Your sobering thought for the week comes from “Third Party Spoilers Are the Whole Deal, People” by Josh Marshall, editor of Talking Points Memo, who writes, “For all the arguing and analyzing and prognosticating about the 2020 presidential race I am surprised how little attention has been given to what may or I think likely will play the biggest role in the outcome: third party candidates…One of the truths about the 2016 election is that Donald Trump didn’t do any better in 2016 than Mitt Romney did in 2012 if you’re looking at the percentage of total votes cast. Indeed, he did significantly worse. Romney won 47.2% of the national vote while Trump won 46.1%. Electoral votes count, not popular votes. And that was Trump’s critical advantage. But it’s really the unusually high 5.7% of the vote going to three third party candidates — Gary Johnson, Jill Stein and Evan McMullin — that made it possible for Trump to win as a minority candidate.” Marshall addds that Trump “really, really needs the presence of spoiler candidates to pull the contest down into the mid-40s where it was in 2016. I’d never say never. But I think there’s a good argument that a significant third party/spoiler candidacy — or ideally more than one — are the necessary predicate of Trump’s reelection.”

In his post, “The End of the Filibuster May Loom,” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Hunter Brown writes, “In 2017, when Republicans had full control of both Congress and the presidency, the party lacked any legislative priorities requiring a filibuster-proof majority. Their two main initiatives, repeal of the Affordable Care Act and a tax cut package, both could be passed with 51 votes through the reconciliation process (the ACA repeal couldn’t win a majority in the Senate but the tax cuts passed). Thus, eliminating the legislative filibuster would not have advantaged them…Democrats, eager to pass, among other things, gun control measures, legislation expanding voting rights, and immigration reform, may practically need the elimination of the filibuster to accomplish these and other major goals. Thus, with an ambitious agenda and little chance at 60 seats, the next time Democrats enjoy full control, they very well may pull the trigger and put an end to the filibuster forever…Ironically, while it takes 60 votes to kill a filibuster, it would only take 51 to stop filibusters forever, as it could be changed as a part of the Senate rules, which only requires majority support, every two years.”

From Geoffrey Skelley’s “Who Will Make The Third Democratic Debate (And Who Could Miss It)” at FiveThirtyEight: Time is running out for Democratic candidates to make the third presidential primary debate in September. There are about two weeks left to qualify, and because of the debate’s higher thresholds, it’s likely that there won’t be 20 candidates — although the debate may still span two nights. Nine candidates have already qualified by our count, and a handful of others could also make it. (In previous debates, the Democratic National Committee capped the stage at 10 participants each night, but it hasn’t yet specified what it will do for the third debate.)..However, it is unlikely that the debate field will grow much beyond 12 or 13 candidates, as it’s much harder to qualify this time than it was for the previous two debates. Not only do candidates have to meet both the polling and donor requirements, but they also must meet higher thresholds. To qualify, candidates must attract at least 2 percent support in four qualifying national or early-state polls released between June 28 and Aug. 28, and they must also have 130,000 unique donors (including at least 400 individual donors in at least 20 states).”

Meanwhile, at CNN Politics, Chris Cillizza explains how “How failed presidential candidates could hold the key to a Democratic Senate majority in 2020.” Cillizza writes that “candidates like former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock are not, well, prospering in their presidential bids at the moment…It seems unlikely that any of that trio — with the possible exception of O’Rourke, although even that looks like a long shot now — is going to have their desired arc to the top of the presidential field. BUT, all three of them would be absolutely top-tier Senate recruits for Democrats trying to build momentum for a push to the majority next fall. (Senate Democrats need to pick up four seats to retake the majority if they win back the White House and five seats if Trump gets reelected.)…Senate Democrats are content to wait — for now. The deadline for a candidate to file to run for the US Senate in Texas isn’t until December — and in Colorado and Montana it’s not until next year. So there’s time.”

At New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait warns that “Russian Election Hacking in 2020 Could Easily Be Much Worse Than 2016,” and he reports, “The Senate report notes that while Russians did not breach voting machines in 2016, they scoped out the defenses in all 50 states. One expert told the committee that Russia was “conducting the reconnaissance to do the network mapping, to do the topology mapping, so that you could actually understand the network, establish a presence, so you could come back later and actually execute an operation…Even more alarming than the implied weaknesses in the voting system is the political context in which they exist. President Trump has frequently either minimized or outright denied Russia’s culpability in the 2016 email hacks (which Trump himself was exploiting at the time). The benign explanation is that the president is merely hypersensitive about the legitimacy of his election. But this fails to explain why Trump also refuses to accept intelligence about Russia’s plans to interfere in the next one…The vulnerabilities of the U.S. voting system certainly furnish Putin with an inviting target. The response, or nonresponse, to the Russian threat by both the administration and the Senate gives us two important pieces of information about a prospective Russian attack. The first is that a hack is more likely to succeed this time around. The insistent passivity of both the administration and the Senate has undermined responses at both the executive and legislative levels.

”Chait adds, “What seems clear is that Russia has incentive to act and that such an operation stands at least some chance of succeeding, given that it can go after voting machines almost anywhere and needs to succeed with only a handful of them in order to change the outcome. Every swing state has one or more large cities with a massive concentration of Democratic votes. Tampering with or disabling the vote count in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee, for instance, could throw the election to Trump outright or create the conditions for a disputed result. Either outcome would dovetail with Moscow’s goals of discrediting the democratic process as a sham and keeping Trump in office. This is the dynamic that has preoccupied most coverage of and commentary about the issue.”

Also at FiveThirtyEight, Nathaniel Rakich reports that “The Movement To Skip The Electoral College May Take Its First Step Back.” As Rakich explains: “In March, the state of Colorado handed a historic win to opponents of the Electoral College by becoming the first purple state to sign on to the National Popular Vote interstate compact. Next November, however, it could make history yet again by becoming the first state to renege on the agreement…the compact only goes into effect once states worth 270 electoral votes (a majority in the Electoral College) have joined, thus ensuring that its signatories have enough electoral votes to guarantee that the national popular vote winner becomes president. Currently, 15 states plus the District of Columbia, together worth 196 electoral votes, have ratified the compact…Four of those states, including Colorado, joined the National Popular Vote movement just this year.” However, “opponents in Colorado were upset enough about its passage that they are now actively trying to repeal the law. Earlier this month, the organization Coloradans Vote said it submitted more than 227,198 signatures to the Colorado secretary of state in an effort to subject the law to voter referendum in the 2020 election. With that number of signatures, chances are very good it will make the ballot, making it the first time voters in any state will vote directly on the National Popular Vote compact.

“Rakich continues, “The only poll about the National Popular Vote law I could find in Colorado was a March survey from Republican pollster Magellan Strategies that found 47 percent of likely 2020 voters would vote to affirm the National Popular Vote law and 47 percent would vote to repeal it. However, even if those numbers are too rosy for the repeal effort, I would still expect support for the law to decrease as opponents prosecute the case against the National Popular Vote, so even a lead of, say, 10 points (akin to the national breakdown) would not be secure. This could be one of the most closely watched ballot measures of the 2020 cycle…Nationally, 53 percent of Americans said the popular vote should determine the president, and 43 percent said the Electoral College should, according to an April/May NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Unsurprisingly, given that almost every state government to pass the National Popular Vote compact was completely controlled by Democrats, there is a wide partisan gap on the question: 79 percent of Democrats preferred the popular vote, while 74 percent of Republicans favored the Electoral College.”

