From “An Ohio amendment serves as a testing ground for statewide abortion fights expected in 2024″ by A. P.’s Julie Carr Smyth and Christine Fernando at The Hill:

Abortion access is expected to play a central role in the 2024 elections. The preview comes next week, when Ohio voters decide whether to enshrine reproductive rights in their state Constitution.

The amendment is the only abortion question on any state’s ballot this year, a spotlight that has generated intense attention from national groups and made Ohio a testing ground for fresh campaign messaging — some of it misleading. The amendment has drawn more than $60 million in combined spending so far.

Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said Ohio offers a vital proving ground heading into next year’s presidential election, when Democrats hope the abortion issue can energize supporters in contests up and down the ballot. Initiatives seeking to protect access could be on the ballot across the country, including in the presidential swing states of Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

“When we’re able to see how our messaging impacts independents and Republicans and persuades them that this fundamental freedom is important to protect in Ohio, that’s going to be something that we can implement looking at 2024,” she said.

The battleground on abortion shifted to the states last summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its Roe v. Wade decision, erasing federal abortion protections that had been in place for half a century. Since then, voters in six states — California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont — have either supported measures protecting abortion rights or rejected efforts aimed at eroding access.

Smyth and Fernando note that “The Ohio amendment would guarantee an individual’s right “to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions.” It expressly permits the state to regulate abortions after fetal viability, as determined by an attending physician, as long as any laws regulating the procedure after that point provide exceptions for the life and health of the woman.”

Further, “Its supporters include Democrats in the state, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and a bipartisan coalition of labor, faith and community groups. They portray the measure — one of the most broadly worded so far — as a way to enshrine Roe-era abortion rights in a one-time bellwether state that has turned increasingly Republican and has passed some of the nation’s toughest restrictions on the procedure….AP VoteCast polling last year found that 59% of Ohio voters say abortion should generally be legal.”

“Turnout in the election that concludes Tuesday is expected to be robust,” Smyth and Fernando write, “building on the enthusiasm from the summer, organizers say. Local election officials anticipate 40% to 50% of registered voters will participate, according to the Ohio Association of Election Officials. That’s higher than a typical off-year November election and up from the 39% turnout in August.”

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 forthcoming book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The Fox News Fallacy is the idea that if Fox News (substitute here the conservative bête noire of your choice if you prefer) criticizes the Democrats for X then there must be absolutely nothing to X and the job of Democrats is to assert that loudly and often. The problem is that an issue is not necessarily completely invalid just because Fox News mentions it. That depends on the issue. If there is something to the issue and persuadable voters have real concerns, you will not allay those concerns by embracing the Fox News Fallacy. In fact, you’ll probably intensify them by giving such voters the impression that Democrats simply don’t care about their concerns and will do nothing to address them. That undermines the Democrats’ ability to respond to predictable attacks against their candidates and party and increases the likelihood of electoral defeat.

As I have documented, there are many current examples of this fallacy including in such hot-button areas as immigration and crime. In the latest ABC/Ipsos poll, Biden’s job approval rating on handling “immigration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border” is 26 percent, with 70 percent disapproval (net: minus 44) and 33 percent on handling crime, with 64 percent disapproval (net: minus 31). That hurts the Democrats not just on these particular issues but also by bolstering their image as a party that tolerates, if not facilitates, social disorder.

But from a political standpoint, the worst example of the Fox News Fallacy by far is around voters’ number one issue: the economy. Consider these recent data on voters’ views of the economy.

1. In the new CNBC survey, Biden’s approval rating on the economy is an abysmal 32 percent with 63 percent disapproval. This includes some very low ratings among some groups Democrats plan to rely upon in 2024: Just 35 percent among young (18 to 34 year old) voters and among Latinos. And then there’s the working-class problem: 31 percent approval among high school graduates (or less), 34 percent among those with some college and only 32 percent among those who identify as either low income or working class. The latter figure includes a 27 percent rating among low income/working-class whites and, more surprisingly, an anemic 39 percent rating among low income/working-class nonwhites. That’s not exactly what the Biden administration had in mind when they started their Bidenomics offensive.

