At In These Times, Adam Ginsbug writes that “six Democratic primaries and caucuses will use RCV (ranked choice voting) next year…RCV would ensure that the crowded primary field ultimately produces a nominee with true majority support.”

Reporting at the end of July, Ginsburg was interested in assessing the support for ranked choice voting among the Democratic presidential candidates. He found that “there are four Democratic candidates who actively advocate for RCV, five candidates who are supportive and two candidates who are receptive to the method. Only two candidates have expressed indifference. The other 12 major Democratic candidates have not commented publicly on RCV.” None of the front-runners at the time advocated RCV, while Sens. Sanders, Buttigieg and Booker expressed “positive sentiment” towards the idea, while Warren and O’Rourke were “open” to it.

Ginzburg notes further that “After the contentious 2016 primary fight, the Democratic National Committee called on its state affiliates to make the presidential candidate selection process more accessible to voters. Six states—Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, Nevada, Iowa, and Wyoming— will turn to RCV to heed that call.”

Simon Waxman notes at Democracy that RCV “has been used in municipal elections in California, Minnesota, Washington state, and elsewhere. And for nearly a hundred years, Australians have elected their lower house of parliament using the method.”

Ginsburg gets into the particular tweaks each of the six states uses for their RCV and adds,

Although the preliminary proposals indicate some states plan to implement RCV in slightly different manners, all plans adhere to the rules set by the Democratic Party: all candidates above the 15% threshold will accrue delegates. Accordingly, as FairVote Senior Fellow David Daley put it, using RCV means that “last-place candidates will be eliminated and backers of those candidates will have their vote count toward their next choice until all remaining candidates are above the 15% vote threshold to win delegates.”

While these plans are all preliminary until they are formally accepted by the DNC, it is heartening to see ranked choice voting adopted as a viable alternative to the current winner-take-all system—especially in a field this crowded.

My take is that ranked choice voting in presidential primaries is a good idea because it enhances voter participation, gives more consideration to each voter’s personal preferences and promotes solidarity among Democratic voters, who will have more of a sense that their range of views have been taken into consideration by the party.

As one of those voters who is struggling to choose between two of the current presidential candidates, it would give me a way to support them both over the others. If none of my choices win, at least I will have more of a sense that the party cared about my views and my candidates got more consideration than is now the case in most states.

One possible downside is that there might be more dithering at the polls, resulting in longer lines. That could be ameliorated to some extent with a publicity campaign urging voters to make their choices before they get to the polls and stick to it. Even better, if RCV is combined with expanded early voting, mail-in ballots, weekend voting and other reforms to make the voting experience less cumbersome.

Waxman argues that RCV often enhances voter disappointment, when their favored candidiates don’t make the cut. He notes further, that “In 2010 the Australian Labor Party won the House of Representatives with just 38 percent of first-place votes on the initial ballot, while the second-place Liberal-National coalition captured 43 percent. That hardly sounds like a firm mandate…So much for guaranteed majority rule.”

Yet, he also reports that “In the 2013 Australian federal election, 90 percent of constituencies elected the candidate with the most first-preference votes, which suggests that choice ranking had little effect on the outcome.” Perhaps the problem of undermining majority rule could be addressed by giving additional weight to first choices.

I like the idea of more voters discussing their ranked choices in coffee shops, carpools, workplace break rooms and water coolers before and after casting their ballots. Instead of Democratic voters segmenting into one camp and rejecting all others, giving due weight to the idea that we share respect for each others spectrum of choices creates more of a spirit of solidarity.

Right now, for example, there is likely some bitterness among suporters of candidates who got cut from the network debates. With RCV playing a role in the selection process, they would have more of a feeling that their preferences have gotten fair consideration.

It would be really good for the Democratic Party to take a stronger lead in adopting ranked choice voting in the primaries, thus providing a message that this is the party that really cares about democracy. At the very least, the states should widen the experiment.

