In his article, “Republicans Seize on Impeachment for Edge in 2018 Midterms,” Jonathan Martin writes, “As Republican leaders scramble to stave off a Democratic wave or at least mitigate their party’s losses in November, a strategy is emerging on the right for how to energize conservatives and drive a wedge between the anti-Trump left and moderate voters: warn that Democrats will immediately move to impeach President Trump if they capture the House. What began last year as blaring political hyperbole on the right…is now steadily drifting into the main currents of the 2018 message for Republicans…Democrats are divided on how to respond to the charge. Many top officials in the capital fear it is a political trap that would distract from their core message and possibly even boomerang to harm them in November. But other more progressive figures see impeachment as a rallying cry of their own to galvanize the left’s anti-Trump base.” It doesn’t seem like a very promising strategy for Republicans. All Dems have to do to sound fair and responsible is say they are waiting for the investigations to conclude before making any commitments, while Republicans do their party no good by reminding the public that their leader deserves is being investigated for both corruption and treasonous offenses.

“The American people are not going to get the vapors from a politician who is willing to acknowledge what they already know—that there are businesses out there harming them for profit…This strategy would solve another pressing problem for Democrats: Americans not knowing where the party actually stands. A 2017 Washington Post poll found that only 37 percent of Americans say the Democratic Party “stands for something.” This has been an acknowledged problem among elected Democratic officials. But a huge part of knowing what someone stands for is knowing what they stand against…A liberalism that once again decides to start making Americans’ lives better through better Internet, cheaper flights, free health care, or fairer banking won’t be able to avoid upsetting those industries. But whoever takes up this task and, through her policies, enrages telecom companies, airlines, drug companies, and banks, can quote Roosevelt as he finished that speech in Portland: “To the people of this country I have but one answer on this subject. Judge me by the enemies I have made.”” — from Jack Meserve’s “Name the Enemy: Liberalism isn’t just about proposing solutions. It’s also about defeating those who would prevent them” at Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

Democratic campaigns looking for a way to connect with small business people should consider adapting Sen. Ron Wyden’s comments at a Friday press conference. As Angela Simaan reports at Common Dreams, “Small business owners are what drive Oregon’s economy forward. They need a simpler, fairer tax code to grow and thrive,” Sen. Wyden said. “Trump’s tax law did the opposite. Today’s report highlights how Republicans’ choice to slash taxes for multinational corporations will bring financial harm to the rancher in Eastern Oregon, the small restaurant owner on the Oregon Coast, and their employees and customers. It’s more proof that this administration will continue to enrich the donor class at the expense of the middle class.”

Gideon Resnick explains “How Beto O’Rourke Is Building a Digital Fundraising Army” at The Daily Beast: “…The Texas Democrat and his top aides placed a major bet on a novel strategy: they would dramatically break down the barriers between candidate and voter. O’Rourke would make heavy use of social media to essentially broadcast otherwise mundane daily functions. And he would treat the often-pesky task of campaign fundraising as an ongoing conversation rather than a plea for cash…So far, at least, O’Rourke’s bet has paid off, and it’s paid off big. The campaign announced this past Monday that it had raised an excess of $6.7 million in the first fundraising quarter of 2018 with more than 141,000 contributions. That number nearly matches the massive haul Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) had in the first quarter of her 2012 campaign. In three of the four reporting periods so far, O’Rourke has outraised Cruz. And operatives and advisers are now confidently predicting that O’Rourke will raise the most online of any candidate in Senate history, building a formidable list of supporters along the way akin to that of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).”

“The immigration debate is a flashpoint into the larger divide between college-educated and non-college-educated white voters,” writes student columnist Derek Simshauser in his post, “Rethinking Democrats’ Strategy for 2020” in The Brown Daily Herald. “College-educated whites believe that immigrants strengthen the country by a margin of 52 to 35 percent; conversely, 61 percent of white working-class voters — defined by the study in question as whites who did not graduate from college and are paid by the job or by the hour — say that immigrants weaken the nation. William Galston of the Brookings Institute incisively notes the larger forces at work in these numbers: “working-class whites are experiencing a pervasive sense of vulnerability … on every front — economic, cultural, personal security — they feel threatened and beleaguered.” Trump won these voters by a much larger margin than Mitt Romney did in 2012 because he made immigration an issue of race politics, not of policy…Engaging in nativist and racist rhetoric on immigration is obviously a line in the sand that Democrats will not and should not cross. But the resonance of the immigration debate goes far deeper than other cultural issues in voters’ attitudes. The “Obama-Trump” voter, whose vote Democrats so badly covet, may not be persuaded by slight moves to the center from Democrats. And if the Democratic ticket ignores the progressive wing of the party on too many social issues, they risk alienating more voters from the left than they would win over on the right.”

At Vox, Emily Stewart reports that, “More Americans are hitting the streets to protest in the era of Trump.” As Steward notes, “According to a new poll conducted by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation and released Friday, one in five Americans have protested in the streets or participated in a political rally since the start of 2016; and of those, 19 percent had never done so before…The poll was conducted during the first two months of 2018 — before the March for Our Lives protest that advocated for gun control in March. It found that more rallygoers are Democrats and independents — 40 percent and 36 percent, respectively — than Republicans, who make up 20 percent of attendees. Rallygoers report attending events to express their views on a wide range of issues, including but not limited to Trump. Of those who went to an event over the past two years, 19 percent did so in support of Trump, compared to 32 percent who protested against him…But whether new protesters will go to the polls for the November midterm elections remains to be seen. Eighty-three percent of rallygoers said they plan to vote in the 2018 midterms, compared to 62 percent of respondents overall.”

Silicone Valley visionary Jack Dorsey, co-creator of both Twitter and The Square, is getting buzz in circles overlapping both tech and politics for his enthusiastic promotion of an article by Ruy Teixeira and Peter Leyden in Medium. As Jon Levine explains at sfgate.com, “Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey came under withering fire Saturday after promoting an article touting the end of bipartisanship and urging one side — Democrats — to thoroughly defeat their opponents as California did in the early 2000s…The original piece, published on Medium by authors Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira, analogized our current political environment to the Civil War and suggested that Republicans needed to be “thoroughly defeated.”…“In this current period of American politics,…there’s no way that a bipartisan path provides the way forward. The way forward is on the path California blazed about 15 years ago,” wrote Leyden and Teixeira.“ At some point, one side or the other must win – and win big. The side resisting change, usually the one most rooted in the past systems and incumbent interests, must be thoroughly defeated .” Dorsey has taken a lot of heat as a strong supporter of Democratic candidates, and he shows no signs of caving to conservative criticism. The California Democrats ‘big tent’ philosophy has strengthened the party in elections, while Republicans have demonstrated nation-wide that they have no interest in genuine bipartisanship, or even good-faith negotiations.

Conservative syndicated columnist George F. Will comes out strongly against felon disenfranchisement in his latest column, “There’s no good reason to stop felons from voting.” Will writes, “Intelligent and informed people of good will can strenuously disagree about the wisdom of policies that have produced mass incarceration. What is, however, indisputable is that this phenomenon creates an enormous problem of facilitating the reentry into society of released prisoners who were not improved by the experience of incarceration and who face discouraging impediments to employment and other facets of social normality. In 14 states and the District , released felons automatically recover their civil rights…What compelling government interest is served by felon disenfranchisement? Enhanced public safety? How? Is it to fine-tune the quality of the electorate? This is not a legitimate government objective for elected officials to pursue. A felony conviction is an indelible stain: What intelligent purpose is served by reminding felons — who really do not require reminding — of their past, and by advertising it to their community? The rule of law requires punishments, but it is not served by punishments that never end and that perpetuate a social stigma and a sense of never fully reentering the community…Again, who is comfortable with elected politicians winnowing the electorate? When the voting results from around the nation are reported on the evening of Nov. 6, some actual winners might include 1.6 million Floridians who were not allowed to cast ballots.”

“Lula’s imprisonment – an attack on the working class globally” by Vashna Jagarnath in South Africa’s The Daily Maverick, provides a well-argued critique of the jailing of Brazil’s former president. As Jagarnath explains, “The imprisonment of Lula is a last-ditch attempt to crush Lula’s growing popularity ahead of the elections in October. Lula had intended to stand as a presidential candidate. The imprisonment of Lula…is an attack on the Workers’ Party, and the Brazilian left more broadly. It is an attempt to restore the authority of the white oligarchy…Even conservative statisticians concede that under Lula’s presidency over 40 million Brazilians were lifted out of poverty. Under Lula’s stewardship Brazil created millions of jobs and unemployment fell from 12% to below 6%. Poverty fell by 27% due to pro-working-class reforms, including a raise in the minimum wage…With the “Zero Hunger” project more than 12 million families had three meals a day. In addition to this Lula invested heavily in education. The president who never had an opportunity to go to university built more universities and technical schools than any other Brazilian leader. In addition, he put in place badly needed affirmative action policies that allowed the poor and black population of Brazil to have a chance to access quality education, even at private institutions.” If Democrats win back the presidency in 2020, a top foreign policy priority should be pressing Brazil to release Lula.

