The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Do the Democrats Have to Choose a Geographic Focus in 2020?

This is the premise of a lengthy report by Bill Galston and Clara Hendrickson recently published on the Brookings site. I recommend the report; it’s well-written and has a great deal of useful data in it, summarized in a series of helpful tables. The tables generally compare a set of states they call the “northern tier” (IA, MI, OH, PA and WI) to another set they call the “southern tier” (AZ, FL, GA and TX). They are compared on 2018 results, including House, Senate and governor, as well as on time trend for these various offices. There is also a nice table on Obama-Trump counties in the northern tier and how many flipped D in the various races in 2018.

Galston’s and Hendrickson’s general argument is that these data–especially the 2018 data–suggest Democrats will likely have an easier time in 2020 expanding their electoral college coalition in the northern tier than the southern tier. That seems reasonable to me and their data do support that claim. I am less sure about the further implication they draw that Democrats need to decide on their geographic focus between the tiers and choose their candidate accordingly. This presupposes that the Democrats are going to go after one of these state clusters and not the other.

I don’t believe this would be wise. Democrats need to put as many plausible states in play as possible to give them a variety of different paths to 270+. Putting all their eggs in one basket, such as the northern tier states, a strategy that Galston and Hendrickson appear to favor, would be a mistake on the Democrats’ part.

Therefore the candidate that Democrats choose should be able to appeal to voters in both sets of states because that is how a Democratic candidate can maximize their chances of winning. And, it cannot be stressed enough, this is not just a matter of choosing the right candidate but of how that candidate chooses to run.

Words of wisdom from David Axelrod in a recent interview on the New Yorker site:

“I think that what is most important [for Democrats] is to not send the signals that were sent in 2016, which is, “We’ve got young people, we’ve got minorities, we’ve got women, so, you white working-class guys, we don’t really need you.” They believed it. They voted for Trump. And that is something that you can affect at the margins by addressing your message broadly, and I think Democrats should do that.

I think the country as a whole is restless on the issue of health care, whether it’s Medicare-for-all or some other prescription, as it were. I think people are eager for another round of health-care reform. I do think people think that there’s something wrong with our system right now, with this tremendous aggregation of wealth at the top while the majority of people are pedalling faster and faster to keep up. So I don’t think those issues are particularly radical. How you address them is another question.”

And that is what we should really be worrying about.

Kelsey Snell notes that “House Democrats Divided On Strategy To Force Release Of Trump’s Tax Returns” at npr.org: “Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee face a dilemma that is already familiar in the first weeks of their majority. Members generally agree that the public has a right to see the tax entanglements of a president. Things get trickier when it comes to who should be demanding those returns and how quickly they should force what is likely to be a confrontation with the administration over the issue…There is a mechanism, known as the “committee access” provision, that allows the tax writing committee to request tax records of any taxpayer from the secretary of the Treasury. It is unclear how the agency will respond to that request and whether it will stall or resist efforts to turn over Trump’s personal returns to the panel.” As House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. said. “That said, we’re not going to overreach, we’re not going to overinvestigate, we’re not going to overpoliticize our constitutional responsibilities.” Meanwhile Snell quote Rep Ron Kind D-WI: First of all, there’s no rush…I gotta believe that the Mueller team already has their hands on the president’s tax returns. If they’re looking for a possible connection between Russia and his family, there is a danger in trying to go too far too fast.”

“A new poll is finding broad support for an annual wealth tax on people with assets of at least $50 million, underlining support for taxing the rich,” reports Matthew Sheffield at The Hill. “The Hill-HarrisX survey released Wednesday found that 74 percent of registered voters back an annual 2 percent tax on people with assets over $50 million, and a 3 percent tax on people with assets in excess of $1 billion…The poll showed support for the idea among people of all ages and races and from both political parties…Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed the wealth tax last month. She is one of several high-profile Democrats calling for higher taxes on the wealthy…Just 26 percent of respondents said they were opposed to the wealth tax…Strong majorities of both sexes said they favored the tax, as did a majority of Republicans. Sixty-five percent of GOP voters supported it while only 35 percent opposed it. Independents backed the tax 69 to 31 percent, as did 86 percent of Democratic voters.”

