In her Politico article, “‘It’s going to be an army’: Tapes reveal GOP plan to contest elections: Placing operatives as poll workers and building a “hotline” to friendly attorneys are among the strategies to be deployed in Michigan and other swing states,” Heidi Przbyla reports on Republican plans for confrontations at the polls and for influencing midterm election results. As Przbyla writes:

“Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts: Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys.

The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.

“Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than [as] a poll challenger,” said Matthew Seifried, the RNC’s election integrity director for Michigan, stressing the importance of obtaining official designations as poll workers in a meeting with GOP activists in Wayne County last Nov. 6. It is one of a series of recordings of GOP meetings between summer of 2021 and May of this year obtained by POLITICO.

Backing up those front-line workers, “it’s going to be an army,” Seifried promised at an Oct. 5 training session. “We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?”

Przbyla adds that “election watchdog groups and legal experts say many of these recruits are answering the RNC’s call because they falsely believe fraud was committed in the 2020 election, so installing them as the supposedly unbiased officials who oversee voting at the precinct level could create chaos in such heavily Democratic precincts.”

Przbyla notes further, “Democratic National Committee spokesperson Ammar Moussa said the DNC “trains poll watchers to help every eligible voter cast a ballot,” but neither the DNC nor the state party trains poll workers. The DNC did help recruit poll workers in 2020 due to a drop-off in older workers amid the pandemic; but he says it is not currently doing so and has never trained poll workers to contest votes.

One of the most chilling revelations of Przbyla’s article: ““Come election day you create massive failure of certification” in Democratic precincts, Penniman said. “The real hope is that you can throw the choosing of electors to state legislatures.”

Also, “Of all former President Donald Trump’s battleground-state allies, Republican operatives in the state of Michigan came the closest to throwing the 2020 election — and the nation — into a constitutional crisis. So many volunteer challengers overwhelmed Detroit’s TCF Center, where votes were being counted, that police intervened because Covid safety protocols had been breached.” The plan also includes directions for “How to challenge a voter,” with detailed instructions.

Przbyla’s article focused on Michigan. But it’s likely that similar plans are being made in other battleground states and districts.

Some things Dems or progressives can do to prepare for Republican challenges:

1. Amp up early voting. Encourage more voters to bank their ballots as early as possible.

2. Expand and enhance legal teams to confront Republican legal scams and intimidation at the polls.

3. Run ads to make sure the public knows who is threatening violence at the polls.

4. Mobilize cell phone squads to make videos of intimidation.

5. Get some union members, who will not be intimidated by goons, to staff the polls.

The following article, “After Ukraine, Voters Want Climate Solutions: New polling shows a bolstered desire for a rapid transition to green energy” by Stanley B. Greenberg, is cross-posted from The American Prospect:

The Russian invasion of a democratic Ukraine, the disruption of Russian oil and natural gas, and an unimaginable spike in gasoline prices have disrupted both global and domestic energy politics. They have done so in completely surprising but understandable and reassuring ways.

Predictably, Russia is reviled in ways we have not seen since the hottest days of the Cold War. In polling, the proportion of respondents viewing Russia negatively reached 72 percent, including 63 percent who were very negative. That was also matched by the polarized and symmetric embrace of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In June, a plurality of 36 percent had warm feelings toward it, though a fifth was not sure. Not now. A 2-to-1 majority feels warmly about NATO. And people also feel significantly warmer about allies like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

But the war has also brought a series of dramatic and surprising shifts in public thinking about energy and climate change, according to surveys I conducted in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States for the Climate Policy and Strategy project.

More from Stanley B. Greenberg

After the global COP26 conference in Scotland, the public debate moved to whether China and India were on the program of getting to net-zero carbon emissions, and how one dealt with the high cost of transitioning to renewable energy. Some conservatives in Britain, Germany, and the United States raised those issues. And in our January survey in Germany, the new government elected on a climate agenda was getting the most support for helping consumers with their energy bill when the country’s carbon tax came into force, by removing the climate surcharge and shifting the cost onto the federal government.