You’ve read the arguments for Medicare for All, and you appreciate the inclusiveness of the proposal, note the success of it in many other countries and believe the economies of scale it would provide make it the most cost-effective system for the U.S. But you are also familiar with the reality that polls indicate millions of voters are happy with their private health insurance and a public option system is a much easier sell.

But if you are wondering if there is a range of policies in between these two choices, read “Here’s how we can have ‘Medicare for all‘ with a private option” by Dr. Thomas Bodenheimer, professor emeritus at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and co-author of “Understanding Health Policy.” Bodenheimer shares some recent data points:

According to CNN 2018 exit polls 41 percent of voters named health care as their most important issue. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 56 percent of the public supports “Medicare for all,” but 74 percent wants to keep their existing insurance. Seventy-seven percent, including 69 percent of Republicans, favor allowing everyone to choose Medicare as their health insurance.

When asked which health-care legislation Congress should focus on, 52 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leading independents chose improving the Affordable Care Act versus 39 percent picking Medicare for all.

Of course most such polling data is profoundly influenced by the phrasing of questions. But Bodenheimer’s data does suggest that many Americans are ambivalent about picking one with wholesale rejection of the other option. As a political junkie, I favor the public option, politics being the art of the possible and all that. But do we really have to pick one and ditch the other? Like Peggy Lee asked, ‘Is that all there is?’

Bodenheimer says no, “These seemingly opposing stances can be reconciled with a united front for health care. A united front means that progressives and moderates put aside their differences for now.” I doubt it’s as simplistic as ‘progressive vs. moderates’ — lots of progressives favor the public option, and I’m sure there are some moderates who have eperienced economic ruin because of crappy private health insurance, and are way ready for Medicare for All.

Bodenheimer cites three principles of a middle way forward:

1) Providing immediate relief from the burden of health-care costs

2) Over time, offering an improved Medicare to all Americans

3) Allowing people to keep their private health insurance – the “private option.” Most urgent is health-care cost relief.

Bodenheimer cites compelling data illustrating the unacceptable costs of halth care policy paralysis – skyrocketing premiums, the heavy burden of deductables and endless out-of-pocket expenses. Then there is sdrug company price gouging, coverage shortfalls in Medicare etc. He acknowledges that “any Medicare for all plan must improve Medicare to reduce the bills that Medicare patients have to pay themselves.” Further,

If the Medicare age went down from 65 to 55, we would receive a Medicare card shortly after our 55th birthday. Or Medicare might automatically cover children under 18. Over time, everyone would receive a Medicare card in the mail. We would have the private option. But we would be insured from the moment we are born until the day we die.

The details of financing must be debated. A couple of things might be important. First, to keep taxes down, employers whose employees choose Medicare should pay into Medicare the same amount that they were paying for those employees’ private insurance. Otherwise, employers would save a lot of money at taxpayers’ expense

Second, the social security contributions employers and employees pay to support Medicare would rise, especially for higher-income people. When we are young and healthy, we pay so that when we become old and sick, we benefit.

It’s not hard to envision widespread support for all of those approaches. You could also chuck into the mix catastropic coverage for all, with a public option approach for preventative and maintenance care. It’s not an either/or choice, unless that’s all that makes it to floor votes in the House and Senate.

As Bodenheimer concludes, “If Democrats win the White House and Congress, a transition to Medicare for all with the private option becomes possible. In the meantime, Democrats need to come together in a united front that can defeat Donald Trump and relieve people’s suffering from health-care costs.”

Medicare for All advocates Sens. Sanders and Warren surely know this, as does former V.P. Biden and the improve Obamacare and public option supporters. But they also know they have to strongly argue one or the other to push the debate. So far it’s working well, with the side benefit of revealing how utterly bankrupt the Republicans are in terms of both morals and ideas for health care reform.

Democratic candidates have been pretty passive about promoting their party, which may help explain  why the party underperforms in polls. The thinking of too many Democratic candidates at all levels seems to be something like “The party doesn’t do well in polls, so I won’t talk about it much. I’ll just emphasize my individual accomplishments and bash Republicans.” But it’s not enough to assume, for example, that everyone knows Democrats have spearheaded the charge for needed economic reforms, such as a minimum wage increase. Dems should say, again and again that they, almost alone, have passed minimum wage bills across America over strident GOP opposition. At U.S. News, Susan Milligan reports that “A recent economic journal paper – considered the most comprehensive modern look at the impact of state and local minimum wage increases – analyzes 138 minimum wage increases over the past five years. The result? Pretty much what the proponents intended, says Arindrajit Dube, a professor at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst and one of the study’s authors.“..What we found was these policies have the intended consequence of raises wages at the bottom” of the income scale and “have some degree of spillover beyond the minimum wage,” since other employers tend to hike their own wages when the minimum wage increases…“ Brag more, Dems, about your party’s leadership, not just your own. That’s one way we can improve the party’s image.

Mueller is done, but Democratic presidential candidates, and perhaps all Democratic candidates and political reporters should read “Here Are the Questions a Shrink Would Have Asked Mueller: Three psychiatrists analyzed the Mueller Report to assess the president’s soundness of mind. Their conclusion: This is a national emergency” by Bandy X. Lee, Edwin B. Fisher, And Leonard L. Glass at The Daily Beast. The shrinks are the authors of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” and their questions open up some critical concerns for further consideration. The last question, in particular, hits the core concern squarely: “5) As a prosecutor, do you see a nexus between the president’s hate speech and danger to others as targets of his rhetoric?” Read the questions and answers for some useful insights regarding how to discuss Trump’s mental health.

Next time somebody gives you the old “Congress is bought off by the NRA” false equivalence routine, just show them this list of 178 co-sponsors of H.R. 5087, the 2018 bill to ban assault-style weapons, 177 of whom are Democrats.

Also check out “Here’s where every 2020 candidate stands on guns: The candidates agree on universal background checks and an assault weapons ban. There’s less agreement on other proposals” by German Lopez at Vox. Lopez notes, “President Donald Trump, for his part, doesn’t seem interested in much. He has supported a federal red flag law, which would allow police to take away someone’s guns if there’s some proof of a risk of violence (a “red flag”). But on other measures, from universal background checks to an assault weapons ban, Trump and Republican lawmakers have resisted, instead talking up questionable connections between violence, mental illness, and violent media…Democratic candidates, however, have taken more comprehensive stances on guns. For the most part, they’re sticking to common Democratic themes like universal background checks, an assault weapons ban (which is typically paired with a ban on high-capacity magazines), and federally funded research into gun violence. But the campaigns’ plans do include some new ideas here and there — including red flag laws, which campaigns ranging from Cory Booker’s to John Delaney’s back, and requiring a license to buy and own a gun, which Booker in particular brought to the presidential stage but others, like Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, also support.” Lopez provides more details on the positions of each candidate.

