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

California Dreamin’

The LA times has released polls of likely voters in 8 California congressional districts. Josh Marshall highlights the good news for Team Blue:

“Look at this new set of polls from California. The gist is that Republicans are at risk of losing a bunch of suburban seats the party has held for decades. In other words, they’re looking at a possible total wipe out. Democrats universal loathe Devin Nunes. But he’s generally been seen — rightly — to be safe in this cycle. But look at the numbers. He’s at 53 percent versus 45 percent for Andrew Janz. That’s still a pretty solid position to be in. But that’s not safe anymore. Duncan Hunter, under indictment but in an extremely Republican district, is up by only 2 points over Campa-Najjar.

Some highlights from “GOP sees Kavanaugh as boost for Senate, danger for House” by Scott Wong, Lisa Hagen and Mike Lillis: “A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marish survey released Wednesday shows the Democratic advantage has basically vanished. Once a 10-point margin for Democrats in July is now only a 2-point gap between Democrats and Republicans who consider the elections “very important.”…Polling released from Harvard CAPS/Harris on Monday showed that registered Democratic voters are slightly more likely to vote than Republican and independent voters based on the battle over the Kavanaugh nomination, which could provide some comfort to the party. Half of Democratic voters say they’re more likely to vote, compared to 46 percent of GOP voters…But Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC says it has conducted 24,000 interviews in states with Senate races since Thursday that shows the Kavanaugh nomination is not the game changer the GOP claims. The group says it hasn’t moved the needle in horse-race polling in Trump states, arguing that health care is still the top issue…While Trump’s attacks on Ford could excite the [GOP] base, many believe it could do lasting damage with independents and female, suburban voters whose support endangered House Republicans will need if they are to survive in November.”

Lillis, Hagen and Wong also note that “Democrats, meanwhile, have already been energized by what appears to be a backlash against the mercurial president, especially among female voters and candidates, who are running in record numbers this cycle…“The women of America are very energized — and they started to be energized on the 21st of January 2017. It has not dissipated,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the Democratic whip, told a small group of reporters in his Capitol office. “And while I believe there’s some energy on the other side as well, I don’t think it matches the energy that was created on our side, which was already at a high level.”…If the Kavanaugh nomination is derailed, Republicans like Freedom Caucus Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) believe the defeat will deflate the base and depress turnout in November. But others argue it could mobilize GOP voters — at least in Senate races.” While some very recent polls do show an uptick in GOP base voter enthusiasm, it’s unlikely that it will exceed the increase in voter enthusiasm among Democrats. Much depends on the wild card that will be played today, the results of the F.B.I.’s Kavanaugh investigation. Don’t be shocked if any GOP base Kavanaugh bump evaporates in the month ahead, as voters begin focusing on issues of concern that can actually be affected by their votes.

In his article, “Brett Kavanaugh Is Patient Zero” Ronald Brownstein writes in The Atlantic: “If Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is truly concerned about preserving the Court’s legitimacy in American life, as he’s often suggested, Brett Kavanaugh has become his worst nightmare…Before the disputed Bush v. Gore decision, which ended the recount in the 2000 presidential election, about half of Americans routinely expressed a great deal of confidence in the Court, according to Gallup polling. That number has fallen to 40 percent or less since the mid-2000s; in the latest Gallup measurement, from June, just one-third of Democrats said they had faith in the Court, compared with about two-fifths of Republicans…After Friday’s Senate Judiciary Committee session, Kavanaugh is facing a renewed FBI investigation into the sexual-assault charges against him from Christine Blasey Ford. But even if that inquiry fails to produce decisive evidence, and Senate Republicans push through his nomination, the tactics Kavanaugh has already employed to preserve his candidacy are bound to stoke Roberts’s greatest fear…if the Senate confirms Kavanaugh, it will present Roberts with a justice whose every decision will be viewed through the lens of the partisan and tribal animosities he inflamed to defend his nomination…In every possible way, he validated the portrait that critics had painted of him as a Republican operative in robes.”

At law.com, Karen Sloan reports that “900+ Law Profs Say Kavanaugh Lacks ‘Judicial Temperament,’ in Letter to Senate,” and observes that “The list of signatories is growing by the hour, and organizers plan to send the letter to senators on Thursday. As of Wednesday morning, 907 professors from 154 law schools had signed on…We have differing views about the other qualifications of Judge Kavanaugh,” the letter reads. “But we are united, as professors of law and scholars of judicial institutions, in believing that Judge Kavanaugh did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court of our land…A separate group of 660 female law professor are also planning to send their own letter to the the Senate Thursday, arguing that Kavanaugh cannot be impartial and that he was especially condescending toward women senators during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.”

Kavanaugh’s evangelical conservative supporters won’t like it much, but “The nation’s largest group of Christian churches on Wednesday called for the withdrawal of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for the Supreme Court,” notes Avery Anapole, writing at the Hill. “The National Council of Churches, which represents 38 denominations in the US, wrote in a statement on their website that they believe Kavanaugh has “disqualified himself from this lifetime appointment and must step aside immediately…”Judge Kavanaugh exhibited extreme partisan bias and disrespect towards certain members of the committee and thereby demonstrated that he possesses neither the temperament nor the character essential for a member of the highest court in our nation,” the statement read…The National Council of Churches alleged that Kavanaugh’s testimony included “several misstatements and some outright falsehoods,” including some related to Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school party in the 1980s.”

“Several Democratic candidates around the country are conducting shrewd, intelligent campaigns for Congress, focusing on real issues and letting the Trumps fall where they may,” writes Richardf Hermann in “A Democratic midterms strategy” at The Wayne Post. “They realize that they do not need to fulminate incessantly against President Trump’s countless foibles, faults and failures. He does this very ably all by himself. He is the perfect vehicle for keeping his mayhem front and center, reminding voters daily why it is essential to come out and vote against his enablers in November…Trump’s inability to stop tweeting, turn off the TV and actually govern permits Democrats to zero in on issues that matter to voters: a broken and obscenely expensive healthcare system; K-12 education that has fallen behind the rest of the developed world; unaffordable higher education that often does not lead to a decent job; blindness to the massive workplace changes about to hit us from technological innovation; expanding income inequality; collapsing infrastructure; climate change denial; inept disaster response; an unfair tax system that favors the wealthy; unsustainable entitlement programs; an ignored opiod crisis; and disastrous deregulatory initiatives that will sicken and even kill Americans.”

