes to the right to match their culturally based conservative identity.”

Edsall continues, “For many years,” Elizabeth Suhay, a political scientist at American University, wrote by email, “the Republican Party managed to persuade many working-class whites to support their economic agenda not only by contrasting it with Democrats’ emphasis on racial equity but also by arguing that small government, economically conservative policy rewards hard work….The persuasiveness of this message waned, however, with increasing inequality, low income growth, rural job loss, etc., creating an opening for Trump. His 2016 campaign directly addressed working-class whites’ economic concerns, even if his policies in office generally did not….With the Vance pick, we are seeing an even greater rhetorical shift toward economic populism aimed directly at working-class and rural voters, and it is likely that a second Trump term would advance more populist policy than the first….It is certainly the case that the two parties’ recent agendas have put many working-class people in a bind: The Democratic Party’s economic agenda suits them, but the Democrats’ social agenda has been far more progressive than the modal working-class person. This is true regardless of race; however, Democrats’ emphasis on affirmative action (broadly construed) will be perceived as threatening by white working-class folks for both economic and cultural reasons.” Edsall concludes, “This year, each political coalition — left and right — is fraught with contradictions. In a situation in which the vote count threatens to be close, defections of any kind, especially if they’re concentrated in the wrong places, can be extraordinarily costly.”

Democratic candidates and their campaign workers have an article to read, “Class, race and the chances of outgrowing poverty in America” at The Economist. Some of the observations:

A new study by Raj Chetty, of Harvard University, and colleagues provides fresh data on how America’s landscape of opportunity has shifted sharply over the past decades. Although at the national level there have been only small declines in mobility, the places and groups that have become more (or less) likely to enable children to rise up have changed a lot. The most striking finding is that, compared with the past, a child’s race is now less relevant for predicting their future and their socioeconomic class more so.

The greatest drops in mobility have been not in the places evoked in song, but on the coasts and the Great Plains, which historically provided pathways up (see maps). “Fifteen years ago, the American Dream was alive and well for white children born to low-income parents in much of the North-east and West Coast,” says Benjamin Goldman of Cornell University, one of the co-authors. “Now those areas have outcomes on par with Appalachia, the rustbelt and parts of the South-east.”

The fact that white children have become more likely to remain in poverty than before, whereas for black children the reverse is true, raises many questions. The finding comes from tracing the trajectories of 57m children born in America between 1978 and 1992 and looking at their outcomes by the age of 27. “This is really the first look with modern big data into how opportunity can change within a place over time,” says Mr Goldman. For children born into high-income families, household income increased for all races between birth cohorts. Yet among those from low-income families, earnings rose for black children and fell for white children.

A black child born to poor parents in 1992 earned $1,400 a year more than one born in 1978. A similar white child earned $2,000 less than one born in 1978. But on average, a poor white child still earned $9,500 more than a poor black child.

Convergence, not equality

This pattern has played out in virtually every county, though with big regional differences. As a result, the earnings gap between rich and poor white children (the “class gap”) grew by 27%, whereas the earnings gap between poor white and poor black children (the “race gap”) fell by 28% (see chart). The class gap did not meaningfully change for non-white people. This convergence between poor white and poor black children is as much the result of improved mobility for black children as it is of decreased mobility for white ones.

The effects echo in other outcomes too. The gap in early-adulthood mortality between rich and poor white Americans more than doubled between the 1978 and 1992 birth cohorts, while the white-black race gap for the same metric fell by 77%. Other gaps between black and white Americans, from sat uptake and rates of graduation to rates of marriage and incarceration, have narrowed similarly.

None of this means that race is no longer relevant for Americans’ chances in life. Although the reversal of the direction of travel is striking, a young black American born in 1992 to poor parents was still four percentage points more likely to remain in poverty than a poor white peer, down from a 15 percentage-point gap for those born in 1978. And while the near doubling in rates of mortality among young, lower-income white Americans is deeply alarming, mortality rates for their black counterparts have increased too, and they are still (a bit) more likely to die young.

In polarised America, where race remains a divisive topic, some are bound to misappropriate the findings. Anti-woke conservatives will claim that the data show how “white privilege” is a myth and that programmes targeting poor black children should instead invest in poor white ones. Woke warriors will argue that race remains the most important factor holding children back from upward mobility, and so dismiss concerns about left-behind white kids. Both are wrong.

Convergence has not yet brought equality. Despite improvements across America for poor black children, there is still no county where their outcomes match those of poor white ones. Yet the decline of the white working class is steep, and bound to cause grief. Telling a young white man with lower life outcomes than previous generations that he is still doing better than the average black peer is about as useful as telling a young black man that he’s doing well “for a black man”.

