Chris Cillizza shares “Two reasons why all is not lost for Democrats in the midterms” at CNN Politics. Cillizza writes that “as of late, there are a few small signs that the coming election might not be a total disaster for Democrats.” Further,

“The first piece of good news comes via the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, which released its updated Partisan Voting Index earlier this week.

In an analysis of the PVI results, the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman concludes that there has been a somewhat steep decline in the number of competitive seats across the country following the decennial redistricting process that has taken place over the past 18 months or so….Why is the decline in highly competitive seats a good thing for Democrats? Simple. While Republicans only need a net gain of four seats to take control of the House, if they want to achieve a large, governing majority in 2023, they will need to beat a lot of Democratic incumbents who sit in seats that Biden won by a considerable amount….it’s harder to beat a Democratic incumbent in a seat Biden won by 10 points in 2020 than one in a district Biden carried by 1 point. And to pick up 30+ seats, Republicans are going to have to beat a whole lot of Democratic incumbents in districts that clearly lean to their party — at least at the presidential level.

….The second piece of relative good news for Democrats comes in the generic ballot test. This is a poll question that seeks to gauge support for a generic House Democratic candidate against a generic House Republican candidate and is broadly predictive of which way the national winds are blowing. (The question usually goes something like: “If the election were held today, would you vote for the Democratic candidate or Republican candidate for House?”)….A New York Times/Siena College poll out this week showed that among registered voters nationally, 41% said they would back the Democratic candidate, while 40% chose the Republican one. (Among voters likely to cast a ballot this fall, 44% opted for the Republican candidate while 43% chose the Democrat.)….It’s also worth noting that the generic ballot question has historically favored Democrats by a few points, so a virtual tie between the parties is rightly read as an edge for the Republicans.”

Add to all that the slight improvements in gas prices and employment, the growing reaction to the gutting of Roe v. Wade, the fallout from the January 6th hearings, growing anger about Republicans stonewalling gun safety legislation, along with some exceptionally-lame GOP senate and gubernatorial candidates, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that it could indeed be worse.

Cillizza cautions, however, “None of this data changes the underlying reality of this election: Biden is deeply unpopular and, in past midterm elections, when the president is unpopular, his party in the House tends to sustain heavy damage….But for Democrats, who have spent the last seven months being barraged by a seemingly endless stream of bad news, these twin developments suggest that the worst-case scenario may, in fact, not come to pass.”

From “Something Bubbling in the Heartland” by Mike Lux at Daily Kos:

“A messaging strategy that combines economic populism with a focus on kitchen table economic solutions, and an organizing strategy that builds local communities, can help bring back these voters — both swing and base voters who have been less inclined to go to the polls  lately.

All of that, plus the simple idea of making sure Democrats pay enough attention to these kinds of voters and counties, is the path to winning back working-class voters who live outside of big cities.

The even better news is that Democrats are beginning to use this kind of approach in a lot of places in the region right now, and it seems like it has the potential to pay off. Look at what is going on in the states:

• In the local elections held in Wisconsin in April, despite a widely predicted “red wave” in a low turnout election, which traditionally favors Republicans, Democrats won 53% of the 276 contested local elections on the ballot, holding their own in the purple areas in the state. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Governor Evers is leading both Republican candidates fighting it out in the primary, one of them by four and the other by seven percentage points. Ron Johnson — who has a trail of controversies and damaging quotes a mile-long — trails three of the four Democrats running in the primary for the Senate seat.
• In Pennsylvania, Republicans are fleeing their far-right extremist gubernatorial nominee as fast as they can, while Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman is running a great populist campaign, and currently sports a 9-point lead in the public polling.
• In Ohio, where Republicans presided over what the Columbus Dispatch called the biggest scandal in the country, the Republican governor is sitting at only 45% in the polls in spite of having universal name ID after a 46-year political career in the state. Meanwhile, the latest public poll has Tim Ryan leading by 44-41 for the open Senate seat, and Democrats had a great year in mayoral races there last year.
• In Iowa, Democratic primary voters surprised the DC Democratic establishment by rejecting former Congresswoman Abby Finkenauer, who had much higher name recognition and a big fundraising start, and picking former Navy Admiral Mike Franken 55-40. Franken’s background and strong presence on the stump is making a big impression on Iowa voters. Given that only 27% of voters wanted 88-year-old Chuck Grassley to run again in an earlier poll, this could be a sleeper race.
• In Missouri, Republicans look likely to nominate Eric Greitens, the former governor forced to resign by the Republican legislature over multiple scandals. Democratic candidate Lucas Kunce, a 13-year Marine veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and has a powerfully populist message, is leading in the Democratic primary. There is polling showing him essentially tied with Greitens right now. In the meantime, an added twist to the race is that a heavyweight Republican lawyer who was a clerk for Clarence Thomas, is entering the race as an Independent, saying he can’t stand the idea of Greitens becoming a senator. So Republicans will be splitting their votes.
• In Nebraska, there was a special election a couple of weeks back that was a huge surprise in historically Republican CD 1. In a special election ignored by the DCCC and most Democratically aligned groups, where the Republican heavily outspent the Democratic candidate, Democratic candidate Patty Pansing Brooks lost only 53-47. While this district still leans Republican, it actually got four percentage points more Democratic due to redistricting, and the district includes Lincoln, where the University of Nebraska is located and where Brooks is very strong. A big turnout of young people in the district could put Brooks in the winner’s seat.”

Lux adds, “The other point I want to make about the region as a whole is that Democrats are leaning into the Factory Towns strategy. John Fetterman, Tim Ryan, Nan Whaley, Mike Franken, and Lucas Kunce are all from medium-sized factory towns, and they are all running strong economically populist campaigns against far rightwing candidates who have embraced Trump and all his bullshit.

“The working-class industrial heartland — the Midwest plus Pennsylvania — has historically been the biggest battleground region in the country,” Lux concludes. “It moved strongly toward Reagan in the 1980s, toward Clinton in the 1990s, to Obama in 2008 and 2012, and then veered toward Trump in 2016. There is something bubbling out there this year that is going to surprise a lot of people.”

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

To Regain the Support of “Culturally Traditional but Not Extremist” Working Class Voters Democrats Need to Understand the Compelling Political Narrative That Leads Them to Vote for the GOP.
Andy Levison is just right about this. I highly recommend you read his excellent memo.

Levison summarizes his argument as follows:

1. As the 2022 elections approach, a critical question for Democratic strategists is why a significant group of working class voters choose to support Republican extremists even though they themselves are more accurately described as “cultural traditionalists” rather than extremists. In opinion surveys and focus groups this group of white (and now also increasingly Latino) working class voters make clear that they do not actually believe MAGA/Q-Anon/Tucker Carlson conspiracy theories or view all Democrats as literal “enemies” but they nonetheless vote for extremist candidates who assert these views on election day.

2. A major reason for this is that working class voters do not make their political choices primarily based on examining specific issues and policies. They evaluate candidates based on their broader outlook and philosophy – a perspective that the candidates frequently present as a basic “story” or “narrative” about America.

3. The basic extremist narrative is actually undergirded by three profoundly important subsidiary narratives that are nested within the larger narrative and which long predate the modern MAGA ideology. These three linked sub-narratives are not inherently extremist. They express a genuine and understandable frustration and sense of abandonment by the Democratic Party.

4. Democratic candidates can identify with these narratives and seek ways to address the legitimate concerns that are a deeply felt part of the working class experience in modern America without endorsing the extremist narrative that has incorporated and exploited them with such marked success.

Read it all here.

From “The End of Roe v. Wade Could Help Democrats in These Midterm Races: Instead of fighting each other over abortion, Democrats can fight these Republicans.” by Bill Scher at The Washington Monthly:

‘Legitimate arguments can be made about whether Democrats should take every conceivable action—without regard to existing law and Senate rules—to protect abortion rights now or whether party members should only work within the system because further erosion of norms would make all rights, reproductive and beyond, at the mercy of shifting political winds.

But why should Democrats get mired in an intraparty debate about tactics when they can unite against Republicans banning abortion?

Republicans are turning the clock back to the early 20th century—and in some cases, where dormant laws are being dusted off, the 19th—in about half of the states. The political scientists Jake Grumbach and Christopher Warshaw crunched survey data from multiple sources for The Washington Post and determined that “a majority of the public in about 40 states supports legal abortion rights.” In other words, several states present opportunities for Democrats to restore reproductive freedoms.”

Scher spotlights some of the key races he believes Dems can win by focusing on Republicans banning abortion, including the governorships of Florida, Georgia and Texas and maybe Arizona, Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina, and South Dakota. He also believes Dems can win the races for Attorney General in Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Texas, along with majority control of the state legislatures of Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Read the article for his detailed analysis of these races.

Scher concludes:

“To be clear, none of the above races are easy wins for Democrats. And we can’t know if the abortion issue on its own will be enough to make them more competitive. But that uncertainty only makes it more imperative for Democrats to employ strategies that maximize unity and appeal to swing voters. Party infighting over parliamentary procedures and norms fuels “Democrats in disarray” punch lines that accomplish the opposite.

To motivate the pro-choice majority—which extends well beyond progressive base voters in deep blue states—to prioritize abortion, Democrats need a laser focus on states where abortion is banned or severely restricted.

If such a strategy is successful, Democrats will broaden their geographic support. That would help secure abortion rights in more states and improve the odds of Democrats retaining U.S. Senate control. Holding the Senate keeps Democrats’ judicial confirmation power. If they can keep it long enough, they will be in a position to replace the eldest Supreme Court justices: Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.”

No doubt there are good arguments for targeting  U.S. Senate and House races Dems can win using the same attack strategy. What is certain is that the circular firing squad strategy is the one Republicans hope Dems will adopt.

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

Democrats’ emerging problems with Hispanic working class voters are, in my opinion, both poorly understood and vastly underestimated in Democratic circles. That’s the subject of my latest at The Liberal Patriot:

“Hispanic working class (noncollege) voters are emerging as an Achilles heel for the Democrats. Here are some facts about Hispanic working class voters that help bring this challenge for Democrats into focus.

1. In the 2020 election, Hispanic voters moved sharply away from the Democrats. Both Catalist and States of Change (forthcoming) data agree that it was around a 16 point pro-GOP margin shift (two party vote). States of Change data indicate this shift was heavily driven by Hispanic working class voters, whose support for the Democrats declined by 18 points. This pattern could be seen all over the country, not just in states like Florida (working class Hispanic support down 18 margin points) where they fell short but also in states they narrowly won (Arizona down 22 points; Nevada down 15 points)….

10. Along these lines, consider these data from Catalist. Between the 2012 and 2020 elections—which Democrats won by similar popular vote margins—Democrats’ advantage among nonwhite working class voters was trimmed by 18 margin points. Over the same period, Democrats’ performance among white college-educated voters improved by 16 margin points. For a party that has already sustained drastic losses among white working class voters and has been clinging to its dominance of nonwhite working class voters as proof that it is still a working class party, these are very uncomfortable facts.

But facts they are. Here’s another fact: Hispanic working class voters are overwhelmingly upwardly mobile, patriotic, culturally moderate to conservative citizens with practical and down to earth concerns focused on jobs, the economy, health care, effective schools and public safety. Democrats will either learn to hit that target or they will continue to lose ground with this vital group of voters—and in the process invalidate their increasingly tenuous claim to represent the American working class.”

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot. And subscribe!

From “Why Republicans Are Favored To Win The House, But Not The Senate” by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight:

Republicans are substantial favorites to take over the U.S. House of Representatives following this November’s midterm elections, but the U.S. Senate is much more competitive, according to FiveThirtyEight’s 2022 midterm election forecast, which launched today….

Democratic hopes of keeping the Senate are much more viable, however. Part of this, as I mentioned, is because they appear to have stronger candidates in a handful of key races. Pennsylvania, for instance — which is an open seat after the retirement of Republican Sen. Pat Toomey — is ordinarily the sort of seat that you’d expect Republicans to win since Pennsylvania is a purple state in a Republican year. However, the Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, is ahead of Republican Mehmet Oz, the doctor and TV personality, in every poll conducted so far. The model, though, is trained to be a bit skeptical given the fundamentals of the race, so it hedges against those polls and, at this point, has determined that Pennsylvania is best thought of as a toss-up. Still, that means Democrats have roughly a 50-50 chance of gaining a GOP-held Senate seat, offsetting potential losses elsewhere.

Indeed, our forecast sees the overall Senate landscape to be about as competitive as it gets. The Deluxe forecast literally has Senate control as a 50-50 tossup. The Classic and Lite forecasts show Democrats as very slight favorites to keep the Senate, meanwhile, with a 59 and a 62 percent chance, respectively.

Part of this is because Senate terms last for six years, and so most of these seats were last contested in 2016,³ a mediocre year for Democrats in which they lost the popular vote for the House and also lost Senate races in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona. Of the 35 Senate seats up for grabs in November, 21 are currently held by Republicans. True, most of these are not competitive, but in addition to their chances to gain a GOP-held seat in Pennsylvania, Democrats also have credible chances in Wisconsin and North Carolina (and outside chances in Ohio and Florida, although those are a stretch given how GOP-leaning both states have become).

Republicans don’t have any surefire pickups, meanwhile. Our model regards their best chances as being in Georgia, but that race is rated as a toss-up. And the races in Arizona and New Hampshire merely lean toward the Democratic incumbent, meaning they are still highly plausible GOP pickup opportunities.

Still, the picture isn’t as bad as you might expect for Democrats. If the political environment really deteriorates for them, they’ll be in trouble, lose most of the competitive races and even blue states like Colorado could come into play. But if things are merely pretty bad for Democrats instead of catastrophic, the outcome of the Senate will remain uncertain enough that stronger candidates could make the difference for them.

The pundit prognosis for the House, Governorships and state legislatures is still pretty bad for Democrats. But recent Supreme Court decisions on abortion, guns and school prayer underscore the importance of having a Democratic majority in the senate to prevent the high court from getting even worse. Democratic strategists face some tough choices about where to allocate resources in this cycle. But investing more in holding the Senate majority looks like a wiser option.

From “Does the Roe Ruling Have a Silver Lining for Democrats” by Chris Cillizza at CNN Politics:

“Seventy-two hours removed from the landmark overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, there are signs that the judgment may have woken up the long-dormant Democratic base in advance of this year’s midterm elections.

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll had two striking findings:

1) More than 3 in 4 Democrats (78%) said the court’s decision made it more likely that they would vote in the fall. A slim majority of Republicans (54%) said the same.

2) Democrats now lead on the generic ballot question (“If the election were today, would you vote for the Democrat or the Republican for House”) 48% to 41% over Republicans, a remarkable 10-point swing since an NPR poll in April.

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

Democrats have a lot of problems and their supposed allies in progressive organizations are one of the biggest ones. I explain in my latest at The Liberal Patriot:

“The secret is out. Progressive organizations—nonprofits and advocacy groups—which form a vital part of the Democrats’ supportive ecosystem have become massively dysfunctional due to internal meltdowns, mission creep and maximalist goal-setting. For those close to this world, this has been apparent for some time though there has been reluctance to call it out for fear of helping the right (the Fox News Fallacy) and/or being ostracized by their own side. But with the publication of Ryan Grim’s exposé on The Intercept and Zack Colman’s Politico piece focusing on green organizations, the rot is out there for all to see.

There are three key aspects to this rot:

1. Internal Dysfunction. The new generation of activists coming into these organizations tends to see internal hierarchies as reflecting their radical critique of society as a whole as a system that oppresses all “marginalized” groups: black, Hispanic, anybody nonwhite, female, gay, trans, indigenous, colonized, etc. Therefore, these internal hierarchies are by definition unjust and must be struggled against with little regard to what function these hierarchies might actually serve.

Needless to say, this plays havoc with an organization’s ability to run a merit- and efficiency-based internal system, since so many “diversity” boxes have to be checked to do practically anything. And the need to placate staff demands and smooth over the endless conflicts this produces leads to a stunning misallocation of time and internal resources. The resulting inefficiencies can virtually paralyze an organization. Said one former executive director of a progressive organization quoted by Grim: “My last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife”. Said another current executive director: “I’m now at a point where the first thing I wonder about a job applicant is, ‘How likely is this person to blow up my organization from the inside?”

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot!

Some excerpts from “The Democrats Have a Winning Message: “Stop Dangerous Extremists”: Forty reasons the GOP is “a clear and present danger to American democracy” by Mark Green at The Nation:

“Trump and his allies are a clear and present danger to American democracy.”—the Honorable J. Michael Luttig….Speaking slowly but powerfully, Judge Michael Luttig last week may have handed Democrats what has so far eluded them: a winning message for the midterm elections. Given all the revelations to date from the January 6 hearings—as well as five-plus years of Republican malevolence—Democrats can campaign this fall against a GOP full of “dangerous extremists” and run by “dangerous extremists.”

….The best response to persistent misdirection, however, is to repeat a memorable message sustained by a mass of evidence that brands today’s Republican Party as the most extreme in our modern history…..To get there, voters need to visualize and understand what happens when violence-prone reactionary authoritarians replace democracy with despotism. An America run by Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene means no Obamacare, shrunken and corporatized Social Security, lower real income for average workers, even more school shootings, rising attacks on LGBTQ and Asian Americans, appeasement of Putin, plus emboldened armed militias like the Proud Boys threatening—or actually killing—local election officials….

So while the Biden White House will presumably be pushing its positive accomplishments, Democrats need to simultaneously begin assailing the “clear and present danger” of the Republican Party as the only negative message that can work—especially as likely indictments of the Trump cabal and more instances of right-wing violence occur….Running against “dangerous extremists” can tie together the news about January 6, the likely reversal of Roe, Republicans calling homosexuality an “unacceptable lifestyle choice” while suggesting secession at the Texas GOP convention, and the MAGA mob assaults on Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss….It can become in 2022 what the “Do-Nothing-Congress” was in 1948—a political hammer that galvanized voters and turned Harry Truman from a sure loser into a surprise winner.”

For some well-stated message points, comb Green’s 40 reasons to illustrate the GOP’s “clear and present danger to American democracy.”

So, “Why Do Democrats Suck at messaging?” Dan Pfeiffer, former communications director for President Obama and author of “Battling the Big Lie,” shares some thoughts on the topic at Vanity Fair, including:

“Pundits and the political press are constantly haranguing Democrats for their messaging mistakes. One liberal writer of several well-reviewed presidential histories called me often during Obama’s first term to lecture me on why Obama didn’t yet have a version of FDR’s New Deal or LBJ’s Great Society. The subtext of these conversations was that great slogans make great presidents. Much of Progressive Twitter is filled with lamentations about some failure or missed messaging opportunity. There was a running joke in the Obama White House that you needed a master’s in economics to discuss economic policy and a doctorate in public health to offer health care ideas, but everyone believed that reading the newspaper made them qualified to opine on messaging strategy.

….A series of focus groups conducted in the first few months of the Biden presidency found that voters were unable to identify what the Democratic Party stood for. Two electoral landslide victories for Obama, a huge popular-vote win for President Biden, and four years of resistance to  Trump—and the Democrats still have a brand problem. This is more than a failure by party leaders and activists to settle on a narrative.

…How does one compose a pithy slogan or a tweet-length narrative to accurately and appealingly describe a coalition so broad that it extends from Joe Manchin to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? It’s the difference between being asked to come up with a brand for one television network like HBO or ESPN and being asked to brand “television” more broadly. What compelling slogan would be inclusive of every channel, from Bravo to CNBC?

Frankly, the messaging and branding task is more challenging for Democrats than it is for Republicans. The geographic disparities in the Senate and the Electoral College mean that Democrats must turn out liberal-base voters and appeal to voters much more conservative than the median Democratic voter. Democrats have to sell a wider array of products to a wider array of people.

The Republican coalition is narrower. It’s more ideologically homogenous and as white as a field of lilies. The Electoral College is biased toward Republican states, and the Senate gives small rural states like Wyoming the same number of votes as California and New York. To succeed, Republicans need only appeal to their base and little else, which allows for a simpler message.

However, Pfeiffer notes, “For all the party’s messaging mishaps, there are some facts running counter to the prevailing narrative that Republicans are messaging maestros. First, Democrats have won the popular vote in all but one presidential election since 1988. Second, the Democratic Party’s approval rating, while nothing to write home about, has been consistently higher than the Republican Party’s for many years. Finally, the Democratic position on immigration, taxes, reproductive freedom, minimum wage, civil rights, voting rights, and climate change is more popular than the Republican position.” Further,

These facts help explain why Republicans and their billionaire supporters invest so much time and energy in building a disinformation apparatus that can overcome the opinions of the majority of Americans. Hence, the megaphone problem…..Democratic messaging is not perfect; far from it. It’s often too wonky and wordy, an Ezra Klein column distilled into a paragraph of focus-grouped verbal applesauce. Our party leaders are all over 70, and none of them rose to the pinnacle of party leadership based on their communication chops. They are generationally disconnected from the party’s base, but the problem isn’t their age. It’s that each has spent more than half their years serving in Congress, where authentic human speaking goes to die.

Noting that “Democrats spend 99% of their time worrying about what they should say and only 1% figuring out how to get people to hear what they are sayin,” Pfeiffer adds,

The Republicans have a cable television network whose sole raison d’être is to attack Democrats and promote pro-GOP talking points. The conservative media dwarfs the progressive media in size and scope. And even then, it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. The bulk of the media on the right is an adjunct of the party apparatus; during the Trump presidency it was state-adjacent propaganda—Pravda, but with plausible deniability…..Facebook, the biggest, most important media outlet in the world, aggressively promotes conservative content. Democrats are out-gunned. We have fewer outlets with less reach. What we say is being drowned out. Sure, we need a better message, but first we need to get a bigger megaphone….Democrats have a much smaller megaphone, and our message is getting drowned out.