At nbcnews.com Alex Seitz-Wald and Benjy Sarlin write that “Democrats predicted the wave of women who marched against Trump, shared stories of abuse in the #MeToo era, and powered female candidates to primary victories this year, would only build after watching Christine Blasey Ford’s poised testimony on Thursday describing Kavanaugh laughing as he assaulted her. A record number of women are running for Congress this year, and 75 percent of them are Democrats…”The women of this country identify with Dr. Ford and will not forget what is happening here,” said Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “They are not angry, they are furious, and I expect the largest women’s turnout in a midterm — ever.”…ActBlue, an online clearinghouse for Democratic donors, reported that they raised $10 million from small donors on Friday, their highest daily total ever since the site was founded in 2004.”

In her post, “Republicans vs. Democracy” at The Washington Monthly, Stephanie Mencimer shares a chilling reminder that allegations of sexual assault are not the only good reasons why Democrats should fight to kill the Kavanaugh nomination: “While Kavanaugh clerked for Kennedy, he has said his real hero is the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a noted foe of the Voting Rights Act who spent his early years as a lawyer in the 1960s assisting with a Republican poll-watching program accused of harassing and trying to turn away black voters. In 2011, Kavanaugh endorsed the modern version of that program, upholding a South Carolina law requiring a government-issued ID for voting, even though the Obama administration had found that it violated the Voting Rights Act because it could disenfranchise tens of thousands of minority voters.” There is every indication that  Kavanaugh woud be a rubber-stamp voter-suppressor in the spirit of his buddy, Kark Rove. If that wasn’t enough, it’s clear Kavanaugh’s confirmation would also be a disaster for the environment.

In his New York Times op-ed, William H. Frey explains why “Trump Can’t Win the War on Demography,” and observes, “The demographic trends make this plain. America’s white population is growing tepidly because of substantial declines among younger whites. Since 2000, the white population under the age of 18 has shrunk by seven million, and declines are projected among white 20-somethings and 30-somethings over the next two decades and beyond. This is a result of both low fertility rates among young whites and modest white immigration…the older retirement-age white population will grow by one-third over the next 15 years and, with it, the need for the government to support Social Security, Medicare, hospitals and the like.” But Frey writes that a failure to accuately count these demographic transformations in the Census could lead to cuts in “federal funds for housing assistance, job training, community development and a variety of social services that should be distributed on the basis of census counts.”

A ‘polling nugget” from FiveThirtyEight’s Janie Velencia and Dhrumil Mehta: “A Quinnipiac University poll in Florida shows good news for Democrats in the state’s Senate and governor races. The poll found Democrat Andrew Gillum 9 points ahead of his Republican opponent, Ron DeSantis, in the race for governor. That comes on the heels of several high quality polls⁴ showing Gillum in the lead. It also shows Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson 7 points ahead of Republican Gov. Rick Scott in the Senate race following one poll that found Nelson 3 points ahead and another that found the two in a dead heat. The FiveThirtyEight Senate forecast currently gives Nelson a 5 in 8 chance of winning.”

“I think there will be a modest uptick in the Latino vote,” said Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, a political scientist at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas who studies immigration and Latino political influence,” notes Albert R. Hunt in “Latino Voters Are Making the Democrats Sweat: They don’t like Trump or Republicans. The question is how many will turn out in November” at Bloomberg Opinion. “That would be good news for Democrats, but not the great news they hope for…That vote will be critical in the uphill battle to win control of the Senate. Of the 10 states with the most competitive Senate races, four — Florida, Texas, Arizona and Nevada — have sizable but quite different Hispanic populations. There’s a large Cuban-American community in Florida that has tended to favor Republicans, while Democratic-leaning unions play a bigger role with Nevada’s Latino voters, who are mostly of Mexican descent…There also are up to a dozen competitive races in those four states for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In a few tightly contested ones, for example in Dallas and Houston, Latino voters could provide the margin to unseat veteran Republican legislators.”

“Clinton won two-thirds of the Latino vote nationally in 2016, exit polls showed, and Trump’s attacks on immigrants keep him strikingly unpopular with this constituency, according to many polls, including a September survey of Latino voters by Hart Research Associates,” Hunt notes further. “Nearly two-thirds of respondents to that poll said they disapproved of Trump’s presidency. They wanted Democrats to win control of Congress by a three-to-one margin over Republicans. They overwhelmingly preferred candidates who side with the Dreamers, young adults who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and were allowed to stay under President Barack Obama, and those who oppose building a wall along the Mexican border. Obama was viewed positively by 67 percent of respondents and negatively by only 14 percent. Republicans hope that the strong economy will keep more Latino voters in their corner on Nov. 6, and are also appealing to the cultural conservatives among them.”

From “Working-Class Politics and the Foremen Problem” by Allison Hurst at The American Prospect: “How might working-class people’s class identifications and loyalties affect their political choices? We all know that there are workers who identify with the working class, who work in solidarity with their fellow workers, who seek to advance their interests as a class, while others identify with the boss and seek to advance their interests on their own…GSS data from elections over the past 50 years shows that people in working-class jobs who identify as middle class are more likely to vote Republican than similarly situated working-class people who identify as working class or lower class. (GSS doesn’t include data from 2016, but I extrapolated the percentages based on information from American National Election Studies (ANES).)..If we look only at white working-class men, who may be especially prone to bossism, we find even greater differences, not just between those who voted Republican and those who voted Democrat, but also those who did not vote at all. White working-class men are (a) more likely to vote Republican if they identify as middle class and (b) less likely to vote at all if they identify as working class, lower class, or poor.