Sheffield cites similar findings from other polls: “A Jan. 22-23 Business Insider-SurveyMonkey poll found that 54 percent of adults favored Warren’s proposal while only 19 percent disagreed with it. Another 15 percent said they were unsure…The policy idea attracted majority support in a Feb. 1-2 Morning Consult-Politico survey of registered voters. Sixty-one percent of respondents backed a wealth tax while only 20 percent were opposed. Nineteen percent were unsure.

Oliver Roeder takes a stab at explaining “Why It’s Unlikely We’ll Get A Deal On The Wall Anytime Soon: That’s what the game theorists think, anyway” at FiveThirtyEight, and notes “Since economist John Nash revolutionized economics, bargaining has been the stuff of game theorists. What makes a deal more likely to happen? And what makes it more likely to fall apart? The fruits of that study hold a couple of lessons for reading the news, and the tea leaves, coming out of the White House and the Capitol over the next few days…Why are we playing this particular game? Why, specifically, is a partial shutdown the outcome that arises in the absence of an agreement? This seems, as an economist would say, inefficient — a little bit of miscoordination can lead to a big consequence. Perhaps, as is the case elsewhere, the previous budget should remain in force if no deal is reached. Or perhaps the parties should be forced into mediation, as is sometimes the case in the private sector. To an economist, these ideas to remake the system sound like attractive efficiency boosters.”

If you want to get a little wonky about analysing border walls, check out “What the research says about border walls” by Denise-Marie Ordway at Journalists Resource, which reviews seven scholarly articles on the topic. Among the findings reported by Ordway: “Scholars from Dartmouth College and Stanford University examine how expanding the U.S.-Mexico border fence has affected migration and the U.S. economy…The key takeaway: The $2.3 billion project curbed migration and benefited low-skill U.S. workers but hurt high-skill U.S. workers. “In total, we estimate the Secure Fence Act reduced the aggregate Mexican population living in the United States by 0.64 percent, equivalent to a reduction of 82,647 people,” the authors write…According to the analysis, another fence expansion “would have larger impacts on migration from Mexico to the United States, they would also result in greater reallocation of economic activity to Mexico; for example, a wall expansion that builds along half the remaining uncovered border would result in 144,256 fewer Mexican workers residing in the United States, causing the United States real GDP to decline by $4.3 billion, or approximately $29,800 in lost economic output for each migrant prevented.”

From “Targeted internet ads may improve millennial voter turnout,” also by Denise-Marie Ordway at Journalist’s Resource: “If you want to get more millennials to vote in municipal races, targeted internet ads may help, according to a new study published in Political Communication…The study, done in partnership with The Dallas Morning News, finds that Dallas voters between the ages of 23 and 35 were more likely to participate in certain local races if they had been targeted by internet ads promoting election news coverage and election reminders…The effect was small — turnout was less than 1 percentage point higher among these millennials compared with those in the control group, which did not receive any ads. But the ads were shown to be more effective than direct mail and automated phone calls, the study’s lead author, Katherine Haenschen, told Journalist’s Resource.”

Further, notes Ordway, “Reaching millennials is of particular interest to community leaders, political party officials and campaign organizers because people born between 1981 and 1996 are projected to become America’s largest voting bloc. Millennials made up 27 percent of the voting-age population in the United States in November 2016, just under Baby Boomers, who comprised 31 percent, a 2018 report from the Pew Research Center shows. Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964…While the number of millennials continues to grow – largely through immigration and naturalization, according to Pew – millennials are much less likely to vote than earlier generations. For example, 51 percent of eligible millennials nationwide voted in the 2016 presidential election, compared with 69 percent of Boomers…This study claims to present the first evidence that online ads can boost voter participation. Haenschen, a communication professor at Virginia Tech, said they can be especially useful in reaching millennials and other hard-to-reach voters, including those who live in remote locations or do not have landline telephones.”

Tara Golshan has a succinct description of “The dumpster fire that is Virginia politics, explained in 500 words” at vox.com. An excerpt: “If all three Democrats resign — which looks unlikely at this point, but isn’t out of the realm of possibility — the governorship would be passed to Republican Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Kirk Cox, whose district, a court determined, was drawn in a way that discriminated against African-American voters…To top it all off, Cox got his speakership only after the state settled a tied election — that determined which party would control the chamber — by drawing a name out of a bowl.”

At Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik explain that “Looming over all of this is the upcoming state legislative elections in Virginia this November. Republicans are hanging on to very slim majorities in the state House of Delegates (51-49) and state Senate (21-19). Democrats made a net 15-seat gain in the House of Delegates in November 2017 as Northam, Fairfax, and Herring won statewide. Democrats seemed like favorites to win both chambers — we’ll analyze these races later in the year — particularly because a new state House of Delegates map imposed by judicial order will improve Democratic odds in that chamber. Some Virginia Democratic operatives, even before the current mess, were concerned that the white hot intensity that fueled Democrats in 2017 and 2018 might cool in 2019, particularly without any statewide elections on the ballot. Lower turnout might help Republicans, whose voter base in Virginia (and elsewhere) can be more reliable in off-year elections. Still, the growing nationalization of American politics could help the Democrats by pushing them to maximize turnout in Virginia by focusing again on the unpopular President Trump. But one could imagine the opposite happening, particularly if Northam hangs around and depresses Democrats, or the Fairfax allegations continue to churn. Perhaps a statewide election for lieutenant governor, if it happens, will increase turnout in Democrats’ favor. Or if Northam stays, could we see Democratic state legislative candidates running on impeaching their own party’s governor? It’s not impossible, and it would be just the latest crazy development in a state rocked by them over the last week.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

You can’t swing a dead cat these days without running into another of the Medicare for All plans offered by various Democratic presidential candidates and liberal think tanks. What should we think about all this?

First, I think we should differentiate between Medicare for All as a campaign slogan and these various plans. As a slogan I think it’s got a great deal of power. But it is important that the plan to which such a slogan is linked be perceived by voters as a clear advance and not as a threat to their current situation.

Fundamentally, I think this comes down to whether the plan is Medicare for All Who Want It or Medicare for All, Whether You Want It or Not. This, in turn, comes down to whether the plan is a vast expansion of Medicare-like availability or simply replaces the existing system, including private health insurance, with a government-run system based on Medicare.

There is a strong case that the political sweet spot–what the public is really ready for–lies in the former not the latter. Ron Brownstein in his latest Atlantic article explains:

“After the ACA’s passage, Obama—who had famously promised that those who like their insurance plan could keep it—faced a huge backlash after only a few hundred thousand people in the individual insurance market were forced to give up coverage that did not meet the law’s standards. Ending private insurance would affect the 181 million Americans who today receive health insurance through their employers, according to census figures.

The share of Americans who receive coverage through work is significant: about two-thirds of adults with a high-school diploma, three-fourths of those with a two-year college degree, 87 percent of those with a four-year degree, and 90 percent of those with graduate education. Not surprisingly, that means extremely large percentages of adults receive health coverage through their employers in many of the affluent suburban districts that powered the Democratic takeover of the House last November.

More than four-fifths of the population receives employer-provided coverage in a wide range of districts that Democrats flipped from the GOP in 2018, including suburban seats in Northern Virginia and New Jersey, and seats in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Detroit, according to census results. And roughly three-fourths receive health insurance through their employers in districts that Democrats won elsewhere: in northeast Iowa; Irvine, California; Salt Lake City; Virginia Beach, Virginia; and the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia; Atlanta; Des Moines; Kansas City, Kansas; and San Diego. By contrast, in the much more working-class New York City district won by the liberal champion Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, just 56 percent of the residents have employer-provided insurance…..

In the latest monthly health-care tracking poll by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, four-fifths of Democrats (and 56 percent of all adults) said they supported “a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare-for-All, in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan.”

But the same survey found much more hesitation, even among Democrats, when respondents were told that such a plan could mean higher taxes, longer waits for treatment, and the elimination of private insurance companies. Support among the general public in the Kaiser poll plummeted to just 37 percent when respondents were told it could eliminate private insurance companies.”

This implies we should not let the best be the enemy of the good. It is quite possible to have a Medicare for All Who Want It-type plan that really does provide universal coverage, would contain costs and all the rest, but does not immediately wipe out private insurance. These probably make more sense to push at this stage of the game.