Perhaps most alarming of all, among voters who currently say they are undecided between Biden and Trump for 2024, Biden approval rating on the economy is just 13 percent. 13 percent! That doesn’t bode well for moving these undecideds into Biden’s column.

2. In a survey of 5,000 voters across seven swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), Morning Consult found that about three-quarters of voters believe the nation’s economy is headed down the wrong track and that, on net, voters were likely to think their personal financial situation was better under Trump than Biden.

And in a direct hit to the Bidenomics campaign, about half (49 percent) of swing state voters say Bidenomics—the economic policy of the Biden administration—has been bad for the economy, compared to just 26 percent who say it has been good for the economy and ten percent who say it has had no impact. Among those currently undecided between Biden and Trump for 2024, views are even more negative: only two percent (!) say Bidenomics has been good for the economy.

Even more damaging to the Bidenomics cause, swing state voters say they trust Trump more than Biden to handle a wide range of economic issues. That includes the economy generally (Trump +14), the stock market (Trump +16), everyday costs (Trump +12), interest rates (Trump +13) and taxes (Trump +10). Even issues like the job market, unemployment, pay raises, housing and personal debts generate Trump advantages of six to seven points.

Of course, conservative media outlets—Fox News and the like—are quick to point to results like these and argue that the Biden economy, especially associated inflation, is to blame. On cue, Democrats are quick to argue that this can’t be right—the economy has been going great guns! Unemployment is super-low, job creation has been strong, inflation has been moderating, real wages have started to rise and (so far) no recession. Therefore, if voters say they’re unhappy with the economy that can’t possibly reflect their “lived experience” as it were but rather how they are being manipulated and misinformed by the media, especially Fox News, etc.

This is a huge mistake—a textbook and very damaging example of the Fox News Fallacy. It’s still the case that real hourly wages and weekly earnings are lower now than when Biden took office (though they’re comparable with pre-pandemic levels). The latest income data from the Census Bureau also show continued decline in real median household income in the first two years of the Biden administration, leaving it 4.7 percent lower than its pre-pandemic peak. In contrast, the pre-pandemic years of the Trump administration saw an increase of 10 percent in household income.

And, critically, as Bill Galston notes in a new article, “$8.99 Cereal Could Rock the Globe:”

In the current election cycle, the central economic issue isn’t growth and jobs, but inflation. The most recent Economist/YouGov poll asked a random sample of Americans, “Which of the following do you consider the best measure of how the national economy is doing?” Four percent selected the stock market; 11 percent picked their personal finances; 15 percent chose unemployment and jobs reports. But 56 percent said the best measure was the prices of the goods and services they buy.

When economists talk about “inflation,” they are referring to the rate at which prices are increasing. They have naturally been puzzled by the continued intensity of public concern about inflation, given that the rate of inflation has declined significantly. But surveys show that average Americans are at least as concerned about price levels as they are about the rate of price increases.

That brings us to the price of breakfast cereal. “I almost had a heart attack the other day when I saw a box of cereal for $8.99,” said an Illinois house cleaner. “I was like, ‘Does that come with a gallon of milk too?’” I’m sure she’s speaking for many Americans; I know she’s speaking for me. My sense of what things should cost at the grocery store is anchored at pre-pandemic levels, and I find it hard to accept that so many items have risen in price by 30 percent or more. My wife and I can afford the higher prices, though we sometimes choose not to pay them and do without items we regard as outrageously expensive. What about families with children who are trying to get by on $75,000 a year?

Galston goes on to talk about the prices of cars and homes but you get the idea. This is voters’ lived experience. No amount of banging on about Bidenomics and new green jobs is going to make much of a dent in these feelings. The only thing that might is focusing intensely on voters’ chief economic concern and stop trying to talk them into believing the economy and Bidenomics are actually great when they clearly don’t think so. They are not just being manipulated by the evil conservative media—that’s the Fox News Fallacy. They’re trying to tell you what they really think. It might not be a bad idea to start listening.