“The overwhelming majority of Americans see felon disenfranchisement as the cruel, pointless and counterproductive punishment that it is. It serves no purpose other than to prevent millions of Americans from more fully participating in society. That’s why many states have loosened or gotten rid of their felon disenfranchisement laws in recent years. Vermont and Maine have gone even further, allowing people in prison to vote — as is the case in most European countries. Last time we checked, all are still functioning democracies. — A choice paragraph from the NYT editorial, “Why Are Florida Republicans So Afraid of People Voting?“

In other voter suppression news, you may have missed “New Hampshire’s Republican governor just vetoed a bipartisan redistricting commission” by Danielle McLean at Think Progress. Among her observations: “New Hampshire’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed a bipartisan bill Friday that would have allowed an independent redistricting committee to redraw the state’s legislative and congressional district maps in 2021 and beyond…The veto is just the latest sign that Republican Party leaders want to control the map-making process and preserve a system that allowed them to racially and politically gerrymander at historic proportions in several GOP-controlled states the last time district lines were redrawn in 2011…While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled this year that federal courts do not have the power to decide partisan gerrymandering cases, a growing number of states have established independent commissions to draw district maps in a non-partisan manner. New Hampshire would have joined eight other states to have established such a commission…Under the current system, New Hampshire’s legislature, which is currently controlled by Democrats, is responsible for drawing up the state’s political lines. The governor has the ability to veto or approve any maps.”

McLean continues, “Heading into 2021, Republicans appear poised to once again gerrymander and leave the process up to the lawmakers themselves…Next week, the shadowy group that crafts far-right legislation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, at its annual meeting in Austin, Texas, will host a pair of closed-door workshops teaching state lawmakers the basics of ‘redistricting.’ Government watchdog groups warn those panels will in reality teach them how to gerrymander and pair them with the mapmakers that can help them draw partisan lines…Last year, ALEC created a model resolution that reaffirmed “the right of state legislatures to determine electoral districts” instead of the courts…And former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) — who helped usher Wisconsin’s extreme gerrymandered districts in 2011 and is now leading the GOP’s redistricting efforts in 2021 as the finance chair of the National Republican Redistricting Trust — has also claimed that rural residents should be counted more than urban residents when the maps are drawn.”

Nate Silver shares a revealing chart in his post, “Forget ‘Lanes.’ The Democratic Primary Is A Whole Freaking Transit System” at FiveThirtyEight:

It probably won’t break your heart that the “Owner of SoulCycle and the Miami Dolphins faces outrage and calls for boycott over Trump fundraiser,” as Brian Ries reports at CNN Politics. What it ought to do is gladden the hearts of, not just Democrats, but every sentient being who cares about American democracy and human decency.

As Ries, writes,

Real estate developer Stephen Ross — who is chairman and majority owner of the Related Companies, which oversees Equinox Fitness — will host a luncheon on Friday, according to the invitation, at which attendees will pay up to $100,000 for a picture with the President and $250,000 to listen in on a roundtable discussion.

The Washington Post first reported the fundraiser, sparking the outrage. The news didn’t sit well with some people who frequent the gym, who assailed it as supporting a President whose inflammatory rhetoric and policies targeting people of color are out of sync with the gym’s progressive and oftentimes famous clientele.

Related Companies Chairman Stephen Ross tried to minimize his suport of Trump, parroting a lot of yada yada about his embrace of diversity etc. But hosting and organizing a Trump fund-raiser is a lot worse than writing Trump’s campaign a check, which alone would merit a progressive boycott.

For too long, Democrats have forfeited one of their most potentially powerful tools for social and economic progress — economic withdrawall. However, we live in a political climate that allows the Republican President of the U.S. and members of his administration to boycott congressional subpoenas and refuse all requests for information. The Republican Senate Majority Leader also feels free to unilaterally stonewall all progressive legislation and prevent meetings and hearings with a Democratic president’s nominee to the U. S. Supreme Court. Isn’t it time for Democratic rank and file to leverage their dormant power as consumers to achieve needed reforms?

Yes, boycotts are problematic. For one thing, it’s important to make sure that affected labor unions are OK with it. And it’s tough to get a critical mass of awakened consumers mobilized enough to have an effect.

But, you know what is even more problematic? Funding politicians who actively promote racism,  bigotry and white supremacy. Also, Democrats bankrolling a presidential campaign that would screw millions of Americans who have serious health problems, and cheat hard-working Americans of all races out of a living wage. Progressives Financing a reckless president to deny the climate crisis and grease the skids for polluting industries is also a big problem.

The way it is now, the GOP’s sugar daddies get a free ride. They support Trump’s worst initiatives with their hefty contributions, while paying no price whatsoever in term of public opinion. The day that this free ride comes to a halt is the day that American democracy will be renewed and energized. It’s a challenge that must be met by progressive consumers, as well as voters.

Steve Rosenthal addresses a question of critical consequence at The American Prospect: “Will Trump Steal a March on Democrats in the Midwest? It’s time for Democrats to begin their ground game in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.” As Rosenthal writes, “If you want to talk about “winnability,” let’s note how all three of these states are winnable for Democrats next year. Until 2016, Democratic presidential candidates had carried each of these states in every election since 1992. Have the demographics or voting patterns in each of them changed in such a way that makes them unwinnable for Democrats? Not at all. Hillary Clinton lost Michigan by just 10,704 votes, out of 4.8 million cast; she lost Pennsylvania by 44,292, out of 6.1 million cast; and she lost Wisconsin by just 22,748, out of 3.0 million cast. For those of you doing the math, Clinton lost these three states by approximately 78,000 votes, out of more than 13.9 million cast, and her campaign largely neglected all three states.

“Rosenthal continues, “In 2018, however, statewide Democratic candidates stormed to victory in all three states—gubernatorial nominees won by a collective margin of more than 1.2 million votes. By no means, then, are the “big three” moving away from the party, despite their 2016 results. If Democrats do their work right, and begin now, they can lock these states down, denying Trump a path to victory.” However, Rosenthal adds, “But while Democrats are having this debate over vague ideas about electability, Trump’s campaign, which has already raised $124 million, is actively engaging voters in all three of these states. Trump has visited each of them this year and his campaign has been spending huge amounts of money on digital ads there. And yet the latest Morning Consult tracking poll showed Trump’s approval rating under water in Michigan (40 percent), Pennsylvania (44 percent), and Wisconsin (42 percent)…The Democrats’ path to victory in all three states is clear. First and foremost, Democrats must turn out large numbers of voters of color; their drop-off in 2016 doomed Clinton in Michigan (where minority turnout fell by 12.4 percentage points from 2012) and Wisconsin (down by 12.3 percentage points). Next, they must keep in their column the suburban, exurban, and white working-class voters who went from voting for Obama in 2012, to Trump in 2016, then back to the Democratic gubernatorial candidates in 2018.”

E. J. Dionne, Jr. makes it clear in his syndicated WaPo column, “On guns and white nationalism, one side is right and one is wrong“: As Dionne writes, “In pursuit of a mythical middle ground, the faint-hearted will counsel against calling out the moral culpability of those who divide, deflect and evade. Meanwhile, the rationalizers of violence will continue to claim that only troubled individuals, not our genuinely insane gun policies, are responsible for waves of domestic terrorism that bring shame on our country before the world…But sane gun laws are the middle ground, and most gun ownerssupport them. Opposing the political exploitation of racism is a moral imperative. And refusing to acknowledge that only one side in this debate seeks intentionally to paralyze us is the path of cowardice.”

