Could Trump’s “dumb southerner” comment hurt Republicans in the midterm elections. As Gabriel Pogrund sets the stage in “Southern senators bristle at Trump’s ‘dumb Southerner’ insult” in The Washington Post:

Southern Republican senators defended Jeff Sessions after an explosive new book by Bob Woodward recounted how President Donald Trump called his attorney general a “dumb Southerner” and mocked his accent.

In the forthcoming chronicle of Trump’s White House, “Fear,” Woodward writes that the president privately called Sessions a “traitor,” saying: “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner . . . He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.”

The remarks are said to have come during a conversation between Trump and his former staff secretary Rob Porter about Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Russian investigation. They represent the most withering insults the president has directed at his attorney general in months of largely one-sided sniping.

Of course Trump denies ever having said any such thing. But Bob Woodward’s credibility is not so easily dismissed, and the follow-up diss about Alabama sounds a lot like Trump’s put-down style.

Trump is not literally on the ballot in November, although quite a few Senators and congressional Republicans have proudly accepted his support in GOP primaries. Let them now squirm a bit when asked by reporters about his “dumb southerner” remark.

Meanwhile some southern Republicans have responded, as quoted by Pogrund:

“I’m a Southerner, people can judge my intellect, my IQ, by my product and what I produce rather than what somebody else says,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., in an interview…”We’re a pretty smart bunch. We lost the Civil War, but I think we’re winning the economic war since then . . . I’m not gonna get into name calling because I don’t think you should be allowed to call names – including the president,” he added.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who served alongside Sessions during his 20 years as senator for Alabama, said: “Well, I’m sure I’ve got that accent, wouldn’t you think?”…He pointed out that Trump himself relied on Southern voters during the 2016 general election, warning: “I guess the president, he says what he thinks…

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., added to the chorus of disapproval, joking that Sessions was not a “dumb Southerner” but a “smart Southerner.” “Oh come on,” he said. “I’m a Southerner too. I think it’s not at all appropriate. It’s totally inappropriate.”

…Said Bob Corker, R-Tenn., on Tuesday: “I think we all know it’s likely he is going to terminate him after the midterms. In the interim I think it would be good if he stopped raving about Sessions. It’s unbecoming. Either do something or don’t, but these comments just continue to degrade our nation.”

Even Lindsay Graham weighed in with a timid scold that “It’s probably not helpful to characterize the region that way…” Yet, the election is two months away, and such gaffes may not have all that much of a shelf life — especially if southern voters are not reminded in the two months ahead.

But the opinions that really matter are those of southern swing voters in hot races in state legislatures, congressional districts, and statewide offices, particularly the marquee governorship races in Georgia and Florida and Beto O’Rourke’s bid for senate in Texas. It’s not hard to envision some creative Democratic ads reminding southern swing voters how they are perceived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Those who were hoping for a groundswell of popular opposition to the Brett Kavanaugh nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court are not going to like polling nuggets flagged by Dhrumil Mehta and Janie Velencia at FiveThirtyEight: “A C-SPAN/PSB poll found that 35 percent of likely voters can name President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, when asked in an open-ended question. Relatedly, an AP-NORC poll found that a plurality of Americans don’t have strong feelings about Kavanaugh as a nominee one way or the other.” But what will matter more to Senators in deciding if they will vote for confirmation of Kavanaugh is how the registered voters in their states feel about him, and there little or no data available for that. The Kavanaugh nomination is of such overarching importance that Democrats should still do everything they can to defeat it, without sacrificing too much of the time, energy and money resources needed for the midterm campaigns – a highly problematic challenge at best. Meanwhile, much of Kavanaugh’s history is being hidden from the public by his GOP handlers. The question for investigative reporters is, “Why?”

And speaking of the Kavanaugh cover-up, Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes in The New York Times that ” The Trump White House, citing executive privilege, is withholding from the Senate more than 100,000 pages of records from Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s time as a lawyer in the administration of former President George W. Bush…The decision, disclosed in a letter that a lawyer for Mr. Bush sent on Friday to Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, comes just days before the start of Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings on Tuesday…Senate Democrats said this was the first time that a sitting president has exerted executive privilege under the Presidential Records Act in order to prevent documents from going to Congress during a Supreme Court confirmation process.”

The New York Times editorial “The Supreme Court Confirmation Charade” observes that “Republicans aren’t even pretending to do their constitutional duty. Senator Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, is refusing to let his colleagues or the American people see millions of documents from Judge Kavanaugh’s time as White House staff secretary to President George W. Bush — a job he has called the most influential of his career in terms of his approach to judging. And in recent weeks, multiple senators have been personally helping the judge prepare by holding mock hearings…Republicans are licking their chops. Out with squishes like Anthony Kennedy, the court’s last true swing justice, and in with reliable soldiers like Judge Kavanaugh, who is likely to provide the key fifth vote to reshape large portions of constitutional and statutory law in a deeply conservative mold. That means, for starters, making it harder for minorities to vote, for workers to bargain for better wages and conditions, for consumers to stand up to big business and for women to control what happens to their bodies. It also means making it easier for people to buy and sell weapons of mass killing, for lawmakers to green-light discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender Americans, for industries to pollute the environment with impunity, and for the wealthy to purchase even more political influence than they already have.”

Labor Day seems like a good time to consider what little is known about Kavanaugh’s views on worker rights, which Steven Greenhouse does in his op-ed, “How Trump Betrays ‘Forgotten’ Americans” in The New York Times: “It doesn’t look as if Mr. Trump’s latest nominee to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, will be a friend to workers or unions. In an astonishingly anti-worker opinion in a case involving a SeaWorld trainer killed by an orca whale, Mr. Kavanaugh wrote in 2014 that the Labor Department was wrong to fine SeaWorld. Dissenting in a 2-to-1 case, he suggested that the Labor Department should not “paternalistically” regulate the safety of SeaWorld’s trainers because they, like tiger tamers and bull riders, were sports and entertainment figures who accepted the risk of injury in hazardous businesses that usually regulated their own dangers. His opinion had echoes of 19th-century state court rulings that factory workers assumed the risk of injuries from machinery that cut off their hands.” In other words, do owners of hazardous businesses have an obligation to protect their workers?  If Kavanaugh’s emails and records as white house staff secretary are ever released, no one should be shocked if they indicate his support of anti-worker legislation and nominees, as well as voter supression projects based on race.

Jonathan Chait’s “Trump Is a Snob Who Secretly Despises His Own Supporters” at New York Magazine explores a meme that may have utility for the 2020 campaign, if Trump stays in office that long. As Chait writes, “Conservatives have spent decades depicting liberals as coastal snobs. Entire campaigns were built from this theme, from Michael Dukakis’s “Harvard Yard boutique” to various Democrats failing to display the requisite enthusiasm for Nascar.” And yet, for all of Trump’s “vaunted populism, he is filled with contempt for average people in general and his own supporters in particular…Trump is the ultimate snob. He has no sense that working-class people may have equal latent talent that they have been denied the chance to develop. He considers wealthy and successful people a genetic aristocracy, frequently attributing his own success to good genes.” Chait is on to something here. The ‘Democrats are snobs’ meme has worked well for the GOP, and for Trump in particular, and yes some Democrats have helped it along, as in HRC “deplorables” comment — even though Trump and the Republican elites practice snobbery as a way of life. Successfully branding a political adversary as a snob provides powerful leverage because  everyone hates a snob. Democrats really ought to develop an ad campaign presenting Trump as the elitist snob stereotype he fits so well.