Two good ones to look at are Reps. Rosa De Lauro’s and Jan Schakowsky’s Medicare for America plan (explained by Jacob Hacker, who helped devise the plan, in a good interview on Vox and the Center for American Progress’ (if I may be allowed a moment of institutional chauvinism) Medicare Extra for All plan.

In “These governors are showing what happens when you campaign on climate action and win:  There’s a flurry of green political news at the state level” at Vox, David Roberts writes that “Since climate change was first introduced to US politics, most attention and debate have focused on a federal solution, but most actual policy progress has taken place at the state level. States are where everything from cap-and-trade systems to renewable energy mandates have actually become law…And so it remains today. Most of the buzz in current climate politics, especially with the presidential race beginning to take shape, is around a Green New Deal, a grand, comprehensive set of federal investments and regulations…But a GND is a long way off, even if everything goes well. Meanwhile, once again, US states are stepping up. The 2018 midterms saw several green-minded governors either elected for the first time or reelected, and they are wasting no time pushing forward.” Roberts provides details of reforms om Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, FLorida and Idaho and adds that “The call for 100 percent clean energy is practically Democratic orthodoxy at this point. And Trump’s wan attempts to save coal look sillier and sillier.”

Ronald Brownstein previews “The Coming Democratic Drama Over Medicare for All: The policy’s supporters could run up against the same problems that Republicans faced in trying to repeal Obamacare” at The Atlantic, and observes, “Ending private insurance would affect the 181 million Americans who today receive health insurance through their employers, according to census figures...The share of Americans who receive coverage through work is significant: about two-thirds of adults with a high-school diploma, three-fourths of those with a two-year college degree, 87 percent of those with a four-year degree, and 90 percent of those with graduate education. Not surprisingly, that means extremely large percentages of adults receive health coverage through their employers in many of the affluent suburban districts that powered the Democratic takeover of the House last November.”

Brownstein adds that “More than four-fifths of the population receives employer-provided coverage in a wide range of districts that Democrats flipped from the GOP in 2018, including suburban seats in Northern Virginia and New Jersey, and seats in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Detroit, according to census results. And roughly three-fourths receive health insurance through their employers in districts that Democrats won elsewhere: in northeast Iowa; Irvine, California; Salt Lake City; Virginia Beach, Virginia; and the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia; Atlanta; Des Moines; Kansas City, Kansas; and San Diego. By contrast, in the much more working-class New York City district won by the liberal champion Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, just 56 percent of the residents have employer-provided insurance.”…In [Democratic pollster Geoff] Garin’s survey for Protect Our Care, Democrats split exactly in half on whether they want the party to pursue reforms that build on the existing employer-based system or replace it entirely with a single-payer structure.

Geoffrey Skelley reports that “Almost Half Of Voters Are Dead Set Against Voting For Trump” at FiveThirtyEight: “With the 2020 election cycle revving into full gear, pollsters are asking voters whether they plan to vote for President Trump. In a Washington Post/ABC News survey, respondents were asked if they would definitely vote for the president, consider voting for him or definitely not vote for him — and 56 percent said they would definitely not vote for him. Morning Consult poseda slightly different form of this question, asking voters if they’d definitely or probably vote for Trump, or if they’d definitely or probably vote for someone else. Eight percent said they would probably vote for someone else, but 47 percent said they would definitely vote for someone else. In total, that’s 55 percent of respondents who seemed unlikely to vote for Trump…The share of voters who said they would “definitely” oppose Trump is much higher than it ever was for Obama. In fact, the average share of voters who said they would “definitely” oppose Trump is roughly 10 points higher than it was for Obama more than 600 days out from the election, which is where we are now.”

In “Other Polling Nuggets,” Skelley writes, “If Trump and congressional Democrats fail to come to a border security agreement in the next couple of weeks, 48 percent of Americans said in a Monmouth University poll that the parties should agree to fund the government through the end of the year without a deal. Twenty percent said they should shut down the government until a deal is reached, and 26 percent said they should extend the temporary funding and keep negotiating. Asked about the idea of Trump’s declaring a national emergency to build the wall, 64 percent of respondents said they disapproved, while 34 percent said they approved.”