Trump’s Electoral College victory in 2016 is often linked to his pugnacious statements regarding trade and American jobs. But things have gotten considerably more complicated, now that he has launched the opening salvos of what could soon degenerate into a trade war. As Erica Werner notes in “Ohio workers love Trump’s tariffs, and that’s making trouble for the GOP” at The Washington Post: “Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is running for reelection partly by touting his support for the president’s aggressive trade strategy and trumpeting his longtime opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade deals Trump rails against. That’s largely a boon in Ohio, where Trump won by 8 percentage points in 2016. “I’m working with the president to make these tariffs work,” Brown said last week after addressing a gathering of Teamsters at a United Steelworkers hall in Akron…For Brown’s likely Republican opponent, Rep. James B. Renacci, Trump’s trade moves are a growing political headache, forcing the candidate to explain his own past support for trade pacts and his concerns about the tariffs…Renacci, like GOP lawmakers elsewhere, is being forced to explain to blue-collar voters why he supports free trade policies that are now out of step with Trump’s Republican Party…Similar upside-down trade politics could emerge in House races, too, in districts from California to Washington state to Michigan.”

Comments by Ari Berman, from his interview by Amy Goodman on ‘Democracy Now’ addressing Trump’s decision to ask Census repondents about their citizenship status: “…The census affects everything in American life, Amy. It affects how $675 billion in federal funding is allocated to states and localities. It affects how many congressional seats and electoral votes states get. It affects how local and federal districts are drawn. It affects the data that every institution in America, from corporations to universities to the military, uses to understand their populations. And so, if the census is rigged, if the census is manipulated, then all of American democracy is rigged and manipulated as a result…there has always been a tremendous undercount of people of color by the census. In the 2010 census, 1.5 million people of color were undercounted, were not counted by the Census Bureau. That undercount could be dramatically larger now under Trump, because immigrants are going to be afraid to respond to the census now. And so, what Donald Trump is doing is he’s turning the census, which is a constitutionally mandated act every 10 years, he’s turning the census into a tool of voter suppression and to a tool of nativist resentment. And that’s so shocking for our democracy.”

David Leonhardt sketches a major opportunity for Democrats in his column, “Asian-Americans, a Sleeping Political Giant” at The New York Times:“In a new piece for Washington Monthly, Saahil Desai suggests that Virginia can serve as a model for Democrats nationwide. “Democrats’ failure to mobilize” Asian-Americans, Desai writes, “has been a major missed opportunity.” Outside of Virginia, many other swing states and House districts — in California, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and elsewhere — have meaningful Asian-American populations. In the last midterm election, in 2014, the nationwide turnout for Asian-American citizens was dreadful — just 27 percent, according to the census. That’s far below the rates for whites and blacks and virtually identical to the Latino rate…The six biggest Asian-American groups — which, in descending order, are Chinese-, Filipino-, Indian-, Vietnamese-, Korean- and Japanese-Americans — have varying opinions on nearly every major political issue (as these charts show). Yet not one of these subgroups leans Republican.”

How are Dems doing in the quest to level the playing field among America’s governorships in the 2018 midterm elections? Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley share some insights at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “On the gubernatorial front, Democrats seem better than 50-50 to win Republican-held seats in Illinois, Maine, and New Mexico. The GOP’s best targets are Alaska, where independent Bill Walker is unpopular, and open seats Democrats are defending in Colorado, Connecticut, and Minnesota, particularly if and when former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) decides to try for a third, nonconsecutive term in the Gopher State (he appears likely to run). Democrats have several other prime targets, which is natural given both the environment and the immense amount of defense Republicans need to play on this map…We’ve previously said that the best way to judge 2018’s gubernatorial races is by which party wins a majority of five big states: Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Republicans currently hold all but Pennsylvania…Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) is an underdog against Democratic nominee J.B. Pritzker in Illinois. Florida and Michigan are open-seat Toss-ups, and Ohio Leans Republican but should feature a competitive race in the fall. Meanwhile, Gov. Tom Wolf (D-PA) seems like an increasingly good bet for reelection, as we explain in our next section.”

At The Fix, Eugene Scott flags a frequently-overlooked point in the ongoing discussion about class and politics in the U.S.: “The teacher boycotts making national headlines highlight the problem with the way many define class in the United States — especially “working class.”…But a lack of understanding about education and income often make addressing the economic woes of Americans like these teachers challenging. In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, analysts often conflated the working class with those who don’t have a college degree…But the teacher walkouts are a reminder that even professionals with master’s degrees in some of the country’s largest cities endure many of the same economic challenges associated with those in blue-collar jobs. This is perhaps why most — 54 percent — of white working-class Americans said investing in college education is a risky gamble, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Atlantic…According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average salary for elementary and middle school teachers is $56,420 per year, while high school teachers earn an average of $58,170. The salary is comparable to some trade jobs, like plumbers ($57,070), electricians ($57,910) and food service managers ($57,250).” The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) estimates that about 3.6 million teachers are “employed in public and private elementary and secondary schools in 2007-2008.” Democrats might also think about the number of recent college graduates they know who are doing working-class jobs, including waiting on tables, walking dogs, baby-sitting and other such employment in the ‘gig economy.’

It is amazing how much the gun safety protests have accomplished in a short period of time. Check out Amanda Holpuch’s post, “Six victories for the gun control movement since the Parkland massacre” at The Guardian, which presents the litany of achievements of the movement, including: “Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, on 9 March signed a $400m bill to tighten the state’s gun laws while flanked by family members of students killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. The bill fell short of what campaigners had hoped for, a ban on assault weapons, but it did raise the age for buying a gun to 21 from 18, ban bump stocks and extended a three-day waiting period for handgun purchases to include long guns. Hours after it was signed into law, the NRA filed a federal lawsuit against Florida…The week after the Parkland shooting, US companies distanced themselves from the country’s National Rifle Association (NRA) amid public pressure. Hotel chains, car rental firms and home insurance businesses had offered discounts to members of the NRA but cancelled them in droves after the shooting.”

Helene Cooper’s “‘All It Takes Is One Mistake’: Worries Over Plan to Send National Guard to Border” at The New York Times” provides one of the more perceptive critiques of Trump’s ill-advised idea to put large numbers of American troops on the border we share with Mexico: “At the Pentagon, several officials privately expressed concern about being seen as picking a fight with an ally at a time when the military has plenty of adversaries — the Islamic State, North Korea, Russia, Syria — to contend with. Massing American troops at another country’s border, several current and former Defense Department officials said, would send a message of hostility and raise the chances of provoking an all-out conflict…“We are so lucky here in this country when you look at our borders,” said Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, a retired veteran of the Iraq war. “We’ve got the Pacific on one side, the Atlantic on the other and allies to the north and the south. Mexico is not an adversary. Why would you present this offensive barrier to a friendly country?””

In his slate.com post, “It’s Time to Stop Yammering About Liberal Bias: The right has plenty of representation in the nation’s opinion pages,” Ositu Owanevu has a richly-deserved scold for conservatives, observing: “If, as conservatives have insisted over decades of uninterrupted complaint, the American people really are being indoctrinated into liberalism in their formative years at our schools and colleges and in their adult years by an oppressively slanted press, how exactly does one explain the American political situation in 2018, with right-wing control of the presidency, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, 33 governorships, and 32 state legislatures? If America’s citizenry really has been spoon-fed leftist propaganda for nearly 70 straight years, isn’t the reorganization of the United States into semiautonomous workers’ republics long overdue?”…Regarding charges that The New York Times, Washington Post and The Atlantic are examples of major media infected with liberal bias, Owanevu writes, “those three publications already employed, by my cursory and possibly incomplete count, 18 conservatives and libertarians writing regularly for them: David Brooks, Bret Stephens, Bari Weiss, Ross Douthat, David Frum, Conor Friedersdorf, Reihan Salam, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Megan McArdle, Marc Thiessen, Max Boot, Michael Gerson, Jennifer Rubin, Kathleen Parker, Radley Balko, Ed Rogers, and Anne Applebaum. The majority offer their takes frequently and freely without liberals on Twitter or anywhere else jeering in mass protest.”

A TDS staff post on Tuesday commented on TV shows about the working-class, noting that only one show, the edgy drama “Atlanta,” often spotlighted Black working-class characters. “ABC Scored With ‘Roseanne.’ But Where Are TV’s Black Working-Class Shows?” by Ira Madison III at The Daily Beast has more to say about that. As Madison notes:, “the easy answer could be to reboot shows like Sanford and Son or Everybody Hates Chris, two very good shows that depicted working-class black families. It’s worked well for One Day at a Time on Netflix, which has rebooted the Norman Lear comedy with a Cuban family. The show has tackled racism, PTSD, sexuality, the economy, and health care—all the issues that affect the working class…It might seem gauche, perhaps, for white executives to try and greenlight shows where the leads are lower-income black people. Perhaps they can only feel comfortable with affluent depictions of black lifestyles. But it’s absolutely necessary that we let all Americans see themselves, I mean, that’s the heartland strategy, yes?..Of course, that would require the media to focus as well on the people who are working class in America who didn’t turn out for Trump, minority and white ones—which is actually a majority of Americans. And the last time I checked, the electoral college didn’t log its Nielsen ratings.”