And if not? I’ll give the last word here to Dave Wasserman from a Twitter thread:

How is it Dems are cleaning up in special elections/referendums if their national poll numbers are so bad? Because in the Trump era, Dems are excelling w/ the most civic-minded, highly-engaged voters.

Their biggest weakness? Peripheral voters who only show up in presidentials.

A big reason Dems beat pundit/historical expectations in the midterms? Only 112M people voted, including a disproportionate turnout among voters angry at Dobbs/abortion bans (many of them young/female).

But there will be ~160M voters in 2024. So who are those extra 48M voters?

They skew young, unaffiliated, nonwhite and non-college. They’re also more likely to base their choice on a simplistic evaluation of whether the economy was better under Trump or Biden.

On this question—and on immigration/age concerns—Biden is routinely getting clobbered.

Keep in mind: in 2020, when Biden’s favorability was above water and Trump was at 41 percent job approval (and Biden was ~7 pts ahead in the final polling averages), Trump still came within 42,915 votes in AZ, GA & WI out of ~160M cast nationally of winning a second term.

Now fast forward to 2024 with tied national polls, 40 percent Biden approval, equally dismal Biden/Trump favorability, more economic pessimism, growing migrant/intl crises and the potential for RFK/West to double Jill Stein’s pull on campuses, etc.

Biden is in absolutely dire shape.

Gulp.

Kyle Kondik explains “The Third Party Wild Card: Recent non-major party vote strongest out west — and not in the states likeliest to decide 2024” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

In addition to RFK Jr., left-wing intellectual Cornel West is also running, most recently deciding to run as a true independent instead of seeking the Green Party nomination. No Labels, the third party group that Democrats see as a front for Republicans trying to hurt Joe Biden through the party’s potential candidacy, is also floating out there. And that doesn’t even mention the Green and Libertarian parties, the two most reliable sources of third party candidates in recent years, or anyone else who might run.

None of these candidates, individually, would have a prayer of winning barring some truly incredible change in American politics, nor are they even guaranteed to be on the ballot everywhere. Collectively, though, the level of support they get will be interesting to monitor, and it may be that the third party vote ends up disproportionately hurting one of the major party nominees over the other, although that is not certain. At least two recent polls, from USA Today/Suffolk and NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist, showed Donald Trump doing better on the two-way ballot against Biden than if Kennedy was included (although the effect is more pronounced in the Marist survey). But after using Kennedy as a weapon against Biden in the Democratic primary, Republicans are switching gears as he now appears to threaten Trump more.

In terms of Electoral College votes in key swing states, however, the third party vote could be less consequential. Kondik argues that ” Of greatest interest to us is whether we should expect the third party vote to be meaningfully higher or lower in the most important states in the Electoral College. Seven states were decided by 3 points or less in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — these states form the core of what we expect to be the competitive map in 2024. Their recent third party history is shown in Table 3.

Kondik notes further that “Pennsylvania and Michigan are also on the lower end of the average — the Keystone State was just a couple hundredths of a point from being listed in the bottom 10 of average third party voting in Table 2. Wisconsin is basically right at the average, and Arizona is a little above average, with the big third party year of 2016 standing out as its strongest outlier year (and even then, the third party share was only a little over a point higher than the nation as a whole). Of these core swing states, Nevada has had the highest average third party vote in recent elections. Nevada offers voters an explicit “None of These Candidates” option, which likely contributes to the higher average: This option has gotten at least 0.4% of the vote in every election this century, and that’s about how much higher Nevada’s average third party voting is compared to the rest of the country. Arizona and Nevada being a little higher than average also just fits in with them being western states, given the heightened support that recent third party candidates have gotten in that region.”

Kondik concludes, “So, while there are a number of states that have a recent track record of clearly higher-than-average third party performances, the states most likely to decide the election are not really among them. That doesn’t mean third party votes in these states are necessarily unimportant: It just means that we shouldn’t expect the third party candidates to do better in them than they do nationally. It may also be that a common argument against voting third party — “go ahead, throw your vote away,” to quote a favorite Simpsons episode — is perhaps most persuasive in the top battlegrounds.”