From “The Left Needs a Language Potent Enough to Counter Trump: The president’s rhetoric is dangerously populist in nature, and the left doesn’t know how to fight it.”  by George Packer at The Atlantic: “…The language of the contemporary left is anti-populist. Its vocabulary, much of it taken from academia, is the opposite of accessible—it has to be decoded and learned. Terms such as centered, marginalized, intersectional, non-binary, and Eurocentric gender discipline separate outsiders from insiders—that’s part of their intent, as is the insistence on declaring one’s personal pronouns and showing an ability to use them accordingly. Even common words like ally and privilege acquire a resonance that takes them out of the realm of ordinary usage, because the point of this discourse is to create a sense of special virtue. The language of the left also demands continuous refreshing and can change literally overnight: A writer is told that the phrase born male is no longer okay to use and has to be replaced with assigned male at birth. Many of these changes happen by ambush—suddenly and irrevocably, with no visible trail of discussion and decision, and with quick condemnation of holdouts—which gives them a powerful mystique…The language of the left creates a hierarchy of those who get it and those who don’t. Mastering the vocabulary is a way of signaling entry into a select world of the knowing and the just. The system is closed—there’s an internal logic that can be accepted or rejected but isn’t open to argument or question. In this sense, though much of the language of the left has academic origins, its use in the public square is almost religious. The abandonment of language that brings people in rather than shutting them out is one of the left’s many structural disadvantages in American politics today. In fact, it divides the Democratic coalition in a profound way.”

For most of U.S. history, from Thomas Paine to Eugene Debs to Martin Luther King Jr., the left had a populist language of its own,” Packer continues. “It used a simple vocabulary and spoke in universal moral terms that appealed to the basic goodness in people rather than inventing a sophisticated hierarchical code to label their ills. It created insiders and outsiders, but they weren’t divided between the knowing and the unilluminated, the woken and the sleeping. The populism of the left posed the same opposition as Trump’s—the people against the elites—but with very different sets of characters.

Packer concludes, “You still hear notes of this language in the speeches of Senator Elizabeth Warren, with her talk of a “rigged” economy. Though she’s spent most of her adult life in universities, she speaks with a natural plainness that reminds you of her prairie origins. But she’s running for the presidential nomination of a party whose new activists think in and are constrained by a hermetic language of the chosen few. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, another candidate, has embraced it with the zeal of a convert, and at times Warren seems to come under its influence. Trump, with his sadistic instinct for the weaknesses of others, has learned how to hurt Democrats by using divisive rhetoric and waiting for them to walk into a trap of self-enclosure they can’t see. He won’t hesitate to use an event as terrible as El Paso to keep this logic working in his favor. A force as dark and powerful as Trump’s populism can be defeated only by an equal and opposite force.

Emily Stewart explains “Why Joaquin Castro’s tweet of a list of Trump donors is so controversial,” and writes, “Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) is under fire for tweeting out a list of donors to President Donald Trump. Why the maneuver is so controversial isn’t entirely clear: It’s all information that was already public…The Texas Democrat and brother to 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro on Monday tweeted a list of 44 San Antonio donors who contributed the maximum amount under federal law to Trump in 2019. “Sad to see so many San Antonians as of 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump,” he wrote, calling out a couple of the city’s better-known donors by their Twitter handles. “Their contributions are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’..The point of all of this is pretty straightforward: It’s a way to keep campaigns accountable and make sure they’re following the laws, and it also increases transparency for voters to see who is backing campaigns.” In my view, we need more “outing” of big contributors to political campaigns, not less. Most of the information in question is publicly available. But candidates and their staffs should not do it. It’s just asking to be taken off message. The major media has been unduly timid about their responsibility to amplify large donor contributions. But political activists should not hesitate to take it on.

We’ve had our hopes for corrective action dashed before, many times. With that in mind, FiveThirtyEight’s Weekly Political Chat inquires “Will The El Paso Shooting Change How Politicians Talk About White Extremism?” Among the observations, Nate SIlver notes, “There is a cumulative effect even if there’s also a short-term boom-and-bust cycle after significant events. During the midterm elections, for instance, more Democrats than Republicans rated gun policy as a high-priority issue, which is a departure from the old-school conventional wisdom that guns were supposed to rally Republican voters.” Perry Bacon, Jr. adds that “But even though some Republicans — maybe even Trump, I’m not sure — will probably dial down the white nationalist rhetoric, I think the only movement on gun control will happen on the left. Or Democrats will become even more unabashedly party of gun control…generally most Democrats support: 1) expanding background checks, 2) banning assault weapons, and 3) ban high-capacity magazines.”

Daniel Rakich addresses “How Views On Gun Control Have Changed In The Last 30 Years” at FiveThirtyEight and explains: “In a December 2018 poll, Gallup found that 66 percent of Americans said it was “extremely” or “very” important that Congress and the White House deal with the issue of gun policy in the following year, which was a significant increase from the 54 percent of Americans who said gun policy was extremely or very important to them in January 2014. However, we still have a while before guns are the most important issue to Americans. In July 2019, only 1 percent said guns were the number-one problem facing the country — barely changed from the 0 percent who said so for most of the 2000s. And while this number does spike in response to mass shootings — it got as high as 7 percent in the six months after Sandy Hook and hit 13 percent after Parkland — so far, it has never stayed at those elevated levels for very long. So while public opinion has swung more toward the side of gun control in recent years, it may not yet be dramatic or consistent enough to force politicians to act.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is feeling the heat these days, with declining poll numbers, increasingly critical media coverage, including allegations of corruption and hard-hitting billboards (see here, here and here,) in his home state. He has also acquired a disparaging nickname, “Moscow Mitch,” thanks to his Putin-friendly policies.

McConnell gloried in his former nickname, “the Grim Reaper.” But the “Moscow Mitch” moniker seems to have legs, judging by the latest tally of Google hits (58,700,000) the term generates. Indeed, the usually unperturbable McConnell is ticked off about it, according to recent reports.

McConnell’s failed “leadership” history does add up to a disturbing portrait of an out-of-touch politician, whose arrogance and callousness toward anyone outside the shrinking base of Republican voters invites harsh criticism and growing protests. But he may be on the verge of an even steeper deterioration of his image, thanks to his rigid views opposing gun safety reforms in the wake of the three mass shooting during the last 9 days.

For a look at McConnell’s awful record on the issue, check out the blog, “On the Issues: Every Political Leader on Every Issue,” a blog affiliated with Snopes, which provides a some of the history of McConnell’s obstruction of gun safety, including:

Voted NO on banning high-capacity magazines of over 10 bullets in 2013.

Opposed the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty in 2013.

Voted YES on allowing firearms in checked baggage on Amtrak trains in 2009.

Voted YES on prohibiting foreign & UN aid that restricts US gun ownership in 2007.

Voted YES on prohibiting lawsuits against gun manufacturers in 2005.

Voted NO on banning lawsuits against gun manufacturers for gun violence in 2004.

Voted NO on background checks at gun shows in 1999.

Voted YES on loosening license & background checks at gun shows in 1999.

Voted YES on maintaining current law: guns sold without trigger locks in 1998.

But McConnell has probably done even more damage to gun safety prospects with his most damaging   power as majority leader —  killing debate and votes on gun reforms in the Senate. Recently, he  blocked a bill that would prohibit most person-to-person firearm transfers without a background check. The bill passed the House by wide margins. McConnell placed the bills on the Senate calendar, instead of referring the legislation to a committee for action.

Democrats, of course, are hopeful that McConnell can be defeated at the Kentucky polls in 2020, even though KY is a red state. McConnell has a strong opponent in Democrat Amy McGrath. If McConnell survives McGrath’s challenge, however, there are two other ways he can be removed from the majority leadership: 1. Democrats win a Senate majority, and 2. Republicans hold their Senate majority, but suffer such deep national losses across the board that they decide they need a new leadership face. Any one of these three possibilities is a plausible outcome.

Regardless of his re-election prospects, McConnell may now be a significant liability for his party at the national level. As the most well-known Republican after Trump, he will be the “face” of his party if Trump is defeated and he is re-elected. As a GOP politician with high name recognition, he already fills that role to some extent.

In his post, “Mitch McConnell Will Be The Boogeyman Of The 2020 Election,” Kevin Robillard, senior political reporter for HuffPo, notes that a poll of 12 presidential battleground states by the Democratic campaign finance reform group End Citizens United indicates some trouble ahead for the Majority Leader.

After being exposed to messaging about McConnell, the Democratic advantage grew to 12 percentage points. That was more effective than messages about President Donald Trump (6 percentage points) or congressional Republicans overall (9 percentage points)… McConnell’s approval rating among swing-state voters in the survey is just 26%, with 50% viewing him unfavorably. Among independents, just 18% view him favorably, and 58% have a negative opinion. In counties that swung from former President Barack Obama to President Trump, his approval rating is 25%, while 53% have a negative opinion.

Meanwhile Democrats should prioritize support for the “Ditch Mitch” movement, fund his Democratic opponent and crank up the heat on McConnell on all fronts, especially regarding gun safety, which is increasingly viewed as a national security issue.

It’s all thoughts, prayers and no action for Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans. “As the nation reeled Sunday morning from news of a second mass shooting in the span of 13 hours, Democratic lawmakers began demanding that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell take action this week on long-stalled gun control legislation they argue could help prevent the next large-scale tragedy,”  Devan Cole and Caroline Kelly report at CNN Politics. “Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, wrote in a tweet Sunday that she’s “ready to go back tomorrow” to take legislative action. “Inaction is unacceptable. No more talk. The time for passing legislation is now. I’m ready to go back tomorrow…On a state level, just nine states and the District of Columbia ban large-capacity ammunition magazines. The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence lists California, Colorado, Connecticut, Washington, DC, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Vermont as places with bans that include the sale, possession, and/or manufacture of such magazines. The laws vary from state to state and define the magazines as holding either 10 or 15 rounds.”

Rep. Tim Ryan, another Democratic presidential candidate, was even more explicit: As Tom Boggiani reports at The Raw Story, “We have got to put pressure on Mitch McConnell to start with the background check bill,” he exclaimed…The GOP needs to get their shit together and stop pandering to the NRA,” he added, before going after Trump and Republicans who stand by and say nothing when the president encourages violent white nationalism…“It’s like when the president made the comments about good people on both sides in Charlottesville. how many Republicans really stood up and said what was on their heart? You know, in their heart and minds? Not many, hardly any.” he stated.”

In his NYT column, “The Heartland is Moving in Different Directions,” Thomas B. Edsall observes: “The Democrats’ ability to wrest back Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa faces a steep hurdle. The population of the Rust Belt is aging at a much faster pace than the rest of the country. Exit polls show that people over the age of 50 put Donald Trump in the White House, and the Midwest has them in droves…In five states — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Wisconsin — the number of 18-to-35-year-olds, the most liberal age group, grew by 56,448 between 2016 and 2018, according to Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings…That growth pales in comparison with the rising number of people 65 and older, a core of Republican support, which grew by 685,005 — an advantage of better than 12 old people for each young person. Nationwide, from 2016 to 2018, 18-to-35-year-olds grew by 677,853 while the 65 and over population grew by 3,207,209 — a smaller advantage of 4.7 old people for each young person, according to Muro…Polls consistently show that older voters are more Republican than younger voters: In 2017, for example, Pew found that 18-to-35-year-olds skewed Democratic 54 percent to 39 percent; voters over 70 were 48 percent Republican and 41 percent Democratic.”

It gets worse, as Edsall explains: “The aging of the Rust Belt population is a major factor in a closely related trend, the declining share of self-identified liberals in the region…Pew Research reports that from 2010 to 2017, the percentage of people who say they are liberals in the Midwest — defined broadly as Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas — dropped from 23 to 19 percent, while the percentage describing themselves as conservative fell by a statistically insignificant 1 percent, from 38 to 37 percent. Moderates grew from 33 to 37 percent.”

But Edsall does see some hope for Democrats in that “the growing urbanization of the Midwest, combined with the decline of pro-Republican rural communities…may improve the odds for the Democratic Party and its candidates.” He cites a Brookings study, which found that in the 2018 midterm elections “10 of the 15 districts that flipped from Republican to Democratic in Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Iowa “have income growth rates that exceed their state averages…Of the remaining five flipped districts, in which growth was below the state average, three were in Pennsylvania, where Democratic victories resulted from a state Supreme Court decision ordering the replacement of the Republican gerrymander of congressional districts, making those districts much more favorable to Democratic candidates.” Edall concludes, “While the trends and the data are often conflicting and inconclusive, I’d say on balance that the developments are encouraging for Democrats, albeit modestly.”

From “The 2020 Congressional Elections: A Very Early Forecast” by Alan I. Abamowitz at Sabato’s Crysgal Ball: “Barring a dramatic shift in the electoral landscape, Democrats appear very likely to hold onto their majority in the House of Representatives in the 2020 elections and make at least modest gains in the Senate. However, there are significant caveats with both projections. Obviously, one of those is that it is very early and that the president’s approval rating and the generic ballot could very well be different late next summer…In the House, we are in an era with limited ticket-splitting and a weak incumbency advantage. Additionally, the overall House map has a Republican lean: Republicans could win the House back by defeating fewer than two-thirds of the 31 Democrats who hold seats that Trump carried in 2016 (and only three Republicans hold seats that Hillary Clinton carried). The confluence of these factors could allow Republicans to overperform the projection in this model, particularly if Trump is reelected…While the model predicts a good chance of a Democratic majority in the Senate in 2021, that prediction should be taken with considerable caution considering the margin of error of the model and the fact that only a handful of Republican seats that are up next year are in Democratic-leaning or swing states. Moreover, if Democrats do take back the Senate, it will almost certainly be by a very narrow margin, which would make it difficult to pass the sort of progressive legislation advocated by many of the party’s 2020 presidential candidates.”

“Paralyzed by caution, and its worst instincts justified through a gradual takeover by corporate interests, the Democratic Party has in many ways been its own worst enemy,” Branko Marcetic writes in his article, “Corporate Democrats Have Been in the Driver’s Seat for 30 Years. Not Anymore” at In These Times: “Rather than proposing far-reaching redistributive policies, national Democrats have by and large moved to the right while pushing means-tested, tepid proposals meant not to offend corporate backers or scare off mythical “Reagan Democrats.” The result has been a party that’s failed to inspire its core constituency—working-class voters—to show up at the polls.” in the third presidential debate, however, “both Sanders and Warren tied signature policies like Medicare for All, a wealth tax, free tertiary education and student debt cancellation to their broader vision of political change, rebuking Democrats’ three-decade-long strategy of scurrying in fear at the sight of their own shadow. Warren thundered that the Democrats need to be the party “of big, structural change.” Sanders argued that “to win this election and to defeat Donald Trump … we need to have a campaign of energy and excitement and of vision. We need to bring millions of young people into the political process in a way that we have never seen.”