But now in the United States, the spike in gas prices has led people to believe fossil fuels are the most expensive option. Every day they stare at figures approaching $5.00 and $6.00 a gallon, the highest price ever at the pump, it deepens the consciousness of this cost equation. A majority in my April survey now believe the cost of the transition will not be unacceptably high.

When we asked which concept is “more fundamental,” the “climate crisis” or “energy crisis,” a majority of 52 percent said the former. Only 41 percent chose the “energy crisis.” A third answered with intense agreement that the climate crisis is fundamental, compared to only a quarter on the energy crisis.

Click here to read more of this article.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

How Much Will the Abortion Issue Help the Democrats This Year?

Probably less than you think. I explain at The Liberal Patriot:

“The apparent intention of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade has handed the Democrats a big political opportunity. Most voters want to keep Roe v. Wade. Most voters think abortion should generally be legal and an overwhelming majority favor legal abortion in at least some circumstances.

Republicans on the other hand appear ready to take advantage of a Roe v. Wade overturn by pushing for stringent abortion restrictions in many states up to and including an outright ban on the procedure. So Democrats would appear to be on the right side of public opinion on the issue and well-positioned to generate considerable political advantage for themselves in a year when there’s been little of that to go around.

But will they? Unfortunately there are abundant indications that they could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on this one. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the response of the Democrats so far demonstrates in painful, almost crystalline detail much of what’s wrong with the party today.
Here is a (hardly exhaustive) list:

1. Median Voter? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Median Voter! Public opinion on abortion is quite complicated. It is true that voters oppose banning abortion. But it is also true that voters oppose making abortion legal in all circumstances. By about 2:1 the public favors at least some restrictions on abortion. Looked at by trimesters, the framework used in Roe v. Wade, Gallup found that 60 percent think abortion should be generally legal in the first three months of pregnancy. But that falls to 28 percent for the second three months and just 13 percent for the final trimester.”

Read the rest at The Liberal Patriot.

From “Struggling Dems look to a risky strategy: Meddling in GOP primaries to boost ‘unelectable’ Republicans” by Andrew Romano at Yahoo News:

Fearing a loss in November, leading Republicans throughout the Keystone State had tried — and failed — to derail Mastriano’s bid. But at least one very prominent Pennsylvanian had been rooting for Mastriano all along, and spending like crazy to help him: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro, the man Mastriano will now face on Election Day.

Call it the McCaskill Maneuver.

In the summer of 2012, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, also a Democrat, did something unprecedented, dropping nearly $2 million worth of ads designed to help an ultraconservative GOP congressman named Todd Akin secure his own party’s Senate nomination.

Why? Because McCaskill and her pollster had calculated that “Akin’s narrative could make him the winner among the people most likely to vote in the Republican primary — and maybe, just maybe, a loser among moderate Missourians,” McCaskill later explained.

Now, a decade later, the McCaskill Maneuver is making a comeback. In Pennsylvania, Illinois, Nevada and Oregon, Democratic gubernatorial candidates have been trying to boost Republicans they think they can beat— and weaken whoever they consider their biggest threat.

Next up could be Arizona, where “Democrats are doing something similar with Kari Lake” — the GOP’s Mastriano-like frontrunner — “by focusing their energies in the primary not on speaking to the base, but rather on painting her as too extreme for Arizona,” according to Arizona Republic columnist Elvia Díaz.

But there are serious problems, As Romano explains:

The problem, however, is that 2022 isn’t 2012, and the shift Democrats are trying to capitalize on — an ever more extreme GOP base — is also what makes McCaskill-style meddling much riskier than it was 10 years ago.

In McCaskill’s day, the gambit worked. Akin came from behind to win the GOP nomination. McCaskill celebrated by shotgunning a beer with her daughters. Then she clobbered him by more than 15 percentage points on Election Day.

