From “The Presidential Race at the Dawn of a New Year” by Kyle Kondik at Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

— Despite bad polling and clear weaknesses for President Biden, we are sticking with our initial Electoral College ratings from the summer, which show him doing better than what polls today would indicate, even as there are enough Toss-up electoral votes to make the election anyone’s game.

— We still anticipate a close and competitive election between Biden and former President Trump, whose dominance in the GOP primary race has endured as the Iowa caucus looms.

Kondik concludes, “Readers sometimes ask us if we have a set schedule for updating ratings. We do not—we make updates when we believe that they are warranted, although we also don’t want to be changing ratings willy nilly throughout the election season: The ratings are designed to be a best guess projection of November, not a measurement of where things may stand now. An “if the election was held today” assessment is pointless, because, well, we know that the election is set for November, not for today or tomorrow. Thus far we haven’t been compelled to change our initial Electoral College ratings, although we of course have taken note of Biden’s poor current polling. It will be harder to downplay the numbers if they persist, particularly even as Trump becomes more prominent because of the primary season and other factors.”

The following transcription of Paul Gigot’s interview of Ruy Teixeira, co-author with John B. Judis of Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, is cross-posted from the Wall St. Journal:

Paul Gigot: With the 2024 Iowa caucuses less than a month away, the presidential campaign season is in high gear and Democrats are worried. Joe Biden has an approval rating that is downright dreadful, now close to 40% and in head-to-head polling, he loses to Donald Trump and loses by even more to Nikki Haley. Ruy Teixeira says this is explained at least in part by a deterioration of the Democratic party’s winning coalition from 2020. Mr. Teixeira is a political scientist affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute and author with John Judas of the new book Where Have All the Democrats Gone, the Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes. Welcome back to Potomac watch (inaudible) Ruy. Nice to have you here.

Ruy Teixeira: Hey, thanks for having me, Paul.

Paul Gigot: All right, so you and John Judas wrote a very different book a decade and a half or so ago called The Emerging Democratic Majority. That majority appeared to be daunting under Barack Obama with his victory in 2008 in particular and then 2012, but it has since gone away. What happened?

Ruy Teixeira: Well, the main thing that happened, I think, and this is something we highlighted in our original book from 2002 about That Emerging Democratic Majority is we noted that yeah, there were a lot of things that were changing in the Democrat’s favor in terms of the rise of non-white vote, the realignment of professionals to the Democrats. The movement of a lot of the more dynamic cosmopolitan metro areas of the country toward. The Democrats changes in the women’s vote, which favored them and so on and so forth. But we were remarked that, hey, let’s be realistic here. The white working class is still a massive share of the American electorate and particularly in a lot of key states. And while they’re declining, they’re going to be with us for a long time. Therefore, if the Democrats could not hold on to their minority share of the white working class vote, if that further deteriorated, that would put their coalition in question. And that’s exactly what happened in 2010, then 2014 and then 2016 to everyone in shock, Trump manages to win and any wins really on the back of white working class voters, especially in the Midwest. So that was the white working class. And then I think what’s really fascinating about the last seven or eight years is the way the non-white working class has started to move away from the Democrats. We saw that in the 2020 election where Hispanic working class voters support for Democrats probably declined by about 20 margin points. There was also deterioration in the black working class vote and now we’re seeing it in the polls going up to the 2024 election. So this is really kind of a remarkable development and really points out that the Democrats Coalition was never as stable as they thought. And even something like the non-white vote, Hispanic and black vote and so on is really not stable for them if the working class component of it starts going south. All to shows to go you that the working class is no longer as committed to the Democrats as they once was, and that’s blown a hole in their coalition, which seemed to be so promising at the beginning of the 21st century.

Paul Gigot: All right, the polling sure backs you up. What are the causes as you look at them for this breaking away by working class voters as a cultural liberalism? Is it the fact that the Ann Arbor and Madison and Santa Monica elites don’t have a lot in common with people in Toledo who work in auto plants? What are the main causes?

Ruy Teixeira: Well, it’s all of the above, I think. If you look at the late part of the 20th century, I think certainly the cultural factors are important, but also it’s the decline of the labor movement, removing the working class anchor from the Democrats and the sense Democrats are no longer on the side of working class people who are getting hit by some of the economic changes of the latter part of the 20th century of feeling like Democrats were practicing a sort of soft neoliberalism, they were more interested in trade deals and deregulation than they were interested in the economic situation of the working class. And then in fact, they’d sort of forgotten about the working class in a lot of left behind areas of the country. And we saw that in a sort of a standard Gallup polling question that’s been asked forever, which party is better able to ensure prosperity for the country in the next several years? And that used to be a big democratic advantage and starting in the 80s it really goes away. So a sense that Democrats were no longer on your side economically, even as they were becoming more liberal and especially more liberal in the 21st century. And that’s where I think the cultural issues really start to bite because the Democrats do become so much more left-leaning and if not radical, a lot of issues concerning race and gender, immigration and so on. Then you might even add to that a whole sense that Democrats concerns were less about the working class and more about the priorities of their solid voters in the urban metro areas where culturally liberal white college graduates were so influential. So all of that put together kind of alienates the working class writ large from the Democrats and has contributed to a sense Democrats are no longer the party of the working class, but rather more the party of educated elites who are perhaps less interested in the fate of working class voters than they should be. And then you add to that, but frankly the Trump years prior to the pandemic were actually relatively better for working class voters, including non-whites than the first three years that the Biden administration has. So I think that just underscored the problems a lot of working class voters now have with the Democrats.