Another possible misconception is that social mobility is a zero-sum game: that poor white children are doing worse because poor black children are doing better. The authors tackle this by showing how in places where black children have done well, white children’s outcomes have remained stable; and in places where white children have done particularly poorly, their black peers have also not thrived.

In his previous work Mr Chetty demonstrated just how much a child’s chances of outperforming their parents depended on their race and where they grew up. One of the questions the authors were left with was how “sticky” these effects would be over time: could opportunities for the next cohorts of children change within these same places, or were they fixed? The new study’s most hopeful finding is that, far from being fixed, opportunities within a place can change significantly and rapidly. Neither history nor place is destiny.

This offers clues for policymakers. Jobs, and their role in ensuring that communities flourish, are at the heart of understanding these big shifts. Children’s outcomes are tightly correlated with those of the communities in which they grow up. The narrowing of the race gap and widening of the white class gap, write the authors, “can be explained almost entirely by the sharp fall in employment rates for low-income white parents relative to low-income black and high-income white parents”. Growing up in a thriving community is crucial for children’s future outcomes—and which communities have been thriving over the past 15 years has changed in a way that relatively disadvantages poor white families. “In the past 15 years, we’ve seen a decline in conditions in low-income white communities relative to low-income black and high-income white communities,” concludes Mr Goldman.

So the gap between upward mobility stats for African Americans and low-income whites is shrinking a bit, and that’s good for Democratic candidates to consider, when reaching out to working-class voters. When it comes to  dealing with cheap shots regarding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, however, note also that less than 10 percent of Fortune 500 C.E.O.s  are women and about 1.6 percent  are African Americans, with 3.2 percent of S & P 500 C.E.O.s  identifying as Latinos. A good question for D.E.I. critics is, “So, how would you improve these statistics, or do you think it’s O.K. the way it is?”

In “Harris’ big test: reclaiming swing states for Dems,” Erin Doherty writes at Axios: “Early national polls suggest Harris’ entry has given Democrats a bump in a tight race, but the presidential election is a state-by-state contest.

• Harris appears to be energizing many young and minority voters. A big question is whether she also can maintain Biden’s recent success among older voters — and stem Democrats’ losses among groups such as Latino men and whites who didn’t go to college.
• In a strategy memo released early Wednesday, Harris’ campaign argues she can. She aims to do so partly by focusing on women’s reproductive rights and contrasting Trump’s legal problems with her history as a prosecutor.
• Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020 was aided by his gains among whites who didn’t attend college, a group that helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center.

Driving the news: Larry Ceisler, a Pennsylvania-based public affairs executive, said he doesn’t expect Harris to match Biden’s numbers in rural parts of the state.

• But, he said, Harris “is going to boost turnout and support from African American voters, diverse voters and younger voters.”
• “It could be a net positive for the ticket,” Ceisler said.
• Another thing that might help in must-win Pennsylvania: Harris is considering Josh Shapiro, the state’s popular Democratic governor, as her running mate. Putting him on the ticket could alter the calculus there.

Doherty continues, “What they’re saying: In its memo, Harris’ campaign argues that she’s positioned to expand Biden’s winning coalition from 2020.

• “Her net favorability is 19 points higher than Trump’s among white, college-educated voters, and 18 points higher than Trump’s among voters over 65,” the Harris campaign writes.
• It also claims that the roughly 7% of voters who remain undecided are “disproportionately Black, Latino and under 30” — voting populations more likely to favor Harris.

By the numbers: Few polls have been released since Biden left the race Sunday and Harris jumped in.

• Reuters released a national poll Tuesday showing Harris with a 2-point lead over Trump, (44%-42%).
• The same poll the previous week had Trump with a 2-point lead, suggesting that the Democrats’ candidate switch led Trump to lose ground instead of picking up a post-convention bump.
• A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll indicates that Harris’ entry reset the race, which the poll says is statistically tied.

Swing-state polls are done less frequently, and don’t yet reflect the historic twists and turns of the past two weeks. The latest batch showed Trump ahead in most of the six states likely to decide the election — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

• In a New York Times/Siena College poll — taken before Biden dropped out and the assassination attempt against Trump — Harris fared better than Biden, and was essentially tied with Trump in Pennsylvania.
• Harris also polled stronger than Biden with Black voters and younger voters.
• In Michigan, Real Clear Politics found that Trump led by about 2 points from an average of Trump-Harris polls.

Doherty quotes Ceisler on Harris again, “She’s going to have to introduce herself to the electorate — and she can’t let herself be painted as some far-left ‘woke’ activist from San Francisco, because she’s not.”