Is the great winnowing of presidential candidates happening to soon, or right on time? Put another way, is 14 month out from the presidential election (less for the primaries) to soon for TV networks to dismiss presidential candidacies?  Chris Cillizza reports at CNN Politics: “At the moment, 10 candidates — out of the 21 still running — have met the qualifications (130,000 individual donors, four national or early-voting state polls at 2% support or more) to make the debate stage in Houston on September 12. ..The simple fact is that if you are running for president but can’t make it onto a debate stage that 10 of your fellow candidates made, it’s going to be very, very hard to justify staying in the race all that much longer. How do you go to donors and ask them to give — or give more — to a candidacy that is, by the Democratic National Committee’s standards, not in the top 10 most viable? And if you can’t raise money, how do you pay your staff and run a real campaign?…(Side note: This standard doesn’t really apply to Tom Steyer, who has the personal wealth to continue to fund his campaign for as long as he chooses.)” Remember, however, that candidates disqualified for the September debates could theoretically come back and qualify for the debates in October.

Regarding the shape of the current Democratic presidential race, Kyle Kondik writes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball that”Warren’s rise, from 4% to 16%, is the kind of change that any half-decent poll would suggest is statistically significant. That does not mean she is leading — Biden still clearly is, based on the bulk of the data — or even necessarily that she has surpassed Sanders for second place. But she is also, along with Sanders and Biden, one of the frontrunners, a group that at the moment is hard to expand beyond three…That said, we also cannot necessarily make the assumption that the shape of the race is set in stone — months remain until Iowa votes in early February. Harris has shown the potential to climb higher, and may yet again. Some of the low-polling candidates — like Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) or Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) — may yet get their moment. Remember, for instance, the 2012 Republican race: While Mitt Romney ended up winning, at this point of the race he was trailing Rick Perry, and the two contenders who would become Romney’s chief rivals — Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich — were combining for only about 7.5% of the vote. Of course, that’s a share of the vote that Klobuchar and Booker (now combining for only 3%) would envy, but it also does show at least the potential for low-performing candidates to break out later in what has become a long slog of a nomination process. The hope of a moment in the sun is sustaining many of the candidacies right now, although we’ve already started to see some candidates fall by the wayside, and expect to see more.”

In his NYT column, “We Aren’t Seeing White Support for Trump for What It Is: A crucial part of his coalition is made up of better-off white people who did not graduate from college,” Thomas B. Edsall writes, “The 2020 election will be fought over the current loss of certainty — the absolute lack of consensus — on the issue of “race.” Fear, anger and resentment are rampant. Democrats are convinced of the justness of the liberal, humanistic, enlightenment tradition of expanding rights for racial and ethnic minorities. Republicans, less so. This may well prove to be a base-vs.-base election, but even so the outcome may lie in the hands of the substantial proportion of the electorate that is undecided — 7 percent according to Pew. And if Democrats want to give themselves the best shot of getting Trump out of the White House, it is toward these voters that they must make concerted efforts at pragmatic diplomacy and persuasion — and show a new level of empathy.”

At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum mulls over Edsall’s article and observes “Working-Class Men Have Lost Nearly $20,000 Over the Past 40 Years” and observes, “College-educated men haven’t been doing great: their incomes have been treading water for the past 40 years. But men with only a high-school diploma have simply cratered: their incomes have dropped by nearly $20,000 since 1973. Trump appeals to the white segment of this group with his racial demagoguery because he has no real economic message for them and neither do Democrats…The white working class may not be essential to Democrats these days, but it’s unquestionably a group that has suffered a lot in recent decades and would be receptive to a genuinely populist economic appeal—including, but not limited to, a truly full-throated commitment to unionization. It’s no wonder that Elizabeth Warren is making the inroads that she is.”