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 forthcoming book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The appalling terrorist attack by the appalling terrorist group Hamas, which slaughtered more than 1300 Israelis, 87 percent of whom were civilians, is the largest single day killing of Jews since the Holocaust. The response of America’s intersectional left has also been appalling. As Sohrab Ahmari accurately noted in a Compact magazine article titled “Woke Is Dying”:

Many of those who spent the last few years promoting #Defund, “intersectionality,” and similar concepts refused to condemn Hamas’s butchery—that is, when they didn’t celebrate it. The Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter tweeted, “I Stand With Palestine,” along with a picture of a paraglider, an allusion to how Hamas terrorists descended upon an outdoor party, murdering some 260 ravers. Yale American Studies professor Zareena Grewal declared: “Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard.” The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America promoted a Times Square rally at which murderers were hailed as liberators.

What is wrong with these people?

In my opinion, the rot goes very deep. This is not a one-off. Over the last number of years, huge swathes of the American left have become infected with an ideology that judges actions or arguments 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.

This approach was always a terrible idea, in obvious contradiction to logic and common sense. But it has led much of the left and large sectors of the Democratic Party to take positions that have little purchase in social or political reality and are offensive to the basic values most people hold. The failure to unequivocally condemn the Hamas massacre as a crime against humanity is just the latest example of this intellectual and moral malignancy.

Take the vogue for “anti-racist” posturing. This dates back to the mid-teens and gathered overwhelming force in 2020 with the George Floyd police killing and subsequent nationwide protests. It became de rigueur in left and liberal Democratic circles to solemnly pronounce American society structurally racist and shot through with white supremacy from top to bottom. No argument along these lines was too outrageous if it came from or on behalf of “people of color”, who must be deferred to given their place in the intersectional hierarchy.

Nothing exemplifies this better than the lionization of Ibram X. Kendi, whose thoroughly ridiculous claims were treated as revealed truth by tens of millions of good liberals and leftists:

There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups…The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination….The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

Only those who have checked their capacity for critical thinking at the door could possibly take this “analysis” seriously. But they did because of the intersectional positioning of Kendi and those he claimed to advocate for.

How else to explain why liberals didn’t run screaming in the opposite direction when Kendi called for the passage of an “anti-racist Constitutional amendment” that would:

…establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.

It is difficult to imagine anything more illiberal than proposing an unelected Soviet-style bureaucracy of “experts” that would vet the actions, ideas, and perhaps even the thoughts of all public officials in the country for their anti-racist content and punish those who deviate from the correct path. Madness! And yet he has been showered with honors, money, and coveted academic positions (though recent revelations of epic mismanagement at his Boston University Center for Antiracist Research may curb some of that enthusiasm).

Bad ideas and arguments are bad ideas and arguments. It shouldn’t matter who makes them. Just like it shouldn’t matter who in the intersectional hierarchy massacres Jews. It’s still an atrocity.

It’s high time for Democrats to decisively reject this kind of thinking across the board. Embrace instead the universalistic principles the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in. They believe, unlike Kendi, that racial preferences in rewards and decision-making are not fair and fairness is a fundamental part of their world outlook. They actually believe, with Martin Luther King Jr., that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” In a recent University of Southern California Dornsife survey, this classic statement of colorblind equality was posed to respondents: “Our goal as a society should be to treat all people the same without regard to the color of their skin.” This MLK-style statement elicited sky-high (92 percent) agreement from the public, despite the assaults on this idea from Critical Race Theory (CRT), Kendi, and large sectors of the Democratic left. In a fascinating related finding, the researchers found that most people who claim to have heard about CRT believe CRT includes this colorblind perspective, rather than directly contradicting it. Perhaps they just can’t believe any theory that has anything to do with race would reject this fundamental principle.

Similarly a recent Public Agenda Hidden Common Ground survey found 91 percent agreement with the statement: “All people deserve an equal opportunity to succeed, no matter their race or ethnicity.” This is what people deeply believe in: equal opportunity not, unlike the intersectional left, equal outcomes.