“There was always a false element in Trump’s common-man appeal. (The gender reference in that sentence is not an accident.) Limiting the working class with the adjective “white” is a large part of it,” writes E. J. Dionne, Jr. in his Washingon Post Labor Day column. “The core of Trump’s ideology, such as it is, has never been about class; his passion has always been for race, culture and immigration. Many post-election studies suggested that Trump’s voters were much more energized by these issues than by economics. Watch the typical Trump stump speech, and you will find that fear-mongering smothers any uplift and that falsehoods about immigrants outnumber truths about the challenges to middle-class living standards…Any politician who is serious about the working class needs to think about it as a whole — which means remembering how many wage-earners are African American and Latino. They have been hit as hard by deindustrialization as white workers and, in many places, harder…As David Cooper noted this summer in an analysis for the Economic Policy Institute, while 8.6 percent of white workers were paid poverty wages in 2017, the figures were 19.2 percent for Hispanic workers and 14.3 percent for African American workers.”

At The Plum Line, Paul Waldman touches on an often overlooked group conflict that influences today’s politics: “The version we live through, however, has its most direct roots in the 1960s, when liberals grew their hair long, danced to rock music, took drugs and had all the fun, while conservatives looked on in horror, contempt and more than a little envy…Ever since, barely a campaign goes by when we don’t replay the conflict between the hippies and the squares in one form or another. And it has often worked to the benefit of Republicans, who get strong support from older voters, including baby boomers of the Jeff Sessions variety, who ground their teeth in rage as they watched their free-spirited peers pile into vans and head off to Woodstock, vowing that one day they’d be in a position to lock those pot-smoking degenerates behind bars.” Ironically, an unknown, but probably substantial portion of the hippie generation actually became conservative Republicans over time– many, if not most of them, are now in their seventies. But the perception and it’s attendant resentments linger on in the likes of Jeff Sessions. The good news, as Waldman notes, is that today’s younger voters “can’t stand the GOP. According to a recent NBC/GenForward poll, only 26 percent of millennials have a favorable impression of the Republican Party, while 60 percent have an unfavorable impression. (The numbers for the Democratic Party were 44 percent favorable and 42 percent unfavorable.)” But there is reason to hope that today’s younger voters will turn out in more impressive percentages than did their predecessors.

In “Where did our raises go? To health care,” Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson flags a new study co-sponsored by the firm Willis Towers Watson and the Council for Affordable Health Coverage, a business group, which finds that “For the bottom 60 percent of U.S. workers, wage gains have been completely wiped out by contributions for employer-provided health insurance…The study focused on full-time, year-round workers from 1980 to 2015. It did not cover people who were unemployed or had government insurance (Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act)…For the bottom 50 percent of workers, employers’ health insurance contributions averaged 30 to 35 percent of companies’ total compensation packages. Companies also increased the premiums that workers themselves must pay to get coverage. From 1999 to 2015, worker premiums for a family plan more than doubled in inflation-adjusted dollars, from about $2,000 annually to almost $5,000…The problem is plain: We’d all like both cheaper health insurance and higher wages, but the way the health-care system is operating today, we might get neither. As insurance premiums get more expensive, inflation-adjusted (“real”) wages will continue to stagnate or decline.”

An oldie, but more relevant than ever bumper sticker:

If you know anyone who doubts the bumper sticker’s premise, direct them to this 2012 article in Forbes, ‘The Capitalist Tool.’

At The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein’s “How the Democratic Party Can Turn the Sun Belt Blue: From Florida to Texas, November’s elections provide an opening for Democrats to shift the balance of power—and make up for lost ground in the heartland” provides the outlnes for a new Democratic strategy in the Sun Belt. As Brownstein explains:

Can Democrats overturn the Republican advantage in the rapidly growing Sun Belt?

In the coming years, Democrats will likely face a growing need to expand their inroads in the Sun Belt states—which tend to be younger, racially diverse, and white-collar—as Republicans strengthen their position in older, predominantly white, and blue-collar states across the Midwest and Great Plains.

Brownstein cites increasing “pressure on Democrats to post deeper gains in Sun Belt states—such as Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and perhaps even Texas—that more reflect their modern coalition.”

Brownstein sees a two-pronged transformation, including the erosion of Democratic strength in the Rust Belt states of the midwest and an uptick in the growth of pro-Democratic constituencies in the Sun Belt. Regarding the aging of the heartland, Brownstein writes:

The shift toward the GOP among older whites threatens the long-term position of Democrats in a wide array of states across the country’s heartland, where those adults constitute a critical mass.

…The resilience of industrial-state incumbents such as Brown, Stabenow, and Casey makes clear that Democrats aren’t facing imminent extinction in the heartland; they are even well positioned to potentially recapture several governorships there this year. But the potential losses among the second group of senators, who are defending more rural states, underscore the likelihood that the Democratic position in the heartland will continue to erode over time, particularly as the GOP appeals more overtly to white anxiety over demographic and cultural change.

As for the other transformation, the growth of pro-Democratic constituencies in the Sun Belt, Brownstein writes,

…Democrats through the 2020s will need greater gains in the Sun Belt to fill the gap at every level—in contests for the House, the Senate, and the Electoral College. Since 2008, Democrats have already brought into their camp two Sun Belt states that reliably leaned Republican through the early-21st century: Virginia and Colorado. New Mexico, a longtime swing state, has also tilted blue, with Clinton carrying it comfortably, Democrats holding both Senate seats, and Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham, the party’s nominee, in a close contest to recapture the governorship

But the Democrats’ status has been much more tenuous in six other pivotal states across the Sun Belt: Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia in the Southeast; and Nevada, Arizona, and, more distantly, Texas in the Southwest. Except for Nevada, Trump won all of those states in 2016. Republicans control the governorship in each except North Carolina, and hold all 12 Senate seats except for the lone Democrats in Florida and Nevada.

November offers Democrats an important opening to begin shifting that balance. Their best two opportunities nationwide to win Republican-held Senate seats are in Nevada, where Democratic Representative Jacky Rosen is challenging the incumbent Dean Heller, and Arizona, where voters on Tuesday nominated the Democratic congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema to face her Republican colleague Martha McSally. In Texas, Democratic Representative Beto O’Rourke has mounted an unexpectedly strong challenge to the GOP incumbent Ted Cruz. On the other side of the ledger, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida is facing a formidable threat from outgoing GOP Governor Rick Scott.

All of these states, except for North Carolina, are also picking governors this year. The Republican Greg Abbott appears to be cruising to reelection in Texas, but the other four contests look highly competitive. Especially revealing may be the races in Florida and Georgia, where Democrats picked African American nominees (Andrew Gillum, who beat a more centrist alternative, and Stacey Abrams, respectively), and Arizona, where they chose the Hispanic educator David Garcia.

Brownstein adds that “Two dynamics will likely determine Democratic prospects in the Sun Belt. One is whether they can replicate their improvement in other regions among college-educated whites; in the Sun Belt, those voters have leaned more to the right, especially on social issues, than elsewhere. But there are signs that some, especially women, are recoiling from Trump’s definition of the GOP.”

But, much depends on whether the Democrats can mobilize younger voters of color in the south.  And Democrats are going to need a more aggressive approach to registering and mobilizing eligible Latinos across the Sun Belt. Brownstein adds:

Even more important over the long term may be whether Democrats can energize the region’s huge population of young minorities. All of the Sun Belt states are defined by the same stark demographic divergence. Their youth populations are heavily nonwhite: According to projections by the Brookings Institution demographer Bill Frey, by 2020 minorities will constitute a clear majority of the under-30 population in Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and Texas, and more than two-fifths of that population in North Carolina. Meanwhile, older generations in the same states remain preponderantly white: In 2020, the population aged 65 to 69 in each of these states (save for Texas) will be roughly two-thirds white. In Texas, whites will represent about three-fifths. The white share of the 70-plus population in all six states is even higher.