“Across the country, the past few years have witnessed a spike in state preemption of local authority—every state except one has at least one such law on the books and nearly three-quarters of states have three or more,” writes Sophie Kasakove in The New Republic. “In the past year alone, 19 new preemption laws were passed in different states. The effort has been quiet, but nonetheless coordinated and precise: In many states, particularly conservative ones, preemption law has rendered left-leaning local policy-making largely impotent. It has revealed yet another way Republicans have paralyzed government, while underscoring the need for progressives to win back not just Congress, but statehouses across the country…Democrats for too long have been ignoring legislatures while Republicans have been, frankly, eating our lunches,” says Steve Farley, an Arizona state senator. “That’s why we’ve seen so much gerrymandering—Republicans have understood the power the legislatures have to be able to change a lot of things.”…Democrats are aiming to flip 14 legislative chambers in ten states in November, and advocacy groups are promoting a new generation of state leaders more favorable to local progressive power.”

From The New York Times editorial, “Hit Pause on Brett Kavanaugh“: “Enough…With a third woman stepping forward with accusations that the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh committed sexual assault as a young man, this destructive stampede of a confirmation, driven so far by partisan calculation, needs to yield at last to common sense: Let qualified investigators — the F.B.I. — do their job. Let them interview the many witnesses whose names are already in the public record, among them Judge Kavanaugh’s close high-school friend Mark Judge, then weigh the credibility of the various claims and write a report for the White House and the Senate Judiciary Committee…To jam Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation through now, without seeking to dispel the darkening cloud over his head, would be to leave the public in doubt about his honesty and character — and to set an even lower standard for taking claims of sexual abuse seriously than the Senate did 27 years ago in considering the accusations against Clarence Thomas by Anita Hill.”

“The Kavanaugh controversy erupted as polls were already showing a threat to GOP candidates this fall, in the form of an intense backlash against Donald Trump that’s fueling unprecedented deficits among college-educated white women and energized turnout among African American women,” writes Ronald Brownstein in The Atlantic. “Democrats have positioned themselves to benefit from that energy by nominating a record number of women in House, Senate, and gubernatorial elections…Even before Ford testifies, nearly three-fifths of college-educated white women opposed Kavanaugh’s confirmation in a recent Fox News poll. And while a plurality of non-college-educated white women backed Kavanaugh in that survey, a strong performance from Ford could strain that conviction. The fierce recoil from Trump among college-educated white women is the single greatest source of Republican vulnerability in House races this year; if the party’s defenses among blue-collar white women also crack, a difficult election night could turn disastrous.”

Perry Bacon, Jr. spotlights “The 7 Senators Who Will Decide Kavanaugh’s Fate” at FiveThirtyEight. The 7 senators include 3 Senate Democrats, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, along with Republicans Tennessee’s Bob Corker, Arizona’s Jeff Flake, Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski. As Bacon writes, “47 Republicans are safe bets to favor Kavanaugh, and 46 Democrats are safe bets to vote against him. He needs at least 50 votes to be confirmed, so he needs three of the seven swing senators identified above. (A 50-50 vote would put Vice President Mike Pence in position to cast a tiebreaking vote for Kavanaugh.)” After watching Dr. Ford’s heartfelt testimony, it’s hard to imagine any of the 7  undecided senators willing to acccept the consequences of supporting Kavanaugh.

In is post, “New Poll: Kavanaugh, Trump Losing Support of Republican Women,” Ed Kilgore cites a new Morning Consult poll and writes, “there is fresh evidence that another category of voters Republicans will need on November 6 is not reacting with pleasure to the crusade for Kavanaugh: “Public support for Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat has dropped to its lowest point since President Donald Trump nominated him in July, driven in large part by a sector of the president’s base: Republican women …[Since last week] Kavanaugh’s net support among Republicans — the share who oppose his confirmation subtracted from those who support it — dropped 11 points, with 58 percent now in support of his confirmation and 14 percent opposed. The shift was driven by an 18-point fall in support among Republican women, with 49 percent now in favor and 15 percent in opposition.”

Ruy Teixeira notes on his Facebook page that “A new USC/LA Times poll is out and it has the Democrats up by 14 points in the generic Congressional, which seems too high. But they have a lot of interesting data in their writeup, particularly in terms of shifts since the summer. The graphic below showing shifts among subgroups of women is striking. Note that the biggest shift they show is among white noncollege women, who have moved 10 margin points toward the Democrats.”

At The National Journal, Ally Mutnick writes, “Internal Democratic polling conducted in August and September revealed the party’s candidate leading or trailing by small margins in a dozen seats on the outer edges of the battlefield. And outside money is already starting to flow beyond the 50 or so districts that initially drew major TV ad reservations…“For Republicans, this is a game of Whac-A-Mole,” said John Lapp, a Democratic strategist who served as the DCCC’s executive director in 2006. “With a battleground map this big, they simply can’t be everywhere. There are competitive races in blue, purple, and ruby-red districts popping up every day.”..”Almost nobody should assume that they’re cruising,” Republican pollster Glen Bolger said. “If the president won by 10 points or less, it’s a competitive race.”

“In our polling of battleground districts, President Trump has a minus-12 approval rating among undecided voters, with 34 percent approving and 46 percent disapproving,” notes Nate Cohn at The Upshot. “He has a minus-9 approval rating among decided voters (43-52)…Decided voters want Democrats to take control of Congress by three percentage points, 49-46. Undecided voters are split, 32-32. You’ll note that a lot of our undecided voters are also undecided on these questions…This sort of goes against some conventional wisdom on midterms: Well-known incumbents wrap up a larger proportion of their voters early, while undecided voters who don’t know the challenger but who are skeptical of the incumbent and the incumbent’s party break the other way. If this were true, you would expect the preponderance of the undecided vote to lean somewhat Democratic.”

Tim Storey, the elections guru at the National Conference of State Legislatures, “estimates that with a generic-congressional-ballot-test advantage of Democrats up by 6 points, that would likely translate into a gain of close to 500 state legislative seats nationwide for Democrats. Like in the U.S. House, the curve is asymmetric, the chances of over 500 are greater than under 400,” according to Charlie Cook’s article, “A Grim Fall Awaits GOP” at The Cook Political Report. Commenting on Cook’s post, Ruy Teixeira adds, “Democrats certainly have enough of a lead on the national generic to make a 500 seat gain for the party in state legislatures seem, if anything, like a pretty conservative estimate. Data indicate that there could be as many 1,000 Republican state legislative seats where Trump’s approval rating is below 50 percent. That’s a lot of targets.”