Today marks the last of the major MLK-related anniversaries for a long while, which means that there are likely going to be more articles about him in the media today than will appear on any day for the next half century. Here are some of them, which may be of particular interest to those who are interested in ways MLK’s legacy can still inform Democratic strategy:

Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “How Dr. King Lived Is Why He Died: We owe it to Dr. King to commemorate the man in full: a radical, ecumenical, antiwar, pro-immigrant and scholarly champion of the poor” at The New York Times will probably have more readers than any other MLK retrospective appearing today. Jackson’s best paragraph: “Dr. King’s spirit has been our moral guidepost for 50 years. That spirit is alive today with the high school students of Parkland, Fla., as they push the country toward sensible gun control. It is alive with the teachers of West Virginia, who have blazed a trail for other workers. It is alive with Black Lives Matter, the Dreamers, Colin Kaepernick and thousands of African-American voters who defied the pundits and sent an Alabama Democrat to the Senate for the first time in a generation. It is alive with the Rev. William Barber as he resurrects Dr. King’s last crusade, the Poor People’s Campaign.”

At The Washington Post’s Daily 202, James Hohman’s “MLK’s final speech — delivered 50 years ago today — was full of timely and timeless teachings” dissects King’s last message, and notes in one moving graph: “That night, he framed what was happening in Memphis as a flash point in the global struggle for human dignity. “It’s all right to talk about streets flowing with milk and honey, but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here and His children who can’t eat three square meals a day,” the reverend told a few thousand people who had come to see him. “In the human rights revolution, if something isn’t done and done in a hurry to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty — their long years of hurt and neglect — the whole world is doomed. … If we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live.””

“In our long effort to moderate King, to make him safe, we have forgotten how unpopular he had become by 1968,” write Stephen and Paul Kendrick, co-authors of “Douglass and Lincoln: How a Revolutionary Black Leader & a Reluctant Liberator Struggled to End Slavery & Save the Union.” in their Washington Post op-ed. “In his last years, King was harassed, dismissed and often saddened. These years after Selma are often dealt with in a narrative rush toward martyrdom, highlighting his weariness. But what is missed is his resilience under despair. It was when his plans faltered under duress that something essential emerged. The final period of King’s life may be exactly what we need to recall, bringing lessons from that time of turmoil to our time of disillusion…Fifty years later, it would look too familiar to the King of 1968 to see our continued economic inequality, hawkishness, backlash to civil rights gains, and racist violence from Charleston to Charlottesville. His response then was to resist exhaustion from the deluge of issues and to enlarge his work instead, hold firm his insistence.”

CNN Opinion has an excellent collection of essays from diverse writers in “Who is Martin Luther King Jr. to us, 50 years later?,” including a powerful closing piece by Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, who writes, “Rather than discovering the shared experiences that unite us, we obsess over the political labels that divide us. Rather than discovering our beautiful selves, we obsess over who’s in our camp and who’s outside of it…This obsession with political affiliation has inspired a “win at all costs” mindset. Most of us can barely stand to be maligned in the comments section of news stories, or in social media threads, but King withstood so much more. He famously said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that; hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” He withstood his share of hate, but he did not allow it to make him bitter nor did he allow it to alter what he envisioned as possible for the future.”

At The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner writes, “Fifty years have gone by since his death. And far too little has changed—or has even changed for the worse. Police still kill young black men with impunity. In King’s era, blacks could be arrested or killed in the South for trying to exercise their civil rights. Today, they can be arrested or killed in the North for walking down the street…Each generation needs to discover MLK’s truths in its own way. For instance, the March for Our Lives and the gathering movement against gun violence, initiated by relatively affluent high school students from Parkland, was at risk of taking the spotlight away from the gun violence that has ravaged black communities, including police violence. But these groups have been able to come together, with compassion and solidarity.”

Also at The American Prospect, Randall Kennedy observes “What should we focus upon in marking the 50th anniversary of this somber landmark? I suggest three things: the particulars of King’s achievements as a liberal dissident; the trying circumstances he faced at the end of his life; and the virtues of his principal strategy and aim—coalition politics in the service of a decent, egalitarian, multiracial society…“As we work to get rid of the economic strangulation that we face as a result of poverty, we must not overlook the fact that millions of Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, Indians and Appalachian whites are also poverty-stricken. Any serious war against poverty must of necessity include them.” The Black Power slogan, King complained, “gives priority to race precisely at a time when the impact of automation and other forces have made the economic question fundamental for blacks and whites alike.” He preferred the slogan “Power for poor people,” understanding and teaching that a common struggle for economic justice is key to suitably addressing the recalcitrant problem of racial injustice.”

One of Dr. King’s favorite publications, The Nation is providing links to four of his many articles for the magazine. But also read “Dr. King Knew That Labor Rights Are Human Rights” by John Nichols, who notes, “As right-wing Republican governors (and some supposedly more moderate Democrats) target public employees in particular and union members in general for abuse, it is necessary for the right-minded and right-hearted people of today to defend public workers—just as the right-minded and right-hearted people of Memphis joined King in defending the workers of that city in 1968…King’s call for labor rights, economic fairness, and racial justice rings as true today as it ever did. “Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness,” he declared on the night before he was slain. “Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.”

The Boston Review is also running, “Forum V: Fifty Years Since MLK,” a collection of in-depth essays about Dr. King’s legacy and it’s meaning for our times. We conclude with a segment from Brandon Terry’s “MLK Now,” in which he writes, “It is not enough for people to be angry,” King argued; “the supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.” Crucially, King never denied the existence of righteous anger or the threat of rebellion, but incorporated these passions into his political thinking as challenges to be redirected toward worthier ends…One concrete implication of this view—beyond curbing the impulse to mock and condemn on social media—is to avoid forms of political resistance that seek to “humiliate the opponent” rather than “win his friendship and understanding.” These vengeful approaches deny others the capacities for moral learning. They foreclose unanticipated forms of reconciliation and community, and judge, a priori, the life horizons of others based on their worst transgressions, cognitive mistakes, or group identities. Worse, the misguided notion that such practices build partisan solidarity and affirmation are woefully shortsighted. Inevitably, such passions turn inward, destroying organizations with recrimination, excommunications, and cynicism.”

At The Fix, Amber Phillips probes “Just how big of a hurdle is gerrymandering to Democrats’ taking back the House this November?,” and observes that “there’s one outsize hurdle standing in the way of Democrats’ sudden popularity: gerrymandering…After the 2010 Census, Republicans controlled enough state legislatures to draw new electoral lines in four times as many districts as Democrats did. And Democrats have been locked out of power in some swing states ever since. A new report finds they might not make it back to power without lines that favor them, and Democrats don’t have a reasonable chance to control the line-drawing process until after the 2020 Census…A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice calculates that Democrats are going to have to win the popular vote by a historically large margin — an estimated 11 percent —  to overcome Republican-drawn districts that were designed to keep them out. Winning by such a large margin is something no party has done in decades.”

Republican gynephobia extends well beyond their decades-long obsession with Hillary Clinton. In his USA Today article, “Exclusive: Nancy Pelosi targeted in more than a third of GOP House commercials,” Craig Gilbert notes that the GOP’s fear of women leaders is apparently getting worse: “Nancy Pelosi has long been a favorite target of GOP attack ads. But Republicans seem to be taking it to another level in this election cycle…The House Democratic leader has been featured in roughly one-third (34%) of all GOP broadcast ads aired in House races this year, according to data provided to the USA TODAY NETWORK by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), which tracks political advertising…That compares with 9% in all of 2016 and 13% in 2014.”

“Priorities USA, a progressive super PAC focused on digital advertising, has been encouraging Democrats to push a strong economic message,” notes Alexi McCammond at Axios. “But now they’re pushing for candidates to refocus that message to include health care: “Democrats need to seal the deal by talking about economic issues, health care being one of those,” said Josh Schwerin, the PAC’s communications director…Be smart: The real challenge for Democrats will be choosing a more moderate or progressive health care message. Voters are split 48-46 on wanting a national health plan and simply wanting improvements to the Affordable Care Act, according to a March Kaiser Family Foundation poll…But the timing of the expected insurance premiums increase could help Democrats; another Kaiser poll found health care costs are the top health care issue voters want candidates to talk about in 2018.”