“We needed to put Akin’s uber-conservative bona fides in an ad — and then, using reverse psychology, tell voters not to vote for him,” McCaskill wrote in 2015. “[So] we spent more money for Todd Akin in the last two weeks of the primary than he spent on his whole primary campaign.”

Fast forward to 2022 in the Keystone State.

That helps explain why Shapiro — the Pennsylvania attorney general who ran unopposed in that state’s Democratic primary for governor — has been following the exact same playbook. This spring, Shapiro spent more than $840,000 to air an ad all about Mastriano, a state senator who rose to prominence by falsely denying the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

The script was pure McCaskill, emphasizing how Mastriano is “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters.”

“If Mastriano wins, it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for,” the narrator intones. “Is that what we want in Pennsylvania?”

Romano, however, cites reasons why the McCaskill strategy could be a turkey in November:.

The first is that a midterm election year (like 2022) is different from a presidential election year (like 2012). In a midterm year, higher-propensity voters — voters who are likely to turn out every cycle, no matter what — have a disproportionate influence, and higher-propensity voters tend to be older, whiter and more Republican. In a presidential year, the scales tip toward lower-propensity voters, who tend to be younger, less white and more Democratic.

So McCaskill had a leg up in 2012 — when President Barack Obama was running for reelection and boosting down-ballot Democrats nationwide — that Shapiro won’t have in 2022.

Much the opposite, in fact. According to political analyst Harry Enten, Republicans enjoyed an average turnout advantage of 3 percentage points in midterms between 1978 and 2014 — an advantage that doubled to 6 points, on average, in the years when a Democrat occupied the White House. Demographics make midterms hard enough for Democrats. Backlash to Biden will only make this year’s midterms harder.

Turnout in last week’s Pennsylvania primary hints at the stubbornness of this pattern. Roughly 1.34 million people voted in the state’s marquee Republican contests for governor and Senate. But only 1.26 million voted in the state’s competitive Democratic Senate primary, with even fewer (1.2 million) bothering to cast a vote for Shapiro (who, again, ran unopposed).

The second reason the McCaskill Maneuver might be riskier now than in 2012 is that it relies on a phenomenon that’s become less and less common over the last decade: swing voting. It used to be that a significant number of Americans would vote for a Democrat in one cycle and a Republican the next time around, or vice versa. Many would even “split their ticket,” voting for a Democrat and a Republican in the same election.

But growing polarization and negative partisanship — the idea that voters are motivated more to defeat the other side than by any particular policy goals — have made such practices rarer.

McCaskill’s own career illustrates as much. In 2012, she won 15% of Missouri’s GOP vote and 22% of self-described conservatives, according to exit polls, even as Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney easily carried the state. Six years later, in 2018, she won just 7% of the former and 8% of the latter — and lost reelection in what was otherwise a banner year for Democrats.

So while it’s possible that Mastriano’s far-right positions on hot-button topics like abortion and election integrity will push suburban moderates into Shapiro’s camp, it’s also possible that the same message will energize the GOP’s increasingly MAGA base and solidify the party’s natural turnout advantage. It’s unclear which effect will be bigger.

Mastriano is pretty extreme. But it’s still high stakes poker, considering the damage he could do if he is elected. As Romano notes, “Mastriano has implied that he could award the state’s electoral votes to Trump in 2024 with the “stroke of a pen” — and he just won the GOP primary not in spite of but rather because of that implication.” Of course, it’s also possible that Shapiro’s strategy could work as planned, delivering a victory of pivotal importance for Democrats and their future.

Some nuggets mined from “What Went Down During The May 24 Primary Elections” by FiveThirtyEight’s panel of election analysts:

The biggest takeaway might be that even though tonight was not a good one for Trump’s endorsement track record, especially in Georgia, don’t write off his influence in the party just yet. Yes, Kemp handily won renomination in Georgia’s GOP gubernatorial primary, but as Alex wrote on the live blog earlier, even if Trump’s preferred candidates don’t win, it’s not “necessarily good news for the anti-Trump wing of the GOP. That’s because, at least in several of Georgia’s races, the non-Trump backed incumbent is still embracing Trumpian politics!”