Equally, Americans believe crime is crime no matter who commits it and that criminals should be punished. They do not believe that open drug use, street camping, shoplifting and countless other symptoms of social disorder should be tolerated because the populations involved are “marginalized” or because enforcement outcomes might not be equally distributed across races. Nor do they believe that the borders of the United States are merely suggestions that can be ignored by those appropriately placed in the intersectional hierarchy.

Reactions to the Hamas massacre have exposed the moral cul-de-sac occupied by the intersectional left. Democrats and liberals should seize this opportunity to dissociate themselves not just from these disgraceful reactions but also from the entire world view that has produced bad policy and worse politics in area after area.

Of course the usual suspects will inevitably say that returning to a universalist, mainstream approach is tantamount to throwing loyal Democratic constituencies in need of help “under the bus”. But who is throwing whom under the bus? Perhaps it is those whose intersectional dogma stands in the way of a Democratic approach that could plausibly generate the widest possible support that are throwing those who need help the most under the bus.

Andrew Prokop mulls over “5 ways the House speaker drama could end: Will the “Never Jordan” bloc cave? Will there be a bipartisan deal? Or … what?” at Vox and writes:

“Republicans’ staring contest of a speaker’s race, then, is continuing, with no resolution in sight. Here’s the GOP’s math problem:

• 217 out of 221 Republicans need to vote for the GOP’s speaker candidate on the House floor to elect him (if all Democrats oppose him).
• Roughly 180 Republicans appear to be team players who will happily back any nominee preferred by most of the conference.
• But there are about 20 holdouts on the right who have embraced hardball tactics to try and force a more right-wing speaker to be elected. Think of them as an “Only Jordan” bloc.
• And now there’s a newly emerged roughly 20-person “Never Jordan” bloc, composed of mostly mainstream or swing-district members who are fighting back against the right-wingers.

So what are the ways this could end?

1) The “Never Jordan” bloc caves: Jordan is currently the GOP’s speaker nominee, and he’s still trying to win over enough support among the 22 Republicans who opposed him on the most recent House floor vote.

Some of these members are powerful Appropriations Committee Republicans who could be given promises over how Jordan will handle spending fights. Others represent swing districts and fear support for an extremist candidate like Jordan could hurt their reelection, but they’ll need support and fundraising from the party establishment to keep their seats. And other holdouts appear to be motivated by personal gripes over how Jordan treated the previous speaker nominee, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) — maybe their feelings could be assuaged?

2) The “Only Jordan” bloc settles for someone else: If Jordan can’t win over enough holdouts and quits the contest as Scalise did, the GOP will go back to the drawing board and try to select another speaker nominee.

The question then will be whether that person can win over the hardcore Jordan supporters on the right. These recalcitrant right-wingers made it difficult for Kevin McCarthy to be elected speaker in the first place in January — but he did eventually win enough of them over. Perhaps another candidate, not yet in the race, could do the same. (Or maybe McCarthy could do it again.)

3) Some Republicans cut a deal with Democrats: If neither bloc of GOP holdouts is in the mood to cave, one other option is to rely on Democrats to get a Republican speaker candidate elected. In theory, such a deal could take place with a small group of Democratic moderates, or through a deal cut with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) that has the Democratic Party’s official approval.

Any such deal would draw fury from conservative media, and GOP leaders have already tried to denounce any idea for a “coalition government.” This is why the recent proposal to empower McHenry via some Democratic votes got dropped like a hot potato. But if the far right truly seems impossible to win over, a bipartisan deal may seem to mainstream Republicans like the only option to keep the government open.

4) McHenry just takes the reins without an official vote: Up to this point, speaker pro tempore McHenry has interpreted his duties as limited to facilitating the election of a new speaker. He has said he doesn’t want to do any more than this, and the belief within the GOP conference was that for him to be able to do more, the House would have to vote to empower him.

Outside experts, though, have argued that such a vote might not be necessary. Brendan Buck, a former aide to speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, wrote a New York Times op-ed arguing that McHenry “may simply need to act on his own.” That is, he should start calling up resolutions or bills, and if any member of Congress objects, just put it to a vote and see if a majority of the House backs him. “All of this is unstable and unsustainable, but so too is our current course,” Buck wrote.

