From “A closer look at Americans’ views on ICE” by Aaron Blake at CNN Politics: “The White House and Congress have begun what appear to be earnest negotiations over reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the aftermath of Alex Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis…And a couple new surveys conducted both before and after Pretti’s death add some interesting data points to the debate…It’s well-established by now that Americans have largely turned against ICE, with about 6 in 10 disapproving of it and saying it’s gone “too far” or been “too tough.”…But a Fox News poll and a Pew Research Center poll dig a little deeper on a few key points…1. Independents don’t agree with Trump on local police helping ICE..For one, the Fox poll released this week suggests an argument made by Trump and others – that local officials are to blame for the chaos because of their lack of cooperation with ICE – is unlikely to fly with Americans…Trump warned Wednesday that Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was “playing with fire” by not using local police to enforce federal immigration laws…White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have “shamefully blocked local and state police from cooperating with ICE, actively inhibiting efforts to arrest violent criminals.”…Vice President JD Vance added last week: “If we have a little cooperation from local and state officials, I think the chaos would go way down in this community.” But Americans aren’t sure this is what’s called for…The Fox poll asked registered voters whether they favored or opposed “requiring local governments to cooperate with ICE.”…Voters were about evenly split, with 49% in favor and 50% opposed. But independents opposed this idea by a wide margin, 64%-34%…(And that’s to say nothing of the fact that Minneapolis police are actually legally barred from doing what Trump wants.)…”

Blake continues, “2. Americans seem to misunderstand the scope of ICE’s actions…There is one aspect of Trump’s messaging that does appear to be breaking through, though…The Fox poll shows a majority of registered voters think that ICE’s actions reflect Trump’s promises to target people with criminal records either “almost always” (29%) or “most of the time” (25%)…That suggests that most Americans think this is indeed mostly about criminals…But it’s not – or at least, not anymore…The most recent data from the Deportation Data Project at the University of California Berkeley shows that the vast majority of non-citizens arrested by ICE had no criminal convictions, as of data through mid-October. (The percentage of non-criminals targeted has generally increased over Trump’s second term.)…Many others had pending charges. But a New York Times analysis last month found that major enforcement operations focused on specific areas tended to key on people who hadn’t even faced charges. In Washington, DC, 84% had never been charged with a crime. That percentage was 57% in Los Angeles; 63% in Massachusetts; and 66% in Illinois…We don’t have data on Minneapolis yet, but it stands to reason that the numbers look somewhat similar there…The difference between Americans’ perception of the immigration crackdown and what the statistics bear out suggests their already- negative opinions of ICE could worsen further…After all, Americans’ support for deportations drops significantly when the person in question hasn’t committed a crime.”

Blake adds, “3. Americans are good with recording ICE; they don’t like ICE wearing masks…Pew, meanwhile, tested how people feel about some of the things they’re seeing from both federal agents and the protesters in Minneapolis…Americans, by and large, seem to be okay with many of the protesters’ tactics. About three-quarters (74%) said it’s acceptable to record video of agents making arrests. And 59% said it’s even okay to share information on where arrests are happening, which protesters often signal through whistles…As for ICE’s tactics, Americans don’t like them as much…Nearly three-quarters (72%) said it’s unacceptable to use a person’s looks or the language they speak as a reason to check their immigration status. (Some videos from Minneapolis show agents mentioning the accent of the person they’re stopping.) And Americans say 61%-38% that it’s unacceptable for immigration agents to wear face covering to hide their identities on the job…The latter issue is one area where Democrats are demanding reform in the current negotiations. Trump and administration officials have said it’s necessary to avoid the agents being doxxed…Expect that to be one of the major flashpoints in this debate.” More here.

Alex Nguyễn reports that “Texas Democrat Flips State Senate District That Trump Won by 17 Points” at Mother Jones: “A Democrat and union leader won a special election on Saturday to represent a Texas state Senate district that Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024… GOP Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called the result, a 57-43 victory for Taylor Rehmet, “a wake-up call for Republicans across Texas” in an early Sunday post on X. Republicans currently hold every statewide elected office in Texas…“Our voters cannot take anything for granted,” Patrick continued, calling out low voter turnout in special elections…Rehmet, an Air Force veteran and the leader of his local machinist’s union, spent $242,174—nearly 10 times less than Wambsganss—according to campaign finance reports reviewed by Fort Worth Report…“It’s clear as day that this disastrous Republican agenda is hurting working families in Texas and across the country, which is why voters in red, blue, and purple districts are putting their faith in candidates like Taylor Rehmet,” Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “This overperformance is a warning sign to Republicans across the country.”…According to the Texas Tribune, Patrick gave $300,000 to the campaign of Rehmet’s opponent, Leigh Wambsganss, through his PAC, Texas Senate Leadership Fund. Trump also posted multiple get-out-the-vote messages on behalf of Wambsganss on Truth Social in the days leading up to the election… Rehmet, an Air Force veteran and the leader of his local machinist’s union, spent $242,174—nearly 10 times less than Wambsganss—according to campaign finance reports reviewed by Fort Worth Report… “It’s clear as day that this disastrous Republican agenda is hurting working families in Texas and across the country, which is why voters in red, blue, and purple districts are putting their faith in candidates like Taylor Rehmet,” Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “This overperformance is a warning sign to Republicans across the country.” More here.

At Axios, Kate Santaliz reports that “House Republicans fume at Kristi Noem as impeachment push looms,” and writes: “Frustration with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is mounting among House Republicans over her response to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti. Why it matters: They soon could soon be forced to go on the record about whether they still support Noem if Democrats move to force a vote on impeachment…For vulnerable Republicans, the prospect of an impeachment vote tied to immigration enforcement efforts would be particularly painful…Driving the news: Dozens of House Republicans are publicly pushing for more oversight and answers about Pretti’s shooting. Privately, frustration with Noem has been building for months…Saturday’s killing, and the botched messaging that followed, was a breaking point for some lawmakers, multiple aides told Axios…When President Trump dispatched White House Border Czar Tom Homan to Minnesota on Monday, droves of Republicans went out of their way to praise the move — a subtle rebuke of Noem…While no House Republicans have publicly called for her resignation, Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) called on Noem to resign on Tuesday…Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), another vulnerable member, wrote that the shootings of Pretti and Renee Good “show that what the country has been doing is not working,” in a sharply worded op-ed Tuesday. Lawler also called for immigration reform…”Hispanics are leaving the GOP in large numbers, and pretending otherwise won’t fix it. As Republicans, we must reverse course and act now,” Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) said Wednesday. She has long been pushing for comprehensive immigration reform…The intrigue: Democrats see an opening with Republicans who have been critical of the administration’s handling of the shooting…”