“It feels like America’s working class has been losing the class war for as long as we can remember. But it has one wildly powerful, often forgotten tool: trillions of dollars sitting in pension funds. Might this enormous pool of capital be labor’s greatest weapon in its fight against the power of capital itself?..The awesome political potential of this money is the topic of “The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder,” a new book by David Webber, a law professor at Boston University. Even though organized labor has been getting its ass kicked politically for decades now, its vast pension funds can exercise an incredible amount of power—though their ability to do so is under continuous assault.” — from Hamilton Nolan’s “The Working Class Has a $3 Trillion Weapon. Are They Willing to Use It? at splinternews.com.

In his NYT op-ed, Thomas B. Edsall mines a vein TDS and its contributors have been working for a long time — the  political reality that Democrats must win a larger share of white working-class voters to build an enduring majority. Edsall focuses on the flaws in exit polling in the 2016 election, which were based on a sample that badly underrepresented white working class voters. He notes that a recent Pew Research survey “found that 44 percent, or 60.1 million out of a total of 136.7 million votes cast on Nov. 8, 2016 were cast by whites without college degrees — demographic shorthand for the white working class,” compared to the widely-cited Edison Research exit poll which was based on a sample with only 34 percent in this category. Edsall extensively quotes two TDS co-founding editors William B. Galston and Ruy Teixeira, whose Vox article “The math is clear: Democrats need to win more working-class white votes,” provides the critical insight that, had Clinton matched Obama’s share of white working-class voters, “she would have carried, with robust margins, the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Iowa, as well as Florida and Ohio. In fact, if Clinton could simply have reduced the shift toward Donald Trump among these voters by one-quarter, she would have won.” For an in-depth look at the role of white working-class voters, also check out TDS’s “The White Working Class Roundtable,” which includes a dozen essays on this pivotal constituency.

So now, “China hits back at Trump, slaps new tariffs on U.S. goods worth up to $3 billion,” writes Alice Tidey and the Associated Press. It’s unclear how Trump’s trade war will effect the 2018 midterm elections. No doubt he hopes to pick up some votes for Republicans from working-class voters in November. But a humiliating walk-back by Trump may kick in well before 2020. Democratic candidates  may find a good balance in Conor Lamb’s winning strategy in PA-18, in which Lamb noted that it was time to“take some action to level the playing field here” and supported the steel tariff. As David Weigel noted at powerPost, “The unanimity in steel country stands in sharp contrast to how the tariffs have played in Washington and around the country. Trump’s surprise move has scrambled party loyalties, upsetting Republican leaders fearing a trade war and attracting the support of Democrats determined to win back working-class voters in the midterm elections.”

There are good reasons for Democratic candidates to support a soda tax hike, as noted by Mary Bottari of the Center for Media Democracy at Alernet: “The public health community – pediatricians, dentists, the American Heart Association and more – are energized to take action as never before on soda and other sugary drinks because new data is showing that consuming sugar in liquid form increases risks of serious health conditions, such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and obesity in a much more significant way than was previously known…If you are a Mountain Dew addict, get ready for this statistic. One study found that consuming just one to two sugary drinks a day increases your risk of developing diabetes a whopping 26 percent. Another study showed that men averaging one can a day of a sugary drink had a 20 percent increased risk of heart attack. Further, more than three-quarters of American adults are considered overweight or obese, and 30 percent of children.” The soda tax hike movement has been gaining traction recently, but the industry is fighting back in a big way. Still the moral case — and the statistics — strongly favor the tax hike.

After reviewing more than 100 elections since January 2017, FiveThirtyEight’s, Nathan Rakich sketches one of the key Democratic challenges for the midterm elections: “If 2016 represents a new normal, then the party would do well to prioritize suburban districts that moved from Romney to Hillary Clinton, such as the California 45th, Illinois 6th or Texas 7th. But if the 2012 map still applies, then Democrats might be better off targeting districts that voted for Obama before they defected to Trump, like the Iowa 1st, Maine 2nd and New York 19th. Guess wrong, and the party will end up spending valuable time and money in districts that are redder than they appear while lower-hanging fruit goes untouched…One thing the data does show is that Democrats are capable of winning districts of all kinds, even if it doesn’t always work out that way. That should reassure the party that there may not be a wrong answer when choosing which types of districts to target — at least when it comes to demographics. (Some other factor, such as candidate quality, may better explain when Democrats overperform and when they don’t.)”

“In the 2014 midterm elections, less than 20 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 turned out to cast ballots, compared to more than 40 percent of voters between 45 and 59, according to an analysis of survey data by the United States Elections Project, which is run by Michael P. McDonald, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida,” note Matt Flegenheimer and Jess Bidgood in “After Gun Control Marches, ‘It’ll Go Away’ vs. ‘We Are Not Cynical Yet,’” at The New York Times. “Recent polling suggests the gap could close, at least somewhat, this fall. A Quinnipiac University survey released in late February found that 54 percent of those 18 to 34 said they were more motivated than usual to vote, outpacing every other age group…New voter registration pushes, steered by teenagers, are well underway. Students are consulting with established (and adult-run) groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, founded and financed by Michael R. Bloomberg, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence — with plans to discuss how to host their own candidate events before November or start clubs at their schools…Looking to history, fledgling activists are researching Vietnam-era student protests for context and inspiration. They are using words like “intersectional.” They are quoting favored lyrics from “Hamilton”: “This is not a moment, it’s the movement.”

In his Washington Post Politics article, “Why political independents are political independents” Philip Bump writes:

A frequently observed trend in American politics is the rise of self-identified independents. In Gallup’s most-recent estimation, 42 percent of Americans say that they’re independent and not members of either political party. The last time more people identified as a member of a party than as independents was in 2012.

It’s a weird trend in a moment of spiking partisanship, but it’s easy to see how the two could overlap. As partisans become more partisan, it drives some people away from parties entirely. Those independents aren’t then independent in the sense that they vote for members of each party; most independents vote consistently with one party or the other. In the vernacular, they’re leaners — they lean to the Democrats or the Republicans….In Gallup’s latest poll, only 7 percent of independents don’t lean to one party or the other.

In other words, most “Independents” are either Republican-lite or Democrat-lite. Some of the 7 percent of voters who are genuine Independents are part of the “swing voter” category. Even though they call themsleves Independents, they may cast a ballot for a Democrat or Republican on occasion. Others vote for third party candidates. Even though they voted in the last election, some may not vote at all in the next one.

But the swing voter category is larger than Independents because it includes some who self-i.d. as either Republican or Democrat. but may occasionally or frequently vote for the other party, such as many “Reagan Democrats.” Swing voters are the primary targets of campaign because they are more likely to be genuine “persuadable” voters. Significant Democratic Party resources are directed toward winning back Reagan Democrats, a primary battelfield of the struggle for hearts and minds.

If you are running a political campaign, the most relevant way to look at the percentage of the ‘Independents’ electoral segment is to use it as a rough guideline for understanding your electorate. It’s hard to target them for special appeals, and it wouldn’t be a cost-effective use of your time. Keep them in mind in advertising, but don’t spend too much time and effort locating them.

For Democrats, swing voters are more of interest, especially since ample polling data indicates that many voters who identify themselves as “conservatives” hold liberal views on a number of issues. Swing voters include some Independents, but also Dem and GOP partisans, and some who don’t identify as anything. But not all swing voters are persuadable. Some have already made up their minds, or are otherwise uninterested in  new information, arguments and appeals.

If there is a ‘holy grail’ of Amerian politics, it is the elusive persuadable swing voter (PSV). They decide the outcomes of some elections, particularly in a highly-partisan, competitive political environment, in which Democrats and Republicans are evenly matched – like we so often have today. Perhaps the most effective way to find them is to knock on as many front doors as possible and talk with people, which campaigns should do for other reasons as well — like shoring up base voters. After writing down their contact info, get back to them with carefully-calibrated “touches.”

‘Touches’ can be tricky. As Beth Donahower notes in her post, “Get Out the Vote and Super Voters,” at Political Resources Online:

How many times have you heard that you need to contact targeted voters six times, seven times, nine times, or more? These numbers, which are different based upon who you talk to, are at best derived from the average number of touches that you need to persuade a voter and get the voter to the polls. The truth is you don’t need to contact targeted voters a specific number of times to win their support and ensure that they are going to the polls on Election Day; you need to contact them as much or as little as necessary to persuade them and get them out to vote.

The challenge is understanding groups of voters well enough to know what that necessary number is. It could be zero touches, seven, or twenty. Some of your targeted voters need a lot of attention and others, like super voters, you can skip your traditional GOTV calls and mail.

The same principle applies to your scripts and messaging. The better you understand each segment of your targeted voters, the better you can tailor your communication with them. In the case of super voters, leverage your communication with them by tapping into their political prowess and their connections in the community. It’s almost condescending for someone to tell a super voter who has voted every election for the last thirty years that they vote at the local fire hall. They know that! Instead, tap into the intelligence that they can provide to the campaign and turn their interest in politics into volunteerism.

Candidates and campaigns should appeal to the elusive PSVs with ads, media interviews, statements, debates and policies. They can be important in a close race, but they are a small group, compared to base voters, who are easier to reach with specific appeals and the all-important late reminders to vote. Each campaign will have to decide on the wisest allocation of resources to reach PSVs vs. their base. But every winning candidate has to appeal to both groups.

Expect plenty of articles in early June marking the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. But Eric Alterman’s “What Can Democrats Learn From Robert F. Kennedy’s Presidential Campaign? Liberals need to find a way to appeal to white working-class voters without betraying their principles” at The Nation is of particular interest now, as Democratic midterm campaigns hit high gear. As Altman writes in the lede, “Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, inspired an important debate with his recent report “The Inclusive Populism of Robert F. Kennedy.” In The New York Times, he argues that Kennedy’s 82-day 1968 presidential campaign provides a model for liberals who seek to recapture the allegiance of white, working-class voters and “forge a powerful coalition” based on a “liberalism without elitism and a populism without racism.” It really is a good time for Dems to understand the elements of RFK’s unique appeal, and Altman’s article illuminates the power of ‘inclusive populism.”

In his cnbc.com article, “Democrats bet on moderates, military veterans to win in GOP House districts, but the strategy faces big tests as the left pushes more liberal stances,” Jacob Pramuk spotlights two promising Democrats running in potential red-to-blue congressional districts, Brendan Kelley (IL-12) and Gina Ortiz Jones (TX-23) as prime examples of candidates well-matched for the unique features of their districts. Pramuk adds that “Of the 33 challengers getting the DCCC’s organizational and fundraising support as part of its “red to blue” effort, at least a dozen have some military or national security experience…Democrats often try to run candidates with military or national security backgrounds to counter a GOP narrative that the party is weak on defense or crime, said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Democratic National Committee member. That experience is “particularly valuable” in swing districts where Democrats will need voters to cross ideological lines, she said.”

Other insights from Pramuk’s post: “”No side has ever lost an election because of too much energy, and it’s clear that Democrats have all the energy,” said Tyler Law, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC. “Ultimately, robust primaries can be very helpful for candidates, especially those who haven’t run for office before…House Republicans won’t say it publicly but they woke up after the special election terrified by the fact that we have a huge amount of Democratic candidates who uniquely fit their districts and have deep records of service,” said the DCCC’s Law. “But that’s not all that keeps them up at night – Republicans know that their stale playbook backfired, particularly on taxes, and now they’re stuck without a single popular accomplishment to campaign on.”

Megan Bernan and Lydia Saad report the latest findings from the Gallup Poll concerning global warming and partisanship, including: “While 82% of Democrats think global warming has already begun to happen, only 34% of Republicans agree. Rather, 57% of Republicans think it will not happen in their lifetime (25%) or will “never happen” (32%)…About seven in 10 Republicans (69%) think the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated in the news, 15% think it is generally correct and 15% say it is generally underestimated. Democrats, however, are much more likely to think the seriousness of global warming is underestimated (64%) or correct (32%), and just 4% say it is exaggerated…Four in five Republicans do not think global warming will pose a serious threat to them in their lifetime; two-thirds of Democrats think it will.”

According to a new CNBC All-America Economic survey, “the data show that the tax cuts have not been felt, at least not yet,” reports Steve Liesman. “The poll was conducted March 17-20, which should be well enough into the year for Americans to notice a change in their withholding taxes. But that’s not the case…Just 32 percent of the public reports having more take home pay because of the tax cuts, including only 48 percent of Trump supporters and 35 percent of the middle class. More than half say they see no change in their paychecks and 16 percent are unsure. It could be that more time is needed for people to notice the change. It could also be that the tax cut provided too small a break to be meaningful to many Americans.”

Regarding the controversy about adding a question about a respondent’s citizenship status in the 2020 census, E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains the problem succinctly: “There’s a reason why the formal census has not asked about citizenship since 1950, and why it is an especially bad idea to reintroduce it now….Response rates to the census in lower-income neighborhoods have long been a challenge, and immigrants in the country illegally have worried that answering the questionnaire could endanger their status, despite legal guarantees of confidentiality. Even legal immigrants have shared these worries….The undercounting of immigrants would create a twofold injustice,” explains E. J. Dionne, Jr. in his syndicated column. “It would tilt representation at all levels of government away from places with large populations of Latinos and other immigrants (often Metropolitan and Democratic-leaning) and overrepresent white, rural regions and states. And it would short-change undercounted areas when it comes to federal funds, since many programs operate on formulas based on the census…In the Trump era, there is an irony here since one legitimate concern in locales with high levels of recent immigration is that their public services are often strained. Cutting money from such jurisdictions only increases the burdens on local taxpayers, native born and immigrant.”

At The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein writes, “All the elections held since 2016 have signaled that Republicans are facing elevated turnout among Democratic partisans eager to hobble Trump. The refusal to challenge Trump—particularly as he rages against the Russia investigation—enhances that risk for Republicans. Their approach threatens to persuade less partisan voters that they need a Democratic House (and perhaps Senate) to impose any limits on a president who daily redefines the words “mercurial,” “belligerent,” and “volatile…One group has emerged as especially alienated from the president: college-educated white women. The group ordinarily leans Democrat, but only slightly: Since 1992, Democrats have never carried more than 52 percent of their votes in House elections, and Hillary Clinton won 51 percent of them in 2016. However, this week’s NBC/WSJ poll found that 63 percent of them now disapprove of Trump and 62 percent intend to vote Democratic in November.”

Lachlan Markay and Sam Stein of CNN report on Tom Steyer’s “impeachment crusade,” the activities of his “foremost political vehicle, NextGen Climate Action,” and how his involvement might impact the midterm elections. Markay and Stein note that NextGen “has raised more than $16 million during the 2018 election cycle. And more than half of those funds have been passed along to other groups or spent on political activity in support of specific candidates…The group has donated millions more to leading left-wing political organizations, including prominent Democratic groups such as opposition research group American Bridge 21st Century, labor union-backed super PAC for Our Future, and, most recently, a $1.5 million contribution to a new state-level political outfit called State Victory Action…NextGen Rising, the youth turnout entity housed in one of Steyer’s nonprofit groups, has been highly active in 10 states, including the crucial battlegrounds of Florida, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Virginia.” While many Democrats worry that the impeachment initiative could backfire, as it did with President Clinton, others argue that calling attention to Trump’s impeachable offenses has helped position Democrats as a clear alternative for the midterms.

The pivotal role labor unions played in helping to elect Conor Lamb brings a reminder that unions are one of the most important elements of a winning Democratic coalition, and a healthy labor movement is critical for Democratic prospects. “Today, both the Gallup and the Pew polls show public support for unions at its highest level in years: 61 percent at Gallup; 60 percent at Pew, a good 20 to 35 percentage points higher than the approval ratings of President Trump and the Republican Congress,” Harold Meyerson writes in The American Prospect.  “Among Americans under 30, unions’ approval rating is a stratospheric 76 percent. As was the case in the 1930s, pro-union sentiment has grown only after the recovery was well under way…Unions’ new members are not merely younger; they also are increasingly either professional or technical workers. In 2003, 34 percent of all union members were professionals or techs; today, that figure has risen to 42 percent…Should the Democrats recapture the federal government after the 2020 elections, they will need to do something that no Democratic Congress has mustered the will to do in the last 70 years: Change labor law to bolster workers’ right to organize—and, if the Democrats can figure out how to do so, do the same for workers who are independent contractors and temps. They will have strong public backing to make such changes. The anti-plutocratic, pro-democratic politics of the young in particular apply not just to the polity, but to the workplace as well.”

A sign in the Atlanta March for Our Lives  (public domain photo)

David Weigel has an encouraging article at PowerPost, “Democrats’ message at gun-control rallies: Do what the students say,” which shows why Democratic candidates are in a good position to benefit from the burgeoning gun safety movement. Weigel notes that “politicians, most of them Democrats, cheered them on from the crowd. Democratic leaders from both houses of Congress participated in the marches, along with dozens of colleagues and candidates who are running for office in 2018. Their message: Listen to the students, and do what they say…Chants of “vote them out” rang in Washington and at other marches…Democrats were more outspoken about what they wanted: legislation to tighten background checks, restrict the sales of some magazines, and a restored ban on “assault weapons…On Twitter, congressional Democrats shared messages of support, videos of the crowds they saw, and the names of gun-control bills they wanted to pass.”

From Steve Peoples and Emily Swanson of the Associated Press: “Support for tougher gun control laws is soaring in the United States, according to a new poll that found a majority of gun owners and half of Republicans favor new laws to address gun violence in the weeks after a Florida school shooting left 17 dead and sparked nationwide protests…The poll, conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that nearly 7 in 10 adults now favor stricter gun control measures. That’s the strongest level of support since The Associated Press first asked the question five years ago. The new poll also found that nearly half of Americans do not expect elected officials to take action…Overall, 69 percent of Americans think gun laws in the United States should be made stricter. That’s up from 61 percent who said the same in October of 2016 and 55 percent when the AP first asked the question in October of 2013. Overall, 90 percent of Democrats, 54 percent of gun owners and 50 percent of Republicans now favor stricter gun control laws…Sixty percent believe that making it harder to legally obtain a gun would result in fewer mass shootings; just 49 percent said the same in the 2016 poll…7 in 10 favor a nationwide ban on devices known as “bump stocks” that allow semi-automatic guns to function like automatic guns…Nearly 6 in 10 favor a nationwide ban on AR-15-style rifles.”