Paul Gigot: The Democrats under Bill Clinton did quite well winning two presidential races in the 1990s when you had that so-called neoliberal economic views supporting trade deals, for example, relatively centrist economic views. But where it seems to me this changed most sharply against Democrats in the working class is when you had under the Obama presidency this sharp notable turn towards the left on cultural issues. And I’m thinking about identity politics in particular, which in the second Obama term really has emerged as a dominant issue on the left and has continued under the Biden presidency. So I wonder, I’m pushing back on you a little bit on this economic analysis and more on the cultural concerns and I just would throw onto it, as you mentioned earlier, climate, where in my view it’s become a kind of a cultural religion for an awful lot of young people, and yet that cuts against things like assembly lines for gas powered vehicles. We just had Stellantis, the Chrysler parent warn 3,600 workers in Toledo and Detroit that their jobs are at risk because of California’s electric vehicle mandate.

Ruy Teixeira: I would point out though on the issue of trade deals, and so NAFTA was extremely unpopular in the Midwest among working class voters. And really the China shock in the early 2000s has a big effect on a lot of these communities. And really there’s been some good work that’s shown a relationship between increased republican voting and the influence of the China shock on a lot of these areas of the country. But leaving that aside, I couldn’t agree more that these cultural issues really do start to loom large throughout Obama’s two terms in office, the Black Lives Matter, remember Sterly Starks in 2013 and you see the Democratic party over that decade of the teens really moving so significantly in the direction of identity politics and the climate stuff. I just think that’s huge. I think Democrats really underestimate the extent to which while the elites who dominate the party and some of the younger educated voters they price so highly may think climate’s an existential crisis and there’s no crisis too high to pay to deal with this problem. That’s not how working class voters feel about the economy and about the world and about their priorities. The ranks about number 17 according to some (inaudible) polling in terms of their priorities for what the country needs to pay attention to. So I’ve described it as a Green Achilles Heel at times in terms of the Democrats coalition, that they’re so dedicated, so committed to moving as fast as possible to replace fossil fuels with renewables, whereas I think most working class voters and electric vehicles don’t get me started on that. Most working class voters say, “What?” “You want to do what?” “Why should I sign up for this?” But I think for a lot of Democrats, it’s so important to them that they’re just disregarding these signals.

Paul Gigot: That is fascinating to me because it gets into the religious nature of the belief here in terms of climate. What about identity politics? The breaking down into groups has always been there for quite some time and in fact worked to the Democrats advantage in terms of mobilizing minority groups in their favor when they could portray Republicans as particularly anti minority. That has turned in some respects, and it gets to this point you made earlier about the degree to which the non-white working class is moving away from the Democrats.

Ruy Teixeira: Yeah. I think Hispanics are a really good example of this because I think that Hispanics did support the Democrats at very high levels and they still do to some extent, though that’s declined, because they saw Democrats as being the party that was sympathetic to immigrants and that was on their side economically, it was generally like they might be a little too liberal on some things, but basically fine. But what really changes is when the Democrats start thinking of and insisting that Hispanics think of themselves as people of color who are brown people who are oppressed in the United States, who live in this dystopian hell hole we call the US, and who basically are discriminated against and set upon. And that’s really the problem. That’s not the way Hispanics working class people particularly think about the world. They think about, “I’m here to get ahead in life. I’m here to make a good life for my family. I want communities with safe streets and plenty of opportunity. I’m an American and I want to make my way in America.” And I think when identity politics interferes with that sense, that patriotic, upwardly mobile sense that a lot of Hispanic working class voters have, I think that’s when a lot of them start to draw the line and say, “Well, maybe the Democrats aren’t my party quite in the way I thought.” And the more moderate to conservative these voters are, the more open they are to thinking about voting for the Republicans because I didn’t want to get on the identity politics train. I just wanted to get ahead in life. And I think when Democrats lost track of who these voters really were and started putting them into these boxes that corresponded to their faculty lounge politics view of the world, as James Cardwell once put it, I think they really started to lose some of these voters and will continue to lose them.

Paul Gigot: All right, we’re going to take a break and when we come back we’ll talk more with Ruy Teixeira about the state of the Democratic party.

Speaker 5: Don’t forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker, play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. That is play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast.

Speaker 1: From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Paul Gigot: Welcome back. I’m Paul Gigot, here on Potomac Watch talking to Ruy Teixeira, author of the new book, Where Have All The Democrats Gone, the Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes. So you write that the Democrats to win back the white working class needs to have a focus on their economic concerns and address those economic anxieties concerns. But if you look at the Biden White House and his Democratic party right now, isn’t that what Biden is trying to do with all of his flogging of what they’re calling Bidenomics? And they rolled that out a few months ago along the way, taking a shot at us at the Wall Street Journal we’d first used the word Bidenomics and then they made it their own and said, “Yeah, it’s terrific,” but that doesn’t seem to be helping them in the polls. Why not?

Read more…

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

In a recent outstanding piece for The Liberal Patriot, sociologist Musa al-Gharbi noted:

The key schism that lies at the heart of dysfunction within the Democratic Party and the U.S. political system more broadly is between professionals associated with ‘knowledge economy’ industries and those who feel themselves to be the ‘losers’ in the knowledge economy—including growing numbers of working-class and non-white voters.

I believe this is correct. And it leads me to make a suggestion to all those knowledge economy professionals out there who can’t bring themselves to deviate from current Democratic Party orthodoxy because it would supposedly undermine the cause of “social justice”: become a class traitor!

