In last Tuesday’s newsletter, charting Joe Biden’s clearest Electoral College path, I noted his recent improvement in national and some swing state polling averages from Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight since March.
While Biden has made modest gains, he still doesn’t lead in any of those averages.
However, there is another poll average where, on April 22, Democrats took the lead for the first time in five months:
The Real Clear Politics generic congressional ballot test average.
Generic congressional ballot tests are poll questions that ask which party’s candidate you would choose to represent your congressional district.
Scher asks, “Does this mean Democrats are well-positioned to take back the House?,” and answers:
A slightly less dramatic but similar story is told in theFiveThirtyEight average, with a Republican lead around 1 for most of January and February, Democrats tying at the end of February, followed by a series of tiny lead changes. As of May 1, the last reported result, Democrats are up 0.7 points.
Should Democrats feel good at all about such a small lead? Doesn’t gerrymandering favor Republicans so much that Democrats need a big polling lead—and big national popular vote lead on Election Day—to take back the House?
Not so.
Scher continues, “Back in 2021, for the Monthly, I wrote that “When Democrats won control of the House in 2018 and 2020, their share of the popular vote (53.4 percent and 50.3 percent, respectively) was roughly equal to their share of the House seats (54 percent and 51 percent, respectively).” Further,
The 2022 midterm House national popular vote also tracked the House seat share. Republicans won 50.6 percent of the popular vote and 51 percent of the seats.
Of course, a tiny lead within the margin of error six months before Election Day tells us nothing about the final outcome beyond the necessity for determined get-out-the-vote efforts.
But if Democrats maintained a 1 point polling lead, would that be enough to win the House? Or has there been systemic bias among pollsters inflating the Democratic numbers, and therefore, requiring Democrats to build up a large polling lead to ensure at least a narrow Election Day victory?
And in the November 2022 midterm, the polling averages were darn close, with slight GOP overperformance. Republicans won the House national popular vote by 2.8 points. The Real Clear Politics generic ballot average was 2.5 and FiveThirtyEight‘s was 1.2.
Wider divergences are possible, but the widest since 2012 was in 2020, when the Democratic House popular vote margin underperformed the final Real Clear Politics average by 3.7 points. More often, the final margin is within 2 points of the poll average.
Scher concludes: “So while a 1-point margin in the generic congressional ballot test average may not be quite enough to instill confidence in the prospect of a Democratic House takeover, it certainly means Democrats are competitive with six months to go.
Two things are clear about the 2024 campaign at this point. One is that Biden is still trailing Trump: he’s behind nationally in both the RCP and 538 running averages, as well as in every single swing state. The other is that his two great vulnerabilities are the economy/inflation and immigration, generally the two most important issues to voters. Indeed the latter now sometimes eclipses the former in importance as it has in the Gallup poll for the last three months.
Immigration was very important in the 2016 election as well. One way David Shor frequently illustrated the dynamic in 2016 relative to 2012 was with a simple two by two table illustrating that the big swing toward Trump in 2016 was among voters who both (1) supported universal health insurance and (2) opposed “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Put simply, Obama did way better than Hillary Clinton among voters who were both populist/progressive on health care and conservative-leaning on immigration.
Could we see the same dynamic this year, with Trump making decisive gains among such voters? The basis for it certainly seems to be there. It has been widely noted that not only has the immigration issue become more salient but also that voters are now open to a wide range of tough approaches to dealing with the illegal immigration problem. Some of the relevant findings were reviewed by the Post’s Aaron Blake in an article, “Harsh deportation tools are just fine with many Americans.” And a recent Axios poll found a majority of the public supporting mass deportations of illegal immigrants, including a shocking 42 percent of Democrats.
Findings from a brand new poll of over 4,000 voters from The Liberal Patriot and Blueprint confirm this pattern of support for tough measures against illegal immigration. My analysis of the data also shows an enormous overlap between these conservative leanings on illegal immigration and strong support for populist/progressive measures on health care. These cross-pressured voters could play a decisive role in November’s election just as they did in the 2016 election.
Here is what I found:
1. The TLP/Blueprint poll tested 40 different policy ideas associated with the Biden and Trump campaigns. The strongest issues for Biden were generally proposals around health care, most of which were wildly popular. One example was, “Increase the number of prescription drugs that Medicare can negotiate the price of for seniors.” The proposal was supported by 81 percent of voters with just 6 percent opposed for a cool 75 points net support. Those who supported the proposal also supported using “existing presidential powers to stop illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border” by 57 points (72-15).
2. Similarly, supporters of more Medicare price negotiation on prescription drugs also supported deputizing “the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist with rapidly removing gang members and criminals living illegally in the United States” by 46 points (67-21).
3. Nor do these Medicare price negotiation supporters blink at the idea that we should “restrict the ability of migrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum.” They support this proposal by 40 points (63-23).
4. More draconian proposals on dealing with illegal immigration also generate solid support among those favoring a stronger Medicare role on prescription drug prices. For example, these pro-Medicare populists favor the idea that we should simply, “Round up undocumented immigrants, detain, and deport them to their home countries” by 24 points (58-24).
5. The pro-Medicare populists also favor building “a full wall on the US-Mexico border” by 20 points, with 56 percent in favor and 36 percent opposed. They even think it would be a good idea to “change federal law so that drug traffickers can receive the death penalty” (55-33)!
6. A similar dynamic can be observed in some other areas of Democratic vulnerability. Among supporters of an increased Medicare role in prescription drug pricing, we also find overwhelming support for increasing “funding for police and strengthen[ing] criminal penalties for assaulting cops” (72 percent to 17 percent).