In his syndicated column, “The March of the Hope-Mongers,”  E. J. Dionne, Jr. notes, “To begin with, Saturday’s marches achieved something that had never been accomplished before. Guns have long been a voting issue for those who insist that any and every restriction on firearms is a danger to freedom. These marches finally established guns as a voting issue for those who (as the signs carried by demonstrators declared in various ways) place the desire to save innocent lives ahead of preserving unlimited access to weapons…The unmistakably political character of this movement is another change. No phony bipartisanship. No pretending that everyone approaches this issue with goodwill. Thus the importance of “Vote them out.” Thus the imperative of casting the NRA as the adversary and all who welcome its money and support as complicit…this march established the gun safety alliance as multiracial and intersectional, reaching far beyond its traditional base among suburban white liberals…On a crisp and beautiful spring day, we witnessed a new dawn in the struggle against gun violence.”

But NYT’s Margot Sanger-Katz reports that “David Farmer, who led the Maine effort for universal background checks in 2016, said that supporters of gun rights can be particularly persuasive once a concrete proposal is unveiled. In Maine, polling support for the measure declined between introduction and the final vote, before failing, 52-48…We know for a fact we lost the argument at the kitchen table and the bar and the bowling alley,” he said. “…Gun enthusiasts were talking to their friends and relatives and neighbors. They felt about it in a way that was so passionate that they won those one-on-one encounters, and they were very successful in bringing in people to their side.”..The enthusiasm of gun rights activists doesn’t show up just in personal conversations. Over the last few decades, they have been more likely to speak to their legislators or give money to gun-related political groups, according to research from the Pew Research Center. Those actions have sent a signal to legislators that there is robust opposition even to laws that show strong public support in polls.”

Here’s a revealing nugget from The Daily Beast: “Rep. Ryan Costello (R-PA) announced that he will not seek re-election in 2018 due to the “political environment,” according to an interview with The Delaware County Daily Times. Costello claimed that the “deeply personal decision” was rooted in today’s political climate, saying that “it’s very difficult to move forward in a constructive way” with a “very angry environment,” and “hate” from the left. Costello’s 6th District was recently redrawn after the state’s Supreme Court found the congressional map to be in violation of the Pennsylvania’s constitution. With the new boundaries, the district is more Democratic than it was before.”

In his Plum Line post, “Why is Trump raging about the budget? Because Democrats got most of what they wanted,” Paul Waldman provides a list of “some of the ways Democrats won out in this [Ominibus spending] bill, despite being in the minority in both houses.” Waldman adds “Yes, there are some things in there that Republicans wanted. They boosted the defense budget to $700 billion and threw money at some other of their priorities, such as “abstinence-only” education. But when it comes to cutting domestic spending — which nearly all Republicans say they want to do — they took a pass…Why? The simple reason is that they’re afraid. They understand all too well that, while voters might say they like “small government” in the abstract, voters also really like nearly all the things government does. And when you start cutting those programs, there’s a backlash. With an election coming less than eight months from now, the last thing they need is to provoke controversies over slashing important and popular programs…Republicans know full well that their agenda, and even their entire ideological approach to governing, is one that the American public just doesn’t share. They have complete control of government, and they aren’t willing to put their beliefs into practice.”

So what is the lesson of Rep. Daniel Lipinski’s narrow win over the more liberal Marie Newman in the Democratic primary for IL-3 ? At Post Politics David Weigel explores some reasons: “Lipinski, who proudly touted his “F” rating from the National Rifle Association, offered just enough Democrats a trustworthy brand and some coherence on their issues…Lipinski won precincts in the city of Chicago by a landslide, a victory for that rattled but resilient Democratic Party machine. But Newman won the suburbs, in a race her supporters were happy to describe as the party’s past against its ideological future…Newman did not run against Lipinski as a superior legislator. She ran as an avatar for a new suburban politics: pro-abortion rights, pro-gay rights, pro-immigration and, above all, for government investment in social welfare…“Look, this was a Democratic primary, and critical forces in the labor movement stayed with the incumbent,” said Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), who endorsed Newman.” With Lipinski’s narrow win over a newcomer, progressive Democratic candidates are not likely to get  discouraged.

Perry Bacon, Jr. and Dhrumil Mehta of FiveThirtyEight share some data about the current demographic profile of the Democratic party: “According to Pew, 33 percent of self-identified Democrats¹ are whites without a four-year college degree. They represent a larger cohort in the Democratic Party than whites with a four-year degree (26 percent), nonwhites without a four-year degree (28 percent) and nonwhites with a four-year degree (12 percent). Yes, President Trump carried non-college-educated white voters easily in 2016; the exit polls suggest Hillary Clinton won only about 30 percent of these voters. But, because they’re such a huge portion of the U.S. electorate overall (44 percent, according to Pew) that’s enough to make non-college-educated whites a big share of the Democratic flock…And while the percentage of Democrats who are unaffiliated with any religion is growing and that group now makes up a third of the party, the majority of Democrats consider themselves Christians. And it’s not just black and Hispanic Democrats who account for the party’s churchgoing contingent: White Democrats who belong to “mainline” denominations, such as certain types of Presbyterians and Lutherans (12 percent), white Catholics (10 percent) and white evangelicals (7 percent) together form a is sizable percentage of the party — almost as large as the unaffliliated bloc. In terms of ideology, 46 percent of Democrats identify as liberal, the highest number Pew has found for that label since at least 2000. That’s a plurality, but it’s still a minority — Democrats who describe themselves as either moderate (37 percent) or conservative (15 percent) together form a slim majority of the party, according to the Pew poll…Young voters may tilt heavily Democratic, but nearly half of Democrats (47 percent) are 50 or older.”

At The Weekly Standard, David Byler addresses the question, “Can Sherrod Brown Take Back the Working Class Vote in Ohio? His Senate race is a test of whether Obama-Trump voters are reliable Republicans.” Byler writes that “For decades, Ohio has been a political bellwether—a quadrennial swing state that often voted for the winning presidential candidate. But in 2016, something odd happened—Ohio jerked sharply to the right, giving now President Trump an eight-point win despite his two-point national popular vote loss. Some Republicans hoped that Trump’s win was a sign of permanent shift that would allow them to unseat progressive Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2018…But a new Baldwin Wallace poll is throwing some cold water on those hopes…Baldwin Wallace found that Brown leads two possible Republican challengers, Jim Renacci and Mike Gibbons, by 12 and 10 points respectively…According to the poll, 13 percent of Trump voters favor Brown. Some of those voters may be the much discussed Obama-voting white working class Democrats that Trump won over in 2016. Ohio is flush with those voters…More broadly, it might be worth thinking of these Obama-Trump voters not as reliable Republicans but as possible swing voters. They have, after all, swung from Obama to Trump recently and have reasons to vote for either party (cultural commonality with Republicans and economic agreement with Democrats).”

Yet more evidence that voter enthusiasm is high among rank and file Democrats. “Democrats turned out for Illinois’ primary in higher numbers than the left-leaning state has seen for a midterm election in more than a decade, deciding several hotly contested races and signaling the November election could be even tougher than usual for the GOP,” report Sara Burnett and Sarah Zimmerman of Associated Press. “More than 1.2 million people voted in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. That was nearly double the number who cast Republican primary ballots and a roughly 25 percent increase over 2010, the last time Democrats had a competitive gubernatorial primary.”

The gang at FiveThirtyEight addresses a question of interest to political strategy wonks and Democratic headhunters looking for potential senate candidates in 2020: “Which U.S. House Race Is The Best 2018 Bellwether?” At one point Clare Malone makes the case for CA-45: “It’s held by Republican Mimi Walters, but Hillary Clinton won it by 5 percentage points in 2016. It’s in the general Los Angeles area, and it has the suburban voter types who I think are the sort that we’ve seen be more persuadable to the Democratic side in the special elections we’ve had since President Trump’s election. I’m interested in that particular group of voters this year and think the California 45th would give me a decent handle on them if it were the only race I were allowed to know the result of.” Nathaniel Rakich agrees with Malone that CA-45 is “the ideal test case” for guaging college-educated voter trends. Other districts noted in the article include ME-2, IL-6, TX-32, TX-7, CA-25, NY-19, OH-12, KY-6 and VA-10.