Alex Pareene says it exceptionally well in “The Simple, Odious Reason Mitch McConnell Opposes Election Integrity: The sinister influence on the Senate majority leader is not the Kremlin, but a Republican Party that seeks to keep certain Americans from voting” at The New Republic: “America’s elections are a patchwork of fiefdoms, many run by secretaries of state (many of whom are Republicans), some directly run by state parties themselves. Republicans oppose federal reform of the system because it could deny them the ability to create chaos—chaos that sends the other side’s votes to the wrong polling places, purges thousands or hundreds of thousands from the rolls, and strands urban voters in long lines. Chaos that could create opportunities for—and plausible deniability about—more serious fraud and criminality. Chaos that makes it hard to believe this Senate will ever allow truly secure paper ballot regulations, with strict regular audits, to become a national requirement.”

Just some final thoughts on all of the hand-wringing about Democratic presidential candidates beating up on each other and embracing less than popular reforms. 1. It’s early. Dems must be unified a year from now, but not now. In fact, if they were, it would be weird, maybe even creepy. Let the GOP be the Children of the Corn. 2. A lot of the less popular ideas are being field-tested and the candidates need to be battle-tested before they face Trump, as de Blasio said to Biden in the fourth debate. Sometimes leaders can buck opinion trends for a while enroute to building a new consensus. The presidential candidates will surely tweak their health care proposals in the months ahead, as Harris recently did. Elizabeth Warren, for example, is smart enough to know that she has to make more room for those who want to keep their health insurance policies. American needs a well-argued debate between advocates of Medicare for all and the public option, and that’s exactly what we are getting from Democrats, while Republicans grumble vague put-down on the sidelines. 3. The chaotic big field we see in the debates is actually a good thing because it shows which party has the vitality needed to make major changes. The sky isn’t falling just yet…although the climate crisis could be a game-changer a year from now.

“Booker was a happy warrior — balancing attacks (primarily against former Vice President Joe Biden) with an optimistic demeanor. Booker spoke powerfully about criminal justice reform and immigration…Booker has considerable natural gifts as a candidate — and they shone through on Wednesday night.” – Chris Cillizza at CNN Politics.

Julian Castro had another very good night. He has a striking personal dignity and seriousness of purpose that should appeal to many voters. But he also showed a talent last night for laser-targeted attacks. As Cillizza noted, “He probably had the line of the night, hitting back on Biden with this hammer: “It looks like one of us has learned the lessons of the past and one of us hasn’t.” Castro was forceful and effective on immigration and really stuck it to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on how to handle the officer who choked Eric Garner.”

Here’s what we have to give to the embattled front-runner, according to Time Magazine’s Philip Elliot: “Biden took the lashing and lives to fight on. Advisers had spent the month since the first debate bracing for impact. They knew the aura of inevitability was not going to protect them and told him to anticipate wallops far worse than what Harris offered in Miami. Biden had tweets drafted and ready to go for a number of anticipated attacks, including a thread about that 1981 op-ed. It wasn’t a command performance for the front-runner, but he took incoming from all over the stage and appeared to come away relatively undaunted.”

Nate Silver observed at FiveThirtyEight: “My view at the start of the night was that Booker needed to differentiate himself in a positive way from Harris and I think he did that — not with any particularly interesting strategy or by taking her on directly, but just from being fairly sharp throughout the evening when she was quite uneven. Will it move the polls? I don’t know. I think Harris might be in for a skeptical news cycle or two given that she already has lost a lot of her bounce from the first debate.”

In a night of well-targeted zingers, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard scored a brutal one against Sen. Kamala Harris, with her comment, as reported by Stephanie Saul of the NYT: “Now, Senator Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president. But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.”

Gabbard had a lot more to say about Harris. But, caught off guard by Gabbard’s attack, Harris did a good job of defending her record, noting that she now supports pot legalization and banning the death penalty. But Harris missed an opportunity to counter-punch during the nationally-televised debate. After the debate Harris called Gabbard “an “apologist” for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, referring to her meeting with the dictator and previous claims that he’s not an enemy of the U.S..” We can only hope that they won’t squander their respective gifts on a personal feud. Gabbard is an eloquent critic of militaristic foreign policy and Harris provides the Dems’smost blistering take-down of Trump’s litany of abuse.

Sen Gillbrand also had a notable zinger, directed at the GOP’s ‘leader’: “So the first thing that I’m going to do when I’m president — is I’m going to Clorox the Oval Office.” To the relief of envioronmentalists, she followed up with the less toxic, “The second thing I’m going to do, is I will re-engage on global climate change.”

Here’s a ‘tale of the tape’ 2nd night debate metric from Veronica Rocha, Meg Wagner, Amanda Wills and Elise Hammond, also at CNN Politics:

At The Guadian, Art Cullen, editor of The Storm Lake Times, opined: “Front-runner Biden defended his record vigorously, bonded himself to President Obama on civil rights, and reminded viewers of his experience on the world stage. The real winner over two nights: universal healthcare, strongly endorsed by every candidate. It remains the top issue among primary voters. And nothing over two nights appeared to materially interrupt Elizabeth Warren’s steady momentum, while Harris did not have the best night.”

‘Medicare for All’ took its share of lumps during the fourth presidential debate, since it has been creamed in a host of recent opinion polls. Yet, “A pure Medicare-for-all plan is much easier to describe than these complicated plans that try to thread the political needle,” said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “This was a huge problem for the Obama administration in trying to sell the Affordable Care Act,” quoted in 4th debate coverage by WaPo’s Jeff Stein and Yasmeen Abutaleb.

The overlooked Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who makes as much sense as any of the candidates and has an actual track record to back it up, made an important point in the 4th debate, reported here by Ella Nilsen of Vox: “We are all going to work like the dickens to get more Democrats elected to the Senate. If we get a majority in the US Senate because of the position of these senators, not a damn thing is going to get done,” Inslee said. “And I’ll tell you why, with all their good intentions — and I know they’re sincere and passionate — but because they embraced the filibuster, Mitch McConnell is going to run the US Senate even if we take a majority.”

Don’t be surprised of you start hearing more ‘Warren-Booker’ than ‘Biden-Harris’ buzz, since the Massachusetts Senator had the best night of the 20 candidates, followed by Booker’s impressive performance and that of Sen. Sanders, who has moved the political fulcrum to the left. I will be surprised if they don’t get a substantial lift in the polls over the next couple of weeks. My final take on both nights is that the Democratic presidential field has an embarrasment of riches, a lot of very impressive candidates — Time Magazine called it “the most diverse presidential debate in American history.” I was expecting a let-down after the energetic first debate, but came away from night two with an even better feeling about being a Democrat. This party has a bright future.

Kendall Karson reports at abcnews.com: “Following more than six hours of questioning of former special counsel Robert Mueller before two different congressional committees, Democrats and Republicans remain largely splintered on impeaching President Donald Trump, even as nearly half of Americans show little movement on their support or opposition to the move, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll…The poll, conducted using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel, asked Americans about the former FBI director’s testimony Wednesday in consecutive hearings before the House Judiciary and House Intelligence committees…Among those who read, saw or heard about Mueller’s testimony, 47% said it made no difference in their views about impeaching the president…Among Democrats, 48% said they are more likely to support the process of impeachment that could ultimately lead to Trump’s removal from office…Whereas for Republicans, only 3% said they were more likely to support impeachment, 42% said they were less likely… Independents were split, with 26% saying they are more likely to support impeachment and 29% saying less likely.”