Sahil Kapur and Scott Wong share some observations regarding how “Harris’ candidacy reshapes strategies for key House and Senate races” at nbcnews.com: “For Democrats, candidates in battleground races are still planning to localize their races as much as possible. But lawmakers and party operatives are now hoping they can benefit from the wave of enthusiasm provided by Harris’ campaign in down-ballot races….Republican strategists said their priority is to craft and drive a negative portrait of Harris in the minds of voters, using some of the same issues they attacked Biden on, such as immigration, crime and inflation….“What is going to be critical important for Republicans as a whole is to quickly define Kamala Harris,” said one GOP strategist, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, adding that the party is already evaluating new messages in the field. “We have a very short runway to take the four or five most unpopular positions she has and brand her as a supporter of those.”….Democratic strategists say their candidates will continue to run state-specific Senate campaigns and district-specific House campaigns. Many of those candidates had been overperforming Biden for months before he dropped out, and party operatives expect that to continue with Harris, whose favorability ratings are also under water in recent surveys….They’re also continuing to run against what they’re portraying as Republican extremism and out-of-touch candidates after successfully using that approach in 2022….”‘Despicable Me 4’ was a big hit this summer and the problem in the Republican Party is they’ve got a bucket full of minions running for the U.S. Senate,” said JB Poersch, the president of Senate Majority PAC, a deep-pocketed Democratic super-PAC. “Republican candidates are trapped well behind where Trump is.”

Harold Meyerson opines on “Kamala’s Strengths and Weaknesses: Today on TAP: And how she can talk to working-class voters” at The American Prospect: “….there’s not much in Harris’s history to suggest she’s the cure for the Democrats’ growing weakness among working-class voters—most particularly, the white working-class voters who’ve been trending Republican for a very long time….How, though, can she reach out to the working-class men who build buildings, drive trucks, and operate assembly lines (all alongside women, but it’s the men who’ve been moving en masse into Republican ranks)? Chris Hannan, who heads the California Building Trades Council (which represents virtually every union of construction workers in the state)….was clear on how unions like those represented in his council would campaign against Trump and, now, for Harris. “Trump had an ‘infrastructure week’ every year, which led to no increase in infrastructure construction, every year. Under Biden and Harris, we’re building more roads and bridges and rail lines, and electric car factories and semiconductor factories, with union members and union-scale wages, in California, in Arizona, and across the country,” he said. “Trump gave corporations a huge tax cut with no conditions on spending that money in the U.S.; Biden and Harris have prioritized investing in America.”….Will Harris’s strong environmentalism be an obstacle to winning a number of working-class votes? Most likely, particularly in places like Western Pennsylvania, where her opposition to fracking will surely be something that the Trump campaign will stress. “She may not do well in Western Pennsylvania outside Pittsburgh,” another labor leader told me, “but she’ll boost turnout in [heavily Black] Northern Philadelphia and Detroit, particularly if Obama campaigns alongside her there.” That labor leader is also confident that Harris will stick with the kind of pro-union appointees to whom Biden entrusted the Labor Department and the NLRB. “Democrats with centrist records, like Biden had, now understand this is good policy and good politics,” he added….I herewith offer a couple of suggestions myself that might win her more support, or at least more of a hearing, among working-class voters. As I’ve noted, Trump’s suggestion of making tips tax-free actually won’t affect most tipped workers because they don’t make enough money, even with the tips, to pay income taxes. (Indeed, according to a report released today by UC Berkeley’s Food Labor Research Center and the organization One Fair Wage, fully 66 percent of tipped restaurant workers have incomes falling beneath that threshold.) Nonetheless—and despite some speculation that Wall Street consultants would mislabel their fees as tips if such a change were made—I think Harris should adopt this proposal (saying she’s open to crossing the aisle when a decent, or even half-decent, proposal originates there) and go it one better, challenging Republicans to raise the national minimum wage from the $7.25 where it’s languished for the past 15 years, and the tipped minimum wage from its microscopic $2.13—positions I doubt the newly “pro-worker” Republicans will embrace….As well, she should emphasize the arguments that Hannan has made: that factory construction increased by 73 percent once the Inflation Reduction Act passed, that infrastructure construction stagnated under Trump and soared under Biden, and that, as vice president, she cast the deciding votes on much of the “Build, Baby, Build for a Clean, Prosperous Future” legislation that is Biden’s legacy.”