…For Democrats across the Sun Belt, the diverse younger generations resemble a cavalry that always remains just over the hill: Despite their big numbers, their turnout has consistently disappointed, especially in midterm elections.Will that change this year? “At this point, I don’t see [young people] any more or less engaged than I have in past midterm elections,” says the Texas-based Republican pollster Mike Baselice. That’s an ominous forecast for Democrats, particularly in the Sun Belt, given that turnout among young people has sagged badly in the past two midterms.

…Across the Sun Belt, Democrats this year have bet heavily on diversity (the African American nominees Gillum and Abrams, the Hispanic nominees Garcia and Lujan Grisham, and Sinema, who is openly bisexual) and youth (Gillum is 39, and Sinema, Abrams, and O’Rourke are in their 40s). These candidates have provided a jolt of energy for state Democratic parties in the Sun Belt that have sometimes slumbered through recent elections. But unless these fresh faces can mobilize more young people of color to vote, many of them may fall just short in November. That need may be especially acute for Gillum, whose Bernie Sanders–style agenda could limit his opportunities in white-collar suburbs. In Texas, O’Rourke faces the challenge that a substantial minority of Hispanics there—perhaps as many as two-fifths—have consistently voted Republican in recent years.

Enormous obstacles remain for Democrats as they struggle to take advantage of favorable demographic trends in the south, including weak unions, gerrymandered sunbelt congressional districts, Latino citizenship issues and widespread voter suppression, along with the stubborn conservatism of the region’s high-turnout senior voters. But the trends are all in the right direction for Democrats. As Brownstein concludes, “Democrats can now see a clear path to greater inroads in the Sun Belt, centered on persuading more white-collar whites and mobilizing predominantly nonwhite younger generations.”

Florida’s Democratic nominee for Governor Andrew Gillum responded to the race-baiting “monkey this up” comment by his opponent, Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis, with the kind of high-road dignity that the GOP has lost. As Dartunorro Clark and Ali Vitali of nbcnews.com quote Gillum: “We’re better than this in Florida. I believe the congressman can be better than this. I regret that his mentor in politics is Donald Trump, but I do believe that voters of the state of Florida are going to reject the politics of division…In the handbook of Donald Trump, they no longer do whistle calls — they’re now using full bullhorns,” Gillum said. “I’m not going to get down in the gutter with DeSantis and Trump, there’s enough of that going on, I’m going to try to stay high.”…He added, “It’s very clear that Mr. DeSantis is taking a page directly from the campaign manual of Donald Trump, but I think he’s got another thing coming to him if he thinks that in today’s day and age Florida voters are going to respond to that level of derision and division.”

“Is Being Authentic, Progressive, and Inclusive a Winning Strategy for Democrats?,” asks Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly. Commenting on the Democratic gubernatorial primary victories of Stacy Abrams, David Garcia and Andrew Gillum in Georgia, Arizona and Florida, LeTourneau writes, “Both Gillum and Garcia are running unapologetically progressive campaigns. And just like Stacey Abrams, they are being bold in embracing their heritage. As an example, Gillum has a long history of fighting against the gun lobby in a state that has been mobilized on the issue ever since the Parkland shooting. He’s also running on a strong platform of criminal justice reform, which is a priority for African American voters. Meanwhile, Garcia is focusing on public education.” LeTourneau notes that “Democrats came closer to winning in Florida, Georgia, and Arizona than in Ohio. They are closer to winning in Texas than in Iowa…It’s not about insurgents vs establishment or mobilization vs persuasion. It’s also not about furthering the racial divide or the one between Democrats and Republicans. It is about whether being authentic, progressive, and inclusive is a winning strategy for Democrats.”

At The Nation, Andrea Cristina Mercado, Director of the New Florida Vision PAC, explains why “Andrew Gillum’s Upset Reveals a Winning New Progressive Strategy: The results of Florida’s gubernatorial primary should serve as a lesson for the Democratic establishment,” and observes “Gillum’s primary night victory has upended the world of Florida politics for its symbolism, its political platform, and the highest voter turnout in the past 10 years that came with it…He ran on an unapologetically progressive platform, and focused on “anyone who’s ever been told they don’t belong.” He spoke to voters whom his party ignored, and aimed to expand the electorate instead of exclusively trying to sway returning or longtime voters…He offered policies to expand access to health care for all, invest in public education, make sure workers live with dignity, and protect families from “stand your ground,” gun violence, discriminatory policing, or rogue deportation agents.

Mercado adds that “Black voters in Florida and beyond have stood behind Democratic victories in every race. They’re increasingly joined by Latinos, who have inverted their party affiliation in Florida from 37 percent Republican, 33 percent Democrat, and 28 percent independent in 2006 to 37 percent Democrat, 35 percent independent, and only 26 percent identifying as Republican in 2016…We cannot underestimate what will be done to suppress and disenfranchise black voters and intimidate immigrants to protect the Republican hold on the state. To win in November will take more vigilance and deeper commitments than what got us through the primaries.”

Perry Bacon, Jr. explains “What John McCain’s Death Means For The Senate” at FiveThirtyEight: “…his Arizona Senate seat probably won’t stay vacant for long. Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona will appoint McCain’s replacement, and the Republican can select someone as soon as he wants. I expect him to land on a replacement within the next two weeks, maybe even sooner…I expect Ducey to pick a caretaker because the Arizona GOP is dividedbetween a more establishment wing (Ducey) and a more tea party one (former sheriff Joe Arpaio). It would be smart politics for Ducey to avoid irritating one of those groups by choosing someone not seeking a long-term Senate career…there has been little evidence that any Republican senator is willing to oppose the Kavanaugh nomination, so he probably already has the 50 votes required.”

PowerPost’s David Weigel spotlights the primaries in Arizona and Florida today. With respect to the Democratic contenders for the Florida governorship, Weigel writes, “Democrats, who lost two close, bitter races to Scott, have their most crowded primary in decades. Two wealthy candidates, former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and investor Jeff Greene, have led the field in spending, with Greene promising Democrats that he could pour millions of dollars into down-ballot races…Polls, however, have shown a close three-way contest between Levine, former congresswoman Gwen Graham and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum. Graham, who built a moderate record during one term in Washington, has been the focus of the most negative ads; Gillum, who is running to the left of the field and who rallied with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has surged in the final days. But at least 1.6 million voters cast ballots before Election Day, which could help Graham.” Regrding House races, Weigel notes that “there are tight races in four districts where Republicans have retired or left to seek other offices…Democrats are cautiously optimistic about competing for the 6th and 15th, which Barack Obama lost narrowly in 2012 but which swung toward Trump in 2016. But Democrats are most bullish on their chances in three South Florida districts where Latino and suburban voters, once reliably Republican, abandoned the GOP in 2016. Their top target is the Miami-based 27th District, where Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is retiring and where voters rejected Trump by 20 points.”

Arizona is more of a mess, dealing with the fallout of Sen. McCain’s death and President Trump’s diss of the late senator. Weigel observes that Rep. Kyrsten Sinema is likely to win the Democratic nomination for Senate. However, “The Democrats’ gubernatorial primary has been more fractious, with former state education official David Garcia favored after a campaign in which he has talked about creating statewide universal health care and “replacing ICE with an immigration system that reflects our American values.” As for the House contests, Weigel cites a bitterly fought Democratic primary for the 2nd district. In Oklahoma, most of the Democratic interest is in the 5th congressional District, “which overlaps some of the areas where they [Democrats] have made surprising special election gains since 2016 — and where Trump won just 53 percent of the vote.”