The panel wrote that before Brad Raffensperger sealed the Republican Secretary of State nomination. That has to be one of the most important primary results in the U.S. thus far- and a direct slap of the face of the most corrupt President in U.S. history in what may be the most important state in 2024. More insights from individual panelists, but note that these comments are posted from most recent to earlier yesterday evening:

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Election results in Pennsylvania have offered a preview of coming attractions in America’s national politics in previous years.

The state’s primary elections this past Tuesday offer five indicators about what to watch for in the general elections this November and beyond.

1. Trumpism still rules the GOP.

Donald Trump continues to cast a long shadow in the Republican Party, which continues to absorb his style of politics and stances on key issues.  In Pennsylvania’s primary, the top two contenders for governor and U.S. Senate sought Trump’s backing and positioned themselves in ways that sought to appeal to his supporters.

That makes some political sense given the metamorphosis of the GOP’s base towards more extremism that flirts with QAnon conspiracies.  About 4 in 5 Republican voters in key battleground states this spring gave Trump favorable ratings.  These dynamics raise broader questions about what kind of party the GOP has become and where it is heading.  Doubts about the direction of the party are why some Pennsylvania Republicans are panicking and have already defected to support the Democratic candidate for governor.

Thus far this primary season across the nation, Trump has had mixed success in picking candidates, but more and more GOP candidates are picking Trump and his style of politics.

2.  Democrats face diverse trends pulling them in different directions.

The big headline on the Democratic side from Tuesday night was the sweeping victory Lt. Governor John Fetterman had over his primary opponents, winning 59-26%,  a whopping margin of 33 percent, over Congressman Conor Lamb.  Fetterman projects an anti-establishment vibe and contrasts himself to the conventional, more cautious politicians who position themselves closer to the center on issues and image. Fetterman has the potential to jiu-jitsu the typical narrative about Democrats being elitist liberals who are out-of-touch with ordinary Americans.

Yet at the same time, Democrats picked a candidate for governor who looks and sounds like a more conventional politician, Josh Shapiro, who ran unopposed in the primary.  Shapiro casts an establishment vibe in contrast to his Republican opponent, Doug Mastriano, a state senator who trounced another Trumpist Republican Lou Barletta, a former mayor, by more than 24 points.

Down ballot, the Democrats who won primaries for Congress and state house were all over the map on the issues, and it’s hard to point to a consistent theme or story that unifies the party in a national environment where the political mood is sour and the winds are blowing in the GOP’s direction.

3.  The battle for working class voters will be central in Pennsylvania’s Senate contest.

The winner of this race this fall could determine which party has overall control of the U.S. Senate starting in 2023.  Ruy Teixeira points out that working class voters are an important bloc in the Keystone State’s electorate: “Democrats’ fate in Pennsylvania in 2022 depends heavily on holding their modest gains among white working class voters and stopping the bleeding among nonwhite working class voters.”

John Fetterman’s profile and persona gives him an advantage over his opponent this fall on this front.  No matter whether Dr. Mehmet Oz or David McCormick wins after a likely recount due to the razor thin margins, Fetterman will face a multimillionaire with strong Trumpist tendencies (both men also face “carpetbagger” charges, too, because they haven’t lived in the state for long periods of time recently).  That gives Fetterman the chance to broaden and deepen his support with working class voters across the state as he works to increase his appeal and support with black voters, a key bloc that was cool to Fetterman in the primary.