In his column, “Biden made a very tough decision to save the soul of America — again. Democrats need to get to a Harris nomination through a process the whole party will see as fair,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes: “Choosing someone other than Harris, who has already been well vetted, would invite turmoil the party can’t afford. Dumping your entire ticket three months before an election is not a good look. But Democrats need to get to a Harris nomination through a process the whole party will see as fair….Doing so would only strengthen Harris’s candidacy. So would a strong running mate. Govs. Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are among the many good options Harris would have….Biden’s decision will bring new energy to a party that had already gained confidence in its capacity to win, courtesy of Trump’s 92-minute disquisition on Thursday that drove even ardent loyalists to weariness and exhaustion. Trump’s lack of discipline and his vaudevillian affection for his old act led him away from the recommendations of his advisers. They understood that natural sympathy had rushed Trump’s way after a failed assassination attempt. They promised he would tell his moving personal story and call for national unity….Although the choice was excruciating, the president should be — and deserves to be — at peace with this outcome. None of what happened reflects badly on his record as president. He didn’t fail in that debate. His age failed him….All along, Biden cast himself as the person who could best preserve democracy by stopping Trump a second time. Paradoxically, perhaps, he stayed true to that mission by removing himself from the contest. He did the hardest thing a politician can do: relinquish power. His decision saved his legacy.”

“What we can say from head-to-head polling of Harris is that the general trend has gotten a lot better for her,” Christian Paz writes in “Does Kamala Harris give Democrats a better chance to win?” at Vox. “A year ago she was underperforming Biden in head-to-head polling against Trump in a variety of surveys. Closer to the debate and right after, she began to perform about evenly. And more recently, in July, a few polls comparing Biden and Harris against Trump in battleground states and nationally have shown Harris even with Biden or slightly ahead of him….The first sign of this change came from CNN’s first post-debate poll, finding the vice president trailing Trump by 2 percentage points (within the margin of error) while Biden trailed by 6 points. And in FiveThirtyEight’s polls-only post-debate comparison of Harris and Biden vs. Trump, Harris performs slightly better than the president in battleground states — though not in all of them….Recent polling from Pennsylvania and Virginia also shows more positive signs for the vice president: New York Times/Siena College polls this month show that while Harris still trails Trump by 1 point in Pennsylvania, that’s a smaller gap than the 3 points that put Trump ahead of Biden there. Both of these results are within the polling’s margin of error, making the race in the state essentially tied. In Virginia, meanwhile, Harris’s lead over Trump is 2 points larger than the lead Biden has over the former president….And a post-assassination attempt national poll from Reuters/Ipsos shows a statistically tied presidential contest for either Biden or Harris against Trump….Under the hood, however, Harris backers can find an additional data point in their column: 69 percent of respondents think Biden is too old; Harris doesn’t face that concern. And Biden is more unpopular than Harris, something that is consistently true: As of July 18, Biden has a net -17.7 approval rating in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate. Harris’s disapproval is at 11.8. And in RealClearPolitics’ average of favorability ratings, Biden (-16.3) is also more unpopular than Harris (-14.9).”

If you thought Sen. Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio set the lowest standard for selling out previously stated views for political advantage, take a look at “JD Vance, Trump’s VP pick, once called him a ‘moral disaster,’ and possibly ‘America’s Hitler’” by Andrew Kaczynski and Ern Steck at CNN Politics. As the authors write: “Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick Ohio Sen. JD Vance was once a fervent critic of the former president. In private messages, he wondered ahead of Trump’s election whether he was “America’s Hitler” and in 2017 said the then-president was a “moral disaster.” In public, he agreed Trump was a “total fraud” who didn’t care about regular people and called him “reprehensible.”….“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” Vance wrote in a message to a friend in 2016. “How’s that for discouraging?”….In 2016 and 2017, Vance, then best-known for penning the best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” said Trump was “cultural heroin” and “just another opioid” for Middle America. He told CNN ahead of the 2016 election that he was “definitely not” voting for Trump and he also contemplated voting for Hillary Clinton (he ultimately said he planned to vote for independent candidate Evan McMullin.)….,“Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us,” he tweeted after the “Access Hollywood” tape was published in 2016….Vance also liked tweets that said Trump committed “serial sexual assault,” called him “one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs,” and harshly criticized Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 White nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia….“There is no moral equivalence between the anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville and the killer (and his ilk),” Vance wrote in a deleted-tweet….“I’m definitely not gonna vote for Trump because I think that he’s projecting very complex problems onto simple villains,” Vance told CNN’s Jake Tapper ahead of the 2016 election….“Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us,” he wrote in October 2016.”

Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, interviews Stuart Stevens, a Lincoln Project consultant and writes,”Regular cable news viewers will know that Lincoln Project consultant Stuart Stevens has been steadfast in arguing that the Democrats should stick with the president. Regular TNR readers will know that most of our columns have argued otherwise. Here, Michael Tomasky asks Stevens to make the case. “I’m just hard-wired that in a campaign, you’re going to have incredibly difficult moments,” Stevens said. “The instinct shouldn’t be to run for the lifeboats. You fix it.” Watch to see what Stevens thinks the Democrats need to emphasize to win, and what he and the Lincoln Project are doing between now and November.” The interview:

An excerpt from “How Blue-Collar Candidates Could Change Politics” by Barry Yeoman at The Assembly: “About half the U.S. labor force qualifies as working class: people with manual, service-sector, and clerical jobs. They rarely see themselves reflected in their elected bodies….People with current or recent working-class jobs make up 1 percent of all state legislators, and 0 percent in North Carolina, according to data compiled by political scientists Nicholas Carnes at Duke University and Eric Hansen at Loyola University Chicago. If you add leaders of unions that represent working-class people, the national figure rises to 1.6 percent. The number is higher for city councils in the United States, but still hovers around 10 percent. A notable outlier is Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a former factory worker and now the Republican candidate for governor….Nor do working-class voters have a clear champion in either political party. Democrats carried that mantle for much of the 20th century—and, to some degree, still do—in part because of their alliance with organized labor. But that alliance was eroding by 1993, when President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement into law. North Carolina’s manufacturing sector cratered after NAFTA, as factories closed and jobs moved to Mexico….“That was a demarcation point,” said Gwen Frisbie-Fulton, Down Home’s senior narrative strategist. “The Democrats started to feel more elite, feel very metropolitan, and [weren’t] talking about bread-and-butter issues.”….Carnes and Noam Lupu, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University, examined survey data from 1,000 Americans who, in 2015, were asked to compare hypothetical political candidates. Factory workers fared about 2 percentage points better than business owners in these matchups, though the difference was not statistically significant. “[Voters] tend to perceive politicians from working-class jobs as maybe having a little less competence, but a little more warmth or concern for their problems,” Carnes said. “The two things kind of wash out in the end.”

In “Republicans Just Handed Down a Death Sentence to the Nation’s Coal Miners,” Kim Kelley writes at In These Times: “It is shameful that some in Congress would play politics with the lives of the coal miners who too often sacrifice their health to power our country,” commented Chelsea Barnes, director of government affairs and strategy for the clean-energy advocacy group Appalachian Voices, in a statement. ​“Make no mistake: blocking the silica dust standard will cost lives. It is imperative that Congress strike this reckless provision as the legislative process moves forward.”….This rule, for which so many workers fought for so long, is a part of what these Republican committee goons call a ​“destructive and anti-worker regulatory agenda.” The final vote was 31 to 25, which likely means that every single Republican voted for this — and a Democrat joined them (and I for one am awfully curious about who that is). The irony is painful, particularly when one considers the Republicans’ cringeworthy push to position themselves as a ​“blue-collar party” that fights for ​“American workers” against out-of-touch liberal elites. Even Donald Trump, who used to yammer constantly about how much he ​“loved” coal miners and how he was going to bring back the coal industry, has largely abandoned both during his current campaign of destruction….When a coal miner is stricken with black lung and left unable to work, the absolute highest monthly payment that they can receive from the federal black lung benefits fund is $1,545.00, provided they have three or more dependents; if they’re all alone, it’s capped at $772. Meanwhile, members of Congress have access to the best medical care in the nation, thanks to their low-cost, gold-plated healthcare plans and six-figure salaries, both of which are paid for with workers’ tax dollars. Each one of the Representatives who voted to defund the silica rule brings home at least $174,000 per year. Aderholt himself is worth about $9 million, and took home $3.8 million in federal farm subsidies in 2023 for his spouse and businesses. All that filthy lucre could probably buy a lot of oxygen tanks for the coal miners that he and his colleagues just doomed….“It’s very disheartening to see a handful of Washington politicians try and undo all this hard work on a whim,” said Robinson of the National Black Lung Association, in a statement. ​“If this policy becomes law, it will put the lives of countless miners at risk. Mining families deserve better, and we urge Congress to throw out this dangerous policy and get to work helping miners, not making their lives much harder.”