Teixeira also notes, “No doubt many have been following the New York Times/Siena polls as they get updated in real time (a gimmick but irresistible nonetheless). Here’s a nugget from Alan Abramowitz that puts the results in a helpful context: “In 22 House districts with completed polls, 21 currently held by Republicans, most with incumbents running, Dem candidates on average lead by 0.5 points. That may be a more meaningful indicator of the state of the midterm race than the individual district results. Being tied in your own districts at this stage of the campaign signals huge problems for the GOP as district polls tend to underestimate swing in a wave election like this one.”

“No longer playing defense on health care, Democrats and allied groups aired nearly 56,000 TV ads focused on health care between January and July,” writes Alice Miranda Ollstein at Politico. “The Wesleyan Media Project found that in September, health care ads dominated 44 percent of ads supporting Democratic House candidates and 50 percent of those supporting Democrats in Senate races. And in several competitive high-profile races, Democratic candidates are adding personal narratives…Candidates are sending this message in ads, on social media and in face-to-face encounters, and polls show the issue strongly resonates with voters.”

Here’s a good example:

From “The party of men: Kavanaugh fight risks worsening the Trump GOP’s gender problem” by Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker and Robert Costa  at The Washington Post: “Everything about this kind of encapsulates in one moment the problem the Republican Party has with women, ranging from it being male-dominated — with Trump’s Cabinet and the Republican leadership in Congress — to issues of dismissing women who experienced harassment and assault with typical kinds of victim blaming,” Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said…Current attitudes about Trump have inspired a record number of women to run for office this year as Democrats. In House races, women make up 43 percent of Democratic nominees and 13 percent of Republican nominees, according to Kelly Dittmar, a political science professor at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Many of these female Democratic candidates have shared their #MeToo stories on the campaign trail…strategists in both parties say Trump’s agenda and style — and the fact that the GOP leadership stands mostly in lockstep with him — are undoing years of often painstaking work by party leaders to court more female and minority voters.”

From John McCain’s 2008 campaign’s senior strategist:

Riddle me this. If someone is lying (https://t.co/RoJWRckYLb)and they know that lying to the FBI is a crime, why would they be asking for an FBI investigation? If a sitting Federal Judge is accused of something he denies with his reputation at stake why wouldn’t he demand one?

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) September 20, 2018

In his New York Magazine post, “Lessons From the 2018 Primaries,” Ed Kilgore provides 8 takeaways, including: “5) The “struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party” was oversold. Despite a lot of media talk about ideological clashes between “progressive” and “centrist” primary candidates, there was no clear pattern for who won primaries. Some of the notable “progressive” victories were in safe Democratic House districts (e.g., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s NY-14 and Ayanna Pressley’s MA-07) where district diversity and generational change were at least as important as ideology. Overall, “establishment” candidates did pretty well; an analysis of all Democratic House primaries by the Brookings Foundation showed 27 percent of “progressives” and 35 percent of “establishment” types winning.”

We are about to find out what would happen if a politician began making public statements about issues that sound the way real people talk. Charles Pierce has the story in his article, “Mazie Hirono Is a Legitimate Badass of the Senate: It’s about time someone in elected office called “bullshit” on this process” at Esquire. Pierce quotes Horono to good effect: ” I just want to say to the men in this country: Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing for a change.”..I would like to have us come together and figure out what is the best way to proceed. Not this seat of the pants stuff, and the latest being a letter from the chairman to the Democrats saying we have done everything we can to contact her—that is such bullshit I can hardly stand it.” Pierce notes also that she wants “judges who are fair and qualified” and ‘”care about individual and civil rights.” And then, without missing a beat, she added, “If that’s considered liberal, as opposed to what I call justice and fairness, as I am wont to say, ‘F*** them!'” It’s about time a U.S. Senator went a little Bullworth, all the more gratifying that it’s a Democratic woman. Don’t be surprised if her approval ratings increase.

Some interesting ad stats from “Despite an Uptick in Digital Spend, Top Senate Races Still Dominated by TV” by Sean J. Miller at Campaigns & Elections: “In 14 competitive Senate races, Democratic campaigns put an average of 15 percent of their pre-Labor Day ad budgets into digital while GOP efforts averaged 6.2 percent, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which conducted its analysis on ad spending done from May 31-Sept. 3. Though it’s worth noting those percentages include a handful of Senate campaigns that have yet to spend much of anything in earnest…Facebook remains the digital ad platform of choice – at least for Democrats. Of the total spent on digital advertising by the 14 Democratic Senate campaigns, $3,159,700 went to Facebook and $1.495 million went to Google…In total, some $6.1 million went into digital advertising from the 28 Senate campaigns. Compare that to some $45 million spent on TV during the same period.”

In his post, “Let’s sharpen and embolden the progressive narrative (and the counter-narrative, too),” Egberto Willies offers some insightful observations at Daily Kos: “Resigning ourselves to the belief that there is a large racist component within the Trump voting bloc and this therefore makes them unreachable denies a reality that President Obama disproved twice: Even racists will vote their interest if the narrative is right. It is my humble belief that our impatience, our timid narrative, our proclivity to stay high-minded in all circumstances, and our inability to frame and tailor a narrative at the level of those we need to reach have been the cause of our demise…Our young and upcoming politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Andrew Gillum, as well as activists like Indivisible Houston’s Daniel Cohen and Nisha Randle, are unabashedly promoting progressive narratives. Much of it will fly in the faces of those who are pinning their hopes on the mythical political center, but only when we redefine the narrative, devoid of our past indoctrination, will we get the vote…It is not enough to complain that Trump’s voters are racist. After all, we have our own racists among us. We are not looking for friends and lovers, but we should be attempting to coalesce on common values that will get our people elected. After all, above and beyond economic issues, aren’t our people supportive of racial, criminal, and social justice?”