(More here)

Amy Walter pops the question at Cook Political Report? “Can Democrats Turn Things Around,” and responds:

Earlier this cycle, we posited that there were a few things that could help boost Democrats’ prospects:

1. An improving political/economic climate
2. Unexpected gains from redistricting
3. A big event that would shift the focus of the election onto topics more favorable to Democrats.
4. Contentions Republican primaries that produced flawed and bruised nominees

Already we know that option two is a no-go. Earlier this spring, it looked as if Democrats might come out of the decennial process with a gain of up to 4 seats. That rosy scenario has since been dashed by the courts in states like New York and Kansas. Instead, as my colleague David Wasserman has expertly documented, Republicans are poised to pick up two seats from redistricting.

So, what about the other three possibilities? As of now, they aren’t looking all that promising either.

Walter continues.

In the last week or so, there’s been some discussion about whether inflation has ‘peaked’ (i.e., it won’t worsen from here on out). But, the bigger challenge for the Biden White House and Democrats is whether they can do anything to ease inflationary pressures.

That doesn’t look realistic.

To be fair, when it comes to reducing inflation, it’s up to the Fed, not Congress or the White House, to solve it.

Moreover, the sorts of things the White House and Congress could do to fight inflation — like lifting tariffs on China — are politically perilous. And, things that may be politically popular with the base — like forgiving student loan debt — will actually make things worse. As columnist Matt Yglesias writes, “resuming payments fights inflation, and outright forgiveness fuels it.”

There’s also no easy cure for stubbornly high gasoline prices. Releasing more oil from the strategic reserves, jawboning oil companies about ‘gouging’, and allowing for biofuel use in the summer, as the administration has done and says it will continue to do, isn’t going to make much of a dent in the cost of filling up the gas tank.

Noting that polls indicate that the public is pessimistic, she sees an opening for Democratic candidates in some states:

 The NBC poll released last week showed the issue of abortion jumped 16 points in importance for voters. In the March survey, just 6 percent of voters picked abortion as the ‘most important issue facing the country; today it’s at 20 percent. The poll also showed evidence that the issue is animating Democratic voters, with abortion now ranked as their second most important issue (after climate change and just slightly ahead of the cost of living). The likelihood of Roe v. Wade being overturned may also be responsible for narrowing the “enthusiasm gap” between Democrats and Republicans. In the March NBC survey, Republican voters’ interest in the election was 17 points higher than that of Democrats. This month, that gap shrank by 9 points, to a GOP advantage of just eight points.

In listening to two focus groups of Democratic-leaning voters the other week, it’s clear that Roe v. Wade being dismantled is an animating issue for them. “It’s a motivator,” said one woman. “I hope we can remove the people trying to turn these states red and ban abortion completely.”

However, the issue still ranks far behind economic issues among swing voters and independents. The NBC poll found that issues like the cost of living were 17 to 18 points were more salient to independent and swing-state voters than the issue of abortion. In other words, abortion may be an energizing force for Democratic base voters, but it’s not eclipsed concerns about the economy among every other group of voters. One GOP pollster doing a bunch of work in suburban areas told me the other day: “I have seen no evidence of abortion breaking through. Economy, inflation, gas prices, border, Ukraine all more important topics. Hell, even baby formula is more newsy than abortion.

Ultimately, I think abortion could impact individual races, especially in blue or purple/blue states or districts where a GOP candidate takes positions on the issue that are portrayed as well-outside the mainstream opinion. But, abortion isn’t going to change the overall trajectory of the midterm elections.

Also, there may be some hope for Dems in weak Republican candidates that have emerged. In PA, for example,

In Pennsylvania, Republicans dodged a worst-case scenario as the most controversial candidate in the field, commentator Kathy Barnette, failed to win the primary. Even so, the bruising primary campaign has taken a toll on Republicans Dr. Oz and David McCormick. This is especially true for the Trump-endorsed Oz who polls showed with very high negatives among GOP voters. A drawn-out (and potentially contentious) recount process between Oz and McCormick could also delay the healing process. Meanwhile, Democratic nominee John Fetterman cruised through his primary without anyone laying a glove to him.

But, while Fetterman may have had an easier road to the nomination, the next few months are likely to be quite bumpy for the Lt. Governor as we should expect to see a bunch of negative ads against him start to fill the airwaves.