In her Newsweek article, “We need Stronger Labor Unions to protect the Middle Class,” Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife program at Harvard Law and a former member of the NLRB,  shares some disturbing statistics: “Its failure can be summed up in one surprising statistic : the percentage of American workers who are members of unions is lower now than before the NLRA passed. ..Think about that; workers were more likely to be union members (13.2 percent) when they had no right to do so than they are now (10.7 percent) after more than 80 years of having a federally protected right. This decline is having a dramatic effect on all American workers – because the decline in union density suppresses wages for all workers, it accounts for about one-third of income inequality over the past several decades.” Block suggests amending The National Labor Relations Act, which “pre-empts ” – any state or local law that even arguably affects the rights covered by federal law…One big way to change labor law would be to allow states and even cities to enact their own rules for the future of the labor movement.”

Syndicated columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. reports on “the outrage created by the invasion of an estimated 50 million Facebook accounts for the ultimate benefit of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign,” and adds, “we have a right to worry about the ability of a researcher to use voluntary answers to a survey of 270,000 Facebook users to “scrape” information on 50 million people, later used by Trump’s campaign. We have a right to be outraged about Facebook’s failure to inform users that their data had been harvested. “They keep saying, ‘Trust us, we can take care of our own people and our own website,’ ” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “Well, that’s not true.” She and Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., have called for Judiciary Committee hearings, and Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia also called on Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress.” It’s one thing for a political campaign to have your phone number, Dionne argues. “But no campaign is permitted access to your hopes, fears, worries, passions or day-to-day business,” which they can get from you Facebook posts.

The Trump Administration’s failure to address the crisis in Puerto Rico with a serious relief plan could have some unintended consequences that backfire badly. As Manuel Madrid writes in The American Prospect,  “Clustered along Florida’s I-4 corridor, a political bellwether for the state, Puerto Ricans in central Florida are increasingly considered a counterweight to the state’s Republican-leaning Cuban American population, over half of whom voted for Donald Trump. In the wake of Hurricane Maria, a state-provided count claimed that the number of Puerto Ricans who had settled in Florida by December 2017 could be as high as 280,000—a figure that has since been questioned by experts. A newer estimate from University of Florida economists, using school enrollments and requests for state aid as a guide, put the total closer to just 50,000. But this number could grow. Recently, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at the City University of New York released a study projecting that Puerto Rico could lose as many as 470,335 residents between 2017 and 2019. If recent trends serve as any guide, many if not most of those migrants will end up in Florida.”…“Very soon, the Puerto Rican vote will be in the driver’s seat in Florida,” says Garces of Mi Familia Vota, one of the Florida groups in discussion with the DNC. “But this work is year-round, it won’t be solved in one election cycle or just on even years.”

The appointment of John Bolton as Trump’s national security advisor can only signal an even more contentious and belligerent era for U.S. foreign policy. Heather Hurlbert explains why in her article, “John Bolton’s Incompetence May Be More Dangerous Than His Ideology” at New York Magazine: “…He seems to relish the role, going out of his way to argue that the Iraq War wasn’t really a failure, calling for U.S.-led regime change in Iran and preventive war against North Korea, and writing the foreword for a book that proclaimed President Obama to be a secret Muslim. He is a profoundly partisan creature, having started a super-PAC whose largest donor was leading Trump benefactor Rebekah Mercer and whose provider of analytics was Cambridge Analytica, the firm alleged to have improperly used Facebook data to make voter profiles, which it sold to the Trump and Brexit campaigns, among others. Recently Bolton’s statements have grown more extreme, alarming centrist and conservative national security professionals along with his longtime liberal foes.”

Geoffrey Skelley shares the good news at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Gov. Bruce Rauner (R-IL) endured a difficult night on Tuesday. Although he won his party’s primary to earn a reelection shot in November, the contest in some ways confirmed his overall weakness as the most endangered incumbent Republican governor facing the voters in 2018. As such, the Crystal Ball is moving the Illinois gubernatorial contest from Toss-up to Leans Democratic, the first time in the 2018 cycle that we have rated an incumbent U.S. senator, U.S. House member, or governor as an underdog for reelection. Rauner’s vulnerabilities are two-fold: his party base is not solidly behind him — the GOP primary made this abundantly clear — and he faces an energized Democratic Party in what is typically a blue state….With our ratings change, [Democratic nominee J. B.] Pritzker starts the general election campaign with an edge over Rauner. On top of Rauner’s intraparty problems,..At the starting gun, Pritzker holds an early advantage.”

Few will be shocked by the headline of Margot Sanger-Katz’s, “Getting Sick Can Be Really Expensive, Even for the Insured” in The New York Times. But her findings in the article helps to explain why health care reform remains a leading priority for many voters in 2018, particularly high-turnout seniors. As Sanger-Katz notes, “New research shows that for a substantial fraction of Americans, a trip to the hospital can mean a permanent reduction in income. Some people bounce right back, but many never work as much again. On average, people in their 50s who are admitted to the hospital will experience a 20 percent drop in income that persists for years. Over all, income losses dwarfed the direct costs of medical care…On average, uninsured people in the study owed the hospital $6,000, compared with only $300 for those with insurance. But the average decline in income for both groups was much larger — an average earnings hit of $11,000 by the third year. Much of that average — around 60 percent — came from people who never returned to work at all…To the authors, the lesson of the paper is that standard health insurance isn’t enough — policymakers need to think about ways to better protect people against the income risks that accompany illness.” Clearly America’s health security system should include better wage replacement insurance, sick leave provisions or and broader disability insurance — reforms that could prove popular with senior voters and thise with chronic disabilities.

The notion that the Democratic Party is D.O.A. in the south has been upended by Doug Jones’s victory in Alabama’s U.S. Senate race and the strong showing of Democrats in Virginia’s recent elections, along with John Bel Edwards becoming Louisiana Governor in 2016.

Democrats may also have a real shot at winning the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Thad Cochran in Mississippi. Republican Governor Phil Bryant is expected to name state Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce Cindy Hyde-Smith to the U.S. Senate seat, but she will have some nasty opposition from hard-core conservative Chris McDaniel. Ed Kilgore writes that McDaniel feels “entitled” to the G.O.P. nomination as a result of  “his close primary race against Cochran in 2014.” Indeed, McDaniel has already announced his candidacy for the seat in November.

Several Mississippi Democrats are considering running for the Senate seat. But the most likely Democratic candidate is former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and Congressman Mike Espy. As Kilgore notes,

Establishment Republicans in both Jackson and Washington, however, fear that if McDaniel (who has a robust collection of craziness on his résumé) edges Hyde-Smith in the special election, he might actually lose the seat to Espy, an outcome that would be as strange as the GOP’s loss of Jeff Sessions’s seat in next-door Alabama. It’s the sort of thing that could even produce a Democratic majority in the Senate.

An Espy victory in Mississippi will require a heroic voter turnout effort similar to what occurred in the recent Alabama and Virginia elections, along with a strong Espy campaign. If such a prospect seemed unlikely a year ago, it now seems possible.

Perhaps the marquee Senate race in the south will be Democrat Beto O’Rourke vs. Sen. Ted Cruz, whose current approval ratings in Texas are less than impressive. O’Rourke lags in some recent polls, but he is credited with solid skills in terms of public speaking, debating and messaging in general. He could ride a blue wave to flip the seat for Dems. In the Tennessee US. Senate race, former Democratic Gov. Bill Bredesen leads Rep. Marsha Blackburn in a new PPP poll — a possible pick-up opportunity for Democrats.

Dems have their best southern pick-up prospects in House districts FL-26, FL-27, TX-7 and VA-10, according to the Cook Political Report. If a ‘blue wave’ materializes, another half-dozen seats could be included.

In addition, Democrats have candidates for all 2018 governor’s contests in the south. Florida, where Democrats have three strong candidates, is the marquee race, and it is currently rated a toss-up. In addition, the gun safety issue may help Democratic candidates in Florida. Georgia and Tennessee governors races could also get competitive.

Democrats lack majority control of both houses of the state legislature in any southern state, except for Maryland. But they are very close to majorities — 2 votes down in both houses of the Virginia state legislature. Dems are also contending for majorities in the state senates of FL, SC, TX and LA., but lag by larger margins in the lower houses of southern state legislatures, as a result of the impressive Republican takeover campaigns of recent years.

Of course, the Republican ‘control’ of the South has been overstated, in that Democrats have long held the mayorships of most major southern cities. Democrats currently serve as Mayors of Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Charlotte, Nashville, Baton Rouge, Memphis, Baltimore, Annapolis, Louisville, New Orleans, Charleston, S.C., Tallahassee, Little Rock, Chattanooga, Columbia, SC, Tampa, Jackson, Birmingham, Orlando, Wilmington, NC, Norfolk and Richmond, in addition to numerous second tier cities.

While it would be overstating the case to say that the south is back in play in a big way for Democrats, it is reasonable enough to expect some significant improvement in 2018 and there is cause for hoping to do even better in the longer range. But Democrats must raise their game considerably with respect to campaigns for state legislative seats.