Again at CNN Politics, Cillizza explains “How the surprise resignation of Johnny Isakson could change the 2020 Senate math,” and notes, “Georgia Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson’s announcement Wednesday that he will resign from the chamber at the end of the year is just the sort of break Democrats hoping to retake the majority next November badly needed…Here’s why: Isakson wasn’t up for reelection again until 2022. And had he run again, he would have been tough to beat given his long service to the state. But now, his seat will be on the ballot in 2020, not 2022. And whoever Gov. Brian Kemp (R) appoints to fill the immediate vacancy will have — at best — a year to convince voters that he or she deserves to serve out the final two years remaining on Isakson’s term. (Also worth noting: The electoral record of appointed senators is not so good.)…Republicans will now have 23 seats to defend in November 2020 as compared to just 12 for Democrats. Prior to Isakson’s surprise announcement on Wednesday, the Cook Political Report, a non-partisan campaign handicapping service, rated just three GOP seats as “toss up”: Arizona, Colorado and Maine. Widening the aperture, Cook rated 7 more seats — including Georgia Sen. David Perdue’s — as potentially competitive. Democrats, on the other hand, had just four total seats rated by Cook as even marginally competitive with Alabama as the only one, at the moment, in real danger.”

E. J. Dionne, Jr. makes it plain in his WaPo column, “The electoral college is in trouble” that “Defenders of such a departure from one-person, one-vote say that if Democrats run up big leads in a few states and regions — especially California but also, say, New York, Illinois and New England — that shouldn’t count. Their strained claim is that a president is somehow more “representative” of the country if he wins by eking out tiny margins in several Midwestern states. This transforms our democracy into a casino. If you narrowly hit the right numbers in some places, you take the pot…What they are really defending, without explicitly saying so, is the idea that states with a higher percentage of white, non-Hispanic voters should have a disproportionate influence on who becomes president…in addition to being undemocratic, the electoral college encourages a particularly odious politician with no interest in uniting the country to do all he can to promote minority rule…Our founders admitted that the electoral college system they created in the original Constitution was defective by altering it with the 12th Amendment in 1804 . It’s time we followed their lead in showing the same willingness to scrap a system that is sending us headlong into a national crisis.”

Writing in the Boston Review, Lenore Palladino shares some perceptive observations that Dems can use in talking points in her article, “RIP Shareholder Primacy,.” Palladino explains that “shareholder-focused corporations are not laws of nature, nor does that governance model accurately reflect today’s business dealings. This misguided focus is the result of decades of flawed theory in economics and law. It stems from an incorrect analysis of the relationships between shareholders, employees, management, and the corporation itself. And it is based on a flawed theory of the underlying economy: that markets work perfectly, and the heavy hand of government must get out of the way…This ideology has caused immeasurable harm. The singular focus on stock price means that wealth is extracted by a small number of shareholders while those who work to produce that wealth are squeezed to the bone. Large corporations operating in this way so dominate U.S. political, economic, and social life that it is difficult for most of us to remember that the rules that shape corporate governance are democratically determined—that we, the electorate, can actually change them.”

Democrats should read “Latinx voters are leaning Democratic in 2020 battleground states: They could be a force for Democrats next year, but the party needs to make sure its outreach keeps up” by Li Zhou at Vox. Zhou writes, “A new poll of Latinx voters has some potentially good news for Democrats: According to the survey, voters in battleground states are souring on Trump and open to other options in 2020…Whether that translates into an election-changing dynamic, however, remains to be seen. After all, the party hasn’t exactly had a great track record on executing successful Latinx mobilization strategies, and such efforts will be important to drive voters to the polls…The survey, conducted by Equis Labs, an organization dedicated to studying the Latinx electorate, included more than 8,000 Latinx voters in several highly competitive states such as Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida…Per the results, Latinx voters favor a Democratic candidate over Trump at this point in the election cycle, though that sentiment was more muted in certain states like Florida, where Republicans have historically had a strong foothold among Cuban Americans. Between 10 percent and 20 percent of voters across every state were also undecided.”