University of Southertn California professors Abby K. Wood and Christian R. Grose have a post  “How will the Michael Cohen and Duncan Hunter scandals affect the November election? Here’s what our research finds” at The Monkey Cage. Among their findings: “Do voters care about campaign finance violations? Yes. In new research, we argue that campaign finance violations inform voters’ views about the elected official’s character. Members of Congress who were randomly audited and found to have violated campaign finance law fared about 5 percentage points worse in their general elections than incumbents who were not. So it may be no surprise that once elected officials are tarred with campaign finance violations, they also attempt to win back voters’ trust…The FEC’s randomization is key to our study, as it creates an ideal natural experiment for empirical analysis. Randomization allows us to say that the campaign finance revelations violations caused the change in vote share.” The authors acknowledge that “since Watergate involved campaign finance shenanigans — may have been sensitive to those violations in particular.” However, “Our current political climate has enough parallels to the Watergate era that we suspect voters will react negatively to campaign finance violations again. We will find out Nov. 6.”

Some perceptive and very troubling insights from NYT columnist/Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, which ought to energize Democratic voter registration and turnout campaigns coast-to-coast: “The fact is that the Republican Party is ready, even eager, to become an American version of Law and Justice or Fidesz, exploiting its current political power to lock in permanent rule…the modern G.O.P. feels no allegiance to democratic ideals; it will do whatever it thinks it can get away with toentrench its power…if Republicans retain control of both houses of Congress in November — we will become another Poland or Hungary faster than you can imagine…Now it’s clear that there are no limits: They’ll do whatever it takes to defend Trump and consolidate power…We’re suffering from the same disease — white nationalism run wild — that has already effectively killed democracy in some other Western nations. And we’re very, very close to the point of no return.”

Jennifer Hansler has a cautionary note for Democrats in her post, “Influx of Puerto Ricans in Florida may not turn the tide for the midterms, experts say” at CNN Politics: “Hispanic voter registration has increased by more than 100,000 voters since the 2016 election, although it is unclear how many of those are Puerto Ricans. The Florida Division of Elections told CNN it does not have specific statistics on Puerto Rican voters…What is less clear is if and how Puerto Ricans who have resettled in Florida will vote in Florida’s primary election on Tuesday and then in the general election in November.” However, “We are nearly seeing presidential election year numbers of Latinos registered,” he told CNN. Of the 22,600 people Mi Familia Vota said it has registered this season, more than 11,500 are of Puerto Rican descent…We would not be able to hit these numbers in a midterm year without the influx of Puerto Ricans to Central Florida,” [Mi Familia Voa field director Esteban] Garces said.

Harry Enten explains why “Win or lose, Beto O’Rourke will help Texas Democrats,” also at CNN Politics: “If you look at the House map, there are arguably at least six Texas House races that are going to be competitive this fall. These include Texas 2nd, Texas 7th, Texas 21st, Texas 23rd, Texas 31st and Texas 32nd…It’s been shown in academic literature that states where there are competitive Senate races tend to have higher turnout in House races than states that don’t (once you control for other factors)…Texas could use the turnout boost. With the exception of Hawaii, no other state had a lower turnout rate of its voter eligible population in 2016 than Texas. Just 52% of all eligible voters cast a ballot two years ago.”

In his Washington Post article, “Democrats need to start taking voting rights seriously,” Noah Beriatsky makes a case for a national ‘big package’ voting rights reform bill which includes measures like lowering the voting age, automatic voter registration, standardizing early and mail voting, full voting rights and representation for Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, prevent politically-motivated closing of polling places, ex-felon enfranchisement and other needed measures. “While such policies have been discussed here and there, Democrats could find new focus by grouping them under a single comprehensive umbrella. Policy proposals aren’t just concrete plans, they are statements of values and statements of purpose. The point isn’t just to pass any one law. It’s to set benchmarks and moral standards. Right now, the United States behaves as if it doesn’t believe that every person has the right to vote. We need ambitious policy proposals not just to change that but also to help convince people that it needs to change.” Eventually, when Democrats regain congressional majorities and the White House, the time may be ripe for passing a comprehensive voting rights reform package. The idea would be to better brand Democrats as the party that actually values democracy. Until then, Democrats should eagerly pass whatever piecemeal voting reforms are possible.

Kyle Kondik has a Sabato’s Crystal Ball update on races for the U.S. House, nationwide: “We are making 12 ratings changes; 10 in favor of Democrats, two in favor of Republicans… if one believes the Democrats are favored in the race for the House — and we do, although we don’t think the result is locked in concrete — then something in the political environment needs to change, in a positive way, for Republicans to regain the advantage. The Cohen/Manafort news was not that…After today’s changes, there are 205 seats rated Safe/Likely/Leans Democratic, 198 Safe/Likely/Leans Republican, and 32 Toss-ups, of which 30 are currently controlled by Republicans and two are currently controlled by Democrats…With 205 seats now at least leaning to the Democrats, that essentially means the floor for Democratic gains this year would be 11, and that’s assuming Republicans win every Toss-up, which we’re reasonably confident won’t happen.”

So how should Democratic congressional candidates handle the Manafort convictions and Cohen guilty pleas? Jonathan Martin and Nicholas Fandos explore the options for both parties in their New York Times article, “Republicans Urge Embattled Incumbents to Speak Out on Trump.” Here’s some of what they write about the Democratic strategy: “Democrats face their own pressure to shed their cautious midterm strategy and hammer the opposition for fostering what Democratic leaders are labeling “a culture of corruption” that starts at Mr. Trump and cascades through two indicted House Republicans to a series of smaller scandals breaking out in the party’s backbenches…the summer eruption of apparent Republican malfeasance has some in the party arguing that Democrats should make corruption more central…“There’s no way this won’t matter in a whole bunch of races out there, and Democrats need to be talking about this everywhere,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, invoking the 2006 campaign, when “late-breaking corruption scandals, on top of an unpopular president, tipped the House and the Senate…Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, issued a fund-raising plea declaring, “Donald Trump himself was implicated yesterday in Cohen’s guilty plea. The rot of corruption runs deep in the Republican Party.”

However, “To date, Democrats have urged their candidates to conduct their own races, explain Martin and Fandos, “and avoid a national campaign against Mr. Trump or the Republican Congress, except on carefully targeted issues like health care costs. Mr. Trump’s scandals, they argued, will play like background music that they do not need to accentuate…Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, distributed a public letter to her colleagues arguing that the Trump-era capital had “become a cesspool of self-enrichment, secret money and ethical blindness” and that House Republicans were offering only a “blind eye to the corruption and criminality at the heart of President Trump’s inner circle…But in the same letter, Ms. Pelosi also said that Democrats “must also stay focused on delivering our strong economic message…Democrats also worry that employing a Trump-tinged message about corruption will only prompt more questions about whether they would use a new House majority to impeach Mr. Trump, a campaign that could rile an otherwise demoralized Republican base. Democratic leaders have studiously avoided the “I”-word for months amid liberal outcry, preferring to shift the burden onto Republicans who have all but ceased conducting oversight of the Trump administration.” Then there is the middle way, based on the understanding that yes, corruption is a leading concern of many persuadable voters, made even harder to ignore by scandals involving Repubican House members cited in the article. “As news of a Cohen plea deal was circulating Tuesday, House Democratic leaders urged members on a private call to stay on message, avoiding the topic of impeachment. Instead, Democrats will cast themselves as offering a check and balance on the president, a message that their polling indicates voters respond to favorably.” What is certain is that emphasis on Trump’s scandals must be tweaked for each district and state.