“Every extremist murder in the U.S. in 2018 was linked to right-wing extremism, according to an alarming new report from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism,” notes Caroline Orr at Shareblue Media. “The annual report found that at least 50 people were killed by extremists in 2018, marking a 35 percent increase from 2017. This makes 2018 the fourth-deadliest year on record for domestic extremist-related killings since 1970…All 50 murders were committed by people with ties to at least one right-wing extremist movement, making right-wing extremists responsible for more killings in 2018 than any year since 1995, when Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City…According to a November 2018 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the number of terrorist attacks in the U.S. committed by far-right perpetrators more than quadrupled between 2016 and 2017.”

As we go to press, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam says he plans to stay on as Virginia’s governor, in the wake of revelations of his racist behavior as a medical student. But his real-world choices are  whether or not he will resign soon, or prolong the agony for his constituents, his state and his fellow Democrats, and resign later. Northam may be in denial that he can somehow survive and finish his term without tearing up Virginia’s body politic, but that delusion will soon evaporate in the growing chorus of nearly all Virginia’s leaders clamoring for his resignation. Fortunately for Virginia, the state has an impressive young Lieutenant Governor waiting in the wings in Justin Fairfax. Stephanie Mencimer notes in her Mother Jones profile of Fairfax, that “Virginia governors serve only a single term of four years. But Fairfax could end up serving for seven. As an appointed governor, he would fill the three years remaining in Northam’s term and then would still be eligible run again in 2021 as an incumbent.” We understand why that prospect aggravates Republicans, who are also in denial about Virginia’s transformation into a Blue state. But Northam can do his state and his legacy a service by resigning sooner than later, and help empower Fairfax to heal the state they both love. Any other alternative can only do the opposite.

Meanwhile, Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, who has called for his friend Northam to resign, is reportedly mulling over a possible run for the Democratic nomination for President. McAuliffe has said he will make his decision by the end of March, but it could come sooner. Either way, McAuliffe, who has an extraordinary track record of accomplishments as Governor, also deserves a shout-out for his outstanding leadership in guiding Virginia from red to purple to blue statehood. It would be a shame if Northam endangers that legacy by putting careerist priorities before interracial unity and goodwill in Virginia, which can no longer thrive under his leadership. In an NPR interview with Michel Martin, McAuliffe credited Northam with doing a “very good job getting Medicaid expansion done last year,” but also said, “we’ve got to move forward. Our state is in a very good position…But he’s just going to have an impossible task now when everybody in the state has called for him to resign. We’re in the middle of legislative session…This is the time that the governor has to be leaning in. You have the Black Caucus who is adamant that he step down…the point is he knows what’s in the best interests of Virginia.”

Sam Wang discusses how “A Redistricting “Reform” Bill in Virginia Would Entrench Politicians Further” at The Princeton Election Consortium: “In 2011, Virginia was gerrymandered, both racially to hurt black voters, and on a partisan basis to benefit Republicans. We estimate that black voters (and therefore Democrats) lost three seats by being packed into a dozen districts in southeastern Virginia. And in 2017, Democrats just barely failed to take control of the House of Delegates despite winning 54% of the statewide vote. But that artificial dominance is about to fall. In a lawsuit concerning the House of Delegates map, Bethune-Hill v. Va. State Board of Elections, a federal court selected one of several maps offered by a Special Master (which we had analyzed). If the U.S. Supreme Court allows this new map, Democrats would be likely to take the chamber in 2019. If Democrats also take the Senate, they would control the legislative process – and redistricting…In the face of such a potential flip, Republican leadership in the Virginia House has proposed a new redistricting process, HJ615. It is sold as nonpartisan reform. But Ben Williams and I find that it is more likely to entrench whatever party is already in control.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, combines two articles cross-posted from his blog:

As the Pew piece cited below notes, Latinos’ weight in the eligible electorate, which will be the largest among minorities in 2020, could well be significantly less than that among actual voters due to their chronically low turnout.