5) It doesn’t end: Finally, for the sake of completion, one more possibility (albeit right now an extremely remote one) is that the House simply remains speaker-less until 2025. This would mean an unprecedented, devastating 13-month government shutdown with unforeseen consequences — something enough Republicans would likely want to cut short so they won’t be blamed for it. It would also mean an end to legislation for the next year, including perceived “must-pass” measures like aid to Israel. So it seems unlikely things would go this far. But there’s a first time for everything.

None of the scenarios outside of option 3 bode well for the Republic. Meanwhile, Jordan is doing a great job of dividing his party, with plenty of support from eager accomplices.

Can Democrats leverage the “GOP can’t govern” meme next year?  Jordan’s remarkable record of zero legislative accomplishments in his entire career will invite continuing scrutiny, if he gets elected. But it may be a bit stale a year from now. For Democrats, the short term-strategy is to publicize GOP paralysis, keep chipping away at their prospects in swing districts and work on a legislative agenda that can interest political moderates, while holding liberal support steady..

So, “Will Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoil the election for Biden — or Trump?” That’s the question Nathaniel Rakich addresses at abcnews.com, and writes:

Both sides have valid reasons for concern; there’s some evidence to suggest that Kennedy would take more votes away from the Democratic presidential nominee, and some evidence to suggest that he might take more votes away from the Republican nominee. But at the end of the day, his impact on the presidential race is probably being overstated. Third-party candidates rarely win a significant share of the vote, and the election would have to be extremely close for Kennedy’s presence to change who actually wins.

Only a few polls so far have tested a hypothetical three-way race between Kennedy, Trump and President Biden, but they’ve mostly found the same thing: Kennedy’s presence slightly increases Trump’s margin over Biden. On average, Trump leads Biden by only 0.5 percentage points in national polls when Kennedy isn’t included, but that lead grows to an average of 1.8 points in the three-way matchups.

Granted, one year plus out from Election Day, all such polls can end up meaning nothing. There is also an argument that Democrats may suffer more damage from Cornell West’s candidacy for the presidency. Here’s a basket of recent polls, shared by Rakich:

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 forthcoming book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Most people have long forgotten—if they ever noticed to begin with—that the Biden administration did, in fact, propose an ambitious immigration reform bill very early in Biden’s tenure. Ambitious, but without the remotest chance of passing. Republicans, to no one’s surprise, did not sign on to a bill that did almost nothing to address their concerns about border security.

At the time, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, from TX-28, a heavily Hispanic border district, presciently remarked:

Hey, we don’t want the wall, but when it comes to the other issues, we gotta be careful that we don’t give the impression that we have open borders because otherwise the numbers are going to start going up. And surely enough, we’re starting to see numbers go up.

Also around that time, I wrote:

Democrats moving forward have to accept the reality of American public opinion and politics that border security is a huge issue that cannot be elided in any attempt to reform the immigration system. Indeed, the most popular part of the current immigration bill is the provision most directly related to border security (technologically enhanced port of entry screening) according to Morning Consult. And public opinion polling over the years has consistently shown overwhelming majorities in favor of more spending and emphasis on border security.

This suggests a serious revamp of the Democratic approach to immigration flows and immigration reform. The public has indeed become more sympathetic to immigrants and immigration, partially as a thermostatic reaction to the practices of the Trump administration. But that does not mean that Democrats can simply be the opposite of Trump on this issue. He was closed; we’re open! He was mean; we’re nice! Any moves toward greater leniency at the border and the creation of legalization regimes for undocumented immigrants raises the possibility of knock-on effects and unintended consequences that would be highly unpopular. How do you prevent people from gaming the system? How do you handle the possibility of surges at the border to take advantage of leniency and legalization regimes? Any immigration reform package worth its salt must have serious answers to these questions.