At cnbc.com, John Harwood writes, “Congressional Republicans are facing a mid-term election wipeout fueled by voter resistance to President Donald Trump, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll…The survey, six weeks before Americans head to the polls, shows Democrats leading Republicans by 52 percent to 40 percent for control of Congress. If it holds, that 12 percentage point margin would suggest a “blue wave” large enough to switch control of not just the House but also the Senate…Democrats have generated wide advantages among key swing groups within the electorate. The poll shows them leading by 31 percentage points among independents, 33 points among moderates and 12 points among white women…Among white college graduates, a group Republicans carried by nine points in 2014 mid-term elections, Republicans now trail by 15 points. Among white women without college degrees, a group Republicans carried by 10 points in 2014, Republicans now trail by five points.”

The New York Times editorial board says the Kavanaugh proceedings have become “a mockery of lawmakers’ constitutional responsibility,” which invite public skepticism. “The bulk of the blame lies with Senator Chuck Grassley, the committee chairman, and his fellow Republicans, who have abused their power by refusing to let their colleagues and the American people see over 90 percent of the documents relating to Judge Kavanaugh’s critical years in the federal government.” Add that to the fact that the Republicans refused to allow Judge Merrick Garland even a hearing, and it’s clear why the public has good reason to see the nomination process as corrupted by GOP hyperpartisanship.

“I can’t imagine a scenario where it benefits Republicans to have their party’s Judiciary Committee members — 11 men, 0 women — interrogating a woman about the details of her recollections of being sexually assaulted. The only way this definitely benefits them is if Kavanaugh can really, really prove in some way that this did not happen…It would not be the worst move for Republicans if they found a female Supreme Court nominee. The problem is, of course, that the number of people who have the Federalist Society credentials of conservatism and elite degrees and are also female and already sitting on the bench might be small.” – From Perry Bacon, Jr. in “How Will The Troubled Kavanaugh Nomination Affect The Midterms?,” in FiveThirtyEight’s Weekly Politics Chat.

Among the findings of a new poll by Pew Research Center on gender and leadership released today, “Only about a quarter of them [Republican men] said there were too few women in leadership. That’s compared with almost half of Republican women, roughly three-quarters of Democratic men and more than 80 percent of Democratic women,” reports Clair Cane Miller at The Upshot. The poll also found an edge for women in one area, which political ad-makers for women candidates may want to explore: “In politics, they were more likely to be viewed as being good role models, and as maintaining a tone of civility and respect.”

At New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait flags an ironic development that has emerged in the campaign for Ted Cruz’s U.S. senate seat: “Ted Cruz is running for reelection in Texas trying to humanize himself by talking about basketball, and accusing his opponent, Beto O’Rourke, of liking tofu, hating the national anthem, and plotting to ban barbecue. What’s notably missing from Cruz’s campaign message is any recognizable conservative program. The conservative agenda has become at best a distraction, and at worst a liability…In this pivotal moment in his career, facing a surprising reelection threat from left-leaning Beto O’Rourke, and running in a state that has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1976, conservative thought is almost completely absent from Cruz’s campaign themes. His television ads tout Cruz’s record in securing federal hurricane relief for Texas and attack his opponent. (What would Ludwig von Mises think?) Cruz’s role in supporting Trump’s conservative policy accomplishments goes unmentioned…O’Rourke opposed the Trump corporate tax cut. He is openly endorsingthat his state accept the Medicaid expansion created by Obamacare. If even a conservative movement fundamentalist like Cruz doesn’t want to campaign on these issues in a state like Texas, what does that say about the political health of conservatism?”

Nathaiel Rakich writes in FiveThirtyEight’s September 19 Election Update: “The most likely scenario in the upcoming midterm elections: split control of Congress. As of Tuesday evening, the Classic version of our model gave Republicans a 7 in 10 chance of keeping control of the Senate, slightly better than when we launched the forecast, and gave Democrats a 4 in 5 chance of flipping the House. That’s close to the highest odds for taking the House that Democrats have had since the beginning of August…As I wrote last Wednesday, 21 U.S. House seats fit in the middle of the Venn diagram between “districts carried by Barack Obama in 2012” and “districts carried by Donald Trump in 2016.” These districts aren’t quite as fertile for Democratic gains this year as Romney-Clinton districts, but they are nonetheless a competitive batch of seats…”

“Democratic legislatures will be more likely to expand Medicaid, raise teacher pay, enact minimum wage increases, and go for things like automatic voter registration that will increase political participation down the road,” notes Matthew Yglesias at Vox. “Trump’s deep unpopularity is likely to give state-level Democrats a big boost….we are very likely to see some chambers flip this November. The Democratic committee for state legislative races has identified 17 key races that could collectively flip eight chambers. And, given national trends, Democrats will likely flip far more than 17 seats…In terms of actually flipping chambers, though, it is worth noting that the “stretch” goal on that 17/8 list is to flip the Florida state Senate by picking up five seats — and Florida is one of the states where Trump’s numbers have held up worst…In general, Democrats are well-positioned to make gains down-ballot in 2018. That’s going to give them a bigger voice in 2020 redistricting and, of course, in the important work of state policymaking.”

“So our ratings now show Democrats favored to net three Republican-held governorships, Illinois, Michigan, and New Mexico, while the Republicans are favored to win Alaska, currently held by an independent,” notes Kyle Kondik at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “There are seven remaining Toss-ups, and all but Connecticut are currently held by Republicans (and Democrats may ultimately have the edge in the Nutmeg State despite the unpopularity of outgoing Democratic Gov. Dan Malloy). So Democrats remain poised to net several governorships, although some of the biggest races — Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin most notably — remain uncertain.”

Ruy Teixeira cites an “interesting new round of state polls from Reuters/Ipsos,” which show Democratic candidates “Gillum and Sinema ahead, confirming other recent polls. Rosen behind in NV which is a bummer though race is clearly very tight. Most shocking is Beto O’Rourke ahead of Ted Cruz in Texas. I’m pretty skeptical given that most other recent polls have shown Cruz ahead. Also, the internals of the new poll show O’Rourke with 33 percent of the white vote which is super-high for Texas. But ya never know. If O’Rourke can really pull a third of the white vote, he’s golden.”

From Ronald Brownstein’s “The Year of the Woman of Color: Backlash to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh could help elect an unprecedented number of minority women to offices around the country” at The Atlantic: “Democrats have positioned themselves to benefit from that energy by nominating female candidates in 183 House races, according to the Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics. That easily outdistances the previous record of 120 in 2016 and is much more than the 70 women who ran in 1992. (Republicans have nominated just 52 women in House races this year.) According to the center’s calculations, Democrats have also set records with 15 female Senate nominees (including the two challengers, in Nevada and Arizona, who are best-positioned to win GOP-held seats) and 12 gubernatorial picks…But this election could prove an even greater landmark for women of color. “I think what we’re seeing is the tipping point in the Democratic Party,” says longtime Democratic activist Aimee Allison. “We are telling a new story to the country about women of color: We are the least represented and the most progressive, and this is our year.”

In his New York Times column, “What the Kavanaugh Accusations Mean for Red-State Democrats” Michael Tomasky discusses several plausible scenarios that could affect the outcome of the hearings for the midterm elections, as well as for Trump’s nominee. As Tomasky writes,

A view seems to have taken hold in Washington that the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford have let red-state Senate Democrats off the hook. These Democrats — chiefly Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the three Democrats who voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch in April 2017 — all face re-election in just seven weeks in states where President Trump is popular, and where majorities presumably would support Judge Kavanaugh’s elevation to the Supreme Court.

But now, some say, the allegations against the nominee provide reason enough for them to vote no. Jim Manley, a former longtime Democratic Senate aide who knows these matters well, told Reuters on Tuesday: “For those Democrats up for re-election from states that Trump carried, they now have absolutely no reason to vote for Kavanaugh. Period. End of story. They have all the cover they need.” Several talking heads on cable news said much the same thing Tuesday.

I’m not sure it’s that simple. Assuming Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination is not withdrawn and the Republicans continue to fight for him, these three Democrats and possibly one or two others will still find themselves in a tough position. In fact, if a couple of Republicans defect from Judge Kavanaugh, these Democrats will be in an even tougher spot than before.

But even if two Republicans, say Collins and Murkowski, turn against Kavanaugh, “At that point, Republicans, far from accepting defeat, will surely start aiming fire at the three Democrats. Their opponents will taunt them about Judge Kavanaugh on the campaign trail.” It’s possible that these Democrats may see little to lose by voting for Kavanaugh.

Tomasky presents a more appealing scenario for Democrats:

Now imagine a second scenario. Imagine that Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski vote no, but this time they are joined by two other Republicans, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee. Now, Judge Kavanaugh is down to 47 votes. And more important, the air will be out of his balloon, emotionally. At that point, I think the three Democrats will be fully off the hook.

That’s a plausible scenario, but not the one Tomasky sees as most likely:

And, of course, there’s a third scenario (at least!), which I discussed here earlier, and it’s probably still the most likely one. All 51 Republicans stand pat, in which case some Democrats will go ahead and confirm Judge Kavanaugh. But their votes won’t matter. Whether you got 51 votes or 55 or 100, they still call you Mr. Associate Justice.

It’s not hard to see how much depends on Maine and Alaska voters who are against Kavanaugh making their voices heard. Of course, there are other plausible scenarios, including the possibility that more revelations about Kavanaugh emerge, providing the red state Democratic senators with even more cover.

Part of the calculus for all U.S. Senators has to be the potentially explosive power of the ‘Me Too’ movement. Ditto for the strong pro-Democratic voter enthusiasm trend among educated women, which will surely play a major role in the midterm elections, even in red states.

And let’s not forget all of the other arguments against Kavanaugh, including a key point that red state Democrats could amplify to good effect — Kavanaugh’s record of opposing worker rights against employer abuse at every opportunity that came his way.

In the end, however, the red state Democrats will have to answer key questions of conscience that will bear on their legacies, including: ‘Should my vote give Kavanaugh a pass on the serious allegations made by a credible woman?’ Also, ‘should I give Trump and the Republicans a rubber stamp on the Supreme Court that would adversely impact working people for decades?’

If being a Democrat means anything at all, the answer is no.

Perry Bacon, Jr. and Oliver Roeder explain “Why Democrats Were Willing To Break The Rules On Kavanaugh Day 3″ at FiveThirtyEight. Here’s one key point from Bacon: “…The Booker-Cornyn run-in, and the “confidential” documents fracas in general, is a good example of why so many scholars are worried about the state of American democracy. The Republicans, in this instance and others,¹seem to be prioritizing winning over following bipartisan procedures. In turn, this is driving Democrats to violate norms.”

Ed Kilgore’s “On Kavanaugh, It’s All About Collins and Murkowski, Not the Red-State Democrats” at New York Magazine takes a revealing look at Democratic strategy after the appointment of Republican Jon Kyle to fill McCain’s seat, and notes that “the scenario in which Democrats could go after Collins and Murkowski individually as the “deciding vote” has evaporated. They now must flip both Republicans before any of the red-state Democratic senators matter at all. And that means the moment eitherCollins or Murkowski announces for Kavanaugh, it’s game over…The odds of defeating this confirmation have gone down significantly, not only because Kavanaugh got through his interrogation in the Judiciary Committee without any big revelations, but because Republicans can now afford to lose a senator without losing the vote.” Kilgore writes that of the two Republican moderate conservative enators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, Murkowski is more likely to vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Therefore, “…At present the smart Democratic strategy is to focus with the light and heat of a thousand suns on Susan Collins, who will probably announce her decision on Kavanaugh earlier rather than later. Assuming she wants another term in the Senate in 2020, she may be most concerned about heading off a conservative primary challenge from Maine governor Paul LePage (who is term-limited this year) or someone of his abrasively conservative ilk. That’s why the initiative to crowdfund a Democratic opponent for Collins if she votes for Kavanaugh — which has already raised nearly $900,000 — is a smart move.”