Ask yourself who the social justice you prize so highly is really for. Is it really for the poor and working class who have the short end of the stick in our society or is it to make your feel righteous and onside with Team Progressive? Are your social justice commitments and priorities what the poor and working class actually want? Does the language you speak on these issues even make sense to them?

If not, you should consider that a politics that is appealing to you but not the working class is intrinsically limited and cannot achieve the objectives for a better society that you presumably harbor. You should, in short, consider becoming a class traitor.

At the top of the list for aspiring class traitors is decisively rejecting the intersectional left, the ideological vanguard of today’s knowledge economy professionals. According to this vanguard, actions or arguments should be judged not by their content but rather by the identity of those involved in said actions or arguments. Those identities in turn are defined by an intersectional web of oppressed and oppressors, of the powerful and powerless, of the dominant and marginalized. With this approach, one judges an action not by whether it’s effective, or an argument by whether it’s true, but rather by whether the people involved in the action or argument are in the oppressed/powerless/marginalized bucket or not. If they are, the actions or arguments should be supported; if not, they should be opposed. Finally, all the political stands that follow from this “analysis” are linked together and constitute a social justice catechism that must be uncritically embraced by the knowledge economy faithful.

This whole approach is completely bonkers, defying reasonable standards of logic, evidence, and common sense. Yet it has remarkable influence within the Democratic Party and has associated the party with many positions that are both substantively wrong and politically toxic. Consider the following:

• It is not the working class that sees the police as an unnecessary evil and opposes rigorous enforcement of the law for public safety and public order.
• It is not the working class that believes public consumption of hard drugs should be tolerated, with intervention limited to reviving addicts when they overdose.
• It is not the working class that believes many crimes like shoplifting should be decriminalized because punishing the perpetrators would have “disparate impact”.
• It is not the working class that believes you should never refer to illegal immigrants as “illegal” and that border security is somehow a racist idea.
• It is not the working class that believes an overwhelming surge of migrants at the southern border should be accommodated with asylum claims, parole arrangements, and release into urban areas around the country.
• It is not the working class that believes competitive admissions and job placements should be allocated on the basis of race (“equity”) not merit.
• It is not the working class that views objective tests as fundamentally flawed if they show racial disparities in achievement.
• It is not the working class that believes America is a structurally racist, white supremacist society.
• It is not the working class that sees patriotism as a dirty word and the history of the United States as a bleak landscape of racism and oppression.
• It is not the working class that thinks sex is “assigned at birth” and can be changed by self-conception, rather than being an objective, biological reality.
• It is not the working class that thinks it’s a great idea to police the language people use for hidden “microaggressions” and bias against the “marginalized”.
• And it is definitely not the working class that believes in “decolonize everything” and manages to see murderous thugs like Hamas as righteous liberators of a subaltern people.

No, my fellow knowledge economy professionals, it is not the working class that saddles Democrats and American politics with this nonsense, it is the intersectional left that insists on these absurdities and demands your acquiescence. But you don’t have to give it!

Read more…

For a fresh take on the U.S. politics and where it appears to be heading, read “High suburban turnout may be the new norm: We took a detailed look at who turned out to vote in five states in 2023” by 538’s Tia Yang, Mary Radcliffe, and Holly Fuong at abcnews.go.com. As the authors write:

538 analyzed turnout patterns in five states with high-profile elections in 2023, looking at both trends over time and differences between counties with different demographic compositions to see where turnout was highest. (You can download the data we used in this analysis on our GitHub page.) Overall, off-year turnout in these states was at or near its highest level in more than a decade, suggesting that we are still in the high-turnout environment that has characterized U.S. elections since 2016. We also found that turnout rates tended to be higher in suburban counties than in urban and rural ones, and that the pre-2016 conventional wisdom about off- versus on-year turnout has changed — which could pose both an opportunity and a danger to Democrats in 2024.

Since former President Donald Trump took office in 2017, turnout in U.S. elections has been off the charts. According to U.S. Census data, 53 percent of the citizen voting-age population voted in 2018, the highest midterm turnout since at least 1978. The 2020 election broke another record with 67 percent turnout, the highest since 1992. And midterm turnout in 2022 was almost as high as in 2018, at 52 percent.

Turnout rates in off-year elections during the same span have also been elevated. And if the 2023 elections are any indication, turnout in the 2024 presidential election will probably be very high as well. Compared to previous off-year elections with the same types of races on the ballot, Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania all had their highest turnout since at least 2011, and Kentucky and Virginia came very close to matching their turnout acmes from 2019.

The state with the highest 2023 turnout was Ohio; its statewide turnout rate of 43 percent almost matched its 47 percent turnout rate in the 2022 midterms, when the ballot included a competitive open Senate race between Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Ryan (as well as a less competitive gubernatorial race). This was likely due to high voter engagement on Issue 1, a (successful) ballot measure to codify the right to abortion in the state constitution.

Contentious ballot questions have motivated similar off-year turnout levels in Ohio before: Turnout hit 42 percent in 2011 as voters chose to repeal an unpopular GOP-backed collective bargaining restriction. But Ohio’s high turnout this year seems to be a strong argument in favor of the theory that abortion is still driving voters (especially liberal voters) to the polls, even more than a year removed from the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Ballot questions addressing abortion access will likely be on the ballot again in several states in 2024, and while their effects on turnout may be less pronounced in a presidential year, they could still make a difference — especially when it comes to turning out young voters.

It’s kind of pathetic that we think of stats like 42 percent and even slightly better figures hovering around 50 percent as high turnout numbers. Never mind the percentage of voters who are actually well-informed. It gets worse in selected states as you read the rest of the article. But the article’s most important point is that “one consistent theme across states was that suburban counties saw significantly higher turnout than adjacent cities.”