At The Washington Post, Michael Scherer reports that ” Even before the public calls for focus on voters’ needs, Democratic candidates in the most crucial midterm races had already committed to steering clear of the latest legal turmoil surrounding Trump — along with the ever-present question of whether a Democratic takeover of the House would lead to the president’s impeachment…Their fears are that an impeachment debate would distract from other goals, while at the same time alienating the very voters they need to win competitive districts. “I don’t want to see a two-year distraction,” said Susan Wild, a Democrat who is favored to win a key Republican-held House seat in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. “I think, honestly, impeachment proceedings would obviously derail getting other things done in Congress.” Also, ““You’re living it every day in Washington, D.C., but we’re not,” said Ann Kirkpatrick, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for one of the nation’s most vulnerable Republican House seats, in Tucson. “I’m not hearing from people about these recent incidents.” Kirkpatrick said her supporters have been raising alarms about issues far closer to home…the future solvency of Medicare and Social Security, the burden of student loans, the possible threats to abortion rights, and the fate of young immigrants who could lose their legal status to remain in the country. “I have been going door to door. They are concerned,” Kirkpatrick said about the kitchen-table issues. “They are worried. They are fearful.”

However, adds Scherer, Republicans squirming in responding to questions about Trump’s scandals may not be such a bad thing for Dems: “Cohen’s decision to put Trump at the scene of the crime creates a huge challenge for Republican candidates, who now have to figure out how many more shoes are going to drop and whether they really want to continue to stay all-in on Trump,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster working on the midterms…Democrats retook the House in 2006 in a campaign that focused heavily on the “culture of corruption” among Republicans, which included a major Indian casino lobbying scandal.” Also, “I would suggest that an unindicted co-conspirator to a crime should not be in the business of having the ability to appoint someone to a lifetime position on the highest court in our land,” Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) said Wednesday on MSNBC.

Michael Tomasky cites the GOP leadership’s equivocating responses to Trump’s expanding scandals, and sums it up: “But what the Republicans are doing is even worse than mere sycophancy. They are in agreement with Trump on priorities, policy, world view. They agree on the wall. They agree (with limited exceptions) on scapegoating undocumented immigrants. They agree on giving more money to rich people. They agree on doing everything they can to see to it that black people can’t vote…The idea that Trump will finally cross some line that will compel them to bring down some righteous fury on him is silly and naïve. With what moral authority? They have none. And believe me, Trump knows this. He may be a nincompoop, but the one thing he understands is alpha-male power relationships…They will turn on him only when their own careers are on the block—when that bridge is lined with their openly displayed necks, the electoral guillotine dangling ominously above them…Things still have to get a lot worse in Trumpland for the Republicans to act, but even then, it will be to save their necks, not to find their spines.”

E. J. Dionne, Jr. adds in his syndicated column: “The timidity of congressional Republicans in responding to the twin blows to Trump’s integrity will strengthen the Democrats’ case…The argument for impeaching Trump suddenly became very strong, but this does not mean that turning 2018 into an impeachment election is prudent. Most voters see impeachment as a last resort, and it is not a battle cry that will play well in every state or congressional district…The adage that one should not interfere with an enemy who is destroying himself certainly applies here. Insisting on accountability and letting the ongoing probes go forward unobstructed by a lawless president are, for now, enough.”

For those Dems who want to go there, at least with a passing zinger, “Dan Rather Has A Scathing New Nickname For Team Trump,” notes Ed Mazza at HuffPo, who shares Rather’s tweet:

Abraham Lincoln – Team of Rivals
Donald Trump – Flock of Felons

— Dan Rather (@DanRather) August 23, 2018

In their Politico post, “‘A new cherry put on top’: Trump scandal fallout hangs over midterms: ‘Payoffs and porn stars and affairs and indictments and all this stuff doesn’t Make America Great Again in the suburbs,’ said one Republican consultant,” Natash Korecki and James Arkin round up some pithy quotes about the Manafort verdict and Cohen guilty pleas: “There’s only so much of this shit-show a soccer mom wants to hear about and explain to her kids,” said one top Republican consultant representing House Republican candidates on both coasts.”…Navin Nayak, executive director of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, observes “I don’t know if that you’re in a House race and you’ve only got $1 million your smartest strategy is necessarily to focus on [Trump] because he is his own worst enemy, creating so much more negative news … than three ads in [Ohio’s 1st District] might generate.” Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson notes that “while it is powerful to say a Republican gutted coverage for people with preexisting conditions, it’s even more powerful to say they did it while raking in big money from insurance companies.” Korecki and Arkin add, “The advice Democratic strategists are giving their clients: use the conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Cohen‘s guilty plea to tee up fundraising appeals and communications to drive voter turnout. But stay the course on paid ads that focus on taxes and health care.”

As for the credibility of special counsel Robert Mueller and the investigation, a Fox News poll released Wednesday notes that “59 percent of registered voters approve of Mueller’s investigation, marking an 11-point jump from respondents who said the same in a July Fox News poll. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they disapprove of Mueller’s probe,” reports Tal Axelrod at The Hill. “It is unclear whether some people were polled after news broke Tuesday.”

Former DCCC Chair Rep. Steve Israel says it plain in his article, “Democrats Don’t Need a National Message” at The Atlantic: “A message that resonates in downtown Brooklyn, New York, could backfire in Brooklyn, Iowa—which happens to be located in a Republican district that’s now highly competitive…Democrats weaken our connection with voters when we’re presumptuous enough to speak for every voter from Trump World Tower in Manhattan to a Trump-won congressional district in Kansas…The fact is that a national message works best in presidential-election years. The party’s nominee is the “messenger in chief,” building a national brand that unifies base and swing voters, donors, activists, volunteers, canvassers, and down-ballot candidates. A midterm election cycle, by its very nature, is fragmented, with hundreds of different campaigns with hundreds of individual candidates.” Israel says a “bottom-up approach is a better solution than a message imposed by party leadership. Democratic activists would be wise not to debate nouns and verbs, and instead give candidates their freedom of speech.”

At The Hill, Megan Keller reports that “A new poll from CBS News Battleground Tracker shows Democrats winning 222 seats in the House if the midterm elections were today, in large part because of party support among women…The tracker, released Sunday, marks a three-seat increase from the tracker’s estimates earlier this summer. Women told CBS that they plan to vote for a Democratic candidate by a 12-point margin…According to the tracker, 89 percent of women voters polled said their 2018 vote is at least as important as a presidential election, while one in five respondents said it is even more important. Democratic and independent women are more than twice as likely to view the midterms with urgency than female Republicans, CBS found…The tracker polled 4,989 registered voters in 57 competitive congressional districts between Aug. 10–16. It has a margin of error of 1.8 percent.”

New York Times op-ed columnist Michelle Goldberg calls out the “pernicious double standard on politicians who owe money,” now being deployed against Democratic candidates like Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams and Randy Bryce, who is running for Paul Ryan’s seat in the House. Goldberg explains that Bryce and Abrams are being attacked for their personal debts, which are pretty modest, compared to the debts of many prominent Republicans, and she notes: “Donald Trump, by contrast, has had six business bankruptcies. There are several administration officials who, like Abrams, owed tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes when they were hired, including Justin Clark, head of the White House’s Office of Public Liaison…Then there’s Kemp, Abrams’s opponent, a multimillionaire who is being sued for allegedly failing to repay a $500,000 loan used to buy supplies for an agricultural company he invested in. It says something about the racial and class politics of owing money that Republicans nevertheless feel safe attacking Abrams for her debt, most of which she accrued putting herself through school and helping to care for family members in crisis.” A key take-away is that Democrats shouldn’t waist too much time defending their debts, when Republicans almost always provide fat attack targets with their own questionable financial practices.

“A new survey of nearly 10,000 American adults shows that the strong economy is rallying Republicans and maybe swaying some independents,” write Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley in The New York Times. “But many voters still aren’t feeling the benefits of robust growth, and the tax overhaul passed last year looks as likely to hurt Republicans at the polls as help them…The data, from a survey conducted in early August for The New York Times by the online polling firm SurveyMonkey, paints a more complex picture than strategists and pundits of either political stripe usually portray. And it helps explain why, out on the campaign trail, candidates have tended to tread lightly when it comes to talking about the economy…Asked how their finances have changed over the last year, Americans are twice as likely to say they are better off than worse off, and they are even more optimistic about the future…Americans’ confidence hasn’t risen since the start of the year. And their outlook for the next 12 months has actually slipped a bit in recent months. Other surveys, showing a similar pattern, have found that anxiety about a trade war has made some Americans less upbeat about the future.”

At PowerPost, Vanessa Williams reports that “Voting rights activists in Georgia say they will launch a petition drive in an effort to collect enough signatures of registered voters to block a proposal to close more than two-thirds of polling precincts in a predominantly black county ahead of this fall’s general election…“You don’t solve problems of accessibility for people with disabilities by reducing access for people without disabilities,” said Andrea Young, executive director of the Georgia ACLU, which wrote a letter to the board stating that the closures would be a violation of the Voting Rights Act because it would have a negative effect on African American voters. The group noted that African Americans make up more than 96 percent of the voters at one of the polling places slated for closure…Unsure whether the board will be persuaded by the arguments for keeping the polling places open, some activists will try to stop the plan by using a state law that forbids the closure of voting sites if 20 percent of the registered voters in the affected precinct object to the change. The county currently has just over 4,000 registered voters…Several groups, including the Georgia Democratic Party, Common Cause and the NAACP, have called on Kemp to step down from his position as secretary of state while he runs for governor. They says it is a conflict of interest for him to make decisions about election laws and procedures while he’s seeking the state’s top elected job. Kemp has said he will stay in the office until his term ends in January.

It’s crickets time for Republican elected officials, who are nervous about Trump’s latest binge of race-baiting, report Ashley Parker, Seung Min Kim and Robert Costa at The Washington Post. “As Trump immersed the nation in a new wave of fraught battles over race, most GOP lawmakers tried to ignore the topic altogether. The studied avoidance is a reflection of the enduring reluctance of Republicans to confront Trump’s often divisive and inflammatory rhetoric…The Washington Post reached out to all 51 Republican senators and six House Republican leaders asking them to participate in a brief interview about Trump and race. Only three senators agreed to participate: Jeff Flake of Arizona, David Perdue of Georgia and Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican in the Senate…Trump’s critics within the party fear that, in an increasingly diverse nation, the president is reopening wounds many Republicans had sought to heal.” Is it too much to hope that the media will keep the heat on Republican midterm candidates regarding Trump’s racist pandering? Maybe. But it’s up to Democrats to hold Republican midterm candidates accountable for their cowardice in refusing to speak out against Trump’s racism.

From Julian Zelizer’s “Nancy Pelosi is under fire, but ousting her isn’t the answer” at cnn.com: “…If the goal is to eliminate the bogeyman whom the GOP uses to motivate its base, then some Democrats have a badly mistaken idea of what the modern Republican Party is all about and how contemporary politics works. The truth is that regardless of who leads the Democratic Party, Republicans will demonize and characterize them as socialists who want to import radical policies to the United States…If House Democrats decided to pressure Pelosi into stepping down and replaced her with someone from the center of the party, the Republican attacks would not change one iota and they would probably still be pretty effective. The new Democratic leader would be characterized as being just as much of a liberal extremist who threatened the nation, and Republicans would capitalize on their vast media echo chamber to support their point of view. Even if the new speaker were a moderate legislator, like US Rep. Conor Lamb, Republicans would be decrying the nonexistent dominance of the far left…The question for Democrats should not really be if Pelosi offers Republicans too easy a target but rather how their party can be tougher in convincing voters why continued Republican control of Congress threatens vital public policies and the institutions of democracy.” Another argument would be that American democracy is under unprecedented attack by a foreign power, with the aid and support of the Republican President, and Dems need an experienced Speaker to organize the only institution which can prevent it — if the Democrats win a House majority in November.

A pro-Democratic strategic voting campaign is bubbling up in Arizona, where a group called  “Red and Gold” has invested nearly $1.7 million attacking front-runner, U.S. Rep. Martha McSally in the Republican U.S. Senate primary. Even more interesting, the group is directing much of its pitch to senior voters. “The ads center on McSally’s support of a Republican bill that would have allowed insurers to charge older adults more through a so-called “age tax,” notes Yvonne Wingett Sanchez at The Arizona Republic. ‘Red and Gold’ believes that McSally would be the strongest opponent for Democratic front-runner U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema. But also, McSally has blundered badly in supporting the ‘age tax,’ given thee importance of Arizona’s senior voters, who turn out at a higher rate in Midterm elections than do younger voters. Arizona has a higher percentage of seniors, 15.9 percent, than 40 other states.

From “Elizabeth Warren has a plan to save capitalism: She’s unveiling a bill to make corporate governance great again.” by Matthew Yglesias at Vox: “Elizabeth Warren has a big idea that challenges how the Democratic Party thinks about solving the problem of inequality. Instead of advocating for expensive new social programs like free college or health care, she’s introducing a bill Wednesday, the Accountable Capitalism Act, that would redistribute trillions of dollars from rich executives and shareholders to the middle class — without costing a dime…Traditionally, she writes in a companion op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, “corporations sought to succeed in the marketplace, but they also recognized their obligations to employees, customers and the community.” In recent decades they stopped, in favor of a singular devotion to enriching shareholders. And that’s what Warren wants to change…For the biggest corporations, she’s proposing a dramatic step that would ensure workers and not just shareholders get a voice on big strategic decisions…More concretely, United States Corporations would be required to allow their workers to elect 40 percent of the membership of their board of directors.” Warren’s proposal would also “limit corporate executives’ ability to sell shares of stock that they receive as pay — requiring that such shares be held for at least five years after they were received, and at least three years after a share buyback. The aim is to disincentivize stock-based compensation in general as well as the use of share buybacks as a tactic for executives to maximize their one pay.” Yglesias calls Warren’s bill a “a revolution in American business practice to undo about a generation’s worth of shareholder supremacy” and “a revival of the midcentury stakeholder capitalism.”

“Warren’s bill is similar to a bill introduced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (which Warren co-sponsored) called the Reward Work Act,” adds Paul Waldman in his post, “Democrats do have an agenda, and even some big ideas. Here’s one of them” at The Plum Line. “That one would require that one-third of the seats on a corporation’s board be chosen by workers. While in America this is a radical idea, it’s built on the system in Germany, where it has been successful in both fostering economic growth and keeping corporations from focusing on the ruthless pursuit of short-term profits for a tiny few at the expense of everyone and everything else. (Susan Holmberg of the Roosevelt Institute explains here.)…Late last year, the Republicans gave hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to corporations, with the promise that in their beneficence those corporations would raise workers’ standard of living. It didn’t happen; instead, the corporations put their money into an unprecedented wave of stock buybacks that enhanced the holdings of wealthy shareholders…When a liberal group put the idea of including workers on corporate boards into a poll, it turned out to be enormously popular…Republicans would recoil in horror at the idea of changing how corporations work, since their theory of the corporation is that it should have all the rights of an individual but none of the responsibilities. But this is a good example of Democrats coming up with an idea that’s ambitious, meant to address a deep and pressing problem, in line with their values, and compelling to voters.”