From Dylan Scott’s “The 7 most important moments in Obama’s blistering critique of Trump and the GOP,” a couple of salient points from the Democratic Party’s best communicator, which can be tweaked and leveraged in House and Senate campaigns: “Demagogues promise simple fixes to complex problems” — maybe the best one-liner from Obama’s much-buzzed Montana speech. Thoughtful voters know this at the cellular level, and reminding them that today’s Republicans are utterly incapable of creating reforms that incorporate this wisdom can only help brand Dems as the reality-based party. Also, “What happened to the Republican Party?” is a great shorthand way of reminding voters that the current GOP has lost the credibility of its better leaders, like Eisenhower, who understood the good leadership is about bringing people together, not exploiting their differencees. Lastly, the most-quoted line of Obama’s speech, “How hard can that be? Saying that Nazis are bad?” brings home the shame of Trump and his party enablers giving right-wing terrorists a free ride.

In his op-ed, “The Anthem Is a Trap for Democrats: And some of them are walking right into it, to the glee of Republicans,” NYT columnist David Leonhardt makes a credible case that the ‘take a knee’ controversy has no real upside for Democratic candidates. Leonhardt argues, “As Tarini Parti and Henry Gomez of BuzzFeed News reported this week, Republicans have decided to make the protests a big part of their midterm campaign message. “Republican strategists and campaign staff,” Parti and Gomez write, “see opportunities for candidates to make the N.F.L. protests a political liability for Democrats defending seats in states President Donald Trump won in 2016.”…Republicans feel this way partly because they know public opinion cuts against them on a long list of issues: Trump’s performance, the Russia investigation, tax policy, health care, the minimum wage and more. On the national-anthem protests, by contrast, most Americans agree with Republicans…I don’t see a good argument, however, that the issue will help the Democrats in the midterms. On their own, the protests don’t seem big enough to inspire higher voter turnout among left-leaning people who rarely vote in midterms. Yet the issue does seem divisive enough to cause some swing voters to decide that Democrats are out of touch. It’s precisely the kind of issue that can lead white working-class voters to focus on the white part of their identity rather than the working-class part. When that happens, Republicans benefit. When those same voters are thinking about class — about taxes, health care and the like — Democrats benefit.”

Terence Burlij charts “the narrow path to a Democratic senate” at CNN Politics. His scenario: “Democrats still have a narrow path to the Senate majority despite a map that favors Republicans and includes 10 Democratic incumbents running in states President Donald Trump won, five of them by double-digit margins…The list of Democratic targets this cycle has doubled, with a pair of red states — Tennessee and Texas — looking increasingly competitive. With the Senate currently split 51-49 in favor of Republicans, if Democrats were able to win either of those contests — assuming they also flip Arizona and Nevada — it would mean the party could afford to see one of its incumbents defeated and still preserve a path to the majority.”

If you had to pick the most deserving Democratic House candidate outside of your residential district to support, the short list would surely include Lucy McBath, who is running in GA-6. At least one recent poll indicates a statistical tie with her Republican opponent, incumbent Karen Handel. McBath is the mother of Jordan Davis, who was brutally shot and killed while he was in a car that was playing music that was too loud for the shooter in another car. Mcbath, a survivor of breast cancer, is a strong supporter of gun safety measures, a minimum wage increase, reproductive rights for women and other progressive reforms. In April, 2017, Democrat John Ossoff received 48.1 percent of the vote in the GA-6 blanket primary, while Handel received just 19.8 percent. In the June runoff, Handel, supposedly received 51.8 percent of the vote, compared to Ossoff’s 48.2 percent. Contribute to McBath’s ActBlue page right here.

The keystone state may also provide the key to the midterm elections. As Reid J. Epstein reports at The Wall St. Journal, “Of the 63 GOP-held House seats that the Cook Political Report rates as lean Republican, a tossup or likely or lean Democratic, 31 come from six states. Democrats could run the table in battlefield districts in just four states—Pennsylvania, California, Florida and New Jersey—and capture the net 23 seats they need to seize the House majority without taking a single district anywhere else…Nine of Pennsylvania’s 18 House seats could change parties this year, a concentration of competitive races like nowhere else in the country due to the combination of court-ordered redistricting and a broader realignment of suburban voters away from the Republican Party…“The political winds are blowing six swing seats our way,” said Rep. Mike Doyle, a Pittsburgh Democrat who is the dean of the Pennsylvania House delegation. “It would not surprise me if our state flips more seats than any state in the country.”

Some encouraging words for Democrats from Albert R. Hunt at Bloomberg Opinion: “For all the fury over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, he’s expected to be confirmed on a mostly party-line vote, perhaps by Oct. 1, when the Supreme Court convenes. Politically, the fight probably is a wash or a slight energizer for Democrats…“I’ve never seen a wave reverse or dissipate between midsummer and Election Day,” said Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report and a sage of U.S. elections. “They have just remained constant or gotten bigger, like 1994 and 2006.”

Ronald Brownstein’s article, “What Liberal Organizers Are Seeing on the Ground in 2018” at The Atlantic spotlights the impressive activism of Working America, and offers a number of insightful observations, including: “Michael Podhorzer, who supervises Working America as the AFL-CIO’s political director, says the evidence suggests that suburban college-educated voters, particularly those who most revile Trump, will likely vote in large numbers in November. By contrast, the blue-collar whites who surged to the polls for Trump in 2016 appear less motivated to come out for other Republicans—just as many of Obama’s younger and minority supporters didn’t show up during the GOP landslide in 2010, his first midterm election. “In a peculiar irony,” Podhorzer says, “Trump may have something of Obama’s problem in 2010: If he’s not on the ticket, the surge voters are not going to come out and vote for congressional Republicans.”…And while support for the president in white working-class communities remains formidable, the Working America organizers say they have succeeded in moving some blue-collar Trump supporters, especially women, away from GOP candidates. They’ve done so by highlighting Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, as well as the risk that huge deficits created by the GOP tax plan will eventually compel cuts in Medicare and Social Security.”