Zhou continues, “Expected to make up 32 million voters nationwide in 2020, including 23 percent of eligible voters in Arizona, 20 percent in Florida, and 19 percent in Nevada, Latinx voters are a theoretically pivotal demographic for the upcoming election. The survey, however, cautions that they aren’t a uniformly Democratic voting bloc, unlike African American voters, for example, who tend to vote pretty overwhelmingly for Democrats. The universe of Latinx voters has historically been more ideologically diverse, driven by factors including religion…Clinton wound up winning 66 percent of the Latinx vote, while Trump took 28 percent of it, according to a national exit poll. This breakdown is roughly in line with Latinx voters’ overall voter affiliation, though it has been contested by some polling experts…The 2018 midterms indicated a more dramatic shift. Turnout in the midterms spiked from 27 percent in 2014 to 40 percent in 2018. And Latinx voters supported Democratic candidates in the general election by a slightly higher margin: 69 percent voted Democrat compared to 29 percent who voted Republican.”

In his post, “How 2020 Democrats Are Building Volunteer Armies: MobilizeAmerica is quickly becoming the go-to tool for campaigns and organizers to gather supporters” at The Daily Beast, Gideon Resnick reports on a potentially-powerful new tool for electing Democrats:

The Democratic Party is trying to build a volunteer army to match the one it has created for online giving, and so far, the results seem promising.

MobilizeAmerica, an online organizing platform that was founded in 2017 by two Democratic presidential campaign alums, has seen a major growth in usage so far in the 2020 Democratic primary. The platform gives campaigns and organizers a single venue to sign people up for canvassing, door-knocking, phone banking, and more. Already 14 current presidential campaigns and 881 overall organizations are actively using it, including the Democratic National Committee and a number of progressive groups, The Daily Beast has learned.

The events being posted on the site include a “Wine & Ring for Warren in Waterloo,” a “Phone Bank with Team Biden in Charleston County,” and a “Coffee Chat with Team Cory in Iowa City.”

Although those sound like fairly mundane campaign gatherings, they have been parlayed into larger political organizing forums. People participating are leaving their names, email addresses, and phone numbers, and are asked if they want to receive text messages with more information about events and how to stay involved. That data is not transferable between candidates or campaigns. But MobilizeAmerica has centralized a database of grassroots volunteers that has often proven cumbersome for candidates, campaigns, and committees to gather.

Resnick notes further,

Since MobilizeAmerica launched, 827,000 individuals have signed up for 1.27 million actions. And the platform has recently added a distributed organizing feature that lets volunteers create and manage their own events. That has allowed for the platform to play host to more than 6,700 watch parties with more than 39,000 signups around the first two presidential debates, and more are expected for the upcoming debate in September.

It has not quite reached the scale of ActBlue, a fundraising platform launched in 2004 that has revolutionized online giving for Democrats and progressives. But the goals are similarly lofty.

Cofounder Alfred Johnson explains that “putting all the data in one place in a single platform allows for campaigns to keep in better touch with their known supporters. If someone signs up to attend a rally, they could get follow-ups about participating in another volunteer event without the hassle of a campaign maintaining a list in a spreadsheet or elsewhere. And a supporter can opt in to provide feedback via text message about a rally they attended.”

Feedback would include automated text messages and emails to rate the process and make it better. Judging by the outcome, MobilizeAmerica performed well in its first test, the 2017 Virginia elections. In addition, the platform served 480 Democratic campaigns in the 2018 midterm elections, and they are primed for 2020. Resnick reports that, so far, the GOP, which prefers to “build systems around individual campaigns,” has no real equivalent.

As with all such tools, potential becomes power in the execution. But Democratic candidates and campaigns everywhere should take notice and investigate further how MobilizeAmerica can help them win elections.

In his article, “Abolishing the Filibuster Is Unavoidable for Democrats” at The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein writes: “Even if Democrats regain unified control of the White House and Congress in 2020, the fate of their ambitious legislative agenda will still likely hinge on a fundamental question: Do they try to end the Senate filibuster?…If the party chooses to keep the filibuster, it faces a daunting prospect: Democrats elected primarily by voters in states at the forefront of the country’s demographic, cultural, and economic changes will likely have their agenda blocked by Republican senators largely representing the smaller, rural states least touched by all of those changes. In fact, since the Senate gives each state two seats, the filibuster allows Republican senators from states representing only about one-fifth of the country’s population to be in a position to stymie Democratic legislation.”

“Much as some Democrats want to do this, the public is not very enthusiastic. In fact, they flat out don’t want to do it…In the latest Monmouth poll (rated A+ by 538), just 35 percent want to impeach Trump and remove him from office, compared to 59 percent who are opposed. And this is not a particularly pro-Trump poll. His approval rating in the poll is just 40 percent and his re-elect number is only 39 percent…But voters just aren’t behind the impeachment idea. Consider the crosstabs from the poll. Noncollege whites are opposed by 67-27–but so are white college graduates, 67-26. Independents are opposed 64-20, residents of swing counties by 65-26 and moderates by 55-36. Even nonwhites are only narrowly in favor, 51-44.” – from Ruy Teixeira’s Facebook page.

Alan I. Abramowitz writes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “When it comes to ideological identification, Democratic voters are far more divided than Republican voters. Around two-thirds of Republican voters identify as conservative while fewer than half of Democratic voters identify as liberal. Many observers of the current presidential campaign have cited this fact to argue that ideological divisions are a serious potential threat to Democratic unity, especially if the party nominates a strongly liberal candidate. But a closer examination of recent polling data indicates that when it comes to specific policy issues such as abortion, gun control, and health care, Democratic voters are actually considerably less divided than Republican voters. Moreover, these data show that divisions among Democrats based on age, education, and race are much less significant when it comes to policy issues. What makes this all the more important is that policy preferences appear to have a much stronger influence than ideological identification on voters’ broader political outlook including their opinions of President Trump. These findings suggest that the task of uniting Democrats behind the party’s eventual nominee may not be as difficult as some pundits and political observers have suggested.”

So, “What Does Invoking The 25th Amendment Actually Look Like?,” asks Julia Azai at FiveThirtyEight: “Pundits debate the possibilities of the removal and succession of the president if he is incapacitated. Even former FBI Director James Comey has weighed in on whether Donald Trump is “medically unfit to be president.” (He doesn’t think so.) In the unlikely — but politically fascinating — event that a Cabinet were to use the power to oust a sitting president, what would come next?…Constitutional scholar Brian Kalt points out: “Section 4 is drafted less than perfectly. The best reading of Section 4’s text — and the clear message from its drafting history — is that when the president declares he is able, he does not retake power until either (1) four days pass without the vice-president and Cabinet disagreeing; or (2) he, the president, wins the vote in Congress. But the text is ambiguous on this point and commentators have frequently misread it as allowing the president to retake power immediately upon his declaration of ability.”…The Cabinet, especially as it’s currently constituted, is pretty unlikely to take action against Trump. But Congress has its own set of political pressures, and if the Democratic “wave” happens, we may see a serious attempt to go after the president. If impeachment proceedings don’t get off the ground, Congress could turn to the 25th Amendment: While Congress can’t initiate removal of the president under the amendment, it can convene a body to investigate the president’s fitness to serve — and such legislation has already been proposed.”

Did former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper help or hurt his senate candidacy by running for president? Nathaniel Rakich explores the question, also at FiveThirtyEight: “…Colorado Democrats will have plenty of choices of whom to send up against [Sen. Cory] Gardner: About a dozen Democrats were already running for the Senate nomination in Colorado, and so far they don’t look likely to yield to Hickenlooper. Former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, who led one of the few polls of the primary that didn’t include Hickenlooper, has previously said he would not drop out if Hickenlooper entered the race. And state Sen. Angela Williams released a defiant statement last week warning him to stay out: “If he’s going to switch gears and run for the senate, he has a lot to explain to Colorado voters. This won’t be a coronation.”…Gardner is already one of the most vulnerable senators in the country, a Republican in a Democratic-leaning state who will be forced to share a ballot with President Trump in 2020. So while Hickenlooper could very well beat him, I doubt he’s the only one who could do so.”