For example, in Ohio, turnout ranged from 36 to 46 percent in the four counties housing the state’s largest city centers. But turnout was particularly high in populous exurbs, like Delaware County north of Columbus and Geauga County east of Cleveland, which saw turnout rates of 62 and 55 percent, respectively. The results suggest that Democratic mobilization around abortion was one factor driving turnout here: For example, Issue 1 was approved with 57 percent of the vote statewide, while President Joe Biden got just 45 percent in 2020 — a 12-percentage-point difference. But in Geauga County, Issue 1 got 55 percent of the vote, and Biden got 38 percent — a 17-point improvement.

Yang, Radcliffe and Fuong take a deeper dive and provide graphics to underscore the relatively high turnouts in the burbs of the selected states. The suburban strongholds appear to be where Democrats can expect more victories in the years ahead. They conclude:

What these new trends mean for turnout next year isn’t immediately clear. In contrast to the Obama years, odd- and even-year turnout patterns haven’t been totally predictable since 2016, so it’s hard to say whether turnout in urban areas in 2024 will be as high as Democrats hope. But regardless of whether the new voting patterns in cities and rural areas are here to stay, it looks like suburban and mostly urban counties now reliably have the highest turnout — no matter what the calendar says.

Over the past several years, turnout slumps in major cities have been a cause for concern for Democrats. But at the same time, surging turnout in the suburbs — which have become bluer as they’ve grown more racially diverse and as college graduates have moved toward Democrats — seems to have helped offset this. Though suburbs are certainly not monolithic in their party preferences, even small leftward shifts in these areas have benefited Democrats— particularly as they’ve been accompanied by, or perhaps helped drive, high turnout. With this trend continuing in 2023, it seems safe to say suburbs will remain a major political battleground for years to come.

None of this is inevitable and recent years have brought wild cards to the election game which can confound the most astute political analysts. But Dems have to bet on the best available data, which clearly points to cultivating suburban voters as an increasingly pivotal element of Democratic electoral coalitions.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

“I’ve got those mean old swing-state, working-class blues!” I wouldn’t exactly recommend this as the Democrats’ campaign theme song, but it would encapsulate a lot of what appears to be happening to them these days.

A run of national polls have had Biden losing to Trump but, even worse, so have a number of swing-state polls. The latest are of Michigan and Georgia by CNN. In the former, Biden is behind by 10 points; in the latter, he is trailing by 5 points. Peering into the crosstabs, it is clear that Biden’s woes in these states have a lot to do with declining support among working-class voters. Let’s review some of the relevant data, starting with Michigan.

Michigan. In CNN’s Michigan poll, Trump is ahead by 21 points among working-class (noncollege) voters, while Biden is ahead by 10 points among college-educated voters. But Michigan is an overwhelmingly working-class state—according to States of Change projections, Michigan should be around 71 percent working-class eligible voters in 2024—so this a very unfavorable pattern for the Democrats.

Compared to Biden’s successful effort in 2020, the fall off in working-class support suggested here is precipitous. According to States of Change data, Biden lost these voters by a mere 2 points in 2020, so the current deficit of 21 points represents a massive 19-point swing against him. In contrast, the college-educated swing against him in the CNN poll looks quite small: a 12-point advantage among these voters in 2020, compared to a 10-point advantage now.

Other findings from the poll underscore the hole Biden is in among the state’s working-class voters. On whether Biden’s policies have improved or worsened economic conditions in the country, 60 percent of Michigan working-class voters think his policies have worsened conditions, three times more than the 20 percent who believe his policies have improved them.

The poll asked voters about several characteristics and whether Biden and Trump had exactly the characteristics they would like to see in a president, close enough or not what you want in a president. On Biden, 61 percent of Michigan working-class voters say his policy positions on major issues are not what they would like to see in a president. Worse, 65 percent of these voters believe Biden’s ability to understand the problems of people like them is not what they want in a president. And worse yet, 72 percent say Biden’s “sharpness and stamina” isn’t what they’d like to see in a president. In contrast, strong majorities of Michigan’s working-class voters see Trump’s major policy positions, his ability to understand the problems of people like them, and his sharpness and stamina as exactly what they’d like to see in a president, or close enough.

Biden is wont to wave away his troubles by saying: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” When it comes to working-class voters in Michigan, that is not a comparison at present that does much to mitigate his problems.

Georgia. In CNN’s Georgia poll, Trump is ahead by 14 points among working-class voters, while Biden is ahead by 7 points among college-educated voters. Georgia too is an overwhelmingly working-class state, likely around 67 percent working-class eligible voters in the next election, putting the Democrats in a very poor position.

In 2020, Biden lost Georgia working-class voters by just 6 points, so his current 14-point deficit is an 8-point swing against him. But his current 7-point lead among the college-educated is only 3 points less than his lead among these voters in 2020. As in Michigan, working-class defections are driving the move away from Biden to Trump.

It’s worth noting that, while CNN does not supply breaks for nonwhite working class voters, inspections of the internals of these polls indicates that in both states the swing away from Biden among nonwhite working-class voters is likely greater than the overall working-class swing.

The Georgia CNN poll has the same questions as the Michigan poll so it is possible to look at the same Biden evaluations. Georgia working-class voters are far more likely to think Biden’s policies have worsened economic conditions (58 percent) than improved them (22 percent). As for desired characteristics in a president, strong majorities of Georgia working-class voters see Biden as nothaving what they would like to see in a president on major policy positions, his ability to understand people like them and, especially, having the sharpness and stamina to do the job. With Trump, it’s exactly the reverse: on all three of these characteristics, strong majorities of Georgia’s working class see him as having exactly what they want in a president or close enough.