But is that starting to change? Daily Kos Elections had an article today by Stephen Wolf covering a new report on 2018 voters in California districts that flipped Democratic. The somewhat remarkable story, illustrated by a table in the article, is that the Latino share of voters in 2018 in these districts about matched the share of voters in 2016. This is highly unusual given the usual dropoff you see among these voters if off-year elections–and that is clear by the comparison to 2014, also included in the article’s table. A good sign. Let’s hope they can keep the party going in 2020.

Pew has a nice short piece out about the topic that’s worth a look. Some nice charts, two of which are reproduced below, one on racial composition and the other on generational composition The big takeaways there are Hispanics becoming the largest group among eligible voters in 2020 and the sudden emergence of Gen Z as a significant group among eligibles.

One of the most annoying distortions we get from lazy media coverage and political lightweights is the meme that Democrats want a sudden, all-at-once conversion to Medicare for all. No serious Democratic political leader is advocating immediate destruction of the entire private health insurance industry. Medicare for all is a goal to be achieved by measured reforms in a reasonable time frame that won’t cause a sudden disruption of America’s health care system and its millions of employees. To understand what Democrats are actually advocating for health reform, read “We read Democrats’ 8 plans for universal health care. Here’s how they work” by Sarah Kliff and Dylan Scott. For a common sense take on progressive health care reform, check out Dylan Scott’s interview of Jacob Hacker at Vox.

From the KFF Health Tracking Poll – January 2019: The Public On Next Steps For The ACA And Proposals To Expand Coverage by Ashley Kirzinger: “A majority of the public say it is either “extremely important” or “very important” that Congress work on lowering prescription drug costs for as many Americans as possible (82 percent), making sure the ACA’s protections for people with pre-existing health conditions continue (73 percent), and protecting people with health insurance from surprise high out-of-network medical bills (70 percent). Fewer – about four in ten – say repealing and replacing the ACA (43 percent) and implementing a national Medicare-for-all plan (40 percent) are an “extremely important” or “very important” priority. When forced to choose the top Congressional health care priorities, the public chooses continuing the ACA’s pre-existing condition protections (21 percent) and lowering prescription drug cost (20 percent) as the most important priorities for Congress to work on. Smaller shares choose implementing a national Medicare-for-all plan (11 percent), repealing and replacing the ACA (11 percent), or protecting people from surprise medical bills (9 percent) as a top priority. One-fourth said none of these health care issues was their top priority for Congress to work on.”

Ezra Klein explains the pivotal importance of the filibuster question to health care reform at Vox: “While it’s possible to imagine a Medicare-for-more bill making it through budget reconciliation, if Democrats want to do something as complex as reconstructing the American health care system, they’re going to need to be able to write legislation in a simple, straightforward way…That means that Democrats either need to get rid of the filibuster, which they can do with 51 votes, or they need to repeatedly overrule parliamentary challenges to their reconciliation bill, which is pretty much the same thing.

My favorite headline of the day comes from ThinkProgress, where Addy Baird explains “Here’s what single-payer advocates want to hear from 2020 Democratic primary contenders: No co-pays, no deductibles, no need for supplemental policies, no private insurance.” My one modification would be that those who want additional private insurance should be able to purchase it. Baird notes further, “a study from the conservative think tank Mercatus found last July that Medicare for All would save the United State trillions, and 70 percent of all Americans — including 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans — support Medicare for all, according to a Reuters poll from last August. Just 20 percent of Americans said they oppose the idea outright.”

“Schultz has revealed his hand with his attacks on Medicare for All proposals,” John Nichols explains in his article, “Howard Schultz Is Just Like Every Other Billionaire—Afraid of Losing His Wealth and Privilege: He calls Medicare for All “far too extreme,” but he is the real extremist.” at The Nation. “The idea that “we should get rid of …the insurance industry”—and replace it with a humane, efficient and affordable guarantee of health care as a right for all Americans—is, to his exceptionally privileged view, “far too extreme.” And don’t even get him started on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal to make the very rich pay their fair share by imposing a 70 percent marginal tax rate on billionaires…Now, billionaire Howard Schultz is labeling Democrats who would guarantee health care for all, education for all and jobs for all as “far too extreme.” In fact, Schultz is the extremist—one of the “prophets of calamity” who FDR warned will “seek special financial privilege” by denying “the necessity of reform and reconstruction.”

Eric Boehlert has some noteworthy comments on media coverage of Schultz’s launch at Daily Kos: “Schultz is clearly benefiting from our Davos-style political culture, where billionaires are automatically held up as symbols of what is right and just. And if a billionaire raises his hand and says he wants become president without facing any primary-season opponents, the media parts like the Red Sea and prepares a seat for him in front of an eager television host…Schultz is also singing out of the same “both sides” hymnbook that the Washington press loves so much. He constantly stresses the idea that both Trump and Democrats have become dangerously out of step with mainstream America—that Democrats are just as radical as Trump, and that the two parties always represent mirror opposites of each other on the political spectrum…Schultz is simply advancing a fraudulent narrative, and the press is mostly letting him get away with it. Over and over…”

Does Howard Schultz support cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits? At New York Magazine’s Intelligencer, Jonathan Chait cites Schultz’s “desire to cut social insurance programs. “We can get the 4 percent growth,” he said last year, “we can go after entitlements, and we can do the right thing — if we have the right people in place.”…In reality, there is no constituency for cutting these programs in either party. A 2017 Pew survey found 15 percent of Republicans, and 5 percent of Democrats support cuts to Medicare, while 10 percent of Republicans and 3 percent of Democrats support cuts to Social Security.”

Is Schultz the ‘austerity candidate’? In his article, “The phony centrism of Howard Schultz,” Damon Linker writes at The Week: “He’s a Democrat who wants Democrats to be less ambitious, to trim their sails, to stop making policy promises premised on raising taxes on people like him…That doesn’t make him a centrist. It makes him a rich Democrat who opposes his fellow Democrats taking a bigger chunk of his income or wealth…Of course he doesn’t put it that way. Instead, he talks about prudence. About the danger of budget deficits. About the importance of Americans living within their means. The country simply can’t afford universal health insurance or free college tuition — even though, somehow, such comparably wealthy countries as Canada, Denmark, France, and Germany manage to have something approaching one or both.

Is Schultz’s economic elitism basically ‘Republican Lite’? At The Guardian, Luke Savage observes, “He expresses concern that so many have so little money in the bank but doesn’t think low-earning workers deserve a raise, a union, free health insurance, or the opportunity to get an education without drowning in debt courtesy of sky-high tuition…Schultz is pledging to be a tribune for the billionaire class to which he himself belongs, over and against the growing current of popular, social democratic policies continuing to gather momentum within the Democratic party and among the wider US electorate.” Savage cites Schultz’s “vague, self-interested brand of class harmony as an alternative to meaningful reform…Instead, the grip of billionaires on the American political system – be they conscientious or not – must be broken once and for all.”

Jacob Rodriguez reports at 9news.com, Denver’s NBC affiliate, that “A bill in the Colorado Legislature that would effectively do away with the Electoral College as we know it has passed the state Senate and moves to the state House of Representatives,” where Democrats hold a 41-24 majority. Rodriguez explains further:

The bill – SB 42 – would tie Colorado’s Electoral College votes to the outcome of the national popular vote once enough states adopt similar laws. Once 270 electoral votes-worth of states join the movement, the president will be chosen by whoever receives the most votes nationally, according to the nonprofit National Popular Vote…Should Colorado approve this, 13 states representing 181 electoral votes would be in. However, the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” can’t take effect until enough states sign on to equal the 270 electoral votes needed to become president.

Rodriguez notes that “Some of the other states that have approved similar legislation include California, Illinois, New York and Washington state.”

So where might the National Popular Vote movement win over states with the the needed 89 electoral votes? In the map below, from nationalpopularvote.com, “each square represents one electoral vote (out of 538).”

The National Popular Vote movement has received some bipartisan support in different states, but the most reliable supporters across the nation have been Democrats in the state legislatures. In the wake of the 2018 elections, some of the states most likely to enact the reform in the near future include MI, NC, PA and VA, which together would bring in states with 64 additional electoral votes. Since Republicans dominate Texas politics, Florida is clearly the most winnable of the big states, although it has a Republican governor.