Democratic politics was plenty complicated even before Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt. Democrats still have a daunting challenge to meet in mobilizing for the 2024 elections, and they can’t back away from the task because of the tragic shooting that took two lives, injured others and almost killed the Republican nominee. But let all Democrats be united in deploring and condemning the shooting and political violence. Social media is full of unworthy comments about the shooting from people who should know better. No Democrat should respond to them in any way that encourages or tolerates such comments. Democrats must be the adult party, the one which condemns all forms of violence, especially when directed at political adversaries. Not only is violence morally wrong; to tolerate it in any way is to invite certain defeat in the elections. “Toning down” the rhetoric is not enough. Democrats should openly and consistently espouse nonviolence in all of our political strategies and tactics, and, to paraphrase the message of Martin Luther King, Jr., urge everyone to refrain from violence of “fist, tongue and heart.” It is impossible to gauge the political effects of the assassination attempt on the November elections until all ballots have been counted and subjected to a rigorous analysis. But there is no quicker way for Democrats to blow it than to allow cynical comments about the shooting. Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro has provided a good  template for responding to this tragedy: “Violence targeted at any political party or political leader is absolutely unacceptable. It has no place in Pennsylvania or the United States.” In expressing his sympathy for the victims of the shooting he added “We lost a fellow Pennsylvanian last night: Corey Comperatore….Corey dove on his family to protect them last night at this rally….Corey was the very best of us. May his memory be a blessing.”

Some other Democratic leaders’ responses to the shooting noted by Associated Press, via Daily Kos include: “As one whose family has been the victim of political violence, I know firsthand that political violence of any kind has no place in our society. I thank God that former President Trump is safe,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “As we learn more details about this horrifying incident, let us pray that all those in attendance at the former President’s rally today are unharmed.”….Obama, Trump’s immediate predecessor in the White House, shared the views of others who have held the presidency, writing on social media: “There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy. Although we don’t yet know exactly what happened, we should all be relieved that former President Trump wasn’t seriously hurt, and use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics. Michelle and I are wishing him a quick recovery.”….President Joe Biden said in his Oval Office address last night: ““We cannot, we must not, go down this road in America,” he said, speaking in a prime time speech to the nation. “There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.”….Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, blasted the violence in his home state. “I am appalled and condemn in the strongest terms this violence in Butler,” he wrote on X. “I extend my condolences to those injured and wish a speedy and full recovery for Mr. Trump.” Also at X, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez added “There is no place for political violence, including the horrific incident we just witnessed in Pennsylvania. It is absolutely unacceptable and must be denounced in the strongest terms. My heart goes out to all the victims and I wish the former President a speedy recovery.”

At The Guardian, Katrina vanden Heuval, editor and publisher of The Nation, writes, “Being the victim of a shooting is terrifying. Donald Trump and those wounded and killed deserve our sympathy and concern. We should not forget the risks that political leaders take in a society as polarized and as gunned up as this one….What should we take from this horror? We should begin by decrying all political violence as unacceptable. President Biden has condemned the shooting ardently and unequivocally. So, too, did prominent Democrats who fundamentally disagree with the former president. Hopefully, leaders from across the political and ideological spectrum will join in these condemnations. Just as, one hopes, they will condemn the growing threats of violence that public officials from the president to poll volunteers to judges and jurors now receive….But this is about more than politics and public life. This country has too much gun violence – and too many guns. Most of the victims are not famous, or powerful. With children in grade schools now forced to take part in active shooter drills, it is long past time for all of us to get serious about curbing gun violence….Trump should be assessed – as anyone who would lead this country – on his behavior, his character, and his agenda. That responsibility does not disappear because someone took a shot at him. The prospect of a Trump presidency was as deeply unsettling before Saturday’s shooting incident – and it remains so after it….No one should be fooled. Donald Trump deserves sympathy for the attack he experienced. That does not, however, make him an acceptable candidate for the presidency.”

“Ahead of the November presidential election, just 19% of Americans say democracy in the United States is a good example for other countries to follow, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in April,” Janell Fetterolf and Sofia Hernandez Ramones report at the Pew Research Center on July 10th. “The most common view – held by 72% of Americans – is that democracy in the U.S. used to be a good example, but has not been in recent years. Another 8% of Americans say U.S. democracy has never beena good example for other countries to follow….Americans are much more likely than people in other countries to say U.S. democracy used to be a good example. A median of 40% of adults across 34 other countries surveyed in 2024 take this view….Relatively few Americans overall see the nation’s democracy as a good example for other countries to follow. But adults ages 50 and older are more likely than those under 50 to hold this view. Younger adults, on the other hand, are more likely than older adults to say American democracy has never been a good example (11% vs. 4%)….Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are somewhat more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to see U.S. democracy as a good example (22% vs. 17%). This is nearly the reverse of where things stood in February 2021, when 24% of Republicans and 16% of Democrats saw democracy in the U.S. as a good example….Opinions also differ by voter status. Among Americans who are registered to vote, 21% see U.S. democracy as a good example, compared with 13% of those who are not registered to vote. Registered voters are also somewhat more likely to answer this question.” A critical part of the challenge facing Democrats in the 2024 elections must be to improve these numbers.