National. CNN also recently released an extensive national poll that sheds more light on Biden’s general working-class woes. Some key findings:

1. Biden’s working-class approval rating on handling the economy is just 26 percent. Among the college-educated, in contrast, it’s a more respectable 43 percent.
2. His approval rating on helping the middle class is a mere 28 percent among working-class voters. On handling crime, his rating, at 31 percent among these voters, is scarcely better.
3. On which party is closer to voters’ views on issues, working-class voters favor Republicans over Democrats by 16 points on the economy. Intriguingly, the parties are essentially tied among Hispanics on this issue.
4. On immigration, working-class voters prefer the GOP by 22 points. Even more intriguingly, Hispanics favor Republicans over Democrats by 6 points on the issue.
5. Working-class voters also favor Republicans by 18 points on crime and policing, 12 points on America’s role in the world, 6 points on helping the middle class (!), and 4 points on education. The strongest area for the Democrats among these voters is abortion and even here they only have a single digit (8-point) lead, far less than their lead among the college-educated.
6. Almost half (47 percent) of working-class voters are very worried that the cost of living will be too high for them to continue living in their current community. Another 32 percent are somewhat worried for a total of 79 percent.

Biden’s path to victory in 2024 of course goes through the key swing states everybody talks about. But people should realize that the path to victory in those swing states goes through the working-class voters in those states, voters among whom he has been losing critical support. He and his campaign will either fix this problem or they will lose. And then they—and the country—will really have those swing-state, working-class blues.

The following article by Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, is cross-posted from  Democracy Docket:

Polls for an election a year away drive chatter in some Washington, D.C. circles, but if you get outside of Washington and away from the media’s obsession with Donald Trump and the horse race for the White House, you’ll find Democrats are actually in a position of strength across the country.

At the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), we’re seeing encouraging signs after two consecutive years of Democrats’ sweeping wins in November elections, and an impressive trend of overperformance in special elections throughout 2023.

Just this month, the DLCC won majorities in both legislative chambers in Virginia, protecting reproductive rights for millions and ensuring voting rights and our democracy will continue to function — giving Democrats full legislative control in a key political battleground. After Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) funneledmillions of dollars into these races and cast this election as a referendum on the GOP and its proposed abortion ban, voters showed that MAGA extremism is unwelcome in Virginia, echoing the results we’ve seen in special elections across the country all year long.

Democrats also protected a key governing trifecta in New Jersey, not just preserving the majority in both chambers, but also gaining at least six seats. The millions that Republicans spent to break our majorities were no match for voters who soundly rejected MAGA extremism and enthusiastically backed Democratic leadership.

And in Pennsylvania, the DLCC invested an historic six-figures into the election for Democrat Daniel McCaffery, who secured a critical state Supreme Court seat. This seat is crucial to ensure that Pennsylvania certifies the results of the2024 presidential election, regardless of the outcome. Earlier in the year, we won five special elections in the state, defending our one-seat majority in the state House every time.

Lastly, Democrats scored an important victory in Ohio, where voters approved a ballot measure to protect abortion access. This landmark vote was a strong rebuke of Republicans’ extreme priorities and reinforces what the DLCC has long known: protecting fundamental freedoms is a winning issue.

Midterms are historically tough for the party in power, but in 2022 we made history — securing the best state legislative results for the president’s party in power since before 1934, protecting every state legislative majority and flipping four chambers from red to blue. In 2023, we over-performed in special elections by an average of seven points.

These victories represent a promising trend. When we focus on the data points that matter — actual election results, instead of polling — Democrats are in a strong position in 2024. At the ballot level closest to the people, voters are recognizing and choosing Democrats’ vision for the future over the increasingly extreme politics of the Republican Party.

For the last two decades, Republicans have been laser-focused and unfortunately wildly successful in seizing power in state legislatures. Following elections in 2010 and 2014, they built red majorities across the country and locked themselves into power with redistricting.

The consequences of this takeover still play an oversized role in driving the direction of this country.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, it wasn’t just the conservative justices who were responsible — it was the Republican-controlled legislatures across the country who put the Court’s opinion into action, writing and passing the state laws that stripped rights away from millions of Americans.

State legislatures enact the policies that have the most direct impact on people’s day-to-day lives. While the districts we work in are small, the implications of a single seat can be huge. Take the Michigan Senate and Minnesota Senate, two chambers where we won single-seat majorities in 2022: Soon after, the new Democratic majorities swiftly protected abortion, expandedvoting rights, passed legislation to benefit workers and took action to protect our kids from gun violence and hunger. When Democrats win power in the states, we deliver.

It’s clear what Democrats need to do for the 2023-24 cycle. We’ve made significant progress over the last decade, putting Democrats back in control of 41 chambers nationwide — many of them in states we would expect to be solidly blue on a presidential map. We now have momentum to push into battleground states, and our target map outlines our strategy to make gains and solidify power in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These fights will be our toughest yet, but we’re laser-focused.

Our biggest challenge isn’t the president’s approval ratings — it’s the lack of attention and resources that Democrats at our level of the ballot need to be competitive. Democrats absolutely need to win the White House in 2024 and win majorities in Congress. But our party cannot be fully successful if we do not also make state legislatures a core part of our collective strategy.