In his syndicated column, “Kicking Trump out is the important thing. Fights over how to do it shouldn’t get in the way,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes, “Democrats might note that the hashtag #MoscowMitch, a phrase used by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, went viral to protest Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to allow votes on bills to protect the 2020 election from foreign interference. Making life hell for McConnell and his party for blocking necessary and patriotic legislation would be a good use of August…And, yes, the Democratic presidential candidates will debate this week. Judge them not by the points they score but by who among them best understands that removing this reprehensible president from office is far more important than any of their individual ambitions — and that nothing will make Trump happier than an opposition tearing itself to pieces.”

At CNN Politics, Julian Zelizer previews the second round of Democratic presidential debates and focuses on the challenges for front-runners Biden, Warren, Harris, Sanders and Buttigieg. We will get a first look at Governor Steve Bullock on the first night, and likely some fireworks on the second night, with Biden, Harris and Booker on the stage again. But do expect some sharp zingers from the other candidates, who really need to stand out this week. The value of the large field format is that it makes the diverse Democrats look more like the party of the future, and that’s a good optic. But the public would be better-served by a series of randomly selected smaller group debates, including some one-on-one match-ups, giving the candidates more time to show their command of the issues and visions for the future. Surely the networks can afford to do both large field debates and a series of smaller group face-offs.

Ed Kilgore provides some sobering observations at New York Magazine about the likely effects of failed impeachment. Kilgore explains that “it is as certain as anything in this life that the Republican-controlled Senate will not remove Trump from office under any foreseeable set of facts (and no, the Nixon precedent is not especially relevant). A failed impeachment effort — whether the House doesn’t formally take up articles of impeachment, or it takes them up and they are defeated, or the Senate acquits — would not only leave the president in office, but could even look like an exoneration (which is precisely how Trump would depict it). So what would be the point? A theoretical discharge of duty?…A reelected Trump would be rampant, vengeful, and (of course) unrepentant. The Supreme Court and the entire federal judiciary would likely become a confirmed enemy to progressivism for a generation. With one or two more Trump appointees to SCOTUS, reproductive rights would almost certainly be vaporized. Climate change might well become truly irreversible. Trumpism (or something worse) would complete its conquest of one major political party, and the other would be truly in the wilderness and perhaps fatally embittered and divided.”

Apropos of the dust-up about where folks Trump doesn’t like should go back to, at Daily Kos Elections Guide, David Jarman shares a map students of political demographics may find of interest, which distills Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-Year Data (2013-2017) “most frequently-reported ancestry or origin” for every congressional district:

Noting that “in nearly half of the nation’s 435 congressional districts, the most prevalent ancestry is a non-European one,” Jarman also provides an in-depth analysis of the chart’s limitations. He also has  maps showing the second and third “most reported and ancestry or origin” for each district, and provides links for an even more granular analysis.

The New Republic’s Adam Eichen ruminates on the failure of Democrats “to strategically and methodically focus on the levers of power,” and offers some suggestions, including: “…Democratic donors and elites are generally far too focused on federal elections, a particularly egregious oversight given the sizable governing power found at the state and local level…Daily Kos election expert Stephen Wolf told TNR that, for maximum results, the Democrats should target the Texas State House, Florida State Senate, and both legislative chambers in Pennsylvania in 2020. Each of these chambers only require a handful of seats to flip to win Democratic control. Doing so, in the case of Texas and Florida, would block some of the worst and most devastating partisan gerrymanders of the next decade. Creating a Democratic trifecta in Pennsylvania, on the other hand, would open the door to a major voting rights expansion in a key swing state…Similarly, Wolf suggests Ohio’s two Supreme Court races should be a priority, as a dual victory would give liberals a majority on the bench, providing the only vehicle moving forward to striking down GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression in the Buckeye State…As Brian Kemp’s dubious handling of his own, ultimately successful bid for Georgia governor in 2018 makes readily apparent, secretary of state contests should also be a focus. In 37 states, this is the office that manages elections, overseeing such potentially consequential items as voter rolls, the certification of candidates, and the conduct of recounts. Thirty-one of these states directly elect the secretary of state, with Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi up for grabs in 2019.”

Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium tweets, “Now that the Supreme Court has run away from partisan gerrymandering, it’s time to fight on a state-by-state basis. Here’s a long list of actions for individual states. I’ll add to it as more ideas come up. First, the categories of actions you can take: 1) Ballot-initiative process: push for independent commissions. 2) Friendly state courts: file lawsuits. 3) Public-comment period on redistricting: use it in 2021 to speak for your community of interest. Use data to analyze/offer maps. 4) Everywhere: write your paper…5) Disrupt single-party control by flipping a legislature or breaking its supermajority. 6) Support local reformers: Common Cause, League of Women Voters, or local organizations. 7) Everywhere: help gather data & become a redistricting tech maven!” Wang has other suggestions right here.

Democrats have yet to leverage their formidable but dormant power as consumers in support of political goals. Those who think that the time to do so has arrived may want to check out “These are Laura Ingraham’s leading advertisers” at Media Matters for America, which provides the following list of the right-wing Republican program’s top sponsors: South Beach Diet; Fungi-Nail; Rohto; SeroVital; NFL Network; Waterpik; Stamps.com; Coravin; Takl; Roman Pharmacy; Energizer; Bausch & Lomb; Sandals Hotel/Resort; Sheex; Safelite Auto Glass Co; Nutrisystem; USAA; MyPillow; Lifelock; StarKist; WeatherTech; HomeToGo.com; ClearChoice Dental; Tecovas; Prevagen; Carfax; Elite Singles Dating Service; The Zebra; Eli Lilly; and Novo Nordisk.

In response to numerous polls indicating strong public support for allowing people to keep their private insurance if they want it, Sen. Kamala Harris has unveiled a more flexible health care plan. As Jonathan Cohn reports at HuffPo, “It’s government-run insurance, but with a 10-year transition and a private alternative for those who want it…It would eventually replace employer-sponsored plans, over the course of a decadelong transition, but it would allow private insurers to offer an alternative form of coverage, much as they do today for seniors on Medicare…the Harris plan calls for a more sweeping transformation than the reforms supported by former Vice President Joe Biden. But it would stop short of the change to wholly government-run insurance that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has championed. Cohn notes Harris’s timetable for Medicare for All “is more than twice as long as the four-year changeover in the Sanders bill.”

Perry Bacon, Jr. addresses the question, “Is Trump’s Use Of Identity Politics An Effective Strategy?” at FiveThirty Eight, and observes: “Does the way Trump use white identity politics help him and the GOP electorally, even if he at times veers into racism that members of his own party can’t defend? And are the Democrats (usually more establishment, centrist figures) who worry the party is playing into Trump’s hands when it defends members of Congress like Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota generally right, at least in terms of political strategy?” Bacon concludes, that yes it probably did help him win the GOP 2016 primaries. However, “the way Trump talked about race and identity helped him win the general election is less clear…there are reasons to be skeptical that his rhetoric on race and identity was the main explanation for Trump’s victory…Americans may have decided to support Trump for reasons other than his stances on identity issues (for example, perhaps because he was an outsider to politics). According to Enns, these Trump voters may have then adjusted their views on immigration and other issues to align with Trump’s, as opposed to backing Trump because of his stance on racial and identity issues…”

Bacon adds that “some election models that ignored the two candidates and instead focused on factors like the economy and Obama’s approval rating predicted that Republicans would win. Whatever the merits of Trump (and Clinton’s strategies), the overwhelming majority of 2016 voters backed the same party as they did in 2012. By far the most important factor in Trump’s victory in 2016 was that he was the GOP nominee for president and millions of Republican-leaning voters likely backed him simply because they are Republicans…A perfectly plausible theory of the 2016 election would go something like this: Trump’s racial rhetoric turned off some voters, brought in some new ones, and was basically an electoral wash…To conclude, I think the safest answer to the question of whether Trump’s identity politics are a good strategy, at least in a general election, is “we don’t really know” or “maybe, maybe not.” He won in 2016, but his party lost in 2018 — and both of those elections had a lot more at play than just how Trump spoke about issues of race and identity.”