Brownstein continues, “But Podhorzer, Morrison, and Nussbaum all caution that recapturing the House this fall wouldn’t mean that Democrats have solved all of their problems for 2020. For starters, each says Working America’s experience indicates that, despite all of Trump’s racial provocations, Democrats still face a serious challenge improving on the lackluster minority turnout that hurt Clinton in 2016. In its canvasses, the group has found that working-class minority communities are no more, and may be even less, engaged than their white counterparts. All three say they see no sign this year of an uptick from the typical midterm-turnout decline among minorities—and no evidence that distaste for Trump alone will change the equation for 2020…The core of the Democrats’ problem, they believe, is that while many minority voters see Trump and the GOP as hostile, they are not convinced Democrats have ideas to meaningfully improve their economic condition. White blue-collar communities are even more skeptical. Among these working-class voters on both sides of the color bar, Morrison says flatly, “it is not credible to see the Democrats, broadly speaking, as a change agent.” The ominous result for Democrats? In all parts of the country, families that cite the economy as their top concern during Working America’s door-knocking visits prefer Republicans.”

NYT columnist Paul Krugman nails the GOP’s Kavanaugh confirmation strategy — and a good way for Dems to describe it: “At a fundamental level, the attempt to jam Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court closely resembles the way Republicans passed a tax cut last year. Once again we see a rushed, nakedly partisan process, with G.O.P. leaders withholding much of the information that’s supposed to go into congressional deliberations. Once again the outcome is all too likely to rest on pure tribalism: Unless some Republicans develop a very late case of conscience, they will vote along party lines with the full knowledge that they’re abdicating their constitutional duty to provide advice and consent.”

Democrats who want to see more passion from the party’s top leaders ought to be pleased with the  comments by Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker at the Kavanaugh hearings. Booker’s “I am Spartacus” moment drew predictable ridicule from the GOP, but voters who like a little moxie in political leaders — a frequently-cited concern many voters have about Democrats — have to appreciate Booker’s gutsy dare to the GOP to “bring it,” regarding their threat to expel him. Harris also showed plenty of mettle in her bulldogging Kavanaugh, who looked quite shaken by focused interrogation. Not many Republican leaders would welcome the chance to debate her.

Ed Kilgore’s “Most Americans Can’t Name a Supreme Court Justice” at New York Magazine notes that “A new survey of likely voters by C-Span, moreover, shows that 91 percent of them agree that: “Decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court have an impact on my everyday life as a citizen.” But asked if they could name any of the Court’s current members, 52 percent could not. This is not a new thing, to be sure: the same C-Span question back in 2009 showed 54 percent as unable to name a sitting justice.” Less depressing and more interesting, Kilgore notes that “82 percent of those who voted in the 2016 elections claim that Supreme Court appointments were important to their presidential vote. By nearly a three-to-one margin, respondents favored some sort of restriction on SCOTUS tenure (as opposed to the current lifetime appointments).”

In his New York Times op-ed, “Trump and the Koch Brothers Are Working in Concert: They disagree about trade, tariffs and immigration, but don’t be fooled. Neither side can get what it really wants without help from the other,” Thomas B. Edsall explains why Dems should not be suckered by talk that the Koch brothers have split with Trump: “In practice, the Trump-Koch alliance has been extraordinarily productive, and the alliance is the odds on favorite to win the battle to put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, where he is likely to cement a conservative majority for the foreseeable future…Looking toward November, the Koch organizations are already committedto attacking incumbent Democratic Senators in Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri and Florida while looking at their chance of influencing the outcome in as many as 14 other races. In addition, the network plans to support Republican candidates for governor in Nevada, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Florida, a list that is expected to grow longer as the midterms heat up.”

At FiveThirtyEight, Nathaniel Rakich and Nate Silver plug Silver’s concept of “elasticity” into the 2016 midterm elections. They note that “A state’s elasticity is simply how sensitive it is to changes in the national political environment. A very elastic state is prone to big shifts in voter preferences, while inelastic states don’t blow as much with the political winds…An elastic state isn’t necessarily a swing state, or vice versa. Think of the difference between a state that is decided by 1 percentage point every election (an inelastic swing state) and one that votes 10 points Democratic one year and 10 points Republican the next (an elastic swing state). In other words, elasticity helps us understand elections on a deeper level. Just knowing that both of those districts are competitive doesn’t tell you everything you need to know; for example, the two call for different campaign strategies (turnout in the former, persuasion in the latter).” Read the article for their take on particular midterm races.

Here’s how close the midterms are shaping up in Florida: “New Quinnipiac University polls of the gubernatorial and Senate races in Florida found that both are neck and neck, with voters almost evenly split between the Democratic and Republican candidates,” report Dhrumil Mehta and Janie Velencia, also at FiveThirtyEight. “That’s not all that surprising in a perpetual swing state like Florida. But here’s what did catch our eye: The vast majority of Florida voters are already committed to a candidate with about two months still left until Election Day. Only 3 percent of voters in the gubernatorial poll and 2 percent of voters in the Senate poll said they were undecided.”

Kyle Kondik writes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “In order for Democrats to win the Senate, they need to do two of three things: 1.) Win both Republican-held Toss-up seats in Arizona and Nevada; 2.) Hold all 26 seats they currently hold, several of which are in states that Trump won in landslides; or 3.) Win at least one Senate seat in a dark red state where Republicans are currently favored, be it Mississippi, Tennessee, or Texas. At this point, we might peg Democrats as slightly better than 50-50 to accomplish No. 1, but we’d put Republicans as a bit better than 50-50 to prevent Democrats from accomplishing No. 2 and even better to prevent them from accomplishing No. 3. So that’s why Republicans continue to be favored to hold the Senate, in our view. That said, the Democratic path to a Senate majority does not involve them doing something radically out of the ordinary to win: The presidential out party did not lose a single incumbent-held seat in any of the last three midterms in the Senate, for instance, and both Arizona and Nevada (if not the redder Republican-held states) certainly fit the profile of Senate battlegrounds the out party could win in a year like this one. In other words, if Democrats swept the closest races and captured a small majority, it would be surprising, but not shocking.”