Polls indicate that a substantial majority of voters in nearly all states support the reform. In Florida, for example, nationalpopularvote.com notes that,

A survey of 800 Florida voters conducted on January 9-10, 2009 showed 78% overall support for a national popular vote for President. By political affiliation, support for a national popular vote was 88% among Democrats, 68% among Republicans, and 76% among others. By gender, support for a national popular vote was 88% among women and 69% among men. By age, support for a national popular vote was 79% among 18-29 year olds, 78% among 30-45 year olds, 76% among 46-65 year olds, and 80% for those older than 65. By race, support for a national popular vote was 80% among whites (representing 70% of respondents), 69% among African Americans (representing 13% of respondents), 79% among Hispanics (representing 13% of respondents), and 72% among others (representing 4% of respondents). The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 1/2%.

For a guide to citizen action to support the reform in every state, click here.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

How Far Left Is the Democratic Party Moving?

I think the answer to this question depends on how you interpret the rise of the “young anti-capitalist left” as it’s termed in a recent, lengthy 538 report by Clare Malone. This group includes politicians like Ocasio-Cortez, organizers like Maurice Miitchell of the Working Families Party, organizations like the DSA and Justice Democrats and activist writers like Sean McElwee.

I take these folks seriously and think they perform an important role in raising the profile of some key left issues and generating energy and a sense of the possible around those issues. As Paul Krugman put it in Malone’s article on the specific issue of the Green New Deal: “If the Green New Deal means that we’re going to try to rely on public investment in technologies and renewables and things that will make it easier for people to use less fossil fuel, that’s a pretty good start.”

So all that’s great. But it’s important to keep in mind that the real left movement among the Democrats in party-wide and, for the median Democrat, that does not take them to the same place as this young anti-capitalist left.

Consensus Democratic leftism today rejects ‘business as usual’ and involves a sweeping indictment of the economic and political system for generating inequality and doing little to help ordinary people in the wake of the great financial crisis. Substantively, Democrats today – in particular aspirants for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination – are far more willing to entertain and endorse ‘big ideas’, such as going beyond the ACA, aka Obamacare (which is now vigorously defended) to ‘Medicare for all’, free college education, universal pre-kindergarten provision, vastly expanded infrastructure spending, including a Green New Deal and even a guaranteed jobs program. Taxing the rich is ‘in’ and worrying about the deficit is ‘out’.

Democrats are also highly unified on core social issues such as opposing racism, defending immigrants, promoting LGBT and gender equality and criminal justice reform. In short, the center of gravity of the Democratic party has decisively shifted from trying to assure voters of fiscal and social moderation, to forthrightly promising active government in a wide range of areas.

But this hardly means the Democrats are becoming a radical, anti-capitalist party. Far from it. As leftism goes, the current Democratic iteration is of a fairly modest variety, approaching, at most, mild European social democracy.

Nor is it the case that incumbents and moderates are being thrown out wholesale and replaced with candidates much farther to their left. Across the country, only two Democratic incumbents in the House lost primaries, and none in the Senate did. A Brookings study found that self-described “progressive Democrats” did well in primaries this election season but establishment Democrats actually did somewhat better. The same pattern obtained in the general election in November.Thus, the change in the party is less a leftward surge featuring new politicians with a radical agenda (though this is happening to some extent) and more a steady party-wide movement to the left.

So the Democratic party is moving to the left, but the young anti-capitalist left is only a part of that movement, rather than defining that movement. That’s an important difference to keep in mind. The Democrats have been, and need to remain. a “big tent” party.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Results from the last election were remarkable for Democrats among whites under 45 and I don’t think that fact has gotten enough attention. This is a big chunk of the white population and if it is truly slipping away from the Republicans that blows quite a a hole in the GOP’s white voters-oriented strategy.

Using the Catalist data, which I believe is by far the most accurate data currently available, I find that Democrats carried the national House vote among whites under 45. Ditto for the Iowa gubernatorial election, the Minnesota Senate and gubernatorial elections, the Arizona Senate election, the Virginia Senate election, the Montana Senate election, the North Dakota Senate election and the New Hampshire gubernatorial election. Wow. That’s every statewide contest Catalist has released so far, with the exception of the Georgia gubernatorial election, where whites under 45 were nevertheless significantly less Republican than older whites. I think I detect a pattern!