In fact, voting laws passed by state legislatures can impact who can vote and what ballots are counted in 2024. Right now, the ballot level furthest from Washington and closest to the voters is where we’ve had a winning strategy and where we have the best opportunities to change the direction of the country with smart investments. 2024 can be the year of the states if we stay focused and seize the opportunity. We can’t afford to neglect the states — fundamental freedoms and our entire democracy are hanging in the balance.

In “Democrats plan to track and corner Republican 2024 candidates on Trump,” Jarrett Renshaw reports at Reuters:

When Republican U.S. Representative Don Bacon was asked if he supports Donald Trump’s bid for the White House next year at Nebraska town hall last month, he batted away the question, saying it was too early to say, given the former president hadn’t yet secured the nomination.

Despite the non-answer, a Democratic activist with a video camera filmed the exchange, and it was quickly blasted it online with the headline Bacon “refuses to tell Nebraskans if he supports Trump.”

Crenshaw notes further,

Democrats are monitoring local radio interviews, scouring news stories and hiring teams of political trackers armed with cameras to blanket Republican events, to capture the moment a candidate is asked a Trump loyalty question.

North Carolina, Arizona and Pennsylvania Democrats are currently hiring “trackers” to follow, record and post footage of Republicans at local events, according to job websites.

For $4,000 a month, a tracker will be responsible for “comprehensively tracking opponents’ schedules” and providing “same day footage” to “drive the campaign narrative,” one such job posting says.

Tracking, essentially following an opponent with the hopes they slip up or do something that can be used to influence voters, has become a ubiquitous practice in U.S. political campaigns in recent years. It will only grow in 2024, some Democrats say.

American Bridge 21st Century, the largest research, tracking, and rapid response operation in the Democratic Party, spent $84 million tracking Republican candidates and using the footage to run ads against them in their home states in 2020.

In 2024, the operation is “going to be bigger than it’s ever been,” President Pat Dennis told Reuters.

Renshaw adds, “Republicans in suburban districts are the most squeezed by Trump politics, making them the best areas to film, Dennis said….”The amount of damage Trump has done to the Republican Party in the suburbs is extraordinary. So that’s sort of the pain point for them,” Dennis said.”

Good to know that state and local Democratic parties are paying attention with determination to hold GOP candidates accountable. Now, if local media will do its job, Dems will have a fighting chance to elect a working majority that can get America moving forward in the post-Trump era.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Let’s face it: the Democratic coalition is in poor shape. It’s springing leaks everywhere—young voters, Hispanic voters, black voters, women voters, working-class voters, moderate and independent voters. Of course, some Democrats dismiss the accumulating evidence as irrelevant because it’s too early, too biased, or not consistent with recent positive election results. It reminds me of the widely shared meme of the anthropomorphic dog calmly sipping his coffee in a burning room saying: “This is fine.”

And for sure, it is early. But these are very disturbing data that indicate the scale of the Democrats’ challenge in 2024. Two recent data releases document this ongoing decay of the Democratic coalition. First, looking at the national picture, Adam Carlson at the excellent Split Ticket data analytics site, has produced a compilation of cross-tabular data that allows us to compare average current Democratic performance with Democratic performance from 2020 to estimate shifts in preference since that election by key group. The second data source is a major survey of battleground states and districts by Democracy Corps/PSG/Greenberg Research (DCorps) that provides some rich demographic breakdowns of vote preference and opinion where the 2024 election will almost certainly be decided.

The Democratic “base” as a whole. This group isn’t in the Split Ticket data, but is displayed in the DCorps battleground data. In their definition the Democratic base is an amalgamation of Democratic-friendly demographic groups: “Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, LGBTQ+ community, Gen Z, millennials, unmarried and college women”. Overall, across this constellation of groups, Biden trails Trump in the presidential battleground by 4 points—no better for Biden than among all voters in the battleground.

These base voters also give Trump a higher approval rating than Biden; three-quarters think the country is off on the wrong track. Their most pressing issue by far for the country is inflation and the cost of living. Crime, homelessness and violence is second while, interestingly, abortion only ranks eighth.

Young voters. The Split Ticket data show Biden carrying 18-29 year olds (primarily Gen Z) by 16 points, a 7-point pro-Trump shift relative to 2020. (Note: where Catalist data are available, I use their data alone, rather than averaged with AP/Votecast and Pew validated voter data as Split Ticket does.) Among 30-44 year olds (primarily Millennials), Biden is ahead by only 8 points, a 6-point pro-Trump shift compared to 2020.

The DCorps battleground data suggest the situation may be particularly dire with white Gen Z and Millennial voters. Trump is 28 points ahead of Biden among white Gen Z voters in the presidential battleground and 25 points ahead among white Millennials. Their most pressing issue by a wide margin is inflation and cost of living. Among white Gen Z voters, Biden’s approval rating is 27 percent compared to 59 percent (!) for Trump; among white Millennials, Biden’s rating is 33 percent while Trump’s is 60 percent.

Hispanic voters. The measured pro-Trump shift here is particularly startling. Biden’s average lead among Hispanics is a mere 5 points, an 18-point decline from his lead in 2020. And in the DCorps presidential battleground data, Biden is actually behind among these voters by 3 points. Battleground Hispanics’ key issue is inflation and the cost of living, followed by crime. They give Trump and Biden exactly equal approval ratings.

Black voters. In the Split Ticket data, Biden is averaging a 52-point lead among black voters. That may sound good but it actually represents a precipitous 29-point drop from Biden’s 81-point lead in 2020. It seems hard to believe that Biden will ultimately drop that much support from black voters but even half that drop would be disastrous for him.