In his article, “Resolving the Democrats’ False Choice: How the party can win both the “missing Obama millions” and the Obama-to-Trump voters” at The New Republic, Joshua Mound writes, “Instead of pitting voters of color against white working-class voters in an imaginary election, Democrats should target their policy proposals and political appeals to voters who bridge the gap: the black working class…But the Democrats don’t have to choose between working classes of different colors. African Americans are to the left of whites on just about every economic issue. That means that in order to target the needs of the black working class, Democrats will have to adopt the type of populist economic policies that, many observers argue, are Democrats’ best hope of winning back some of the Obama-Trump voters that Cohn and others believe are necessary for the party to be competitive in presidential and congressional contests…The white voters for whom racism trumps all are lost to Democrats. So there’s no sense, morally or politically, in the Democrats’ returning to Sister Souljah–style racial pandering to whites. But by combining racial and cultural progressivism with an economic platform that’s equal parts Bernie Sanders and Black Lives Matter, Democrats can turn out Obama voters who stayed home in 2016 and win back some Obama-Trump voters.

From Jane Kleeb’s contribution to an intra-progressive debate on “Should We Primary Every Democrat? Three views on left electoral strategy ahead of the 2018 midterm elections” at In These Times: “Primarying conservative and moderate incumbent Democrats simply because they are not as progressive as other Democrats, as Dan advocates, has never made much sense to me. Call me whatever label you want, but I would rather have a Democrat who is with us 70 percent of the time than a Republican who is against us 100 percent of the time. Even more than that, I firmly believe that diversity is a strength—not just diversity of race, or religion, or nationality, but also of ideas. A Democratic Party that has both Elizabeth Warren and Heidi Heitkamp makes us stronger. For example, when a farmer with a rural perspective on how healthcare improvements could impact their community sat at the table with an economics professor, those perspectives joined together to make Obamacare stronger…But to primary people not as part of a well-thought-out strategy, but simply because they do not hold the progressive line 100 percent of the time, is short-sighted and ultimately weakens us as a national party. I prefer to walk the road of building the party so our bench is broad and we put an end to the current one-party rule governing many of our states and our country.” Kleeb Kleeb is the founder of Bold Nebraska, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, a member of the Democratic Party’s Unity and Reform Commission, and an Our Revolution board member. The other contributors include Dan Cohen, president of Blue Sun Campaigns and a pollster and strategist for progressive electoral and issue campaigns and Dayton Martindale, an assistant editor at In These Times.

In the same forum, Cohen writes, “We need Democratic elected leaders who will actually lead, and who embody a true commitment to social and economic justice, inclusion and respect. That means we need contested Democratic primaries: on every level of government, in nearly every district, as often as possible. We should be challenging not only conservative or centrist Democrats, but any Democrat failing to act so as to restore confidence in our party and in government…But there’s a caveat. If we are running to transform the party in a more progressive, inclusive direction, we must foster a culture of respect for those with whom we, at least for now, disagree…our primary opponents are not the enemy, nor are the voters who put them in office. We need not compromise our values, but there is a world of difference between saying, “My opponent is a corporate shill,” for example, and saying, “I respect my opponent and we agree on some issues, but we disagree on the need for a living wage now…We must remember that we build movements over a longer time frame than one election cycle. Many of our challengers will lose, at least their first run…What’s more, if we don’t beat them this time, it gives us leverage to hold them accountable. All of which helps move the party left, because when politicians publicly endorse progressive policies, it tells voters, “That’s what Democrats are about.”

Michael Tackett reports that “White Evangelical Women, Core Supporters of Trump, Begin Tiptoeing Away” at The New York Times. “While the men in the pulpits of evangelical churches remain among Mr. Trump’s most stalwart supporters, some of the women in the pews may be having second thoughts. As the White House fights to silence a pornographic actress claiming an affair with Mr. Trump, and a jailed Belarusian escort claims evidence against the American president, Mr. Trump’s hold on white evangelical women may be slipping…According to data from the Pew Research Center, support among white evangelical women in recent surveys has dropped about 13 percentage points, to 60 percent, compared with about a year ago. That is even greater than the eight-point drop among all women…“That change is statistically significant,” said Gregory A. Smith, Pew’s associate director of research, who also noted a nine-point drop among evangelical men. “Both groups have become less approving over time.”

If you noticed a recent diminishing of Republican candidate quality independent of ideological considerations, it’s not just a vague impression. As Paul Blumenthal notes at HuffPost, “Republicans Have 4 Convicted Criminals Running For Congress In 2018,”and notes that, in addition to Joe Arpaio’s Arizona campaign for U.S. Senator, “convicted criminals running for office as Republicans are Don Blankenship, the former head of the coal mining company Massey Energy who is running in the Republican primary to challenge Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.); former Rep. Michael Grimm, who is challenging incumbent Rep. Dan Donovan (R-N.Y.) to reclaim the Staten Island congressional seat he once held; and Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.), who is running for re-election.” Read the article for more details.

Others have noted a similar downtick in the credentials of presidential appointees under Trump. Ryan Koronowski’s Think Progress article, “Trump’s new economic adviser is really bad at economics. Here are the receipts: Larry Kudlow has made some astoundingly bad predictions, even for a CNBC pundit,” points out that the President’s pick for director of the National Economic Council is much in keeping with his habit of making one of the worst possible choices. Along with a litany of Kudlow’s laughable predictions, Koronowski writes: “Past NEC directors have had law degrees from Yale or Harvard or Cornell, MBAs from Harvard or Wharton (not a bachelor’s with an economics major like the president), a Ph. D in economics from Harvard or MIT, decades of business experience, or taught at the London School of Economics..Kudlow has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Rochester and did not complete a master’s degree in economics at Princeton. He has worked at a junior level at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and also in the Reagan Office of Management and Budget. He worked at Bear Stearns from 1987 to 1994, until he was fired for cocaine abuse. After working for Arthur Laffer’s firm, he got into journalism, most notably hosting a business show on CNBC.”

At BuzzFeed News, Ryan C. Brooks writes that “Democratic strategists argue that there is a cost to the “churn-and-burn” fundraising strategy that outweighs the extra dollars it brings in. The cost of the spammy, fear-based communications, they say, is depressed and alienated voters and the public impression of the Democratic Party as just another arm of a cynical, dishonest establishment…“I think the DCCC’s email strategy is a wasted opportunity for Democrats. They have this expansive email list that they could be using to cultivate and motivate voters to flip congressional seats in 2018,” said Laura Olin, a Democratic digital strategist who’s worked with a host of progressives including Barack Obama’s digital team….“The thing is that fundraising campaigns from Obama, Warren, and Bernie showed us that we don’t need to use those scare tactics to raise money, and those tactics don’t make us lose our values by being inclusive, engaging, and honest rather than being alarmist and misleading,” said [Democratic digital strategist Matthew] McGregor.”

Jefferson Morley drops a political strategy nugget about the importance of personal contact with voters in his article, “The Democrats’ Sweet Spot: Diverse, Young, Working-Class People Who Didn’t Vote” at Alternet: In a large-scale study Sean McElwee, a co-founder of Data for Progress, Jesse H. Rhodes and Brian F. Schaffner of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Bernard L. Fraga of Indiana University  “studied the ballots of 64,000 voters in 2012 and 2016 and came away with a key finding: The number of voters who cast a ballot for Obama in 2012 and did not vote in 2016, or voted for a third-party candidate, outnumbered those Obama voters who pulled the lever for Trump…The Obama voters who stayed home, while generally liberal, were significantly less liberal on four of five key policy questions than the loyal Democratic voters who voted for both Obama and Clinton. In other words, more liberal policy positions were not sufficient to lure them to the polling booth…What made the difference for these non-voters was personal contact, or the lack thereof….“Only 43 percent of Obama-to-nonvoters reported being contacted by a candidate in 2016, compared with 66 percent of Obama-to-Clinton voters,” the authors say.”

Among the political campaign insights shared by long-time labor organizer Marshall Ganz in his article, “How to Organize to Win: Rebuilding the democratic infrastructure is too important to leave up to the consultocracy” in The Nation: “Organizing people is not only about solving immediate problems, like making sure your candidate gets the most votes or putting up a stop sign. It is about doing this and, at the same time, developing the leadership, organization, and power to take on structural challenges in the long run. It is not about fixing bugs in the system, like a safety net. It is about transforming the cultural, economic, and political features of the system. One of the main reasons I got hooked on organizing in the civil-rights movement was that it allowed me to work with people to find the resources within themselves and each other to create the power they needed to change the institutions responsible for their problems in the first place. That is what healthy democracy requires…This kind of organizing, however, is a far cry from the political marketing campaigns run by the electoral-industrial complex today…In a consultant-driven model, volunteers show up but get no training, receive slipshod or inaccurate materials, and are ignored by campaign higher-ups, who could care less about what they learned by talking with real voters. Who cares? It’s all taken care of by polling, targeting, and modeling. The role to which ordinary citizens are relegated in most campaigns is that of “real people”—RPs in campaign-speak—props for a photo op…Mobilizers only turn out people with whom they agree. Organizers engage these people in reaching out to other people with whom they don’t agree. Mobilizing spends down resources. Organizing generates new ones.”