America is a very desirable destination and it is simply a fact that many more people want to come here than can possibly be accommodated. Therefore, choices will have to be made about the numbers to be let in. What is, in fact, a desirable level of legal immigration? If Democrats wish it to be much higher, which is a defensible position, then they must have an answer for who these people should be. How are slots to be allocated—would the country be served well by moving to more a skill-based system or at least a hybrid that leans in that direction? And if the immigration system is to be more generous, how are levels of illegal immigration to be controlled? It will not do to make the immigration system more generous, while doing little to control flows of illegal immigration. Most of all, voters want an immigration system that is both reasonably generous and humane and under control. Democrats ignore the “under control” part at their peril.

I think it’s fair to say that the Biden administration did not heed this counsel and that of others who made similar points. Instead, an initial moratorium on deportations and a multitude of other actions the administration took clearly signaled that there was to be a very different regime at the border than there was under Trump. This regime was touted as being more ‘humanitarian” and “compassionate” but prospective migrants, predictably enough, interpreted it more simply as “easier to get in” if you come. And come they did.

Two straight years of record-breaking illegal immigrant border crossings followed. Some were turned away of course but a large proportion (76 percent) remained in the U.S. Recently, that proportion may be even higher. The situation is exacerbated by the thoroughly broken asylum system. It is being systematically gamed by arriving migrants who are briefed by smugglers and social media on exactly what to say to establish themselves as asylum-seekers.

Read more…

From “CNN Poll: Americans’ views of the Republican Party and its congressional leaders have worsened amid House leadership crisis” by Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy:

Among the public generally, impressions of the Republican Party are deeply negative. Nearly three-quarters disapprove of the way the GOP’s leaders in Congress are handling their jobs (74%, up from 67% in January), and 52% have a negative impression of the Republican Party overall (up from 45% in December). Approval for GOP leadership in Congress has dropped sharply among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, from 58% approval in January to 44% now.

And Americans’ expectations have dimmed that the Republican majority in the House could bring positive changes on the federal budget (43% expected a mostly positive effect in December, 18% now say there has been a positive effect), oversight of the Biden administration (35% expected a positive effect, 23% say there has been one), immigration laws (32% expected a positive effect, 17% say there has been one) or the level of cooperation within the federal government (23% expected a positive effect, 16% say there has been one).

However, the poll also includes some bad news for Democrats:

But the Republican Party’s challenges have not improved the public’s view of Democrats. Just 35% approve of the way Democratic leaders in Congress are handling their jobs, down from 40% in January, and half have an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party (50%), up from 44% in December….most Americans expressing anger at both parties’ handling of the country’s problems – the public continues to prefer the Republican Party’s leadership to that from the White House: 54% say they have more confidence in Republicans in Congress than in President Joe Biden to tackle the major issues facing the country, while 45% have more confidence in Biden’s leadership, unchanged since this summer.

All of the usual caveats apply. It’s just one poll and it’s just a snapshot thirteen months before the 2024 elections. And then there is the question, will discontent with both parties benefit 3rd party candidates?

At The New Republic’s Soapbox, TNR Editor Michael Tomasky interviews Navin Nayak, president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Here’s a cross-post of Tomasky’s introduction, followed by the video of the interview:

It’s one of the most frequent and familiar complaints of rank-and-file liberals: Democratic messaging, especially on the economy, stinks. A new poll from NBC News will surely only add fuel to the fire, as it shows the Republicans with the largest lead on the question of which party can better handle the economy since 1991—at 49 percent to 28 percent. Everybody has ideas and suspicions about why Democrats struggle to break through. Navin Nayak, the president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, has studied the question intensely with his staff. And the situation is … not good.

Nayak has put together a PowerPoint presentation that is a hot commodity in progressive Washington. He’s been showing it to groups of insiders and elected officials, and here, in this edition of Tomaskycast,you’ll get to see some of the slides yourself. Nayak and his team looked at every press release, Facebook post, and tweet put out in 2022 by Democratic candidates for federal office—some 570,000 pieces of communication. And they found that, “to our surprise, only 5 percent mentioned the words ‘economy’ or ‘economics.’” Even including words like “workers,” “wages,” and “jobs” only raised the number to 11 percent. Small wonder the Republicans come out ahead in those polls.