Matt Ford observes at The New Republic: ” Trump’s haphazard style of governance forces journalists, lawyers, and government officials to expend innumerable hours on doomed initiatives and errant tweets. His corrosive effect on American politics forces Americans to devote far more hours of their life to thinking about him than they should. All of this amounts to a tax of sorts on the national psyche—one that can never be repaid…The constant exposure to Trump’s rhetoric and governance carries its own measurable toll. Surveys by the American Psychiatric Society (APS), Politico reported last fall, have found a marked increase in stress and anxiety among respondents with regard to the future in recent years. One poll taken shortly after Trump became president found that nearly six in ten Americans thought 2017 was the lowest point in living American memory, surpassing the Vietnam War and the September 11, 2001 attacks. Nearly three-quarters of Democrats said they were stressed about the nation’s future, a view shared by clear majorities of Republicans and independents as well.”

Ronald Brownstein explains Trump’s re-election strategy at The Atlantic: “The attempt by the president and his allies to invert the debate about his approach to race captures one of the pillars of his reelection message heading into 2020. They have signaled that, as in 2016, he intends to portray his overwhelmingly white, heavily blue-collar, and nonurban coalition as the real victims in American society. And no issue may offer him a more powerful way to gin up those emotions than insisting that the charges of racism against him—and, by extension, against his core supporters—are themselves a form of bigotry, despite the recent escalation of his rhetoric, most notably telling four Democratic congresswomen of color, all U.S. citizens, to “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came…Strategists in both parties, along with independent analysts, largely agree that Trump can energize his supporters by insisting that they are the actual victims of bigotry. But by motivating his core voters in that manner, Trump is utterly dismissing the concerns of the majority of Americans who now consistently describe him in polls as racist or racially insensitive. Like so many of Trump’s choices, that means his response to these accusations is likely to energize his base at the price of limiting his capacity to reach beyond it.”

Brownstein adds, “For the Trump coalition, “an important part of their worldview is victimization and being aggrieved,” says the Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher, who has extensively studied attitudes on race relations. “This continues the victimization narrative…“I think the cost is, he doesn’t attract anybody new,” says Lynn Vavreck, a UCLA political scientist and a co-author of Identity Crisis, a book about the role of race in the 2016 presidential election. “And that could be a cost. The man won by 77,000 votes in three states. If African American turnout goes back to the Obama levels, he needs more voters. He could be fighting the last battle.”…In a study of the 2016 election published last year, the Tufts University political scientist Brian Schaffner and two of his colleagues found that the strongest predictor of support for Trump over Hillary Clinton was a belief that racism is no longer a systemic problem. Using results from a large-sample postelection survey called the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, they found that belief dwarfed economic concerns as a predictor of support for Trump. The conviction that discrimination against women is not a problem also proved a more powerful predictor of Trump support than economic concerns, though not as strong a factor as racial attitudes…The denial of racism “was also the strongest predictor of someone switching from an Obama voter in 2012 to a Trump voter in 2016,” Schaffner said.”

Erin Doherty writes at FiveThirtyEight: “ding to a July poll from Gallup, when asked an open-ended question about the most important problem facing the country, just 2 percent of Americans mentioned the “gap between rich and poor,” and this number hasn’t changed much in over a decade, hovering around 2 or 3 percent. (It’s worth noting that since respondents had to come up with their own answers, even 3 percent support means a sizable number of people mentioned this issue without any prompting.) By contrast, Americans’ views of the importance of the economy have tended to fluctuate with the economy’s performance, as you can see in the chart below — in November 2008, for instance, when the country was in the middle of a recession, 58 percent of Americans mentioned the economy as the most important issue facing the country, whereas today, in a relatively good economy, just 3 percent of Americans said the same…another Gallup poll from late June found that seven out of 10 Americans believed that if they work hard, they can still achieve the “American Dream.” That number is roughly unchanged from 2009. In that same poll, 60 percent of Americans also said it’s either “somewhat” or “very” likely that today’s young people will have better lives than their parents, which is close to the highest that number Gallup has recorded (it got as high as 61 percent in both 2008 and 2018).”

Doherty continues: “Although Americans say socioeconomic inequality isn’t their top priority, many of them support at least one measure that would help close the gap: taxing the wealthy. Many 2020 Democratic candidates have expressed some level of support for raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, though the details of their plans vary. If candidates tie their messages of socioeconomic inequality to their plans to tax the rich, that approach could appeal to voters…According to Gallup, a majority of Americans — a bit over 60 percent — say that upper-income people pay too little in taxes, and that percentage has remained relatively unchanged over the last 25 years. And polling on specific proposals that hike the tax rate for the wealthy shows that these ideas get support from most Democrats and many Republicans. For instance, earlier this year, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed a 70 percent tax rate on every dollar a person earned over $10 million, and a majority of registered voters supported the idea. The proposal got significant support across the political spectrum, with 71 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents and 45 percent of Republicans saying they were in favor.”

At Vox, German Lopez has the skinny on “Here’s where every 2020 candidate stands on guns,” and explains that “The candidates agree on universal background checks and an assault weapons ban. There’s less agreement on other proposals.” Lopez notes, further, “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…Several candidates, including Booker, Warren, Buttigieg, and Yang, support gun licensing. But others, including Joe Biden, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Michael Bennet, have been critical of it.” Read the article for specifics on each candidate.

In Harry Enten’s “Poll of the Week” at CNN Politics, he notes that, “A new national Fox News poll finds that among black Democratic primary voters, former Vice President Joe Biden is their first choice for the party’s presidential nomination at 37%. He is followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at 18%, California Sen. Kamala Harris at 10% and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 8%…our last three CNN polls (April, May and June) aggregated together reveals that younger black voters aren’t as enthusiastic about Biden’s candidacy as older black voters are…Overall, our last three CNN polls have Biden at 44% among black voters. No one else is anywhere close; Harris is in second at 14%. Biden’s big league advantage in these polls is similar to the Fox News poll…However, Biden’s standing drops to 36% among black voters under the age of 50. This is lower than the 51% he has among black voters aged 50 and older.”

Also at FiveThirtyEight, Dhrumil Mehta reports in is “Poll of the Week” that “Americans Are More Worried About White Nationalism After El Paso: But partisans remain far apart.” Mehta notes that “After the deadly mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, this month, more Americans now describe white nationalism as a serious threat to the United States, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. Compared to the last time the poll asked this question, in March, both Democrats and Republicans in the latest poll were more likely to say that the country was threatened by white nationalism…But the El Paso shooting, in which the gunman told police that he explicitly targeted Mexicans, has not narrowed the partisan gap on white nationalism. HuffPost/YouGov polls have asked about the threat of white nationalism four times in the two years since a neo-Nazi killed a woman by driving into a crowd of counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and each time there has been a huge partisan gap in perceptions. If anything, the gap has gotten bigger…”

In “Other Polling Bites,” Mehta provides some revealing stats regarding attitudes toward immigration: “According to a YouGov poll. …28 percent of Americans, including 11 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Republicans, agreed that immigrants who use public benefits should not be able to receive green cards. Fifty-two percent of Americans think that immigrants who receive benefits should be able to get green cards, and 20 percent said they don’t know… According to a new Gallup poll, 57 percent of Americans (including 85 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of Republicans) support allowing refugees who are fleeing Central American countries to enter the U.S. That’s up 6 percentage points from December, including a 10 percentage point jump among Republicans…A poll from the Pew Research Center, however, found that public support for a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants who meet certain criteria is down slightly, from 77 percent in March 2017 to 72 percent this summer. That’s mostly due to dipping support among Republicans.”

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.