In “Democrats’ Effort to Push Biden Off Ticket Hits Uncertainty,” Lindsay Wise, Natalie Andrews and Katie Stech Ferek report at the Wall St. Journal: “An effort by some Democrats to seek an alternative to President Biden as the party’s nominee faced new uncertainty Tuesday, with frustrated lawmakers struggling to find a path forward after the president said he was dead set against stepping aside….Lawmakers aired their frustrations with their predicament, but a concerted push to install a new nominee didn’t emerge, even as a seventh House Democrat publicly called for Biden to make way for a new candidate. Private meetings ended without consensus, leaving the stare-down without a clear resolution less than four months until Election Day….“Like I said before, I’m with Joe,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) repeated several times in response to questions at his weekly press conference Tuesday afternoon….Schumer’s terse comments followed a lengthy lunch meeting with Senate Democrats, most of whom refused to talk to reporters afterward. Some looked dejected. “The president said it’s in his hands,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.). Asked if Biden should remain on the ticket, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said, “That still remains to be seen.”….Sen. Michael Bennet (D., Colo.) told colleagues he didn’t think Biden would prevail this fall, and Sens. Jon Tester (MT) and Sherrod Brown (OH) have also expressed doubts. Later, speaking to CNN, he said he thinks Trump is on track to “maybe win it by a landslide, and take with him the Senate and the House.” He said the White House “has done nothing to really demonstrate that they have a plan to win.” But he declined to say Biden should step aside….One person familiar with the meeting said the party seemed evenly split on Biden. “One-third of the caucus wants him gone, one-third want him to stay, and one-third are resigned he is the nominee but think he is going to lose.”….“I think the conversation is important to have right now, because people do have concerns,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.), head of the progressive caucus. “I just don’t think it should be in public. And I think at the end of the day, he is our nominee right now till he’s not our nominee.”

At Politico, Jonathan Martin outlines “Biden’s Survival Plan: Decry ‘Elite’ Critics, Appeal to His Base,” and writes: “As the president fights for his political life this week, and calls grow from party leaders that he withdraw his candidacy, he’s counting on the support of African American Democrats and his union allies as his last line of defense. It’s a playbook Biden has turned to in the past, portraying his detractors as mostly elite white liberals who are out of step with the more diverse and working-class grassroots of the party. That’s what propelled his nomination after a string of setbacks in 2020….If Biden can retain his allies in labor and the Black community, he will have a chance to reframe the boiling debate about his candidacy along the lines of race and class that have animated every Democratic nomination fight for 40 years. Those clashes, of course, played out in primaries and caucuses. This battle is taking place in a more chaotic and truncated fashion, in the media and on group texts, conference calls and Zooms….“The people Joe Biden fights for — middle-class labor union members, Blacks, Latinos — they know he fights for them and they’re going to stay in the fight for him,” Anita Dunn, Biden’s longtime adviser, told me Sunday….Much as he craves the affirmation of elites, Biden is in his comfort zone donning the armor of Scranton Joe. It recalls Bill Clinton, facing impeachment and the condemnation of censorious Democratic elites, turning to the party rank and file and especially Black Americans in his hour of crisis….This is the crux of Biden’s challenge. He knows his most loyal supporters will be those blue-collar Democrats and their representatives who’ve always had more of an affinity for him than the latte set. “We’ve been through some shit in our lives and we don’t turn when times are tough,” as Richmond put it about the Black community.”

Margaret Sullivan has some pointed comments in her article, “The media has been breathlessly attacking Biden. What about Trump?” at The Guardian. Among her observations: “That bigger story, of course, is the former president’s appalling unfitness for office, not only because he tried to overturn a legitimate election and is a felon, out on bail and awaiting sentencing, but because of things he has said and done in very recent weeks. As just one example, he claimed that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, the radical rightwing plan hatched by some of his closest allies to begin dismantling our democracy if he wins another term….Trump’s disavowal is a ridiculous lie, but I doubt most members of the public know anything about it, nor do they likely know much – if anything – about Project 2025….Meanwhile, what of Trump’s obvious cognitive decline, his endless lies, his shocking plans to imprison his political enemies and to deport millions of people he calls “animals”, his relationship with the late accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein?….There really is no comparison in the amount or intensity of coverage. One journalist, Jennifer Schulze, counted New York Times stories related to Biden’s age in the week following the debate; she counted a staggering 192 news and opinion pieces, compared to 92 stories on Trump – and that was in a week when the US supreme court had ruled he has immunity for official acts….On Monday, the Times sent out as “breaking news” a story whose headline announced that an expert in Parkinson’s disease had visited the White House eight times in a recent eight-month period; much further down in the story we learn that the same doctor also had made 10 visits to the White House in 2012, and that he has supported the White House medical team for more than a dozen years. But many people never get past the headline….Of course, the problem certainly is not just the New York Times, despite its agenda-setting influence. It’s also TV news, both network and cable. And, to a lesser extent, it’s other major US publications….Where does that leave us?….All of these disturbing elements – the Democrats’ dilemma, the media’s failures, and the cult-like, unquestioning support of Trump – could add up to one likelihood in November….A win for Trump, and a terrible loss for democracy.”