There’s a feast of useful information in this interview for anyone who really wants to understand the details on the hole in which Democrats find themselves. The news isn’t all bad: By 68 percent to 32 percent, people say they do support the core Joe Biden message of investing in the middle class over the Republican message of investing in businesses and letting them spread the bounty. But as Nayak says, among Democrats there is “a real recognition that there isn’t message clarity, and there isn’t a simple thing that Democrats from across the country and from top to bottom repeat.”

The following article by Gannon University History professor Jefff Bloodworth is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Riffraff. The Masses. Hoi Polloi. Working Class. The Silent Majority. The Great Unwashed.

“The People” have many synonyms. But “Middle American” best describes the demographic upon which every national election swings. Legendary Columbia University sociologist Herbert Gans defines Middle Americans as lower middle and working-class families between the thirty-first and seventy-first income percentiles. They are the working stiffs who are average in jobs, income, and schooling; a high school educated clerk or truck driver, of any race—that’s a Middle American. And Democrats have steadily lost them.

A broader grouping than working class, income alone does not define a Middle American. In his 1989 classic, Middle American Individualism, Gans outlined how income and a “popular individualism” renders them a distinct class. Reared in environments of economic insecurity, Middle Americans prize personal economic security more than anything. Their pursuit of economic autonomy is defined by self-reliance and an individualist ethos. These values and sensibilities are key to understanding Middle America’s political behavior.

Politically, Middle Americans support a version of “moral capitalism.” Moral capitalism is not socialism; Middle Americans think free enterprise and rugged individualism are just fine so long as labor receives a fair share. But any system that shortchanges labor loses legitimacy in Middle America and risks populist uprisings.

Moral capitalism was born on the nineteenth century populist frontier, and it subsequently evolved into the organizing principle that held rural and urban Democrats together. Moral capitalism was the philosophical basis of the Populist movement in the 1890s. Rejecting small government orthodoxy, populists looked to the state to make the urban, industrial economic order into a moral political economy. When markets failed, moral capitalists sought state interventions—but ones that reflected their individualist code. Social Security exemplifies this attitude: funded by dedicated payroll taxes, to Middle Americans the program is an earned benefit and not welfare.

Harry S. Truman’s GI Bill and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Medicare program followed the script Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote with Social Security. “Earned benefits,” recipients served in the military or labored a lifetime to merit eligibility. Not coincidentally, these programs are politically sacrosanct with most Middle Americans.

Oxford University historian Gareth Davies calls this underlying bargain “opportunity liberalism.” The state provides citizens equality of opportunity. Individuals offer grit and labor. And Middle Americans rewarded Democrats with votes.

By founding federal activism and social insurance programs on Middle American individualism, opportunity liberals defeated laissez-faire conservatism and created a liberal political consensus. In the late 1960s and 1970s, however, entitlement liberals gained the political upper hand inside Democratic politics and policy circles. Seeking equality of results, they pushed a guaranteed income and single-payer healthcare as well as an array of unearned benefits. Moral capitalism, however, cuts both ways: Middle Americans revolt against economic systems andpolitical ideologies that ignore the bond between labor and economic security. Middle Americans came to distrust a liberalism that, in their eyes, dispensed unearned benefits. To them, it was not a moral capitalism, and many turned right as result.

Middle American was once rightfully synonymous with working-class whites. In 1975, nearly nine of ten Middle Americans were white, and in 1980 and 1984 Ronald Reagan won an average 61 percent of the white working-class vote. Because Middle America comprised two-thirds of the entire electorate, Reagan won in landslides. Post-1965 immigration, however, has remade American and Middle American demography. In 1980, whites were 80 percent of the overall population; today, that number has fallen to 60 percent. Indeed, almost half of today’s Middle Americans are non-white. These demographic changes have transformed American politics.

Bill Clinton combined a rising non-white population with the educated middle class, women, and enough white Middle Americans to win the presidency twice. He did so by emphasizing work and opportunity. In effect, he pushed opportunity liberalism back to the party’s rhetorical center.

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