The DCorps presidential battleground data confirm this relatively weak black support for Biden. Interestingly, while inflation and the cost of living is these voters’ top issue, as it is for most other groups, crime is actually very close behind, much closer than among other groups. Consistent with this, black battleground voters are most likely to pick “crime and homelessness being out of control in cities and the violence killing small businesses and the police” as something that would upset them the most if Biden was re-elected.

Women voters. The Split Ticket data show Biden’s average lead among women voters at 6 points, down 7 points from his 2020 showing. This shift is actually slightly larger than the pro-Trump shift among men at this point.

The DCorps presidential battleground data indicate particular problems among white unmarried women (25-point Trump lead) and white working-class (noncollege) women under 50 (47-point Trump lead). These two groups of women are by far the most worried about inflation and the cost of living. Both groups of women give Trump higher approval ratings than Biden. The under 50 white working class women, in fact, give Biden an abysmal 16 percent approval rating compared to 57 percent for Trump.

Working-class voters. The Split Ticket data show Trump averaging solid leads among both high school or less (15 points) and some college (9 points) voters. These leads represent, respectively, a 5-point and a 7.5-point shift toward Trump relative to 2020.

In the DCorps data, Trump has an amazing 21-point lead among the working class as a whole in the battleground states and districts. And that’s 63 percent of the voters in these areas—the areas that, as noted, will decide the outcome in 2024.

Independent and moderate voters. The Split Ticket data show Trump leading Biden by 6 points among independents, a 15-point turnaround from Biden’s 9-point lead in 2020. Biden currently leads by 14 points among moderate voters, which sounds OK, but is actually a 12-point decline from his lead in 2020. And in the DCorps presidential battleground, Trump leads independents by a healthy 18 points.

It no doubt seems odd to Democrats that voters in the center—independents and moderates—aren’t flocking to their banners because surely they all know and believe that chaos agent Trump and his anti-democratic Republican Party represent everything that is immoderate and super-partisan in American politics.

But here’s the problem: these voters don’t necessarily see Trump and the Republicans as clearly being the worst in these areas. In the DCorps poll, battleground voters prefer Trump and the Republicans over Biden and the Democrats on “opposing extremism” (by 3 points), “getting beyond the chaos (by 6 points), “standing up to elites” (by 8 points), “protecting the U.S. Constitution” (by 8 points), and “putting country over party” (by 8 points). These voters see the parties as tied on “democracy being secure”and give Biden and the Democrats negligible leads of 2 points on “presidents not being able to act as autocrats”, and one point on “protecting democracy”. So while partisan Democrats may think these issues are not even close when comparing Biden and the Democrats to Trump and his “semi-fascist” Republican Party, there are clearly huge numbers of less partisan voters who disagree.

Similarly, in a recent Morning Consult poll, voters deemed the Democratic Party more ideologically extreme than the Republicans by 9 points. And in a poll conducted by The Liberal Patriot and YouGov, 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).

Something’s clearly not working here for the Democrats. Despite turning it up to 11 on the threat posed by Trump to democracy throughout Biden’s presidency, and now perhaps to 12 as the probability of a Biden-Trump rematch looms ever larger, actually-existing voters don’t seem to be stampeding in their direction. The big lead that Democrats feel should be naturally theirs is not appearing.

To me, this raises the question: where is the popular front against Trumpism? If he is indeed as bad as most Democrats seem to believe—i.e., we’re one step away from fascism, it’s Weimar Germany 1932 all over again—shouldn’t Democrats be casting the net as wide as possible, compromising on anything and everything to make their party maximally accessible to persuadable voters? After all, we’ve got to stop fascism here!

But that’s not what’s happening. Despite their dire assessment of the threat posed by Trump, moves to compromise on contentious issues that persuadable voters care about are few and far between. Look what’s happening with the immigration issue that has come to the fore in the negotiations over aid to the Ukraine and Israel. Instead of eagerly embracing a deal to move the aid forward that would include fairly modest reforms to the asylum system and other changes to tighten border security, Democrats are evincing the greatest reluctance to make such a deal. And this is despite the reality that voters, including most persuadable voters, view the Democrats as absolutely abysmal on the issue of border security.

It’s hard to understand. And the great irony here is that progressive Democrats, who are precisely the ones who are most hysterical about the threat posed by Trump and Trumpism, are also the ones most adamantly opposed to making any compromise on border security as part of this deal. Or really anything else for that matter.

This is not a recipe for success. I suppose that’s because they don’t really want a popular front against Trumpism but rather a popular front for all the stuff they feel comfortable supporting. But that’s not how a popular front works and it’s certainly not how Democrats are going to rebuild and expand their coalition for 2024. Instead, such a sectarian approach simply enhances the very real possibility that Donald Trump will (gulp) win next November.

Some excerpts from Thomas B. Edsall’s  “‘This Is Grim,’ One Democratic Pollster Says” at The New York Times:

The predictive power of horse-race polling a year from the presidential election is weak at best. The Biden campaign can take some comfort in that. But what recent surveys do reveal is that the coalition that put Joe Biden in the White House in the first place is nowhere near as strong as it was four years ago.

These danger signs include fraying support among core constituencies, including young voters, Black voters and Hispanic voters, and the decline, if not the erasure, of traditional Democratic advantages in representing the interests of the middle class and speaking for the average voter.

Any of these on their own might not be cause for alarm, but taken together, they present a dangerous situation for Biden.