Christian Paz mulls over the polling data in “Do other Democrats actually poll better against Trump than Biden?” at Vox and writes: “If the goal of national Democrats is to keep Donald Trump out of the White House to protect democracy — and they’ve largely framed the 2024 election in just those existential terms — who is best equipped to do it? And after a dismal debate performance by President Joe Biden last week, is it possible that there is another Democrat better equipped to beat Trump than the sitting president?….Polling gives us one way to answer that question. But it’s not as simple as looking at the topline numbers and deciding that it’s time to dump Biden. The only timeline for which we know anything, solidly, is the one we’re living in: anything else is purely hypothetical, and requires some suspension of belief, some scrutiny in looking at numbers, and some skepticism in how we might expect the public to react….Still, it’s too soon to tell just what the American people are thinking about replacing Biden with an alternative….we are dealing in hypotheticals. Any talk about how a Biden alternative would fare against Trump is purely imaginary at this point: we don’t really know how well any of these candidates would do among specific kinds of voters or in different states or regions. How would Whitmer do in the Sun Belt? How would Newsom do in the Midwest? Those questions are crucial to winning the Electoral College, and the polls we have don’t come close to answering them….the polls show hypothetical Biden alternatives would do no better than Biden (generally what Biden defenders say). The second is that they are doing just as well as Biden without even running as actual presidential candidates — and could do better still (what Biden critics say)….Harris, post-debate, still has a better favorability score than Biden, and is doing better than the president with women, Latino voters, and young voters — groups that Biden has struggled with overall. Philip Bump at the Washington Post did some digging on this question last week as well, comparing Harris and Biden’s favorability ratings among subgroups before the debate, and found Harris seems to be viewed more favorably by younger voters, women, and non-white voters….In short, we don’t know much. These are all hypotheticals we’re trying to game out from a very limited set of data. And we’re likely to get a bunch more data as we move further from the debate. “

It’s getting to the point where you need a playbook to sort out the supporters and opponents of President Biden continuing his re-election campaign.

If you thought it would be a matter of prominent moderates and centrists supporting Biden and left Democrats wanting to replace him, you would be mostly wrong. Thus, centrist Democrats like Sen. Mark Warner (VA) and Rep. Mikie Sherrill (NJ- 11) are leaning toward or calling on President Biden to step down and lefty Dems, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT) and Rep. AOC (NY-14 ) are affirming their strong support for the President’s re-election, alongside leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus and former Speaker Pelosi.

As you can see from some of the aforementioned examples, the ages of the President’s re-election supporters and opponents don’t provide much insight into their positions, either. Support for the President’s re-election is all over the place in terms of age. Ditto for those who want him to step down.

“On Monday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters that she was sticking with Biden after speaking to him over the weekend. “Joe Biden is our nominee. He is not leaving this race. He is in this race and I support him,” Nia Prater writes at New York magazine’s Intelligencer.

“I know that President Biden and his team have been true public servants and have put the country and the best interests of democracy first and foremost in their considerations,” [Rep. Mikie] Sherrill said. “And because I know President Biden cares deeply about the future of our country, I am asking that he declare that he won’t run for reelection and will help lead us through a process toward a new nominee,” Miranda Nazzaro reports at The Hill.

Lauren Sforza quotes Sen. Sanders, also at The Hill: “….I think what he has got to do is get out there, interact with people, turn off the teleprompter, and people can make a judgment for themselves how well he’s doing…So what we’ve got to do is inject policy, the contrast between what Biden stands for and what Trump stands for. And then if you do that, I think Biden’s gonna do just fine,” he added.”

Although it appears the Democrats are divided at present, when the Democratic Convention is concluded, the smart bet is that all Democratic members of the House and Senate will support the same nominee, along with every Democratic governor. Regardless of who is on the ticket, the “Democrats in Disarray” meme will be long-dead by Election Day.