7. It is also interesting that some aspects of Democratic approaches to climate/energy issues fit this pattern. For instance, our pro-Medicare populists net oppose requiring “auto companies to sell more electric vehicles after 2030” (45-40). They also are narrowly in favor of repealing “subsidies for clean energy and electric vehicles” (41-40).
8. I also looked at another super-popular Biden health care idea, “Require pharmaceutical companies to charge American consumers the lowest price they charge consumers in foreign countries” and the related super-popular proposal, “Protect Medicare and Social Security from funding cuts or increases in the age of eligibility.” You see the exact same pattern: voters who support these populist ideas overwhelmingly want a much tougher approach to illegal immigration.
These cross-pressures then are very real, just as they were in 2016, and are undoubtedly undermining Democrats’ ability to capitalize on their immensely popular health care proposals. Could these pressures produce the kind of shift in 2024 relative to 2020 that so helped Trump in 2016? The basis is certainly there.
I looked at support/opposition to increasing the Medicare role in prescription drug pricing and support/opposition to the most popular proposal for cracking down on illegal immigration, using the president’s executive powers to directly stop illegal crossing at the southern border. I found that, comparing reported vote in 2020 to expressed vote preference today, the big shift toward Trump occurs precisely among those who both support an aggressive Medicare role in drug pricing and support using presidential powers to stop illegal border crossing.
There’s a lesson there for Democrats should they care to take it. Apparently, the idea of using Biden’s executive powers to stop illegal border crossing is under consideration at the White House, but, predictably, nothing has happened yet in the face of fierce opposition from the usual suspects. The recent decline in illegal border crossings from insanely high to merely very high (due to a crackdown in Mexico not by US authorities) may also be breeding some complacency about the issue in Biden-land despite the scathing message sent by the polls.
This seems unwise. Especially since the ace in the hole the Biden campaign was counting on— voter appreciation of the strong economy finally kicking in—may turn out to be only a deuce. Both the Michigan consumer sentiment index and the Conference Board consumer confidence index went down last month and basically have made no progress since January. Morning in America it’s not.
The Democrats would appear to need all the help they can get. The immigration-health care nexus reviewed here suggests they may be leaving votes on the table by failing to take strong action on illegal immigration. The specter of the 2016 election looms over this campaign and, like a hanging, should concentrate the mind.
As I reviewed last night, here’s my basic take on the 2024 election right now:
Joe Biden is a good President. The country is better off. We have a very strong case for re-election.
The Democratic Party is strong, unified, raising tons of money and winning elections all across the country.
And what do they have? They have Trump, the ugliest political thing any of us has ever seen, leading a party far more a raging dumpster fire than a well- oiled political machine.
One of the things I discussed was my take on recent polling. Here’s what I am seeing now…..(all polls can be found on 538)
In 538’s national Presidential polling average Biden has gained 1.7 pts against Trump in recent weeks, and the general election head to head is essentially tied. We’ve also seen a 3.5 pt gain for Democrats in recent months in 538’s Congressional Generic (which party will you support for Congress), and Dems now have a slight lead though it too is essentially tied. A majority of the national polls this week have the Biden tied or ahead, with 3 – Marist, Ipsos and FAU showing small Biden leads. It’s a close, competitive election with Dems gaining some ground in recent weeks.
In the battle for control of Congress, our Senate candidates all show modest but consistent leads, and Navigator Research has found our House candidates in better shape than Rs in the battleground. Lots of work ahead but this early data is encouraging.
In the Presidential battlegrounds, both polls this week – CBS and Emerson – had all the states they polled inside margin of error. The CBS poll was a little more favorable to Biden than Emerson but again what both found was the battleground states up for grabs.
I’m also coming to believe that these “bad candidate” problems Republicans had in 2022 are occurring again this year, and is going to become material in many of the battleground states this year, particularly in Arizona, North Carolina and possibly Wisconsin too. Kari Lake and the 1864 fiasco are going to be huge drag on the GOP in Arizona. Bat shit crazy Mark Robinson is going to be a big drag on the Rs in North Carolina based on recent polling, and a very not ready for prime time Eric Hovde is already struggling in Wisconsin. The strength of our candidates in the battleground right now – and their weakness – is an increasingly important part of how 2024 is unfolding.
Part of the reason Hopium has been focusing so much on Arizona and North Carolina for our political work is that given how extreme and wild the top of the ticket is in both states I think more is possible in both states this year. And let’s be very clear – if Biden wins AZ and NC we are going to win the election this November.
Rosenberg adds that “as people move from being an adult to registered voter to likely voter to actual voter and are faced with pulling that lever for MAGA Trump and Republicans lose ground. As voters get get closer to voting, and go through the process of having to consider the options in front of them, a meaningful number just can’t go for MAGA and either don’t vote or choose another option (Haley, the Dem). This 2024 MAGA ugliness and extremism is too much for too many, and the GOP coalition doesn’t stay together, Republican candidates struggle, underperform and lose, again and again.”
Further, “every day we need to do more, worry less. For doing more is what is going to make sure we win this November.” In addition, “There is an area I think of enormous opportunity for us in the coming months – we go bring our coalition back together and keep theirs splintered and unhappy with the MAGA takeover of their party.”
Rosenberg cautions that Dems have to stop the leakage of support from Latino and African Americans. Regarding the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the nation’s campuses, “The bottom line – I think the protesters are blowing it right now. While we should always support peaceful protests, these protests have not been as peaceful as many profess, and they should not and cannot interfere with the millions of students taking their finals and graduating in the coming weeks.”
Click on this link to read more of Rosenberg’s podcast transcript and to hear his entire podcast.
It’s been widely noted that Biden has been running poorly among Hispanics compared to 2020 when he carried this demographic by 23 points (which itself was a 16-point drop from Clinton’s 39-point margin over Trump among these voters in 2016). In the most recent New York Times/Siena poll, Biden’s margin over Trump among Latinos is a slim 9 points. That is close to Biden’s average Hispanic lead in polls since the beginning of the year.
I’ve been curious about the role of Hispanic working-class (noncollege) voters in driving this trend. An underreported aspect of the Hispanic shift toward Trump in 2020 was how heavily it was concentrated among working-class voters. In the Catalist data, there was a 19-point margin shift toward Trump among working-class voters but just 9 points among college-educated Hispanics. For the first time, Democrats did better overall among college Hispanics than among working-class Hispanics—a reverse class gap. Are these trends continuing in this campaign cycle?
It’s hard to get detailed data comparing working-class and college-educated Hispanics—that’s rarely reported and most polls don’t have adequate sample sizes. But a new poll of 4,038 registered voters conducted by YouGov for The Liberal Patriot and Blueprint allows for a detailed comparison of these groups not just on Biden-Trump voting intentions but also on policy views and priorities. There are some big, big differences:
1. In terms of voting intentions, Biden leads by just one point among working-class Hispanics but by 39 points among their college-educated counterparts. Interestingly, this 38-point reverse class gap is actually larger than the class gap in this poll among whites (30 points).
2. Two-thirds (67 percent) of working-class Hispanics feel that “inflation is still a very serious problem that is not improving” compared to less than half (49 percent) of college Hispanics. The class gap is about the same on whether the economy is doing poorly or not, with working-class Hispanics way more pessimistic.
3. By 5 points working-class Hispanics think Trump did a better job on the economy than Biden is now doing, while college Hispanics give Biden the nod by a thumping 30 points. Working-class Hispanics give Biden an overall approval rating of 42 percent, less than the 45 percent they give Trump. College Hispanics are starkly different, giving Biden 63 percent approval and Trump just 26 percent.
4. These differences in views of Trump and Biden come out strongly in a series of questions on which presidential candidate is closer to voters’ views in various areas. Among working-class Hispanics, support for Trump runs around even and sometimes better in areas like building up America’s manufacturing capacity, ensuring America’s energy independence, being patriotic, fighting crime and ensuring public safety, and protecting American interests around the world. But in these areas college Hispanics uniformly prefer Biden over Trump by margins of 30-40 points. These assessments are remarkably different but they are consistent with the reverse class gap in voting intentions.
5. There are also stark differences in underlying ideology and partisanship. Working-class Hispanics are about 30 percent liberal in this poll and 70 percent moderate-to-conservative. But more than half of college-educated Hispanics say they’re liberal in orientation. And they skew dramatically Democratic in partisanship, identifying with or leaning toward the Democrats by 50 points over the Republicans. Working-class Hispanics, however, only favor the Democrats by a modest 8 points.
6. The poll also asked about a wide range of specific policy ideas—40 in all. Here the differences between working-class and college-educated Hispanics tend to be smaller, perhaps indicating an opening for the Democrats. Indeed, for the most popular items tested in the poll, working-class and college Hispanics are united in supporting these proposals by wide margins. These include:
“Ban businesses from charging consumers hidden or misleading fees for live event tickets, hotels, apartment rentals, and other services.”
“Increase the number of prescription drugs that Medicare can negotiate the price of for seniors.”
“Require pharmaceutical companies to charge American consumers the lowest price they charge consumers in foreign countries.”
“Cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every American who needs it.”
“Protect Medicare and Social Security from funding cuts or increases in the age of eligibility.”
“Permanently extend the Affordable Care Act (ACA) protections for those with pre-existing conditions.”
7. Interestingly, contradicting the image of Hispanic voters as being lenient on the illegal immigration issue, we find surprising unity between working-class and college-educated Hispanics on some pretty tough proposals for dealing with the problem. For example, on “Use existing presidential powers to stop illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border,” and “Deputize the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist with rapidly removing gang members and criminals living illegally in the United States,” margins in favor of these proposals range from 25-50 points across the two groups.
8. It is true, however, that working-class Hispanics are even tougher on some immigration proposals. They favor “Build a full wall on the U.S.-Mexico border,” by 18 points while college Hispanics oppose the idea by 19 points. And working-class Hispanics favor “Restrict the ability of migrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum,” by a whopping 39 points while college Hispanics are roughly split down the middle.
These data strongly suggest that not only are working-class Hispanics driving the Hispanic trend toward Trump and the GOP but also that working-class and college-educated Hispanics have very different political outlooks and concerns that are obscured by thinking of them as an undifferentiated mass or, worse, “people of color.” The beginning of wisdom is recognizing these class differences and adapting political appeals to take those differences into account.
The days when Democrats could get away with thinking of Hispanics as one of “their” minority groups are, or should be, over. And here’s something that should concentrate their mind when considering the working-class Hispanics problem and how seriously to take it. The simple fact of the matter is that there are far, far more working-class than college-educated Hispanics. According to States of Change data, Hispanic eligible voters nationwide are 78 percent working class. And working-class levels among Latinos are even higher in critical states like Arizona (82 percent) and Nevada (85 percent).
If that doesn’t concentrate the mind, I don’t know what will.
“Trump holds slight advantages in most of the swing states right now, according to averages of the polls. Strictly going by the polls, Trump would have a 283-255 lead (if you give Biden Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which are currently statistical ties)….But the toss up states are expected to be close, within just a few points, in either candidate’s direction. Biden currently has a massive war chest and ad-spending advantage. In addition to personnel, ads are the largest expenditure of a presidential campaign.”
“In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Biden has caught up, pulled even or taken a lead in some recent surveys. And Pennsylvania happens to be where Biden and allies are spending the second-most on ads right now — almost $4 million in the past month and a half since Super Tuesday, the unofficial start to the general election….That’s only slightly behind what they’re spending in Michigan. Biden is trying to make up ground there with younger voters and Black voters, groups he’s lagging with. Trump and groups supporting him have spent only about $700,000 in Pennsylvania in that same time frame….Team Biden has also spent $2 million in Wisconsin. Trump and groups supporting him have spent nothing there so far….Most of the money in this election is going to be poured into seven states, and they fall into two familiar buckets — the so-called “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada.”
“The Blue Wall states are home to significant shares of white, working-class voters, but Biden has retained strong support with unions. Democrats are also putting in significant efforts, especially in Wisconsin, to reach Black voters and be on college campuses. All three states have significant Black populations and multiple colleges and universities.”
“While North Carolina was also close in 2020 — within 2 points — given its history of voting Republican, it begins the cycle in the Lean Republican category. Democrats feel the gubernatorial race in the state could help them, as Republicans nominated a highly controversial candidate, who could turn off swing voters….The increasing population of white, college-educated voters in the state’s Research Triangle continues to make the state competitive. But Republicans have won it in all but one presidential election since 1976.”
“The industrial Midwest has moved more toward Republicans because of the shift toward the GOP among white voters without college degrees. That’s why states like Ohio and Iowa, which were competitive for decades until the Trump era, are no longer Democratic targets….It’s the key group Trump is targeting. But they are declining as a share of the population and of the electorate. That’s a big reason Trump lost despite whites without degrees voting at a higher rate in 2020 (64%) compared to 2016 (55%), according to data from Michael McDonald, the preeminent turnout expert in the country and professor at the University of Florida….It’s also because of the continued shift with college-educated white voters toward Democrats. In 2020, Trump won college-educated white men by 3 points in 2020, according to exit polls, but the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll showed Biden winning the group by more than 20 points.”
“In addition to the Latino population increase in the Southwest, McDonald pointed to the uptick in Asian Americans, and a remigration of Black voters to Georgia as to why those states continue to trend toward Democrats.”
“This year’s election is also going to be different from 2020 in a very big way. Because of the pandemic, mail-in voting was used widely and that contributed heavily to increased turnout. In 2020, 66% of registered voters cast ballots, the highest since 1900. That’s unlikely to be the case again, McDonald noted….”I would be very surprised if we have a turnout rate like we saw in 2020,” McDonald said. “And the people who would most likely then not participate … are going to be these lower-education voters. And so it’s going to pose a real challenge to the Trump campaign, to energize these folks yet again to vote in 2020.”
Montanaro also provides some revealing graphics. Read the entire article to get a clearer sense of his take on the ‘state of the race.’
“Be realistic—demand the impossible!” So went the slogan of the young revolutionaries who thronged the streets of Paris in May, 1968. At the time, the slogan was viewed by mass working-class parties as profoundly misguided, regardless of the high idealism that lay behind it. But over half a century later, it could well be the slogan of today’s left parties—which are now more Brahminthan working class—as they have rushed to embrace “net zero” emissions by 2050 and the elimination of fossil fuels.
This net zero commitment stems from the extremely high priority placed on this goal by the educated elites and activists who now dominate these parties. They believe that nothing is more important than stopping global warming since it is not just a problem, but an “existential crisis” that must be confronted as rapidly as possible to prevent a global apocalypse. Portuguese Socialist politician, Antonio Guterres, now Secretary-General of the United Nations, has claimed “the era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived” and that “humanity has opened the gates to hell”. President Biden said last September:
The only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening than a nuclear war is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next 20—10 years. That’d be real trouble. There’s no way back from that.
More frightening than nuclear war, eh, from which there is presumably a way back? Up and down the Democratic Party, rhetoric is more similar than not to the president’s histrionic take. Whatever else one might say about these statements, it is easy to see how they are not conducive to clear thinking on this issue. The first instinct is to do something—anything!—and do it as fast as possible to forestall this apocalypse.
Hence the commitment to net zero by 2050 to limit global warming to 1.5ºC. Hence the commitment to an extremely rapid elimination of fossil fuel usage. Hence the commitment to an equally rapid build up of wind and solar in energy production.
But how possible is any of this? Is it really possible to hit net zero by 2050? Is it really possible to eliminate fossil fuels that fast? The answer is that, for both technical and political reasons, it is not possible (outside of edge “solutions” like crashing industrial civilization or world authoritarian government to ration energy usage).
The insistence on trying to do so anyway is why “be realistic—demand the impossible!” is, astonishingly, not so far from the guiding philosophy of much of today’s mainstream left, including dominant sectors of the Democratic Party.
Consider the technical feasibility of this program. As the polymath, Vaclav Smil, universally acknowledged to be one the world’s premier energy experts, has observed:
[W]e are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years. Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat…
People toss out these deadlines without any reflection on the scale and the complexity of the problem…What’s the point of setting goals which cannot be achieved? People call it aspirational. I call it delusional.
Smil backs his argument with a mountain of empirical evidence in a new and hugely important paper, “Halfway Between Kyoto and 2050: Zero Carbon Is a Highly Unlikely Outcome.” The paper is a gold mine of relevant and highly compelling data. Smil outlines the realities of the net zero 2050 challenge:
The goal of reaching net zero global anthropogenic CO2 emissions is to be achieved by an energy transition whose speed, scale, and modalities (technical, economic, social, and political) would be historically unprecedented…[T]he accomplishment of such a transformation, no matter how desirable it might be, is highly unlikely during the prescribed period….In terms of final energy uses and specific energy converters, the unfolding transition would have to replace more than 4 terawatts (TW) of electricity-generating capacity now installed in large coal- and gas-fired stations by converting to non-carbon sources; to substitute nearly 1.5 billion combustion (gasoline and diesel) engines in road and off-road vehicles; to convert all agricultural and crop processing machinery (including about 50 million tractors and more than 100 million irrigation pumps) to electric drive or to non-fossil fuels; to find new sources of heat, hot air, and hot water used in a wide variety of industrial processes (from iron smelting and cement and glass making to chemical syntheses and food preservation) that now consume close to 30 percent of all final uses of fossil fuels; to replace more than half a billion natural gas furnaces now heating houses and industrial, institutional, and commercial places with heat pumps or other sources of heat; and to find new ways to power nearly 120,000 merchant fleet vessels (bulk carriers of ores, cement, fertilizers, wood and grain, and container ships, the largest one with capacities of some 24,000 units, now running mostly on heavy fuel oil and diesel fuel) and nearly 25,000 active jetliners that form the foundation of global long-distance transportation (fueled by kerosene).
On the face of it, and even without performing any informed technical and economic analyses, this seems to be an impossible task given that:
• we have only a single generation (about 25 years) to do it;
• we have not even reached the peak of global consumption of fossil carbon;
• the peak will not be followed by precipitous declines;
• we still have not deployed any zero-carbon large-scale commercial processes to produce essential materials; and
• the electrification has, at the end of 2022, converted only about 2 percent of passenger vehicles (more than 26 million) to different varieties of battery-powered cars and that decarbonization is yet to affect heavy road transport, shipping, and flying.
The slogan of “be realistic—demand the impossible!” does indeed seem to fit.
And how are we doing so far on this incredibly daunting task?
We are now halfway between 1997 (27 years ago) when delegates of nearly 200 nations met in Kyoto to agree on commitments to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases, and 2050; the world has 27 years left to achieve the goal of decarbonizing the global energy system, a momentous divide judging by the progress so far, or the lack of it.
The numbers are clear. All we have managed to do halfway through the intended grand global energy transition is a small relative decline in the share of fossil fuel in the world’s primary energy consumption—from nearly 86 percent in 1997 to about 82 percent in 2022. But this marginal relative retreat has been accompanied by a massive absolute increase in fossil fuel combustion: in 2022 the world consumed nearly 55 percent more energy locked in fossil carbon than it did in 1997.
And what would it take in the future to reach the cherished net zero by 2050 goal? Smil estimates that
…the cost of global decarbonization [would be] $440 trillion, or nearly $15 trillion a year for three decades, requiring affluent economies to spend 20 to 25 percent of their annual GDP on the transition. Only once in history did the US (and Russia) spent higher shares of their annual economic product, and they did so for less than five years when they needed to win World War II. Is any country seriously contemplating similar, but now decades-long, commitments?…
Even though we are technically far better equipped than we were 150 to 200 years ago, the task presented by the second energy transition appears to be no less challenging. Just before the end of 2023 the International Energy Agency published its estimate of global investment in “clean energy,”—in other words, essentially the recent annual cost of the energy transition. In 2023 it was close to $2.2 trillion…[W]e should be investing about six times more, or about $13 trillion a year, to reach zero carbon by 2050. Making it $15-17 trillion a year (to account for expected cost over-runs) seems hardly excessive, and it takes us, once again, to a grand total of $400-460 trillion by the year 2050, good confirmation of [the] previously derived value. This is not a forecast, just a plausible estimate intended to indicate the commonly underestimated cost of this global endeavor.
No natural laws bar us from making the enormous investments needed to sustain such massive annual shifts: we could resort to an unprecedented, decades-long, and civilization-wide existential mobilization of constructive and transformative efforts or, conversely, we could deliberately reduce our energy use by lowering our standard of living and keeping it low to make it easier to displace all fossil carbon.
In the absence of these two radical choices, we should not ignore the experience of the past grand energy transition (from traditional biomass energies to fossil fuels) and we should not underestimate the concatenation of challenges presented by practical engineering, material, organizational, social, political, and environmental requirements of the unfolding transition to a fossil carbon-free world that have been partially reviewed in this essay. When we do assess these challenges realistically, we must conclude that the world free of fossil carbon by 2050 is highly unlikely.
By any reasonable standard of feasibility, I’d make that flat-out impossible. That’s one reason why Democrats, and left parties generally, will eventually have to become energy realists. However much they wish it not to be so, grand energy transitions take time—many, many decades. Absent drastically lowered living standards and/or radical social disruption, this transition will be no different. Fossil fuels, and the support they provide to the high living standards enjoyed by the advanced world and aspired to by everyone else, will be with us for a loooong time.
But hey, “be realistic—demand the impossible!” right?
Nathaniel Rakich: “President Joe Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee say they raised a combined $90 million in March, while former President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee say they combined for $66 million. Democrats have an even wider advantage in cash on hand: $192 million to $93 million. But my first question is simple: Does it really matter that Republicans are so far behind in the money race?….Trump will probably be able to basically print money going forward….CNN’s Matt Holt highlighted just how much more cash on hand Democrats have than Republicans in nearly all competitive Senate races….Republicans have adopted a deliberate strategy of recruiting rich guys to run for Senate this year, meaning they can self-fund their campaigns — like Hovde in Wisconsin, as Kaleigh mentioned. Other examples are Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania, Bernie Moreno in Ohio and Tim Sheehy in Montana. The multimillion-dollar question, though, is how much they’re willing to dip into their own pockets.”
Kaleigh Rogers: “It doesn’t not matter, though I know that’s an unsatisfying answer. In a race in which both candidates are household names and — despite Trump’s current deficit — will raise and spend gobs of money before the election is over, these differences aren’t going to make or break a campaign….Money never guarantees success (my go-to example of this is former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s billion-dollar losing bid for president in 2020), but it’s not irrelevant. Money buys ads, campaign workers, billboards, yard signs and T-shirts with your respective campaign meme on them. All of this helps get out the vote, get a candidate’s message out and (especially in this race) possibly challenge voters’ preconceived notions of the candidates and what they bring to the table. That’s valuable, but having more digits in your receipts column for Q1 doesn’t equate to a decisive advantage….Democrats outraised Republicans in every single competitive race except Wisconsin, and that was only because GOP candidate Eric Hovde topped up his campaign with $8 million of his own funds in his bid to unseat Sen. Tammy Baldwin.”
geoffrey.skelley: “In the long run, a consistent spending advantage for one candidate could matter. For instance, if Biden were to steadily outspend Trump on ads in swing states down the stretch, that could make a slight difference in his support, as we’ve seen in past campaigns….Trump got an incredible $5.9 billion in earned media (that is, free publicity) in the 2016 campaign, dwarfing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s $2.8 billion and arguably minimizing her almost 2-to-1 edge in more traditional campaign spending….it’s mainly just a question of whether either one can sustain a significant financial lead throughout much of the campaign. My guess is no….No one should be equating Biden’s current fundraising lead with the idea that Biden has a superior campaign….the toughest seats for Democrats to hold this cycle (after Ohio and Montana) should be the open seats in Arizona and Michigan. And the likely Democratic nominees in both states notably outraised their GOP opposition.”
Read the whole article to get the flow of the panelists responses to each other. Also, for an insightful explanation of the unlimited spending power of Super Pacs and the role of the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision in elections, check out this video, featuring Chisun Lee, deputy executive director of The Brennan Center and read “Super PACs keep testing the limits of campaign finance law” by Jessica Piper at Politico.
“Democrats aren’t going to win on immigration this year, but they have to get closer to a draw on the issue to get to a place where people take them seriously,” said Lanae Erickson, a senior vice president at Third Way, a centrist Democrat think tank. “Be palatable enough on that issue that people are then willing to consider other priorities.”
Still, Democrats face a difficult task when it comes to the politics of border security. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has found that almost half of adults blame Biden and congressional Democrats for the current situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, while 41% blame Republicans in Congress.
Despite the data, at least Democrats can point to reforms they have advocated, which Republicans have obstructed in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Democrats “believe they can tout their own proposals for fixing the border, especially after Trump and Republican lawmakers rejected a bipartisan proposal on border security earlier this year.”
“You’re going to be painted as an open border Democrat no matter what, so talk about solutions,” said Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist.
She is urging candidates to lean into the immigration debate by discussing plans for border security and policies to help immigrants who have set up lives in the country. It’s an approach that worked under former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, she said.
Still, the shift in the way Democrats talk about the border could shape the future of immigration policy. The hardline immigration measures pursued by the Trump administration spurred a reaction by Democrats to oppose tough immigration enforcement measures. Now, some Democrats argue that the party should move away from a stance that border security and reforms for legal immigration should not be inextricably tied together. But that approach could also disenchant progressive and Latino voters.
Every Democratic candidate for the U. S. House, Senate, and state and local legislative seats should energetically address Republican refusal to even consider reforms they have previously advocated. The point is to portray the G.O.P. as the obstructionist, do nothing, finger-pointing party that would rather posture and blame than act for border security. Democratic candidates have to master the details of their proposed reforms and develop some sharp soundbites that highlight the Republican’s failure to win any legislative wins to protect America’s borders.
What’s wrong with this picture? The Republican Party seems a shambles, with the unpopular, erratic Trump, with all his massive baggage, as their standard-bearer. Yet the Democrats’ standard-bearer, Biden, is equally if not more unpopular.
For the last six months, Biden’s approval rating has been in the 39-41 percent approval range with 54-56 percent disapproval. As Harry Enten points out “Biden is the least popular elected incumbent at this point in his reelection bid since World War II.”
And critically, trial heats pitting Biden against Trump have consistently shown Biden running behind. Indeed, Biden hasn’t had a lead of any kind in the RCP running average since September of last year (though the race has tightened a bit in recent weeks). That compares to a Biden lead of over six points at this point in the cycle four years ago. As Enten also notes:
[A] lead of any margin for Trump was unheard of during the 2020 campaign—not a single poll that met CNN’s standards for publication showed Trump leading Biden nationally.
Biden is also running behind Trump in six of seven key swing states, consistent with his failure to establish a solid lead in the national popular vote.
In addition, Democratic Party identification has been declining throughout Biden’s presidency and is now at its lowest level since 1988. Looming over this trend and all the other rough results for the Democrats cited here is the indisputable fact that Democratic poor performance is being driven by defections among working-class (noncollege) voters of all races. Polling consistently shows Biden running deficits among working class voters in the mid-teens, a dramatic fall-off from the 4-point deficit he experienced in the 2020 election.
It’s time to admit that the Democratic party brand is in deep, deep trouble, especially withworking-class voters. That is why the Democrats cannot decisively beat Trump and the Republicans, despite the latter’s many liabilities, and find themselves fighting desperately at the 50 yard line of American politics. So it is and so it will continue to be until Democrats figure out how to stop the bleeding with working-class voters.
That means the Democratic approach needs to change. Here’s my three point plan for doing so, originally put forward in October of 2022 and more relevant than ever.
1. Democrats Must Move to the Center on Cultural Issues
2. Democrats Must Promote an Abundance Agenda
3. Democrats Must Embrace Patriotism and Liberal Nationalism
I expand on each of these points below.
The Culture Problem
Here’s the deal (as Biden might put it): the cultural left in and around the Democratic Party has managed to associate the party with a series of views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech and of course race and gender that are quite far from those of the median voter. These unpopular views are further amplified by Democratic-leaning media and nonprofits, as well as within the Democratic Party infrastructure itself, all of which are thoroughly dominated by the cultural left. In an era when a party’s national brand increasingly defines state and even local electoral contests, Democratic candidates have a very hard time shaking these cultural left associations.
As a direct result of these associations, the party’s—or, at least, Biden’s—attempt to rebrand Democrats as a unifying party speaking for Americans across divisions of race and class appears to have failed. Voters are not sure Democrats can look beyond identity politics to ensure public safety, secure borders, high quality, non-ideological education, and economic progress for all Americans.
Instead, Democrats continue to be weighed down by those whose tendency is to oppose firm action to control crime or the southern border as concessions to racism, interpret concerns about ideological school curricula and lowering educational standards as manifestations of white supremacy, and generally emphasize the identity politics angle of virtually every issue. With this baggage, rebranding the party as a whole is very difficult, since decisive action that might lead to such a rebranding is immediately undercut by a torrent of criticism. Democratic candidates in competitive races certainly try to rebrand on an individual level but their ability to escape the gravitational pull of the national party is limited.
Have things improved on this front in the course of the Biden administration? I don’t think so. A Liberal Patriot/YouGov poll found that more voters thought the Democrats had moved too far left on cultural and social issues (61 percent) than thought the Republicans had moved too far right on these issues (58 percent). In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, Trump is preferred over Biden by 17 points on reducing crime and 30 points on securing the border, now the second most important voting issue after the economy.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Democrats’ steady movement to the cultural left and ever “woker” stances on these issues is the steady movement of the intended audience for these stances away from the Democrats. These charts by John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times illustrate this trend. Whatever else the Democrats’ left turn on cultural issues is accomplishing, it’s not doing them much good among the nonwhite voters—especially nonwhite working-class voters—who, activists assured them, were thirsting for the maximally “progressive” position on these issues.
This wasn’t supposed to happen! But it is. As Burn-Murdoch notes:
The image of the GOP as the party of wealthy country club elites is dimming, opening the door to working- and middle-class voters of all ethnicities…More ominous for the Democrats is a less widely understood dynamic: many of America’s non-white voters have long held much more conservative views than their voting patterns would suggest.
This is staring to bite as Democrats’ cultural evolution takes them farther and farther away from the comfort zone of these voters. Damon Linker describes the process well in a recent post on his Substack:
Our polity is deeply divided over politics, with Democrats and Republicans often residing in morally and epistemologically distinct worlds, and each side viewing the country’s history, current condition, and possible futures very differently. But there’s also a common public culture all Americans share and take part in. It is governed by certain implicit norms and expectations that apply to everyone.
But who determines those norms and expectations? The answer is that these days it is often progressive activists. How do they accomplish this exercise of political-cultural power? I will admit that I’m not entirely sure. Something like the following process appears to happen: A group of left-leaning activists declares that certain words, claims, or arguments should be considered anathema, tainted as they supposedly are with prejudice, bigotry, racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, or transphobia; then people in authoritative positions within public and private institutions (government, administrative and regulatory agencies, universities, corporations, media platforms, etc.) defer to the activists, adjusting the language they use to conform to new norms; and then, once the norms and expectations have been adjusted, a new round of changes gets mandated by the activists and the whole process repeats again, and again, and again.
I suspect that to many millions of Americans (and to lots of people living in democracies across the world where something similar is going on) the process feels a bit like a rolling moral revolution without end that makes them deeply uncomfortable. That response is no doubt a function of right-leaning views among some voters. But I’d be willing to bet that for many others, the negative reaction follows from the sheer bossiness of it, with schools, government bureaucrats, HR departments at work, movie stars, and others constantly declaring: You can’t talk that way anymore; you must speak this other way now; those words are bad; these words are the correct ones. A lot of people are ok with this. But many others respond with: Who the f-ck are you to tell me how I’m allowed to talk? Who elected or appointed you as my moral overseer and judge?
To many voters, especially working-class voters, this is the world Democrats are bequeathing to them and they flat-out don’t like it. And that’s important! I never cease to be amazed by Democrats’ touching, if delusional, faith that they can simply turn up the volume on economic issues and ignore these sentiments. Culture matters and the issues to which they are connected matter. They are a hugely important part of how voters assess who is on their side and who is not; whose philosophy they can identify with and whose they can’t.
During the past year, the economy has added 2.9 million jobs, and since Biden came to office it has added 15.2 million jobs. All told, there are now about 5.8 million more Americans at work than there were immediately before the covid-19 pandemic started. And for those who are still concerned about the inflation rate, which has fallen from a high of 9.1 per cent in June, 2022, to 3.2 per cent, the new jobs report contained some reassuring news on that front, too. In the twelve months before the report was issued, hourly wages rose by 4.1 per cent–—the lowest figure since June, 2021, and another indication that inflation is contained. Strong economic growth combined with low unemployment and low inflation is pretty much an ideal outcome for any policymaker.
There are at least three explanations for why Biden’s ratings haven’t benefitted from these developments: the consumer-prices theory, the lags theory, and the vibes theory. The prices theory emphasizes that price levels—and the over-all cost of living—remain high, despite much lower rates of inflation. The lags theory says that people’s perceptions about politicians and economic policymaking can take quite a while to catch up with a changing environment. The vibes theory says that, for whatever reason, many Americans’ subjective feelings about the economy have lost touch with reality. To use the term coined by the economic commentator Kyla Scanlon, many of them are still stuck in a “Vibecession.”
Evidence can be cited to support each of these theories. Although the price of food hasn’t climbed much in the past year, many groceries and other items, such as secondhand vehicles, are still a lot more expensive than they were when Biden was elected, in 2020. Wages have increased faster than prices in the past year, but they haven’t risen by enough to offset previous price hikes. That supports the prices theory. Supporting the lags theory are recent indications that broad economic sentiment has improved, even though this hasn’t yet made itself visible in political polls. Last month, the University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment was 28.1 per cent higher than it was a year ago. The same organization’s index of consumer expectations, which reflects survey respondents’ feelings about the future, has gone up even more. It seems reasonable to expect that improving consumer sentiment should eventually have an impact on people’s assessments of economic policymaking, including the President’s stewardship.
Cassidy has more to say about the disconnect between economic statistics and public perceptions, and you can read the rest of his article right here.
I was very closely watching the saga of OMB’s disastrous effort to freeze funding for a vast number of federal programs, and wrote about why it was actually revoked at New York.
This week the Trump administration set off chaos nationwide when it temporarily “paused” all federal grants and loans pending a review of which programs comply with Donald Trump’s policy edicts. The order came down in an unexpected memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget on Monday.
Now OMB has rescinded the memo without comment just as suddenly, less than a day after its implementation was halted by a federal judge. Adding to the pervasive confusion, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately insisted on Wednesday that the funding freeze was still on because Trump’s executive orders on DEI and other prohibited policies remained in place. But there’s no way this actually gets implemented without someone, somewhere, identifying exactly what’s being frozen. So for the moment, it’s safe to say the funding freeze is off.
Why did Team Trump back off this particular initiative so quickly? It’s easy to say the administration was responding to D.C. district judge Loren AliKhan’s injunction halting the freeze. But then again, the administration (and particularly OMB director nominee Russell Vought) has been spoiling for a court fight over the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act that the proposed freeze so obviously violated. Surely something else was wrong with the freeze, aside from the incredible degree of chaos associated with its rollout, requiring multiple clarifications of which agencies and programs it affected (which may have been a feature rather than a bug to the initiative’s government-hating designers). According to the New York Times, the original OMB memo, despite its unprecedented nature and sweeping scope, wasn’t even vetted by senior White House officials like alleged policy overlord Stephen Miller.
Democrats have been quick to claim that they helped generate a public backlash to the funding freeze that forced the administration to reverse direction, as Punchbowl News explained even before the OMB memo was rescinded:
“A Monday night memo from the Office of Management and Budget ordering a freeze in federal grant and loan programs sent congressional Republicans scrambling and helped Democrats rally behind a clear anti-Trump message. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Trump as ‘lawless, destructive, cruel.’
“D.C. senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, warned that thousands of federal programs could be impacted, including veterans, law enforcement and firefighters, suicide hotlines, military aid to foreign allies, and more …
“Duringa Senate Democratic Caucus lunch on Tuesday, Schumer urged his colleagues to make the freeze “relatable” to their constituents back home, a clear play for the messaging upper hand. Schumer also plans on doing several local TV interviews today.”
In other words, the funding freeze looks like a clear misstep for an administration and a Republican Party that were walking very tall after the 47th president’s first week in office, giving Democrats a rare perceived “win.” More broadly, it suggests that once the real-life implications of Trump’s agenda (including his assaults on federal spending and the “deep state”) are understood, his public support is going to drop like Wile E. Coyote with an anvil in his paws. If that doesn’t bother Trump or his disruptive sidekick, Elon Musk, it could bother some of the GOP members of Congress expected to implement the legislative elements of the MAGA to-do list for 2025.
It’s far too early, however, to imagine that the chaos machine humming along at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will fall silent even for a moment. OMB could very well issue a new funding-freeze memo the minute the injunction stopping the original one expires next week. If that doesn’t happen, there could be new presidential executive orders (like the ones that suspended certain foreign-aid programs and energy subsidies) and, eventually, congressional legislation. Democrats and Trump-skeptical Republicans will need to stay on their toes to keep up with this administration’s schemes and its willingness to shatter norms.
It’s true, nonetheless, that the electorate that lifted Trump to the White House for the second time almost surely wasn’t voting to sharply cut, if not terminate, the host of popular federal programs that appeared to be under the gun when OMB issued its funding freeze memo. Sooner or later the malice and the fiscal math that led to this and other efforts to destroy big areas of domestic governance will become hard to deny and impossible to rescind.