Syndicated Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes that “Democrats have a chance to shape politics for a decade,” and notes: “Republicans control 33 governorships to only 16 for the Democrats, with one independent in Alaska. Democrats are defending just nine governorships this year, and only four seem competitive. Cook rates Minnesota along with Connecticut as the most vulnerable Democratic-held seats, one reason the party welcomed the GOP primary results. Colorado and Oregon also look to be closely contested…On the other hand, 11 of the Republicans’ 26 governorships at stake this year appear vulnerable. Illinois and New Mexico already lean Democratic, and seven others are toss-ups. These include the powerhouse states of Florida, Michigan and Ohio. The GOP will also have to struggle to hold on to Wisconsin and Georgia.”

Kyle Kondik adds in his article, “The Governors: Ratings Changes Abound: Democrats positioned to make gains on a map featuring lots of competition” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Alaska happens to be the top Republican pickup opportunity in the country…The deadline for candidates to remove themselves from the ballot is Sept. 4. If this remains a three-way race after that date, we likely will favor the GOP going forward…Most of the states that are likeliest to flip are already held by Republicans, meaning that the Democrats could have considerably more governorships next year than they hold now (if they don’t, this year will have been a giant missed opportunity for Democrats)…We have previously pointed to five big states as a way to measure which side “wins” this November in the gubernatorial battle: Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The GOP currently holds all but Pennsylvania, a Likely Democratic hold. Democrats are also favored in Illinois. That leaves Toss-ups in Florida, Michigan, and Ohio. We figure the Democrats should win at least one — Michigan is the likeliest, in our estimation — and possibly more. So that’s a long way of saying that the gubernatorial races, on balance, seem to be going decently well for Democrats…”

In her article, “Pelosi has decided to make ethics a core pillar” at The Hill, Melanie Zanona writes that “House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) is moving full steam ahead on a Democratic strategy to paint the GOP as corrupt ahead of the midterm elections, a case that got new legs after the arrest of Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) on insider trading charges last week…Pelosi has decided to make ethics a core pillar of House Democrats’ push for the majority this fall, seizing on Collins’s arrest in a way she hasn’t done with past GOP scandals involving Trump administration officials…But with Collins, a sitting member of Congress and Trump’s earliest congressional backer, Pelosi believes that Democrats have a ripe opportunity to draw a connection between the president and House Republicans who are on the ballot this November…“The Democrats, through the Democracy Reform Task Force, have really positioned our caucus well, and our candidates in the field well, to push the anti-corruption framework to say we stand against a rigged system,” Sarbanes said. “We wanted to assemble a robust effort on that front…I think we are well equipped now to make that case to the electorate,” he added.”

Some telling stats in this “Year of the Democratic Women” by Krista Carothers at democrats.com: “According to the candidate-tracking project (a collaboration between POLITICO, the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, and the Women in Public Service Project at The Wilson Center), only 35 Republican women have won House primary races as of July 25, compared with 122 Democratic women…What’s more, there just aren’t as many women in the Republican party as there are among the pool of Democrats. Pew Research Center survey results in the spring showed that 56 percent of women identify as Democrats or lean Democratic (up four percentage points since 2015), compared with 37 percent who identify or lean toward the Republican party. A key stepping-stone to running for national office is experience on a state legislature, but according to fivethirtyeight.com, only 17 percent of Republican state legislators are women, compared with 36 percent of Democratic state legislators.”

Thomas L. Friedman’s “What if Mother Nature Is on the Ballot in 2020? Democrats could have a strong issue to run on if the extreme weather persists and President Trump continues to dismiss climate change” at The New York Times addresses a growing concern of voters. As Friedman writes, “Democrats have been casting about for a big idea to propel them in 2020. My free advice: If Democratic socialism or Democratic Trotskyism or abolishing ICE — the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — is what will get you elected as a Democrat in your district in 2018, go for it. The Democrats must take the House back. But Trump would feast on those issues in a national election…However, if in 2020 we’re in the midst of even more damaging droughts and storms than we are today, Democrats may be able to run against Trump’s make-America-polluted-again environmental strategy…or seize the incredible opportunity it offers America to become richer, healthier, more secure and more respected by leading the world in clean energy technologies…The Democratic strategy should be built around putting together the performance standards, research and carbon pricing to achieve what Energy Innovation C.E.O. Hal Harvey calls “the four zeros.” These are, Harvey explains: 1. “A zero-carbon grid. Right now, Republican states like Texas and Wyoming dominate the U.S. wind industry and are reaping most of the jobs and environmental benefits. That should go national. 2. Zero-emission vehicles. When you combine a zero-carbon grid with electric vehicles, bingo, you have zero-carbon transportation. 3. Zero-net energy buildings…4. Zero-waste manufacturing. New techniques in manufacturing, such as 3-D printing or advanced chemistry, can slash waste — and waste is a tax on both the budget and the earth.”

Politico’s Steven Shepard discusses three new polls which indicate that “Democrats are cutting into the GOP’s longstanding turnout advantage in midterm elections, another encouraging sign for the minority party’s hopes of winning the House in November.”According to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released yesterday, “With public interest in the midterms increasing as autumn approaches, our polling shows Democrats and Republicans are about evenly matched in voter enthusiasm,” said Tyler Sinclair, managing director of Morning Consult…If high levels of voter excitement continue to November, it could lead to greater turnout at the ballot box. Only 41.9 percent of eligible voters turned out in the 2014 midterms, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey — less than 45.5 percent in 2010 and 47.8 percent in 2006. A CNN poll affirmed a statistical tie in “enthusiasm,” while a Quinnipiac University poll gives Dems a ten-point edge over Republicans among the “extremely motivated to vote in 2018” identifier.

In his post, “Dems Must Build a Democratic Culture, Too” at The Editorial Board, John Stoehr writes about a big, but inadequately-addressed problem facing Democrats, particularly in midterm elections. Stoehr quotes Paul Glastris, editor in chief of The Washington Monthly, who has posed the problem thusly: “There are approximately 50 million Americans who are eligible to vote but aren’t registered. But there are far more “episodic voters”—citizens who are registered but often don’t show up. More than 100 million registered voters didn’t cast ballots in the 2014 midterms. About 145 million didn’t vote in the primaries.”

We can’t really blame the Russkies, or even the Republicans for that gaping void. As Stoehr continues,

We normally think of two groups worthy of our attention: registered and unregistered voters. But those might be the wrong groups to think about. Maybe we should be thinking about unregistered voters versus what Glastris calls “episodic voters.” These are Americans who are registered but do not reliably vote. Why these groups?

For one, because registration is no guarantee of voting. For another, these groups have different value systems. Unregistered voters, Glastris writes, are unregistered because “they dislike politics and don’t believe voting makes a difference.” “Episodic voters,” however, believe in voting. They just don’t know enough. As Glastris writes: “If you were designing a system to maximize the Democrats’ electoral chances, you’d want it to be primarily focused on educating and mobilizing these episodic voters.”

Glastris rightly points to mechanisms that can be put in place to educate episodic voters. But I think there’s more to it than mechanisms. At the root of this problem is that Americans who don’t vote don’t have a habit of thinking democratically*. In other words, they do not inhabit a culture in which self-determination feels real. There are many reasons for that, I’m sure, but I’m also sure liberals groups and the Democratic Party have good incentive for developing such a culture, ward by ward, block by block, even among people who don’t think voting makes a difference in their lives.

This last sentence underscores a glaring weakness of the Democratic party across America — the lack of cultural institutions which encourage participation by eligible ‘episodic’ voters who have every reason to vote for Democrats.