Looking toward 2020, Bacon concludes “That debate over policy and messaging to some extent overlaps with the 2020 Democratic primary contest. Does the party choose a candidate who might appeal to Obama-Trump voters with his or her populist economic stances (Sanders, Elizabeth Warren) or maybe a candidate who might appeal to those same voters by virtue of being a white man or downplaying his liberalism on these issues of race and identity (Joe Biden?). Or does the party pick a person who might focus on mobilizing college-educated white voters and minorities and takes more liberal stances on issues of race and identity (Beto O’Rourke)? And should the party be worried candidates who are not white and male (Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Warren) will be seen as embodying the diversity of the country in a way that some Trump voters don’t like?”

However, New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall reports “Daniel Hopkins, a political scientist at Penn, wrote me that in 2016 voters incorrectly identified Trump’s political agenda. “Many people underestimated the extent to which Donald Trump was perceived as ideologically moderate by 2016 general election voters,” Hopkins wrote…In October of that year, just before the election, 17 percent of respondents in an Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politicspanel survey described Trump as “extremely conservative” and 31 percent described him as “conservative,” for a total of 48 percent. In contrast, in 2012, 22 percent said that Mitt Romney was extremely conservative and 45 percent said conservative, for a total of 67 percent…This leads to an unanswered question: Are all of Trump’s adherents unshakably loyal or can some of them be persuaded to flip, motivated by the reality described on Monday by my colleagues Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman: that while Trump claims to be a pro-worker populist, he has governed as a trickle-down Republican elitist…In some respects, Trump was flying under a false flag in 2016. Will he pay a price in 2020 when he has to fly under his true colors?”

Also at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver makes the case that “Medicare For All Isn’t That Popular — Even Among Democrats.” Silver explains, “Whether you love, hate or are indifferent toward his “Medicare for All” plan, polls show Sanders leading when Democratic voters are asked which candidate they think is best able handle to health care…The thing is, though — according to new polling from Marist College this week — Sanders’s plan isn’t actually the most popular idea in the field. Instead, that distinction belongs to what Marist calls “Medicare for all that want it,” or what’s sometimes called a public option — something very similar to Joe Biden’s recently unveiled health care plan, which claims to give almost everyone “the choice to purchase a public health insurance option like Medicare.”…In the Marist poll, 90 percent of Democrats thought a plan that provided for a public option was a good idea, as compared to 64 percent who supported a Sanders-style Medicare for All plan that would replace private health insurance. The popularity of the public option also carries over to independent voters: 70 percent support it, as compared to 39 percent for Medicare for All.”

But Silver cautions, “there’s more to winning elections than just picking whatever policies happen to poll best; Medicare for All is consistent with the sort of revolutionary change for which Sanders advocates…At the same time, the public option is potentially a winning issue for Biden, and one that allows him to reinforce some of his core strengths. It offers greater continuity with the legacy of the Obama administration (since the public option is a more gradual change from Obamacare — not to mention, something Obamacare initially tried to include), and allows him to double down on his electability message, since it polls better than eliminating private insurance. That may be why Biden has gone on the offense against Medicare for All.” Silver concludes that Harris and Warren, who have endorsed the Sanders Medicare for all approach, may well introduce their own modifications in the months ahead. What we may have here is Sanders playing the bad cop, Biden the good cop, and Warren or Harris providing the compromise that can unify the party and win over persuadable voters.

At The Atlantic, Ronald Browstein probes the political views of a largely unexplored demographic “Will Trump’s Racist Attacks Help Him? Ask Blue-Collar White Women. His strategy rests on a bet: that these voters will respond just as enthusiastically to his belligerence as working-class white men.” Brownstein writes, “The white working-class men look like they are approaching the 2016 margins for Trump, but not the women,” says the veteran Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, in a judgment supported by public polling. “Clearly the women are in a different place.” Greenberg conducted the focus groups, whose findings were released today, for the American Federation of Teachers…If you think about the strategy they had in ’16 … where he campaigned and went into these [blue-collar and nonmetropolitan] areas and really drove up the vote—that doesn’t work if the women aren’t responding to it, if they watch him and they get put off by it,” Greenberg says. “It only works if women are part of the story. You just can’t get the numbers if half of white working-class, nonmetro voters are put off by what you are doing.”” Brownstein adds, “But Trump’s strategy faces a huge obstacle if working-class women don’t buy in to his message as much as working-class men. That’s for a simple reason: Every data source—from the exit polls to the Pew Research Center’s analysis of voter files to studies by Catalist, a Democratic voter-targeting firm—shows that these women reliably cast slightly more than half of all the votes from the white working class…”

Brownstein notes further, that “in 2018, Republicans sagged among these women. Nationally, GOP House candidates still won their vote overall, but by less robust margins than Trump did two years before: 14 points per the exit polls and 17 percent per the Catalist calculations. And Democrats in 2018 generally performed much better with these voters in marquee Senate and governor’s contests in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. (Only in the Senate race in Michigan and in the governor’s race in Wisconsin did Republicans retain a solid lead with these voters.)..Trump’s job-approval rating on Election Day 2018 among these women stood at just more than 50 percent in all three states, according to detailed results provided to me by Edison Research, which conducts exit polls for a consortium of media organizations. In each state, that represented a decline of about five percentage points from his share of their vote in the presidential election. That’s not a radical shift, but in three states that were decided by a combined 78,000 votes in 2016, it could have a powerful impact…National polls since the 2018 election have continued to show Trump facing a cooling reception from these women. Both the latest NBC/Wall Street Journalpoll, released early last week, and the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released this week show him with a net-positive approval rating of just seven percentage points among blue-collar women, well below his vote advantage in 2016. The Marist poll found them divided almost exactly evenly on whether they intend to vote for or against Trump for reelection. That’s a much more tenuous equation than Trump faces among blue-collar white men. Both of the latest national surveys from NBC/Wall Street Journal and Marist found that the share of those men who approve of his performance still stands about 30 percentage points higher than the number who disapprove.”

However, Brownstein warns, “This week’s NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll suggests that non-college-educated white women are essentially just as hostile as working-class white men to vanguard liberal ideas that have emerged in the 2020 Democratic presidential race. Those issues include a single-payer health-care plan that would eliminate private insurance, allowing undocumented immigrants access to any federally funded health-care plan, and decriminalizing unauthorized crossing of the U.S. border. Additionally, while recent polls by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute show that these women don’t quite match the hostility of the men in their cohort to a wide array of demographic and social changes in the country, a majority agree on several ideas: that the growing number of immigrants threatens traditional American values, that the U.S. way of life must be protected against foreign influence, and that white people face as much discrimination as black people. All of those attitudes correlate with support for Trump.”