Edsall notes further, “From Nov. 5 through Nov. 11, Democracy Corps, a Democratic advisory group founded by Stan Greenberg and James Carville, surveyed 2,500 voters in presidential and Senate battleground states as well as competitive House districts….In an email, Greenberg summarized the results: “This is grim.” The study, he said, found that collectively, voters in the Democratic base of “Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, L.G.B.T.Q.+ community, Gen Z, millennials, unmarried and college women give Trump higher approval ratings than Biden.”

Edsall goes on to roll out the discouraging specifics, including:

On 32 subjects ranging from abortion to China, the Democracy Corps survey asked voters to choose which would be better: “Biden and the Democrats” or “Trump and the Republicans.”

Biden and the Democrats led on six: women’s rights (ahead by 17 percentage points), climate change (15 points), addressing racial inequality (10 points), health care (three points), the president will not be an autocrat (two points) and protecting democracy (one point). There was a tie on making democracy more secure.

Donald Trump and the Republicans held leads on the remaining subjects, including being for working people (a seven-point advantage), standing up to elites (eight points), being able to get things done for the American people (12 points), feeling safe (12 points) and keeping wages and salaries up with the cost of living (17 points).

In the case of issues that traditionally favor Republicans, Trump and his allies held commanding leads: patriotism (11 points), crime (17 points), immigration (20 points) and border security (22 points).

As for the causes, Edsall writes, “There is some evidence in both the Democracy Corps survey and in other polls that concerns specific to Biden — including his age and the surge in prices during his presidency — are driving the perception of Democratic weakness rather than discontent with the party itself…..The survey found, for example, that Democratic candidates in House battleground districts are running even with their Republican opponents among all voters and two points ahead among voters who say they are likely to cast ballots on Election Day.”

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Biden’s sagging popularity is weakening Democratic 2024 prospects. As Edsall notes,

Along similar lines, a November 2023 NBC News poll found Trump leading Biden by two points, 46 to 44, but when voters were asked to choose between Trump and an unnamed Democratic candidate, the generic Democrat won 46 to 40.

In a reflection of both Biden’s and Trump’s high unfavorability ratings, NBC reported that when voters were asked to choose between Biden and an unnamed generic Republican, the Republican candidate led Biden 48 to 37.

What makes these numbers and conclusions harder to ignore than other recent polls indicating trouble for Democrats, is the name Stan Greenberg associated with the Democracy Corps poll and related analyses. While James Carville is familiar to many political junkies because of his frequent television appearances, his political partner Stan Greenberg is the Democrats’ platinum standard pollster, poll and election data analyst. Indeed, they have advised successful social democratic candidates all over the world. Greenberg and Carville steered President Bill Clinton’s two victorious election campaigns, and if Hillary Clinton heeded their advice to focus more on winning the support of  working-classs voters in key states, the nation might have been spared the entire Trump disaster, which now threatens the future of America’s democracy.

It is true that nobody knows what is going to happen in the months ahead, and yes, Biden could rally, if the economic picture improves substantially, or if Trump’s legal problems drag him down. In any case, President Biden, or whoever runs against Trump or another GOP nominee, would do well to pay close attention to the insights of Stan Greenberg and James Carville.

To round out your take on Democratic 2024 prospects, do read the rest of Edsall’s column. It provides as thorough and carefully-considered a report as you are going to find.

Eleanor Clift explains how “Democrats Can Win if They Make the 2024 Election About Healthcare: Ron DeSantis updated the GOP’s “repeal and replace” Obamacare mantra to “replace and supersede,” and Trump wants to “terminate” it. But voters like the Affordable Care Act” at The Daily Beast:

Of all the issues before voters, healthcare remains the holy grail for Democrats.

In the last three election cycles, it delivered Democratic victories based on deeply held beliefs about which party could be trusted to reform a system that had left millions without health care and millions more bankrupt with medical debt.

The Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010 (and more commonly known as Obamacare), is far from perfect, but it allowed people with pre-existing conditions to get health insurance, it removed unrealistic caps on medical care, and it allowed young people to remain on their parents’ insurance policy until the age of 26.

It was revolutionary, and more than a decade of Republican calls to “repeal and replace” proved futile. The GOP might have learned its lesson, but Donald Trump, who never tires of his old fixations, says on social media he would like to “terminate” Obamacare and “replace it with something much better.”

Clift adds that “it is music to Democrats whenever Republicans start mucking around in health care. Forty million Americans now have health insurance thanks to Obamacare, an ace card that Democrats hold going into the 2024 election where health care could once again play a decisive role in the outcome.” Also,

“It’s the most powerful kitchen table issue there is,” says Leslie Dach, executive chair of Protect Our Care, a health advocacy group, and senior advisor to the Congressional Integrity Project, a pro-Biden rapid response group. “Politically, it’s a loser for them (GOP) because it’s a totally non-partisan issue. The only place it’s partisan is in Washington, D.C. Everybody in America worries about getting sick, and how they’re going to pay for it, and they’re trying to make it an ideological issue.”

In addition, Clift writes, “It will be 14 years in March since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Most Republicans are ready to put the issue in the rearview mirror, recognizing the futility of repeal and replace, as well as the complexity of the healthcare market in a bitterly partisan political climate….Nikki Haley’s home state of South Carolina and DeSantis’ Florida are two of 10 remaining states that have blocked Medicaid expansion, withholding health care coverage from hundreds of thousands of people.”

Clift concludes, “Any time Trump or DeSantis want to vent about Obamacare, they sharpen the contrast between the party that delivered health care for millions of people and the party that would take it away under the false illusion that they’ve got a secret plan to make it better.”

Sure, Democrats should frame the Republicans’ cluelessness on abortion rights for maximum advantage. But don’t forget their failure to propose a single credible health care reform.