What might a pro-Democratic “culture, ward by ward, block by block” look like? Democratic Block “captains”? Public hearings sponsored by local Democratic parties? Democratic picnics and festivals, grocery co-ops, coffee shops, recycling centers and credit unions? Free health care fairs, financial literacy classes, free rides to the polls? Why not a Democratic community center, something like “Jimmy’s Hall“?

The idea would be to create a community sense that the local Democratic Party is involved in a range of activities that can help improve people’s lives. It could improve the Democratic brand as a more appealing identity in the community, in stark contrast to the Republicans, who don’t even think about helping people who are struggling with real-world problems. Any ideas out there?

Michael Wines explores what it means that “Voting Rights Advocates Used to Have an Ally in the Government. That’s Changing” in The New York Times. In his lead graphs, Wines writes: “A new voter ID law could shut out many Native Americans from the polls in North Dakota. A strict rule on the collection of absentee ballots in Arizona is being challenged as a form of voter suppression. And officials in Georgia are scrubbing voters from registration rolls if their details do not exactly match other records, a practice that voting rights groups say unfairly targets minority voters….During the Obama administration, the Justice Department would often go to court to stop states from taking steps like those. But 18 months into President Trump’s term, there are signs of change: The department has launched no new efforts to roll back state restrictions on the ability to vote, and instead often sides with them…Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the department has filed legal briefs in support of states that are resisting court orders to rein in voter ID requirements, stop aggressive purges of voter rolls and redraw political boundaries that have unfairly diluted minority voting power — all practices that were opposed under President Obama’s attorneys general.” The rest of the article provides an instructive update on the GOP’s voter suppression tactics, leaving leading to the inescapable conclusion that Democrats must win majorities in congress and state legislators and more governorships to effectively address the threat.

“The money and the machinery is there. It’s just that not enough of it is directed at Latinos. With total spending on the midterm elections expected to reach $4 billion, outside groups and super PACs have almost unlimited funds. Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer has pledged $30 million to take back the House. Liberal philanthropist George Soros has already spent $15 million. And Michael Bloomberg has promised $80 million. Yet none of the cash they have allocated has been earmarked exclusively for a major new initiative to reach Latinos. Bloomberg has been focused on gun control and Steyer on climate change—as well as impeachment. He has spent another $40 million on billboards in Times Square, town hall meetings, and TV ads urging the House to oust the president. “If he’d given Mi Familia Vota [a Latino group that works to register and mobilize Hispanic voters] that money, they would have registered enough Latino voters by now to turn Texas blue,” said Andres Ramirez, a veteran Democratic strategist. Yet most of these liberal megadonors “would scoff at Latino groups making this request,” he added. “They wouldn’t even entertain it.”” — From Adrian Carrasquilo’s “Democrats Are Taking Latino Voters for Granted: The party has the money and machinery. Why is so little of it going toward Hispanic outreach?” at The New Republic.

Dems are going to like the title of Ronald Brownstein’s latest article at The Atlantic, “The Ohio Results Point to Democratic Strength in 2018—And a Showdown in 2020: The party has a clear formula for victory in November: sweep America’s suburbs, and pick off a few other Republicans for good measure.” Says Brownstein: “Democrats will be operating with very little margin for error if they must win back the House almost solely by capturing white-collar suburban seats. Their path would be much easier if they could also win a respectable number of the Republican seats they are targeting outside of the major metro areas, including districts in upstate New York, northeastern and southwestern Iowa, downstate Illinois, California’s Central Valley, and Washington State, where Republican Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Jaime Herrera Beutler both showed weakness in Tuesday night’s primary…Democrats, and outside election handicappers, like their odds in several of those races (especially given the agricultural community’s unease over Trump’s ongoing trade wars). But Balderson’s big margins in such blue-collar and small-town counties as Marion, Morrow, and Muskingum are reminders of how strong a headwind Democrats must overcome in those places.”

Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson makes the case that “The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it” in his Washington Post column: “In November, many Republican leaners and independents will face a difficult decision. The national Democratic Party under Nancy Pelosi and Charles E. Schumer doesn’t share their views or values. But President Trump is a rolling disaster of mendacity, corruption and prejudice. What should they do?…They should vote Democratic in their House race, no matter who the Democrats put forward…Under Republican control, important committees — such as Chairman Devin Nunes’s House Intelligence Committee — have become scraping, sniveling, panting and pathetic tools of the executive branch. Only Democratic control can drain this particular swamp…The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it in the House. In this case, a Republican vote for a Democratic representative will be an act of conscience.”

According to the NYT update, “Tracking the House Races to Watch in the 2018 Midterm Elections” by Alexander Burns, which presents data from the Cook Political Report, “There are currently 62 highly competitive seats — those considered a tossup between the two parties or leaning slightly toward one,” and “Right now, 10 seats currently held by Republicans are either likely to be won by Democrats or lean slightly toward them, while another two dozen Republican-held seats are designated as tossups — political coin flips that could just as easily break in either direction.” Further, “There are also more than 50 other Republican-held seats that are contested enough to make Democratic victory at least a plausible possibility. Many of those are in conservative-leaning suburbs and rural areas in the Midwest and West.”

At New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore draws from Andrew Levison’s Washington Monthly article “What Democrats Still Don’t Get About Winning Back the White Working Class,” and observes: “The most important thing right now for Democrats may be abandoning the idea there is any ideological template — progressive or centrist — for dealing with white working-class voters. Telling them to chow down on government benefits while abandoning their cultural viewpoints, as progressives sometimes advocate, is arguably condescending, and the common “centrist” approach of refusing to talk about hot-button issues is disingenuous. Connecting with these voters simply and authentically is also superior to a heavy-handed triangulating message that alienates “base” Democratic voters or college-educated suburban swing voters.”

“Campaign finance was once famously dismissed by Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, as being of no greater concern to American voters than “static cling,” notes Farah Stockman in “For Voters Sick of Money in Politics, a New Pitch: No PAC Money Accepted” at The New York Times. “But since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 opened the floodgates for unrestricted political spending, polls have shown that voters are growing increasingly bitter about the role of money in politics…The issue is now emerging in midterm races around the country, with dozens of Democrats rejecting donations from political action committees, or PACs, that are sponsored by corporations or industry groups. A handful of candidates, including Mr. Phillips, are going a step further and refusing to take any PAC money at all, even if it comes from labor unions or fellow Democrats.” It is proving to be a popular approach for Demopcrats, because “A recent Pew report found that 75 percent of the public said “there should be limits on the amount of money individuals and organizations” can spend on political campaigns.”

Relying on small donations from individuals is more commendable than being financed by corporate interests. But Eleanor Clift reports at The Daily Beast that unrelenting pitches for money from small donors can get pretty obnoxious, as well. Clift quotes extensively from retired liberal journalist Roger Williams:  “He applauds Democratic efforts to go after small donations, but adds that “it’s the way they’re doing it is very aggravating. They lead with absolute panic time, panic time all the time. This election, whether it’s the most important one, I don’t know, but yes, I think it’s terribly important or I would not have given any money—but it’s NOT all about money and these people make it sound like it’s all about money…Further, you guys are supposed to be political pros. Your job is to win elections, which includes figuring out how to do so in races that are difficult. Whining about being outspent and groveling before people like me for a few bucks is not the way to accomplish that.  Do your G.D. jobs!”

If you were wondering why The Republicans stopped bragging so much about their tax cut, a NYT editorial explains that “The idea that the tax cuts were going to line workers’ pockets was always a mirage. Most people will enjoy only a modest and temporary tax cut — families earning $25,00 or less will save on average just $60 on their federal tax this year, and those making between $48,600 and $86,100 will save $930, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Families in the top 1 percent, on the other hand, will save an average of $51,140.”