All in all, still not a pretty picture for Dems. But it’s a bit better than a week ago, at least in the Keystone State.

In the marquee race of Tuesday’s primaries, Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman won an impressive victory in the Democratic primary for the open U.S. Senate seat. New York Times writer Michael Sokolove has the most revealing take on Fetterman’s victory. Some excerpts:

Some choice observations about Democratic votes in other states from “May 17 Primary Elections: Updates And Results” at FiveThirtyEight:

• The Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District remains too close to call. There, progressive state Rep. Summer Lee holds a tiny 523-vote lead over establishment-backed Steve Irwin. Since this is an open, solidly blue seat, Lee was seen as one of progressives’ best chances to add to their numbers tonight. She looks like she’s in good shape, but we don’t know how many ballots are outstanding and it’s possible Irwin could close the gap.
• In Oregon’s 5th District, progressive challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner leads incumbent Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader by 18 points, 59 percent to 41 percent, but only a third of the vote is counted and an issue with ballots in Schrader’s home county could keep the race in suspense for a while. At the very least, though, the fractious Democratic primary has Republicans thinking they can make a play for this seat in the fall; former Happy Valley mayor Lori Chavez-DeRemer leads businessman Jimmy Crumpacker 41 percent to 32 percent in the GOP primary.
• One bright spot for House Democrats this cycle, however, has been North Carolina, and the good news continued tonight. In both of the state’s two most competitive districts — the 1st and the 13th — Republicans nominated candidates that could cause them difficulties in the fall. In the 1st, 2020 Republican nominee Sandy Smith narrowly cleared the runoff threshold with 31.4 percent, but she is a candidate with a troubled track record as she has been accused of domestic violence and financial impropriety. Meanwhile, in the 13th, the winner was Bo Hines, a 26-year-old first-time candidate who spent much of the last year jumping from district to district before settling on this one. Biden would have narrowly carried the suburban district, which is trending in Democrats’ direction, so Hines’s relatively untested profile and lack of ties to the area could pose a problem for him in the general. Democrats nominated state Sens. Don Davis and Wiley Nickel in the 1st and 13th, respectively.
• It’s not all good news for Democrats in North Carolina, though. Notably, Rep. Ted Budd easily topped former Gov. Pat McCrory by more than 30 points in the GOP primary — McCrory managed to lose reelection in 2016 despite Trump winning the state at the top of the ticket. Former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley easily won the Democratic nomination on the other side, but given that North Carolina is a red-leaning state and the electoral environment is shaping up to be favorable for Republicans, this will be a challenging race for Democrats. Inside Elections, the Cook Political Report, and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball all rate the race as Lean Republican.

The FiveThirtyEight panel has a lot more to say about the Republican primaries, as well as the Democratic contests. Read it all at this link.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The Reverse Timothy Leary: They’re Not Tuning In, They’re Tuning Out!

And with the state of today’s politics, you can hardly blame them. John Halpin explains at The Liberal Patriot:

“A foul wind blows across the political landscape. You won’t read much about it in the pages of America’s newspapers or see many segments about it on 24-hour cable news or scroll through much about it on amped-up social media feeds. That’s because the most important if unrecognized trend in American life today is the widespread tuning out of politics by huge numbers of Americans who—with good reason—are disappointed, fed up, or just plain uninterested with what passes for democratic discourse today…

It’s an open question whether either Democrats or Republicans can figure out how to reach and represent this tuned-out generation of Americans. “Our nutters will beat your nutters” is not a smart strategy for winning the hearts and minds of the disaffected masses. As the ideological extremes take over both parties, the tuned-out middle sits by waiting to be courted and listened to in politics. To do so, however, the people running the leading political and media institutions in America will first have to make a conscious decision to end the endless culture wars and start focusing on the economic and social needs of the nation as a whole without constantly badgering other Americans to believe things they don’t want to believe.”

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot!