Former Attorney General Eric Holder: ….with or without new federal laws, the Department of Justice should use its power to vigorously enforce the Voting Rights Act and constitutional voting protections, especially in states that have restricted ballot access in recent years….and the Biden Administration must continue to use its bully pulpit to reinforce that message to lawmakers and the American public. The White House must continue to call for action, including congressional action on voting rights. The country needs a reinvigorated Department of Justice that is closely following, documenting, and challenging voter suppression and election subversion in laws recently passed by states.
Trevor Potter, President of Campaign Legal Center and a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission: The Biden administration can take at least four important steps: first, mobilize agencies to provide registration materials to eligible voters; second, guarantee voting access for eligible voters in federal custody; third, direct the Department of Justice to deploy election monitors and enforce existing voter intimidation laws; and fourth, prioritize providing accurate information about our election system. This would help make voting safe and accessible for all.
Chris Anders, Federal policy director at the ACLU: the Executive Branch has existing power to continue to urge federal agencies to provide expanded voter registration opportunities alongside their regular services, which can help reduce race and income-based disparities in voter registration.
Wendy Weiser, Vice president of Democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law: The White House should insist that any compromise legislation meaningfully tackle race discrimination in voting and sabotage threats. It should encourage Congress to fund elections. And it should fully engage federal agencies in enforcing voting rights, protecting election officials and infrastructure, and ensuring access to registration and voting.
Ayo Atterberry, Chief strategy officer with the League of Women Voters: The White House should continue to work with civil society organizations like the League of Women Voters around electoral access and transparency and push Congress to find common ground on voting rights protections that restore the Voting Rights Act.
Fred McBride, Senior policy advisor with the Southern Poverty Law Center: ….we need the Biden administration to renew efforts to restore the Voting Rights Act and expand federal protections to increase access to the ballot box. Federal voting legislation remains the best way to protect voters and establish reasonable standards for access to polls.
In the preface of his new book, Flipped, the political reporter Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that in 2020 Georgia helped Democrats win back the White House and the Senate “with a formula that could serve as a template for the party in once bright-red territories elsewhere.”
That formula seemed counterintuitive to many Democrats accustomed to chasing swing voters. “Georgia Democrats mostly abandoned attempts to pose as moderate ‘Republican-lite’ figures and jettisoned all-out efforts to convert conservative voters with poll-tested talking points,” Bluestein writes. “Instead, leaders energized the party’s core constituencies—including many who rarely cast ballots—with policies that just a few years prior would have seemed unthinkable.”
….according to Bluestein, “old-guard Democrats insisted” that to get sufficient white support, “Democrats needed to run even harder to the middle.” But it was with the squarely progressive Ossoff and Warnock that Democrats essentially hit the 30-30 mark, with exit poll data showing each getting 29 percent of the white vote and the Black share of the electorate reaching 30 percent.
But does all credit go to the progressive platform and the Democrats’ complementary efforts to juice turnout among their base? Bluestein writes that the Democrats’ “hard work” was buoyed by “extraordinary fortune,” foreshadowing his account of the Republican circular firing squad that shot down rural conservative turnout, part of the reason why the Black share of the electorate was so high….The difference between the Democratic and Republican stories is that for the past few years, the Democrats effectively resolved their internal disputes, while Republicans found new ways to stick the shiv in each other.
….Abrams passed on the Senate while Ossoff and Warnock stepped up. And once they advanced to the runoff, their campaigns synergistically worked together. They had similarly progressive platforms that avoided far-left pitfalls that could have spooked the middle—neither embraced, for example, “Medicare for All” or “Defund the Police.”
….The Republican get-out-the-vote effort was similarly “staggering,” Bluestein writes. It was just undercut by Trump’s attempts to delegitimize the 2020 presidential election and denigrate the state’s Republican election officials. Bluestein notes that many of the approximately 750,000 Georgians who voted in the November general election but not in the January runoffs were in conservative rural areas. Some of the biggest declines were in areas where Trump spouted his nonsense at post-November rallies: Dalton and Valdosta. The president’s scorched-earth attacks on Kemp and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his declarations that the election had been a sham were bound to diminish turnout drives for Perdue and Loeffler.
As impressed as Bluestein is by what the Democrats accomplished, he ends the book on an uncertain note, pointing out that 2020’s turnout spikes cannot “be counted on without a global pandemic” encouraging easy absentee voting “and the polarizing presence of Trump on the ballot in 2022.” He concludes that we can’t yet determine “whether the suburban shift that had turned Republican bastions into Democratic territory was firm or a fluke.”
While Bluestein stops short of drawing definitive conclusions, Flipped does provide a road map. One, demographics aren’t quite destiny, but you sure want them moving in your direction. Two, run candidates who can energize base voters without alienating swing voters. Three, build a turnout operation to channel that energy. Four, stay united while Republicans squabble.
Will such a formula allow Democrats to flip other red states with significant Black populations? Not easily. For example, as Perry Bacon Jr. detailed for FiveThirtyEight, North Carolina doesn’t have quite as many African American voters as Georgia, and its pool of white non-college voters is particularly conservative on racial and social issues, making the 30-30 goal tricky to reach. But Stacey Abrams and the Georgia Democratic Party didn’t wait for the state’s demographic math to fall into place before building the necessary GOTV infrastructure. Flipped makes clear that flipping can take time and effort— and a little bit of unhinged stupidity from your opponents.
Democrats do need a thorough understaning of the pivotal Georgia flip of 2020-21, and Scher’s take on Greg Bluestein’s book brings it into a clearer perspective.
John Halpin makes an important point at The Liberal Patriot: most Americans aren’t particularly engaged by politics yet political parties must still figure our how to reach them. Hint: It’s probably not through your favorite political hobby horse.
“Here’s a suggestion for the two political parties: create a research and communications arm staffed only by people who don’t pay any attention to politics whatsoever and instead inhabit the sociological contexts most Americans occupy in terms of their families, workplaces, media consumption, and local peer groups. No fancy graduate school degrees required. No following Twitter feuds about people’s tone and issue priorities. No debates about Build Back Better or regime change or critical race theory or Trump’s stolen election fictions.
This new research arm could end up being the most valuable branch of party affairs because it is closer to the reality of vast numbers of Americans who couldn’t care less about politics and government.
As background for the new department, study the Pew Research Center’s excellent 2021 study on political typologies. This report presents more useful information about the public and the complex landscape of American political life than any ten “message” surveys around. Consider these important findings:
A scant 9 percent of Americans say they grew up in a family that talked a lot about politics at home. Nearly 6 in 10 Americans report not really discussing politics much if at all growing up. The reality facing the two parties is that most Americans are not socialized into politics in any meaningful manner.”
On one hand, 56 percent of those polled described Biden’s response as “not been tough enough” compared with 36 percent “about right” and 6 percent “too tough.” There were sharp partisan divisions on this question: 68 percent of Republicans said Biden’s response to the invasion was not tough enough, and 20 percent said it was about right. Fifty-three percent of Democrats said it was about right, and 43 percent said not tough enough. Independents were closer to Republicans than to Democrats: 64 percent not tough enough, 25 percent just right.
Conversely, the AP/NORC survey found that 45 percent of respondents said they were very or extremely “concerned about Russia using nuclnd Dems)ear weapons that target the United States,” 30 percent said they were “somewhat concerned,” and 25 percent said they were “not very or not at all concerned.”
The potential pitfalls in the American response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine range from provoking Vladimir Putin to further escalation to diminishing the United States in the eyes of Russia and the rest of the world. The specific dangers confronting policymakers stem from serious decisions taken in a crisis climate, but the pressures on those making the decisions are tied to the competing psychological dispositions of Republicans and Democrats described above, and they are tied as well to discrepancies between men and women in toleration of the use of force.
is to compare how men and women weigh the choice between backing down and conflict. Women are nearly indifferent between an unsuccessful use of force in which nothing is gained, and their country’s leader backs down after threatening force. Men, by contrast, would much rather see force used unsuccessfully than see the country’s reputation endangered through backing down. Approval among men is fully 36 percent higher for a use of force that achieves nothing and in which over 4,000 U.S. soldiers die than when the U.S. president backs down and the same objective outcome is achieved without loss of life.
The gender gap on the use of force has deep roots. A 2012 study, “Men and Women’s Support for War: Accounting for the gender gap in public opinion,” found consistently higher support among men than women for military intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, concluding that the evidence shows a “consistent ‘gender gap’ over time and across countries.” According to the study, “it would be rare to find scholarship in which gender differences on the question of using military force are not present.”
The author, Ben Clements, cites “psychological differences between women and men, with the former laying greater value on group relationships and the use of cooperation and compromise, rather than aggressive means, to resolve disputes.”
It should be self-evident that the last thing this country needs at a time when the world has drawn closer to the possibility of nuclear war than it has for decades is a leader like Donald Trump, the apotheosis of aggressive, intemperate white manhood, who at the same time unreservedly seeks the admiration of Vladimir Putin and other authoritarians.
The difficult task facing Biden is finding the correct balance between restraint and authority, between harm avoidance and belligerent opposition. The situation in Ukraine has the potential to damage Biden’s already weakened political stature or to provide him with an opportunity to regain some of the support he had when first elected.
As Edsall concluse, “American wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have been costly for incumbent American presidents, and Biden faces an uphill struggle reversing that trend, even as the United States faces the most dangerous set of circumstances in its recent history.”
In “Democrats take aim at Big Oil in lead up to midterms,” Zack Budryk reports at The Hill that “Democrats are looking to pin the blame on oil companies for high gas prices, potentially signaling an election-year goal of refocusing scrutiny on an issue that has dogged President Biden’s approval ratings….Two different House committee chairs have called for oil CEOs to testify on disparities between falling oil prices and consumer gas prices. While three companies rebuffed House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), several others are set to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday….“While American families struggle to shoulder the burden of rising gas prices from Putin’s war on Ukraine, fossil fuel companies are not doing enough to relieve pain at the pump, instead lining their pockets with one hand while sitting on the other,” Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and investigations subcommittee Chairwoman Dianna DeGette (D-Colo.) said in a statement Tuesday….A bicameral bill sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep.Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) would tax major oil companies on windfall profits and provide rebates to Americans from the proceeds….“What we’ve seen as a result of the Russian invasion is a lot of speculation and cartel behavior that has dramatically raised oil and gas prices,” Whitehouse said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “Note that the costs did not change, there has not been a similar spike in cost to match the spike in price. … This is a price increase of choice on the part of the big oil companies.”
In other oil and midterm politics news, Kevin Liptak reports “Biden considering releasing 1 million barrels of oil per day from strategic reserves” at CNN Politics. As Liptak writes, “President Joe Biden is weighing releasing a record amount of oil from US reserves as high gas prices persist. A plan being considered involves releasing around 1 million barrels per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the coming months, a person familiar with the deliberations says….The announcement could come as soon as Thursday, when Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks from the White House on gas prices….Biden earlier in the month announced a coordinated release of oil from the reserves in conjunction with other nations. He also released around 60 million barrels in November, which he said at the time was the largest release from the reserve in US history.” However, “Tapping the reserve — the stockpile of 600 million barrels of crude oil stored in underground salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas — generally has only a limited effect on gas prices because of how much oil can be released at a time, but would act as a political sign that Biden is continuing to confront the problem.” Liptak also reports that the governors of CA, GA and ME are pushing economic relief packages for gas consumers.
“Could Trump blow the midterms for the GOP?” Ryan Lizza, Rachel Bade and Eugene Daniels mull over the possibilities at Politico Playbook. Among their comments: “One of the few ways Republicans could potentially blow this electoral equivalent of a layup is if former President DONALD TRUMP suddenly returns to center court….Trump is not toxic for his party everywhere. Republicans did better than expected in House races in 2020 because of the high MAGA turnout Trump generated. But he’s deadly for the GOP in the decisive suburbs at the heart of 2022 politics. Recall how Virginia’s GLENN YOUNGKIN treated Trump like Voldemort, concerned that even uttering his name would repel potential supporters in NoVa….There is a debate among Democrats about whether there is any strategic value in making Trump the center of the election. The moderate Dems barely clinging to their seats insist they have no interest in talking about him. The make-2022-about-Trump faction insists that the only way to recreate the Dem surges of 2018 and 2020 is to recreate the Trump-saturated political environment of those years when right-leaning suburbanites flocked to the Dems….But that debate may be moot….This week’s convergence of 2020 election subversion news and wild Trump comments is a harbinger of things to come. The Jan. 6 committee’s major reports, when released this year, will force every candidate to discuss Trump and 2020. And as the midterms approach, Trump, who has big bets placed on dozens of candidates up and down ballots across America, will be a central player in campaigns everywhere, whether either party likes it or not.”
Some cogent observations from “The Media Is Not Ready for the Midterms” by Molly Jong-Fast at The Atlantic: “The Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan, who has written extensively on this topic, has recommended the “truth sandwich”—the tactic by which a reporter properly quotes a lie by surrounding it with truth. Her advice for the media as the midterms approach? “The mainstream press (the reality-based press, to distinguish them from the right-wing press) should focus on what’s good for citizens and not the horse race aspect of the midterms, and they should call out lies clearly.” She added that she’d also like to see “more focus on voting rights and gerrymandering.”….When I reached out to Jon Allsop, the author of Columbia Journalism Review’s newsletter, his response was focused on the press not two-siding midterms stories: “Mainstream media should cover the midterms like they should cover any political story at the moment—by avoiding treating the two parties as equal and opposite ‘sides’ when they aren’t, especially when it comes to the preservation of U.S. democracy. I think that many reporters and editors have woken up to the Republican assault on democracy in recent years—and others didn’t need waking up in the first place—but good, urgent coverage of the threat still tends to get siloed away from the horse-race punditry, which still often seems to start from the premise that the track is even. We need to see more joined-up thinking here and that will require focus, which will be a particular challenge amid a news cycle dominated by war and with so many other important stories to cover.”….Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at NYU, told me that the media should “redraw the baseline for election-year conflict. Instead of just assuming it’s Democrats vs. Republicans in a familiar battle for control of government, start with a more urgent contest: those from both parties who still abide by the norms of American democracy vs. those who have demonstrated they do not—the Trump loyalists in the GOP, the Stop the Steal movement, the crazed conspiracy mongers, the Christian nationalists. Redirect the bulk of your reporting resources to this newer conflict, while keeping a careful eye on the ‘state of the race’ between the two parties.”….The idea that media should have a prodemocracy bias is a good one. It would help us focus on politicians straying from democratic norms, and highlight antidemocratic plays like disenfranchising voters.”
I was totally persuaded by William Galston and Elaine Kamarck’s 1989 study, The Politics of Evasion, when they wrote, “Too many Americans have come to see the party as inattentive to their economic interests, indifferent if not hostile to their moral sentiments, and inattentive in defense of their national security.” At the time, I too was tired of winning only one presidential election over two decades, and averaging 42 percent of the vote.
In their new report, The New Politics of Evasion, I share their analysis on many of the same problems that keep the Democratic Party “in the grip of myths that block progress toward victory.” Count me in as an ally when they write now that Democrats have taken “stances on fraught social issues … that repel a majority of Americans,” and have failed to defuse the oft-repeated contention that they want to “defund the police.” Count me in when they write that “social, cultural, and religious issues” are at least as real as “economic considerations” in determining how people vote. And they are right that imposing a “politics of identity” on Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans put Democrats out of touch with the priorities of these populations: ending the COVID crisis, providing affordable health care, and reopening schools, getting higher pay, and checking big corporate power.
I thank Galston and Kamarck for raising these issues. But unfortunately, you don’t get any further help from them on removing the blinders that keep you from seeing America.
“The Democrats are bleeding voters, particularly working class voters of all races. There are lots of reasons for this and I’ve written about some of them. One important throughline here is what we might call the common sense problem. As in, Democrats seem to have abandoned it in many areas.
This helps explain why there hasn’t been a ”Trump disenchantment dividend” for the Democrats as the former President’s popularity has fallen and for that matter a “nutty GOP politicians” dividend as various Republican pols do and say fairly crazy things. Voters just aren’t sure the Democrats are that well-grounded either.
Awhile ago, I tried to codify some of voters’ common sense views and values into ten short statements to illustrate how Democrats are losing the plot relative to the median voter. I’ll go through some of them here with the aid of some new data demonstrating how widely this common sense is embraced by ordinary Americans in contrast to their rejection by woke liberal activists and some politicians associated with the Democratic party.”
1. Equality of opportunity is a fundamental American principle; equality of outcome is not.Americans love equal opportunity! But lately more and more Democrats have embraced, implicitly or explicitly, the idea that we must equalize outcomes as well by emphasizing policies that promote “equity” as opposed to simple equality.
But Americans’ common sense is that opportunities should be made equal if they are not and then let people achieve as they will. There is no guarantee, nor should there be, that everyone will wind up in the same place.
The statement above was tested in the very liberal state of Massachusetts by pollster Louis DiNatale who was interested in my ten statements and added them to some of his polls. (I should note that my statements were simply tested as is, rather than reworded for survey purposes, but the results are still quite interesting I think). On this statement, DiNatale found that Massachusetts voters overall agreed with the statement by 61 percent to 16 percent. Republican voters agreed with the statement by 72-12, but so did independent voters by 65-13 and even Democrats by 56-17. White voters endorsed the statement by 63-12 but so did black voters by 56-17.
There just isn’t much of a constituency for equality of outcomes.
2. America is not perfect but it is good to be patriotic and proud of the country. Americans know their country isn’t perfect but they are proud of it anyway. And they don’t view it as fundamentally flawed and tarnished in the way so many progressive activists do. Rather they would echo Bill Clinton’s assertion that “there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America”
In the Massachusetts poll, the statement above drew lopsided 66-25 support, including 60 percent or more of all racial groups. This is consistent with data collected by the More in Common group. Their data separated out a group they termed “progressive activists” who were 8 percent of the population (but punch far above their weight in the Democratic party) and are described as “deeply concerned with issues concerning equity, fairness, and America’s direction today. They tend to be more secular, cosmopolitan, and highly engaged with social media”.
These progressive activists’ attitude toward their own country departs greatly from not just that of average Americans but from pretty much any other group you might care to name, including average nonwhite Americans. Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans, in fact, are highly likely to be proud to be Americans and highly likely to say they would still choose to live in America if they could choose to live anywhere in the world. In contrast, progressive activists are loathe to express these sentiments For example, just 34 percent of progressive activists say they are “proud to be American” compared to 62 percent of Asians, 70 percent of blacks, and 76 percent of Hispanics.
Patriotism is a fundamental American value that some parts of the Democratic party now seem reluctant to embrace. That’s a problem.
3. Discrimination and racism are bad but they are not the cause of all disparities in American society. It’s truly amazing the extent to which Democrats have become associated with the view that disparities in American society can only be attributed to oppression and discrimination, particularly when it comes to race. No other explanation need apply.
But this defies common sense and is not the way normal voters see it, including normal nonwhite voters. In the Massachusetts poll, the statement above generates overwhelming 72 to 20 percent agreement, with 63 percent of blacks, 70 percent of Asians and 65 percent of Hispanics concurring.
It may be easy to convince left-leaning academics and progressive activists that the mere existence of disparities is proof of discrimination and racism. But the American people are a harder sell.
4. No one is completely without bias but calling all white people racists who benefit from white privilege and American society a white supremacist society is not right or fair. The blanket characterization of all whites as racists because of “systemic racism” from which they benefit, regardless of their individual conduct, is a commonplace in Democratic activist circles, as is the idea that white supremacy is a fair characterization of contemporary American society. These dubious assertions, however, fail the common sense test among actual voters.
In the Massachusetts poll, the statement above, that these assertions are not right or fair, received 59-21 agreement overall, with even black voters and Democrats more than 2:1 in agreement. This is likely another case where the common understanding in Democratic activist circles is not the common sense of ordinary Americans or even of the groups these activists claim they are representing.
5, Racial achievement gaps are bad and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism and standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races. Democrats are becoming increasingly associated with an approach to schooling that seems anti-meritocratic, oriented away from standardized tests, gifted and talented programs and test-in elite schools, generally in the name of achieving racial equity. This has led them to a de-emphasis on high and universal academic achievement standards, an approach popular in progressive education circles but not among ordinary voters, including nonwhites.
In the Massachusetts poll, the above statement received 73-19 support, including 3:1 support among black voters. Progressive educators may think differently, but the common sense of voters is that the road to high academic achievement is through high standards and hard work, not the lowering of bars.
6. Police misconduct and brutality against people of any race is wrong and we need to reform police conduct and recruitment. More and better policing is needed for public safety and that cannot be provided by “defunding the police”. Nowhere is the departure of Democrats from the common sense of ordinary voters more evident than on the issue of crime and policing. Democrats are associated with a wave of progressive public prosecutors who seem quite hesitant about keeping criminals off the street, even as a spike in violent crimes like murders and carjacking sweeps the nation. This is twinned to a climate of tolerance and non-prosecution for lesser crimes that is degrading the quality of life in many cities under Democratic control.
The fact is that ordinary voters hate crime and want something done about it. They’re not particularly impressed by disembodied talk about the availability of guns that does not include enforcing the law against the criminals who actually use these guns. Nor do they respond well to assurances that progressive approaches to law enforcement that include less law enforcement will—eventually—work even as crime surges and the quality of life deteriorates.
Reflecting these views, voters in the Massachusetts poll endorsed the statement above by 63-26. This included 64-24 support among whites, but also 2:1 support among blacks, Hispanics and Asians. Ordinary voters don’t want the crime issue racialized, they simply want it stopped and they know you need cops to do it.
Like with the other statements discussed above, it could be argued that this statement is too easy to agree with and is just common sense. But if it’s just common sense, why do so many Democrats have trouble saying these things? The fact that they do explains a great deal about the Democrats’ current woes.
Ruy Teixeira, co-editor of the Liberal Patriot, argues in an email that “the cultural left has managed to associate the Democratic Party with a series of views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech and of course race and gender that are quite far from those of the median voter. That’s a success for the cultural left but the hard reality is that it’s an electoral liability for the Democratic Party.”
Teixeira went on: “The current Democratic brand suffers from multiple deficiencies that make it somewhere between uncompelling and toxic to wide swathes of American voters who might potentially be their allies.”
In Teixeira’s view, many Democrats have fallen victim to what he calls the “Fox News Fallacy.”
“This is the idea,” Teixeira explained, “that if Fox News 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.” For example, he wrote, “Take the issue of crime. Initially dismissed as simply an artifact of the Covid shutdown that was being vastly exaggerated by Fox News and the like for their nefarious purposes, it is now apparent that the spike in violent crime is quite real and that voters are very, very concerned about it.”
Edsall quotes a number of political scientists, who affirm Teixeira’s argument, including John Halpin, a co-editor of The Liberal Patriot, who adds,
The biggest problem ahead of 2022 midterms is that voters don’t think Biden and the Democrats are focused on the issues that matter most to them. If you look at the most recent Wall St. Journal poll, Democrats are currently suffering double-digit deficits compared to Republicans on perceptions about which party is best able to handle nearly all of the issues that matter most to voters: for example, rebuilding the economy (-13), getting inflation under control (-17), reducing crime (-20), and securing the border (-26). Democratic advantages on issues like education are also down considerably from just a few years ago.
Edsall also quotes Third Way Vice President Matt Bennett, who notes, “Of the 12 House Democratic freshmen who lost last cycle — on a ticket with a winning presidential candidate — all were seriously hurt by culture war attacks.”
Edsall shares the perspecive of one of the critics of this view, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, who observes,
party messaging largely remains dominated by reaction and fear rather than boldness. Those fears seem rooted in a panic that progressive values will be seen as less American — when the reality is that ideas like academic freedom, preventing censorship, and a belief in inquiry, including science, are the core beliefs of this nation. It’s past time for President Biden and other leaders of the Democratic Party to approve this message….The white working class is a much more diverse group than commentators from all sides tend to credit….I think the greatest cause of resentment is lack of educational and related career opportunities that have shut out the working class of all races. The Democrats are philosophically wired to expand these opportunities — through free community college and trade school, for example — yet have failed to make these a priority, ensuring a continued sense that Dems are now the party of self-enlightened degree holders looking down on them. That cycle can and must be broken.
Then there’s media critic Dan Froomkin, who calls ‘critical race theory’ a “phony issue….that serves as a stalking horse for inciting white grievance.” Froomkin adds, “I have been horrified at how credulously many political reporters have written about Republican lies — and how impressed they were at their alleged (but entirely unproven) effectiveness. They wrote about it as if it were a real problem, rather than an obvious, bad-faith attempt to manufacture white panic.”
A bright young Democratic left activist I know agrees, and argues that “the ‘culture wars are a distraction from the more important economic wars,” which is true. But that doesn’t make the problem go away.
As Edsall concludes, “What we can be sure of is that the Democrats can’t go on forever with this much of a gulf between what the majority of progressive party activists think the party should stand for and what the majority of Americans think it should.”
I am not so sure that support is as reliable as most Democrats assume. I see signs of erosion, particularly among black working class voters. I discuss and analyze the relevant data in my new post at The Liberal Patriot.
“It has been widely noted that the Hispanic vote was relatively poor for the Democrats in 2020. But that wasn’t the Democrats’ only disappointment among nonwhite voters. Democratic margins among black voters also declined by 7 points, though not by nearly as much as among Hispanics (16 points, Catalist two party vote). Moreover, while absolute turnout for black voters was up, as it was for almost all groups in a very high turnout election, turnout did not go up as much for black voters as for other groups, so relative turnout fell…..
This is a bit of a puzzle. Trump was widely and correctly viewed as a racist, a perception that was turbocharged by the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer. And the Democratic party and Biden were certainly all in on BLM, so you could hardly ask for an election where the profile of the racial justice issue was any higher. And yet….the expected surge in black support and turnout for Democrats failed to appear.
One possibility is that Democrats overestimated the salience of the racial justice issue, perhaps especially as it unfolded around the BLM movement. Black voters, particularly working class voters, do after all have other concerns rooted in material, kitchen-table concerns….
[B]lack voters are not a monolith and cannot be assumed to belong to the Democrats simply on the basis of racial justice advocacy and rhetoric. In the end, the loyalty of black voters depends crucially on the ability of the Democrats to provide material improvements in their lives, particularly for those in working class and poor communities.
This helps explain why the black shift toward Trump in 2020 wound up being heavily concentrated among black working class (noncollege) voters. A forthcoming States of Change detailed re-analysis of 2020 election data not only shows this pattern nationally but also indicates that black margin shifts toward Trump in key states from Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to Florida, Georgia and Nevada were driven entirely or overwhelmingly by black working class voters.
The one silver lining for Democrats on an otherwise stormy political horizon may be the map of states with competitive Senate races this fall.
All of the Senate contests both sides consider the most competitive will be in states that Joe Biden won in 2020, albeit in most cases narrowly.
That geography could provide a critical boost for beleaguered Democrats in an era when both parties are finding it more difficult to win Senate races in states that usually vote the other way for president. That dynamic has grown so powerful that each party now holds just three of the 50 Senate seats in the 25 states that voted against their presidential candidates in the 2020 election.
None of the three Democratic senators in states that then-President Donald Trump won in 2020 is on the ballot this fall, which leaves the battlefield centered overwhelmingly on terrain Biden captured. But Biden’s eroding job approval numbers could undermine that potential geographic advantage. Each side has won very few 21st-century Senate races, either with incumbents or for open seats, in states where the approval rating is lagging for a president of its party.
Brownstein quotes Democratic pollster Celionda Lake, who worked for presidential candidate Biden in 2020: “It’s not just a referendum on Biden. In Senate races you have the resources to make it a real choice; it doesn’t have to be a derivative choice of an affirmation of the president or not.”
Bronwnstein adds, “Unless Biden can get a second wind before November, especially in states that he won, the Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate will turn on whether she’s right.” He notes that ticket-splitting is more of a rarity in recent elections: “Just 1 in 6 people split their votes between presidential and Senate races in the 1990s, according to [Alan I.] Abramowitz’s calculations. The number of split-ticket voters, though oscillating somewhat from election to election, has fallen even further during presidential contests in this century, frequently dropping to only about 1 in 10.” Further,
The numbers were even more dramatic after 2020: Republicans now hold 94% of the seats in the states that voted for Trump two times. (That reflects their hold of 47 of the 50 Senate seats in the 25 states he carried in 2020, since all of them also voted for him in 2016.) Twenty states voted against Trump both times: Democrats now control 98% of their Senate seats — all but the one held by Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
The remaining five states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — flipped from supporting Trump in 2016 to backing Biden in 2020. Democrats now hold eight of their 10 Senate seats.
Bronwstein argues that the GOP’s “chances are best against Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, a state Trump lost only narrowly each time, but Republicans also believe they can threaten New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan and even Colorado’s Michael Bennet if a big enough red wave develops.”
None of the three Democratic senators in states Trump won in 2020 “Montana’s Jon Tester, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin — is up for reelection this fall. All might have faced very difficult odds in this political environment.” But Republicans are investing heavily in winning back seats held by Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly (AZ) and Raphael Warnock (GA), both of whom are running for a six-year term. Worse,
The clear message of midterm elections in this century is that Biden’s approval rating will cast a huge shadow over the contests in all three of these categories. In 2018, for instance, Republicans lost all 10 of the Senate races in states where Trump’s approval rating registered at 48% or below, according to the exit polls conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of media organizations including CNN.
Similarly, in the 2014 midterm elections, Democrats lost 14 of the 15 Senate races in states where Obama’s approval rating stood at 42% or less, according to the exit polls. In 2010, Democrats likewise lost 13 of the 15 where Obama stood at 47% or less. In 2006, Republicans lost 19 of the 20 Senate races in states where President George W. Bush’s job approval stood at 45% or less.
Those are scary precedents for Democrats, because Biden’s approval ratings are lagging in the key states on the Senate map. Recent public polls show his job approval at 43% in Wisconsin and between 35% and 40% in Georgia, New Hampshire and Florida. On a slightly different metric, only 3 in 10 described his performance as excellent or good in a recent Pennsylvania poll.
Brownstein notes “occasional exceptions, such as Collins’ victory in 2020 in a state Biden won comfortably, or the 2018 victories of Democratic Sens. Manchin, Tester and Brown in states where Trump’s approval rating in the exit polls exceeded 50%.” Also, “A January Quinnipiac poll in Georgia, for instance, put Warnock’s approval rating there 11 percentage points higher than the President’s — and a striking 15 points better with independents.”
Democrats shouldn’t expect much midterm benefit from Trump’s troubles, Brownstein believes. But Republicans have “flawed candidates who are stuck in vicious expensive primaries that will drain their resources and leave their eventual nominee badly out of step with the voters that decide the general election in their states,” as David Bergstein, communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, says. Brownstein calls this is “a real risk for the GOP particularly in Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.”
I was very closely watching the saga of OMB’s disastrous effort to freeze funding for a vast number of federal programs, and wrote about why it was actually revoked at New York.
This week the Trump administration set off chaos nationwide when it temporarily “paused” all federal grants and loans pending a review of which programs comply with Donald Trump’s policy edicts. The order came down in an unexpected memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget on Monday.
Now OMB has rescinded the memo without comment just as suddenly, less than a day after its implementation was halted by a federal judge. Adding to the pervasive confusion, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately insisted on Wednesday that the funding freeze was still on because Trump’s executive orders on DEI and other prohibited policies remained in place. But there’s no way this actually gets implemented without someone, somewhere, identifying exactly what’s being frozen. So for the moment, it’s safe to say the funding freeze is off.
Why did Team Trump back off this particular initiative so quickly? It’s easy to say the administration was responding to D.C. district judge Loren AliKhan’s injunction halting the freeze. But then again, the administration (and particularly OMB director nominee Russell Vought) has been spoiling for a court fight over the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act that the proposed freeze so obviously violated. Surely something else was wrong with the freeze, aside from the incredible degree of chaos associated with its rollout, requiring multiple clarifications of which agencies and programs it affected (which may have been a feature rather than a bug to the initiative’s government-hating designers). According to the New York Times, the original OMB memo, despite its unprecedented nature and sweeping scope, wasn’t even vetted by senior White House officials like alleged policy overlord Stephen Miller.
Democrats have been quick to claim that they helped generate a public backlash to the funding freeze that forced the administration to reverse direction, as Punchbowl News explained even before the OMB memo was rescinded:
“A Monday night memo from the Office of Management and Budget ordering a freeze in federal grant and loan programs sent congressional Republicans scrambling and helped Democrats rally behind a clear anti-Trump message. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Trump as ‘lawless, destructive, cruel.’
“D.C. senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, warned that thousands of federal programs could be impacted, including veterans, law enforcement and firefighters, suicide hotlines, military aid to foreign allies, and more …
“Duringa Senate Democratic Caucus lunch on Tuesday, Schumer urged his colleagues to make the freeze “relatable” to their constituents back home, a clear play for the messaging upper hand. Schumer also plans on doing several local TV interviews today.”
In other words, the funding freeze looks like a clear misstep for an administration and a Republican Party that were walking very tall after the 47th president’s first week in office, giving Democrats a rare perceived “win.” More broadly, it suggests that once the real-life implications of Trump’s agenda (including his assaults on federal spending and the “deep state”) are understood, his public support is going to drop like Wile E. Coyote with an anvil in his paws. If that doesn’t bother Trump or his disruptive sidekick, Elon Musk, it could bother some of the GOP members of Congress expected to implement the legislative elements of the MAGA to-do list for 2025.
It’s far too early, however, to imagine that the chaos machine humming along at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will fall silent even for a moment. OMB could very well issue a new funding-freeze memo the minute the injunction stopping the original one expires next week. If that doesn’t happen, there could be new presidential executive orders (like the ones that suspended certain foreign-aid programs and energy subsidies) and, eventually, congressional legislation. Democrats and Trump-skeptical Republicans will need to stay on their toes to keep up with this administration’s schemes and its willingness to shatter norms.
It’s true, nonetheless, that the electorate that lifted Trump to the White House for the second time almost surely wasn’t voting to sharply cut, if not terminate, the host of popular federal programs that appeared to be under the gun when OMB issued its funding freeze memo. Sooner or later the malice and the fiscal math that led to this and other efforts to destroy big areas of domestic governance will become hard to deny and impossible to rescind.