“In a battle over how to carry out Trump’s immigration agenda, one faction has triumphed — for now,” Julia Ainsley reports at nbcnews.com: “President Donald Trump’s decision to shake up the leadership of his immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota is the latest twist in a monthslong power struggle inside his administration over one of his top policy priorities, according to two law enforcement officials, one administration official and a person familiar with the situation…It marks a triumph for one camp of immigration enforcement officials — namely border czar Tom Homan and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott — who have publicly advocated for a targeted approach focused on arresting criminals who are in the country illegally…And it is a comedown for the other faction, led by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, her top adviser Corey Lewandowski and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, who pushed for large sweeps of immigrants and aggressive tactics such as using chemical agents and rappelling into apartment buildings from Black Hawk helicopters…How long the shift in fortunes will last is unclear. Trump’s shake-up in Minnesota suggests he’s cooling to the enforcement tactics that have shaped Americans’ view of his immigration agenda for most of his term, with polls showing many voters think it’s gone too far…At the same time, the president’s aides have said he’s still committed to his deportations policy — Trump polls better on the question of border security — even if he’s for now pivoting away from the strategy led by Bovino following the deadly shooting of ICU nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday and of Renee Good earlier this month.” More here.

In “The Main Driver of Trump’s Bad Polling,” Ian Ward interviews conservative pollster/strategist  Patrick Ruffini at Politico. Here are some of Ruffini’s observations: “However you want to define the swing voter electorate in 2024, cost of living was far and away the number one issue among the Biden-to-Trump voters in 2024. It is still the number one issue. And that’s because of demographically who they are. The profile of the voter who swung in ‘24 was not just minority, but young, low-income, who tends to be less college-educated, less married and more exposed to affordability concerns…So I think that’s obviously their north star right now. The core Democratic voter is concerned about the erosion of norms and democracy. The core Republican voter is concerned about immigration and border security. But this swing vote is very, very much concerned about the cost of living…what really matters is this cost-of-living issue, which people don’t view as having been solved by Trump coming into office…I would say the ICE actions are probably a bit negative, but I think Latino voters primarily share the same concerns as other voters in the electorate. They’re primarily focused on cost of living, jobs and health care…I would say 2026 is perhaps a false indicator. In the midterms, you’re really talking about an electorate that is going to be much older, much whiter, much more college-educated. I think you really have to have a presidential campaign to test how these voters are going to behave.” More here.

Some notes from Louis Jacobson’ “Handicapping The 2026 State Legislative Map: A First Look” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “In our first handicapping of state legislature control for the 2026 cycle, we find 15 chambers that are competitive—either Leans Republican, Toss-up, or Leans Democratic. That’s slightly higher than the number we found at a similar point in the 2022 and 2024 election cycles… At this point in the 2026 cycle, the Republicans are playing defense in more chambers than the Democrats are. The GOP currently holds 8 of the competitive chambers, while the Democrats hold 4 of them. Meanwhile, both Alaska chambers are controlled by a cross-partisan alliance that is favored to continue, and Minnesota’s House chamber should revert to being tied once vacancies are filled by special elections later this month…Among the chambers we rate as competitive, 9 are Toss-ups. This category includes 6 Republican-held chambers (the Arizona Senate, the Arizona House, the Michigan House, the New Hampshire House, the Wisconsin Senate, and the Wisconsin House) and 2 Democratic-held chambers (the Michigan Senate and the Minnesota Senate), as well as the aforementioned, tied Minnesota House…In many states, Democrats are looking forward to a favorable cycle, driven by a reaction to President Donald Trump and his policies. However, in some states, voters may be tired of Democratic governance at the state level, creating cross-cutting pressures…In a number of legislative chambers controlled by Republicans, Democrats are hoping to ride a blue wave and break GOP supermajorities…” Jacobson provides an assessment for each state. More here.

In “Here’s Your Damn Playbook, Democrats: Party leaders can’t seem to process that Trump’s policies are in fact staggeringly unpopular. Minneapolis is showing politicians how it’s done” Aaron Regunberg writes at The New Republic: “You can see how Democrats got the wrong idea. When President Trump was sworn into his second term one year ago, it was not unreasonable for the opposition to feel somewhat cowed. Though his victory was narrow, Trump won the popular vote and made significant enough inroads into traditional Democratic constituencies—young people, people of color, working-class people—that his grandiose claims of a political realignment were arguably credible. That wasn’t an excuse to roll over—standing up to the regime was essential. But there was an argument for Democrats to be careful about picking their spots…A year later, things look very different. Trump’s approval ratings are dismal on everything from the economy to immigration; more than half of Americans say his policies have made life less affordable for them; and his support among young and nonwhite voters has cratered…Americans are seeing what ICE is doing, and they don’t like it. Pollingshows that a majority of Americans view ICE unfavorably and support restrictions on the agency…This is the kind of playing field in which a fight—which will drive further attention toward ICE’s abuses—is politically advantageous. (To be clear, this is a fight worth picking on principle, even if it’s not a political slam dunk—but the fact is, it’s both!)…As fragile and corrupt as our elite institutions have revealed themselves to be, the people in this country are demonstrating real resilience against Trump’s authoritarianism. This should inform our strategies of resistance moving forward.”

Some new polling charts, from Ariel Edwards-Levy at Bluesky:

Jennifer Rubin explains “How to Stop the Fascism: What we do after another DHS murder ” at The Contrarian: “The brutal execution of Alex Pretti on Saturday, coupled with Donald Trump and his minions’ defaming the victim, lying about the facts, asserting that lawfully carrying a weapon made him a legitimate target (!), and refusing to undertake a serious investigation should horrify all decent people…In the immediate aftermath of the last murder, Democrats, libertarian-minded Republicans such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), state and local leaders, and former military should warn against invocation of the Insurrection Act. On Friday, Vice President JD Vance, between lies (e.g., falsely blaming local officials for ICE-induced violence, whitewashing arrests without 4^th Amendment-required judicial warrants, falsely claim Minneapolis has the highest concentration of undocumented immigrants), acknowledged he did not think the Insurrection Act was “necessary.” What has changed on the ground since then? (Walz’s activation of state national guard to keep order may help keep Trump at bay.)…We should not think Trump is immune from public opinion or indifferent to atrocious polling. TACO Trump can be compelled to reverse himself (as he did regarding Greenland) when he runs into a buzzsaw of criticism and/or sees markets sink. Public outcry, driven by his overreach, can force his retreat…In the short run, Democrats can advance a batch of proposals, for example, to cut off funds to the Minneapolis deployment absent a request from the governor; limit CBP operations to the border (as used to be the case); require body cameras, immediate suspension of any agent after firing his/her weapon, and full cooperation with local and state authorities; eliminate masks; install an Inspector General to review all DHS actions and recommend policy and personnel changes; and ban arrests without a judicial warrant…Measures that even Republicans should be embarrassed to oppose — mandating that a parent or guardian must be present before children are taken into custody; ensuring protection of nonviolent First Amendment activities (including filming agents); and prohibiting agents from firing at moving vehicles and/or any person who does not pose an immediate threat to others — should garner bipartisan consensus…In short, the horror of DHS’s murders and lawless rampages must not be allowed to dissipate into the ether of nonstop Trump scandals. Minneapolis can be an historic inflection point, not only to disable Trump’s brutal immigration approach but to defeat his authoritarian project more broadly.”

Nathaniel Rakich ponders a worrisome question at Salon: “Trump regrets not calling up troops after the 2020 election. What stops him in 2026?,” and writes: “Regrets — we’ve all had a few. One of President Donald Trump’s, apparently, is not directing the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election in search of evidence of fraud…That revelation, part of a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times on Jan. 7, commands particular attention in a world where Trump has already sought to push the boundaries of his power, deploying the National Guard to multiple U.S. cities to crack down on protests and crime. The November midterms will be the first federal general election with Trump as president since that 2020 contest, and even before his comments to the Times, plenty of people were already worried that Trump would attempt to deploy the National Guard around the 2026 election…The National Guard isn’t necessarily the problem here; the Guard actually has a history of helping with election administration, such as when troops in civilian clothing helped fill in for absent poll workers during the pandemic in 2020. But many Democrats and election officials are worried that Trump could, say, send them to polling places to interfere with voting on Election Day. If troops were to take possession of voting machines or other equipment, it could break the chain of custody and invalidate scads of ballots. And if troops just show up outside polling places, even if they don’t try to impede the administration of the election, their presence could still intimidate voters…That’s a worst-case scenario. However, there are significant legal and practical barriers to Trump doing this.” Read more here.

Samuel Benson and Alex Hernandez report “Latino voters powered Trump’s comeback. Now they’re turning on his economy” at Politico, and write: “In 2024, economic anxiety and immigration concerns drove Latino voters to President Donald Trump. Those same issues are beginning to push them away…Across the country, the cost-of-living woes and immigration enforcement overshadowing Trump’s first year back in office are souring Hispanic businesspeople, a key constituency that helped propel him to the White House. In a recent survey of Hispanic business owners conducted by the U.S. Hispanic Business Council and shared exclusively with POLITICO, 42 percent said their economic situation is getting worse, while only 24 said it was getting better. Seventy percent of respondents ranked the cost of living as a top-three issue facing the country, more than double the number that selected any other issue…In 2024, Trump won 48 percent of self-described Hispanic or Latino voters, the highest mark for a Republican presidential candidate in at least a half-century, driven largely by economic anxiety. But polling shows Trump’s approval among Latino voters cratering as their satisfaction with the economy and immigration enforcement plummet…In a November POLITICO Poll, a plurality — 48 percent — of Hispanic respondents said the cost of living in the U.S. is “the worst I can ever remember it being,” and a majority (67 percent) said responsibility lies with the president to fix it…According to a November Pew Research poll, about two-thirds (68 percent) of U.S. Hispanics say their situation today is worse than it was a year ago, and just nine percent say it is better; 65 percent of Latinos disagree with this administration’s approach to immigration, and a majority (52 percent) said they worried they, a family member or a close friend could be deported, a ten-point increase since March…Trump’s favorability rating among Hispanics is now at 28 percent, per a recent The Economist/YouGov poll, 13 points lower than it was in February of last year.” More here.

At Brookings, William A. Galston explains why “The economy weakened support for President Trump in 2025 and may do so again in 2026“: “Driven largely by public discontent over persistently high prices, approval of Donald Trump’s performance as president declined substantially in 2025. What the public saw as the president’s inadequate focus on the economy made things worse. At the same time, many of Trump’s disappointed 2024 supporters could shift back toward him if the economy improves…At year’s end, the president’s overall job approval averaged about 43%. He does reasonably well on immigration, crime, and foreign affairs—the issues that dominated his first year in office. He does much worse on the economy (41%), inflation(36%), and health care (32%).¹ Unfortunately for him, the people care more about the latter list than the former: 66% of Americans identify either the economy, inflation, or health care as the top issue facing the country, while 24% pick one of the issues to which the president has devoted most attention…Economic concerns remain dominant, and the public’s assessment offers the president little encouragement. Only 27% rate the state of the economy as excellent or good, compared to 72% who evaluate it as fair or poor. Eighteen percent say that they are better off, but 36% say the reverse. Twenty-three percent think the economy is improving, but 53% say that it is getting worse…This helps explain why almost six in 10 Americans say that President Trump is focusing on the wrong things. Only 16%think that he is spending most of his time on domestic issues, and the invasion and possible occupation of Venezuela won’t help those numbers. Seventy-three percent say that he is not spending enough time working to lower prices…The public’s perception of misplaced priorities has consequences. Only 38% believe that Trump cares about “people like you,” while 62% think that he does not.”

Galston continues, “Economic expectations for 2026 are not bright. Most Americans think that tariffs will continue to push up prices, and only one-third believe that their family’s finances will improve, down from 48% last June. Twenty-three percent think that the economy is getting better, compared to 53% who think that it is getting worse…Increased public confidence in Democrats’ ability to manage the economy has contributed to the 4.5-point edge Democrats now enjoy in the midterm vote for the House of Representatives. Still, 40% of the electorate is willing to change its mind about Trump’s job performance, and they overwhelmingly cite the economy as the issue that could move them. If this happens, Republicans’ prospects in the midterm elections would brighten…There is some evidence that the first year of Trump’s second term could have longer-term consequences for the American party system. After the 2024 election, analysts speculated about a realignment that would transform Republicans into a multi-ethnic, populist, working-class party. Now this prospect seems remote. Many of the groups that moved strongly toward the Republicans in 2024—independents, Hispanics, young adults—have moved away and should be regarded as swing voters…Republicans’ populist credentials have been tarnished. Sixty-five percent of the people think that the Trump administration’s policies favor the wealthy, compared to just 12% who think they are oriented toward the middle class. Not surprisingly, populist sentiments remain strong. Eighty-one percent of Americans, including 66% of Republicans, believe that the rich in the U.S. have too much power. Sixty-two percent say that taxes on billionaires are too low. Fifty-seven percent believe that the government should try to reduce the wealth gap between the rich and the poor…Progress is another core element of the creed. Each generation is supposed to do better than the last. But now, only 15% of Americans believe that today’s children will grow up to be better off than their parents, while 51% think that they will be worse off. Republicans and conservatives share this pessimism.”

In “A New Low for American Workers: The share of American income going to labor is at its lowest level since measurements began,” Harold Meyerson writes at The American Prospect: “Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released earlier this month show that the labor share of the nation’s GDP hit the lowest point it’s been at since the BLS began measuring such things in 1947. In that year, the labor share—that is, the pay and benefits that American workers claimed—stood at 70 percent of the nation’s income, with the remaining balance going to profits and other investment income…In the third quarter of 2025, the labor share stood at 53.8 percent. That means that the share of the nation’s income going to workers over the past 78 years has declined by roughly 16 percent, as the share going to investors has grown by the same amount…It’s not all that hard to identify the reasons behind America’s epochal transformation from a nation that honors work to a nation that honors investment. In 1947 America, when the labor share stood at 70 percent, more than one-third of the workforce was unionized, and taxes on the highest incomes routinely exceeded 70 percent. But for the heirs of the Rockefellers and the Fords, we were billionaire-poor, even as record numbers of working-class Americans found themselves, for the first time, able to buy houses…It’s only been in the past 10 or 15 years—beginning with the emergence of Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders’s first presidential campaign—that the existence of this redistribution became widely visible as a national problem. Today, however, with the crises of affordability in housing, health care, education, and even food affecting scores of millions of Americans, we’re beginning to see a politics—potentially, a majoritarian politics—devoted to curtailing this upward redistribution and bringing some of the nation’s income back to those who actually do its work.”

In “CNN poll finds majority of Americans say Trump is focused on the wrong priorities,” Jennifer Agiesta, Ariel Edwards-Levi and Edward Wu write at CNN Politics: , “Public opinion on nearly every aspect of President Donald Trump’s first year back in the White House is negative, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds, with a majority of Americans saying Trump is focused on the wrong priorities and doing too little to address cost of living…A majority, 58%, calls the first year of Trump’s term a failure…There’s hardly any good news in the poll for Trump or the Republican Party entering a critical midterm year, with the president’s handling of the economy looming as the defining issue in key House and Senate races…Asked to choose the country’s top issue, Americans pick the economy by a nearly two-to-one margin over any other topic. The poll suggests Trump is struggling to prove that he’s addressing it. And it finds broad concerns over Trump’s use of presidential power and his efforts to put his stamp on American culture…Views of economic conditions have remained stable — and largely negative — for the past two years, with about 3 in 10 rating the economy positively. What’s changed in the latest poll is the increased pessimism about the future: Just over 4 in 10 expect the economy to be good a year from now, down from 56% just before Trump was sworn in last January…A 55% majority say that Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions in the country, with just 32% saying they’ve made an improvement. Most, 64%, say he hasn’t gone far enough in trying to reduce the price of everyday goods. Even within the GOP, about half say that he should be doing more, including 42% among Republicans and Republican-leaners who describe themselves as members of the “Make America Great Again” movement.” More here.

From “Backlash to Trump has been more severe in his second term” by G. Elliot Morris at Strength in Numbers: “In the first year of Donald Trump’s first term as president in 2017, the share of Americans calling themselves Republicans (or independents who leaned toward the Republican Party) dropped just 2 percentage points — from 42% in 2016 to 40% by Q4 of 2017. I predict it will surprise many people to hear that the Democrats didn’t actually change their advantage in party ID much at all in Trump’s first term, expanding their advantage to +7 in 2018 from +6 in 2016…In Trump’s second term, however, the Republican Party is shedding members at a much higher pace. Gallup released its latest party identification data this week, and the numbers show Republican identification dropped from 46% in 2024 to just 40% in Q4 of 2025 — a 6-point decline, triple the 2-point drop during Trump’s first term…While many pundits covered Trump’s 2024 win as a new dominance for the right in American politics, it’s clear now that the apparent new apex of GOP loyalty was more of a phantom swing, perhaps an election-year shock driven by inflation and an unpopular Democratic president. There were a lot of soft Trump supporters who were willing to identify with the GOP in a moment of incumbent backlash, but didn’t stick around when Trump inevitably did what was all very well predictable ahead of time…III. Will 2026 be another blue wave?…The question now is whether Democrats can convert this party ID advantage into a big midterms victory. They will need to do that if they want to deliver on their promises of reining in Trump. But party ID advantages don’t automatically translate into votes — ask Democrats circa 2010 or 2014. In both years, Democrats held advantages in party identification but lost badly because their voters didn’t show up…But when you combine a 6-point decline in Republican identification with strong generic ballot numbers (and a tendency for the party in the White House to lose ground over the election year — see my post from Tuesday!), sustained special election overperformance, and an engaged base showing up to protests, you have the ingredients for a wave. Redistricting is the big unknown variable for 2026, but of course, that wouldn’t blunt a big Democratic popular vote victory, just the number of seats they win.” Read more here.

n his NYT opinion essay, “Trump Unmasked,” Thomas B. Edsall puts Trump on the couch, quotes some psychological experts, including Ian Robertson, an emeritus professor of psychology at Trinity College in Dublin, who notes, “In a Feb. 12 Irish Times article, “A Neuropsychologist’s View on Donald Trump: We’re Seeing the Impact of Power on the Human Brain,” Robertson described the frenzied opening days of the second Trump administration:Deports manacled immigrants, closes AIDS-prevention programs, starts and stops and restarts a tariffs war, vows to cleanse Gaza of its troublesome inhabitants and demands that all Israeli hostages be released by Hamas by midday on Saturday or he would “let hell break out.”…This activity, Robertson continued, fuels an aggressive, feel-good state of mind, particularly in dominant, amoral personalities such as Trump’s. It also creates a restless, hyperactive state of mind, which, when combined with a feeling of omnipotence, fosters the delusions that you can snap your fingers and sort every problem…”  Edsall comes to the following conclusion: “Over the past week, it felt as though Trump was even more intensely compelled to publicly announce his determination to dominate everything in sight, and anyone who wants to block him had better watch out…Perhaps most spectacularly, during a Jan. 7 interview with four Times reporters, Trump was asked if there were any limits on his global powers…He replied: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”…“I don’t need international law,” he added…Trump may think his own morality and his own mind are the only constraints on his otherwise limitless power, but if we are dependent on either — not to mention Trump’s sense of empathy, compassion or sympathy for the underdog — we are in deep trouble. The nation, the Western Hemisphere and the world at large need to figure out how to place restraints on this ethically vacuous president, or we will all suffer continued and ever-worsening damage.”

Trump’s health care “plan” is the same old nothing burger the GOP has been pushing for decades. As Jonathan Cohn explains in “Trump’s ‘Great Healthcare Plan’ Is Not Great. It’s Not Even a Plan” at The Bulwark: “DONALD TRUMP ON THURSDAY rolled out what he is calling “The Great Healthcare Plan” and the single most important thing to know about it is that it’s not really a plan…A real plan would have details and numbers, plus experts on standby to explain and defend it. It would reflect weeks of behind-the-scenes work, and represent the beginning of a serious, persistent effort to get a bill through Congress. That is not what the White House produced…The online summary is just 350 words and fits on a single printed page. The extended “fact sheet” clocks in at just 825 words. There are days Trump writes more than that in his posts on Truth Social…And it’s not like those 825 words are dense with policy substance. About a third is a summary of some modest—er, “historic”—executive actions Trump has already taken. The rest is a list of ideas either Trump or Republicans in Congress have endorsed before, with no guidance on the specifics that it would take to turn them into legislation….None of this is surprising. Trump has been promising to release plans for “great” health care throughout his two presidential terms, going back to the very first days of his initial campaign when he was launching his crusade to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “I am going to take care of everybody,” Trump boasted in a 2015 CBS News interview. “Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

“In the run-up to the new year,” Justin Vassalo writes in “Will Democrats Gain from MAGA’s Schism over Foreign Policy?” at The Liberal Patriot,”political observers were struck by the degree of public feuding in MAGA’s camp. Some even ventured that there are serious fissures in Donald Trump’s coalition, particularly over what constitutes “America First” and who is welcome among their tribe. Much of the drama, though, revolved around the Epstein files, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s stunning break with Trump, and the GOP’s internecine battles over the influence of extremist right-wing commentators like the antisemite Nick Fuentes—battles that hadn’t necessarily redounded to the Democrats’ benefit in the polls. The question as 2026 began was whether Democrats could find ways to exploit these growing discontents while maintaining their newfound focus on affordability…The potential fallout from the U.S. military’s audacious capture of Venezuela’s autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro, on January 3rd under Trump’s order (without consultation of Congress or a formal declaration of war) could soon embolden Democrats to challenge Trump on his own ideological terrain. So far, Trump’s decision—justified as fighting “narcoterrorism” but evidently motivated by personal animus and a stated desire to take control of Venezuela’s oil—has polled poorly with independents and reinforced the general public’s perception that Trump is increasingly divorced from their everyday concerns…While Trump has unabashedly declared he, as commander-in-chief, is bound only by his “own morality,” many Americans are certain to oppose this further concentration of executive power…And the ire that such an atavistic strategy is likely to elicit from voters fed up with military adventurism, endless wars of choice, and gargantuan, opaque defense budgets presents Democrats with a clear opportunity to cast Trump’s second term as a parade of betrayals. Perhaps more than any other event, the Maduro affair symbolizes the disjuncture between the issues that expanded Trump’s coalition in 2024 and a record that has already disenchanted his “soft” and “shy” supporters. At this precarious moment, Democrats shouldn’t hesitate to frame Trump’s gamble—a reversion to Cold War-style meddling liable to yield major and unanticipated consequences—as putting ordinary Americans dead last…Still, any Democratic strategy to confront the new Trump doctrine will only succeed if it extends beyond raw criticism. Democrats need to convey in no uncertain terms that voters are right to be angry with Washington’s endless policy capture, that their party will do everything to reassert powers Congress has virtually abdicated, and that they will renew the vision of prudent defense and domestic reinvestment that animated Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Above all, though, Democrats must map a path to security, peace, and prosperity that speaks, with conviction, to American ideals—and relieves the country of the folly and tragedy that have damaged America’s standing in the 21st century.” More here.

Bianca Quilantan and Josh Gerstein write that the “Supreme Court appears likely to uphold state transgender athlete bans” at Politico.”The Supreme Court seems poised to uphold state laws banning transgender women from women’s sports teams even though some justices signaled a reluctance Tuesday to issue a sweeping ruling that could reverberate beyond athletics or threaten states that require schools to accommodate transgender athletes…Conservative justices largely focused on how to apply the absolute transgender athlete bans in West Virginia and Idaho, neither of which have taken effect over the past several years. They took into consideration hormone suppression and mitigating biological advantages, age limitations for sex-separated athletics and whether they should toss the Idaho case due to mootness…“We have to decide for the whole country — constitutionalize this — given that half the states are allowing transgender girls and women to participate, about half are not,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said…Lawyers backing the West Virginia and Idaho bans asserted that they should be upheld because they truly impact only what they called a “tiny” number of people: transgender women and girls who have taken hormones to mitigate sex differences and who are seeking to play on women’s teams.” Democratic candidates actually have a tougher call to make than Supreme Court justices in their individual campaigns. In 2024 Elon Musk presented Trump with multi-million dollar funding of ads designed to portray Dems as excessively trans-friendly and allowing Republicans to parade around as the macho, straight male-friendly party. Some believe that the ads could have tilted the election toward Trump. Read on here.

Alexander Bolton reports that “Senate liberals tell colleagues to pivot to economic populism” at The Hill, and writes: “Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other Senate liberals are urging their Democratic colleagues to pivot to economic populism by “confronting” corporate power and billionaires, warning that just talking about affordability alone won’t move swing voters who backed President Trump in 2024…“There is clear consensus in our party for a relentless focus on affordability this year and beyond. We agree. But it would be a mistake to embrace an affordability agenda that fails to confront the billionaires and corporations making it impossible for hardworking Americans to achieve and afford a middle-class life,” they wrote…“Bland policy proposals — without a narrative explaining who is getting screwed and who is doing the screwing – will not work,” they warned…Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), two other outspoken progressives, also signed the memo to “interested Democrats.”…The Democrats cited a recent poll published by the Century Foundation of 1,426 registered voters that found that Americans increasingly cannot afford basic goods such as medical care and groceries and that people without college degrees are twice as likely to skip medication or a meal…And the survey found that voters across demographic groups believe corporations and the wealthy hold too much power and these voters overwhelmingly support policies that put money in the hands of working people…They wrote that working-class voters “see politicians — Republicans and Democrats — cozying up to those same corporations to line their own pockets rather than directly confronting corporate power.”…The senators argue that Americans are “demanding bold, populist economic policies — not just technocratic fixes at the edges — so that hard work is valued and rewarded.”…They argue that Trump’s “campaign of faux economic populism succeeded in 2024” but that it has failed to deliver on its promises to make basic goods and services more affordable, setting the stage for a “backlash” to his presidency and “laying the foundation for a large popular majority to wrestle government back from the billionaires and corporations.”

“Trump Tumbles With Middle-Class Voters,” Isabella Torregiania writes at knewz.com: “According to a The Economist/YouGov survey, support for Trump is slipping with middle-class Americans — those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 per year…The president’s net approval among this group fell consistently over three months: -10 in October with 43% approval and 53% disapproval, then -12 in November and -17 in December, when 40% approved and 57% disapproved…YouGov’s December poll found his net approval among working-class Americans earning less than $50,000 per year sank to -34, with just 31% approving and 65% disapproving…The findings show that confidence in the U.S. economy is falling, emphasizing Americans’ growing anxiety over living costs… While many Americans struggle with rising expenses, Trump continues to dismiss the affordability crisis…”The word ‘affordability’ is a con job by the Democrats,” he said last year…In December, a PBS News/NPR/Marist survey found 57% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s economic performance, while only 36% approve — the weakest rating he has received on this issue in either term…Financial stress is evident, with 70% of respondents reporting that their area is not affordable for the average family — a rise from 45% in June…Additional data from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also showed a drop in approval across other areas…By December, only 40% of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, a 10-point drop since March.”

From “Low Gas Prices Don’t Seem to be Moving the Needle for Trump—and He’s No Exception Historically” by Kyle Kondik at Sabato’s Crystal ball: “We calculated the correlation between real gas prices and presidential approval from 1977-2025. We found that there was a -.47 correlation between those two variables, so there is some negative correlation between higher gas prices and lower presidential approval…These are the same figures we found when we last looked at this in 2022. From the 1977-2011 timeframe, the correlation was -.52 and the r-squared was .27, meaning that the connection weakened a little when adding the last 15 or so years to the dataset…Part of what may be going on is that approval ratings just don’t move around very much these days. Presidents are often stuck in a narrow band that even big events don’t move much, so it stands to reason that even something important to most people’s daily lives, the price of gasoline, wouldn’t necessarily have much bearing on a president’s approval rating either…Trump’s own approval, in the low-to-mid 40s, has been fairly stable. These numbers are better now than they were at this time eight years ago (when his approval was just shy of 40% in polling averages). However, Trump also was generally around or over 45% for much of last year before dipping below that number a couple of months ago. Given the relatively stable price of gasoline over his first year in office—and the longer-term research laid out above that does not show much of a recent connection between gas prices and presidential approval—it does not seem like gas prices are having much of an effect on Trump’s approval.” Read more here.

Some insights from the Boston Review’s “Guns in the Family: A childhood steeped in guns shows that toxic masculinity and racism are at the heart of U.S. gun culture” by Walter Johnson, author of The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard: “The heady and uniquely American blend of martial culture, white paranoia, and toxic masculinity—which makes stories of so many U.S. families and childhoods illegible without guns—possesses an insistent teleology, a sense that all this perceived threat is leading us to someplace inevitable, a battlefield on which one will not stand a chance of surviving without a gun…When I hear the NRA people going on about how guns are just “tools,” I think, absolutely, you are right, guns are tools: tools for making emotionally stunted men feel whole; tools for guiding lonely boys along the bloody pathway to becoming violent men; tools for spreading the fearful fantasy of the coming race war; tools for enflaming urban areas in rural states, and making the argument for more cops and more prisons; tools for reproducing male dominance and white supremacy; tools for white male parthenogenesis…Until we deal with the admixture of toxic masculinity and white supremacy that produces such pornographic inequality; until we stop using armed police to guard the border between the haves and have-nots; until we recognize that imperial violence and police violence and school violence are related aspects of the same problem, we are going to keep producing killers.”

In her article, “Trump regrets not seizing voting machines after 2020 election loss” Anna Betts reports at The Guardian that “Donald Trump has said he regrets not getting the US national guard to seize voting machines after his 2020 election defeat ended his first presidency, as he continues to falsely claim that he won the race. But he has also questioned whether national guard troops would be “sophisticated enough” to pull something like that off…Trump made those remarks in an interview with the New York Times published on Sunday. The outlet had questioned him about a plan reportedly floated in late 2020, after he lost that year’s presidential election to Joe Biden, to seize voting machines in several key swing states in an effort to search for evidence of fraud…The Times reported that the idea was discussed during a December 2020 meeting in the Oval Office, where several of Trump’s advisers, including lawyer Sidney Powell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, reportedly urged him to use the military or federal authorities to seize Dominion voting machines in states where Trump baselessly claimed that voter fraud had occurred, with the aim of conducting a recount…According to reports published in 2022, the advisers even presented Trump with draft executive orders outlining how such a seizure could be carried out. One draft order, reported by Politico, reportedly referenced conspiracy theories about election fraud in Georgia and Michigan and would have ordered the defense secretary to “seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information, and material records required for retention under” a US election records law.” Betts adds, “Election integrity experts have said that the 2020 presidential race was the most secure to date. And dozens of legal challenges brought by Trump’s camp that sought to challenge the 2020 election failed.”

At Dissent, Carla Murphy writes in “Why We Need a Working-Class Media: What could the political effects be of a media that actually served working-class Americans?”: “In No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class, Christopher R. Martin shows how, since the late 1960s, journalism has practiced a “class-based redlining of the news audience” that effectively disappears working-class people and our communities. One result is that most readers today “would not learn much about the working class from the news media.”…when black writers talk about class issues, like student loan debt or the cost of higher education and housing, they’re typically presented in relation to black people only. This carve-out is facilitated by “racial disparity” data that support a single story: broad black–white comparisons rather than intra-class racial comparisons or intra-racial class comparisons. It’s not that the racial disparities formula isn’t relevant; it’s a truism that whatever goes wrong for white folks goes worse first, faster, and furthest for their black counterparts…And neither does it invite the class narratives of 40 million black and brown immigrants and their children. We hail from countries where class identity matters as much as race, ethnic, or religious identity…Just as black folks disengage from media that only makes room for black pain, the same can be said for the working class—particularly young people—watching one-dimensional representations of their lives…Demographic change and wealth inequality mean new stories about what it means to be working class are here. Let’s write them—on our terms.” More here.

Leading up to the 2024 elections, there was an undeniable trend of voters, as well as candidates, changing their allegiance from the Democratic Party to the Republicans. Among the 30 states that kept tabs on party registration, from 2020 to 2024 Democrats lost a bit more than 2 million registrants, while Republicans gained about 2.4 million on their registration rolls.

The trend was underscored by Trump’s win in the 2024 presidential election and amplified in numerous polls. Of course, party switching of any kind is more common among voters than candidates. Trump bagged a high profile Blue to Fred switcher in recruiting RFK, Jr. to serve as his Secretary of Health and Human Services, even though the switch was roundly denounced by the Kennedy family along with countless voters who admired his father.

Previously, Sen Arlen Specter (PA) was the most high-profile elected official to switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. But he was the exception and that was back in 2009. In that same year, the “Blue Dogs” caucus of conservative Democrats peaked at 54 members, but then lost members in the next three congressional elections. The years between then and 2025 have featured a steady stream of voters favoring Republicans. (for a comprehensive count of prominent party-switchers in American history, check out this list)

But now there are reasons to believe that the trend is beginning to flip in favor of Democrats. “In the second quarter of 2025, an average of 46% of U.S. adults identified as Democrats or said they are independents who lean toward the Democratic Party, while 43% identified as Republicans or said they lean Republican,” Jeffrey M. Jones reports at Gallup. In 2026, there are two high-profile Democratic candidates who were formerly Republicans: Geoff Duncan, a former Republican congressman and Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, who is running for Governor of Georgia; and George Conway, attorney and political commentator who is running for congress in NY-12. If both of these candidates are defeated, they will be considered political anomalies. If they are elected, they will be hailed as political visionaries, who saw the future before less-bright Republicans caught on. If one wins and the other loses, call it a split decision, which may or may not inspire more flippage.

In any case, both Duncan and Conway should be credited as candidates of conscience, former Republicans who decided that the GOP has become a corrupt personality cult, swamped by greed, callousness and hypocrisy. If elected, Conway and/or Duncan will also diversify the Democratic Party as proponents of conservative philosophy and strengthen the hand of centrists in American politics, as well as in the Democratic Party.

Benjamin Guggenheim reports that “9 Republicans back Dem effort to revive Obamacare subsidies: The vote put House Republicans on the record for the first time this Congress on the enhanced tax credits that expired at the end of last year” at Politico: “Nine House Republicans broke rank Wednesday in support of advancing a Democratic bill that would revive key Obamacare subsidies for three years — a move that sets up a final passage vote Thursday that will for the first time this Congress put members of the House GOP Conference on the record for or against the enhanced tax credits…House members voted 221-205 — with all Democrats voting in favor — to move forward with a Democratic-led discharge petition to force consideration of the legislation against the explicit wishes of Speaker Mike Johnson…The Louisiana Republican for months refused to put a bill on the floor to prevent the credits from ultimately expiring Dec. 31, citing divisions within the GOP ranks over the policy but also criticizing the credits himself…Lack of movement prompted four vulnerable House GOP moderates — Rep. Mike Lawler of New York and Reps. Robert Bresnahan, Brian Fitzpatrick and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania — to provide the four necessary signatures late last year, allowing the Democrats’ discharge effort to now proceed…These Republican centrists fear the political ramifications of allowing the subsidies to remain lapsed in the face of spiking insurance premiums in an election year. All four voted to move ahead with the legislation Wednesday, alongside GOP Reps. María Elvira Salazar of Florida, Nick LaLota of New York, David Valadao of California, Thomas Kean of New Jersey and Max Miller of Ohio…Democrats applauded as the gavel went down to close the vote…The bill stands no chance of passage in the Senate, where there aren’t 60 votes to overcome the filibuster. But a bipartisan group of senators continues to meet in hopes of reaching a compromise agreement to extend the subsidies alongside some modest policy changes.”

“Democrats romp to victory in Virginia special elections,” Emily Singer reports at Daily Kos: “Tuesday night brought fresh evidence that a blue wave is building for the 2026 midterm elections, after Democrats won a pair of special elections for vacant state legislative seats in Virginia. In each election, Democrats improved on the margins won by former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election…Democrat Mike Jones won the state Senate seat vacated by Lt. Gov.-elect Ghazala Hashmi. Jones defeated Republican John Thomas, 70% to 30%, marking an 8-percentage-point improvement on Harris’ performance in 2024, according to VoteHub…Democrats also notched an 8-point overperformance in a Richmond-based House of Delegates district, where Democrat Charlie Schmidt defeated Republican Richard Stonage Jr. 79% to 20%, according to VoteHub…Consistently overperforming in special elections is a good sign that a party is set to do well in the next general election…In special elections during the 2025-26 cycle, Democrats overperformed Harris’ margin by an average of 13.3%, according to data collected by The Downballot. That’s higher than the 10.6% average overperformanceDemocrats notched ahead of the 2018 midterms, when the party went on to easily retake control of the House…Democrats’ strong performances in special elections have spooked Republicans, who are sounding alarm bells about the 2026 midterms. In fact, the chair of the Republican National Committee has publicly said his party will likely lose.”

At SCOTUSblog, David Boies shares his thoughts with 25 years perspective on the highly controversial and consequential Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore in 2001, the 25th anniversary of which was recently marked, alongside the 5th anniversary of the January 6th insurrection: As Boies, who represented Vice President Gore, explains: “In 2000, the Democratic candidate (Al Gore) received 48.4% of the popular vote, and the Republican candidate (George W. Bush) received 47.9%. In the days following the election, it was agreed that Gore had won 266 electoral votes, Bush had won 246, and Florida’s 25 votes were disputed. Bush led Gore in Florida by 537 votes. In close elections, Florida law provided for manual recounts to confirm “the intent of the voter.” This was especially important in the many Florida counties that still used old punch-card machines, which were notoriously error prone…On Thursday, Dec. 7, after a partial recount of four counties and full briefing, Barry Richards, representing Bush, and I, representing Gore, argued before the Florida Supreme Court. In its decision the following evening, that court agreed with me that certain votes that had been cast on time but excluded by Florida’s Republican secretary of state as recounted too late should be counted. This reduced Bush’s lead to less than 200 votes. The Florida Supreme Court also agreed with me that the entire state should be recounted. That court, however, rejected my argument that it should give the local canvassing boards guidance as to how to interpret Florida’s “intent of the voter” standard, appearing to accept Barry’s argument that the historical discretion accorded to the local boards had to be respected…The recount commenced the following morning, and by shortly after noon on Saturday, it was on schedule (with the possible exception of one county where the Republican canvassing board members refused to show up) to be completed by Sunday evening…During Saturday morning, Bush’s margin continued to decrease, and Gore believed the recount would soon show him narrowly ahead. I was less certain, but hopeful…However, on Saturday afternoon, five Republican members of the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Florida to stop counting the votes. The five justices acted without a hearing or briefs on the merits. They gave no explanation as to what, if anything, was improper. The only explanation for stopping the vote count in mid-stream was given by Justice Antonin Scalia: if the vote count showed Gore winning and the court later invalidated it, Bush (and the court) would look bad.”

Boies continues, “True enough. But obscuring the consequences of government action has never been seen as an appropriate goal in a free society. The four remaining justices (two Republicans, two Democrats) filed a bitter dissent…Gore and his whole team were shocked. For the first time in our nation’s history, the court was intervening to affect a presidential election. And it was doing so without a hearing – and without giving any explanation as to what error, if any, it believed was occurring…Three days later, at 10:00 p.m. EST on Dec. 12, after accelerated briefing and oral argument before the court by me on behalf of Gore, Ted Olson on behalf of Bush, and Joseph Klock on behalf of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the same five justices held that Florida’s recount violated the equal protection clause because different canvassing boards interrupted the intent of the voter, making it more likely that a vote would be counted differently in some counties compared to others…The court further held that since Florida could not now complete a recount by the Dec. 12 “safe harbor” date, no further recount would take place. The majority ignored the procedures of the 1877 Act for resolving just such electoral college disputes… The four dissenting justices pointed out that the majority’s opinion was inconsistent with precedent, the rule of law, and the record below; that the federal issues were not substantial; that the court should never have taken the case in the first place; and that Dec. 12 was not a final date, and Florida, not federal judges, should choose whether Florida’s historical right to a recount outweighed any benefits of the safe harbor…The issue was not whether manual recounts to determine the interest of the voter were a good idea (a question that can reasonably be debated). The issue was whether, in the middle of an election, the Supreme Court would change the rules Florida had followed for a century (and that 35 other states followed, as well)…Although widely criticized by both conservative and liberal legal scholars, the initial public reaction was somewhat muted. People did not take to the streets. No shots were fired. No troops were needed. No bargains cut…In a gracious concession speech, Gore accepted the court’s decision and pledged his support for Bush as president. In his capacity as vice president presiding over the Senate’s count of the electoral votes, he even overruled objections to Florida’s slate of Republican electors.” More here.

“After a slew of wins in November, Democrats are entering 2026 feeling hopeful and ready to take back the House come midterm season,” Douglas Schoen and Carly Cooperman write in “Democrats are poised to take the House, but don’t expect a blue wave” at The Hill. “And while they’ll likely do just that, the looming idea of a 2018-style blowout seems to be getting further and further out of reach… To be sure, conditions certainly favor Democrats: historical trends, increasing frustration with the Trump administration and encouragement from the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia all point to a Democratic majority in the lower chamber…That said, it is critical not to overstate the depth of this so-called blue wave; while it may resemble 2018 at first glance, the simple fact is that it will be essentially impossible for Democrats to flip 40 seats as they did on that occasion…Indeed, the battlefield appears to be smaller than ever before. Thanks to partisan gerrymandering, once-competitive districts have now become easy targets that fundamentally prevent a truly massive seat haul from actually panning out…Looking back to 2018, about three-quarters of the seats that Democrats flipped were in the competitive zone where President Trump had won by less than 5 points. This time around, the competitive zone is not nearly as populated. There are only 14 Republican-held toss-up seats, so a 40-seat pickup should be barred from Democrats’ expectations altogether.” See also Ed Kilgore’s “A Democratic Wave Would Be Nice in 2026. But a Ripple Will Do” at New York magazine, via The Democratic Strategist.

Many New York lefties are still enjoying a sugar-high in the wake of Mayor Mamdani’s inauguration. In  San Francisco, the other city often bashed for its ultra-progressive political culture, however, a very different story is taking shape. At Politico, Dustin Gardiner writes in “As Mamdani rises in New York, San Francisco turns away from the left” that, “If Zohran Mamdani represents the rise of progressive politics in America, San Francisco is fast becoming the deflating counterpoint for the left…It isn’t just that liberal lion Nancy Pelosi is on her way out or that moderate Democrats, backed by wealthy tech investors, have trounced the left in election after election over the last five years. It’s that San Francisco progressives who have been lost in a fog here — paying the price for voters’ frustrations over street conditions, homelessness and a drug addiction epidemic — have seen liberals in another big city suddenly supplant them…“The takeover is classic: San Francisco is the jewel in the crown of the crypto and tech industries,” vented Aaron Peskin, a progressive former president of the Board of Supervisors who lost last year’s mayoral election. “They want this to be the symbolic elite tech capital of the world.”…In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie, an heir to the billion-dollar Levi Strauss fortune, has focused on austerity measures, beefing up policing, reviving a hollowed-out downtown core and supporting the booming artificial-intelligence industry.” Calling San Francisco “a lefty caricature and punching bag for conservatives, pundits and politicians on the right,” Gardiner quotes leading local Democrat on the changes underway on the left coast: “The message is you can take things too far,” said Nancy Tung, chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party and a moderate who’s helped lead the city’s centrist shift. She added, “Don’t expect that voters won’t notice forever.”…Tech investors have outsize influence in San Francisco, a city of less than than 850,000 people where a few million dollars can blanket the local airwaves with ads…Silicon Valley interests have poured tens of millions of dollars into San Francisco elections over the last five years, often propelling messages about the city’s pandemic decline and blaming progressives for crime in the city…,The contrast in San Francisco is glaring: After years of progressives gaining power, voters in 2022 recalled progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin and three school board members who had pushed to rename public schools even as classrooms remained empty during the pandemic. Moderates then won a majority on the city’s Board of Supervisors, including ousting socialist Supervisor Dean Preston in a district that includes the Haight Ashbury, one of the city’s liberal enclaves.”

On this anniversary of the January 6th insurrection/riot it seems appropriate to share the description of this event by the person who conducted the most thorough investigation of it. Read former Special Counsel “Jack Smith’s Closing Argument” at The New Yorker, shared by Ruth Marcus, in which she quotes Smith: “…the evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit. So in terms of why we would pursue a case against him, I entirely disagree with any characterization that our work was in any way meant to hamper him in the Presidential election. I would never take orders from a political leader to hamper another person in an election. That’s not who I am…If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today,” he said, “I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat” Smith has conducted investigations of Democrats, as well as Republicans throughout his career. Marcus adds, “Smith’s deposition was, in all likelihood, as close as he will get to making a closing argument. It marks, most likely, the unsatisfying conclusion of an unsatisfying episode, one that underscored the limitations of the criminal-justice system in dealing with a lawless President.”

Some insights from “Unsolicited advice for Democrats” by Jonathan P. Baird at the Concord Monitor: “It is not enough to simply be defined as against Donald Trump and his fascist regime. Democrats need a more affirmative identity…We have been losing elections with regularity, but I have not seen much soul-searching. Now the Democratic leaders hope to win with only minor adjustments…It is past time for Democrats to develop a far more progressive, economic populist identity. The billionaire class is buying elections like they would any commodity. We need a vision that can attract the American majority. The pieces of this vision should not be any great mystery but I will suggest some policy planks: Medicare for all. It is wildly popular and needed especially as we watch the disappearance of Obamacare subsidies, which will devastate 24 million people and make health care unaffordable. Universal health care is exactly the kind of value Democrats should embrace enthusiastically…Expanding the Supreme Court. Democrats should push to add four seats to the U.S. Supreme Court. That Court has been corrupted and it has acted like a tool of the Republican Party. Nothing prevents Congress from changing the number of seats on the Court. As currently embodied, Democrats can expect the Court to veto any legislation that helps the majority of the American people, just as it did when Biden was president…Democrats need to create a far more welcoming approach to all working people and we should get away from the snobbiness, disdain and moral judgmentalism that has characterized many college-educated Democrats. Politics is a game of addition, not subtraction. I think anger at Trump voters is stupid…The sociologist C. Wright Mills once wrote about “crackpot realism” and how ruling circles indulged in that type of thinking. That is exactly the kind of thinking too many Democrats indulge. Even if masses of people hate what the Trump regime is doing, there is no guarantee they will vote for Democrats. The Democrats need to give the people reasons to vote for them…”