The following article by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot: 

It’s easy to underestimate how much the Democratic Party has changed in this century. In particular, you can miss how white liberals have changed from being a voice in the choir to the choir director. Cast your mind back to the beginning of the century. At that point, a mere 28 percent of Democrats described themselves as liberal and two thirds were either moderate or conservative.

Fast forward to today and the liberal share has more than doubled to 59 percent while the moderate/conservative share has declined drastically. It’s the liberals’ party now. And especially, it’s the whiteliberals’ party now.

White Democrats even at the beginning of this century were already disproportionately liberal—that is, more likely to be liberal than nonwhite Democrats. That disproportion has grown sharply over the course of the century. A Gallup analysis from 2023 found that over several decades, the liberal share among white Democrats had gone up 37 points, compared to 17 points among black Democrats and 18 points among Hispanic Democrats.

These trends have combined to radically change the ideological composition of white Democrats. In 2000, white Democrats who were moderate or conservative outnumbered white liberal Democrats by about 2:1. Today that relationship has been reversed. White liberal Democrats now outnumber moderate/conservative white Democrats by about 2:1.

That matters. From being merely a voice, albeit an important one, in the Democratic choir, white liberals are now directing the choir and imposing their culture, preferences, and priorities on the party as a whole. For example, in the recent Third Way survey of likely 2028 Democratic primary voters, white liberals (43 percent) outnumber all nonwhites (35 percent) who anyway are ideologically split in a way white Democrats tend not to be (66 percent of that group say they’re liberal). Indeed, black voters in the survey are split down the middle between liberal and moderate/conservative, with the latter group actually being slightly larger.

That gives white liberals enormous leverage within the party. Any Democrat seeking to build their support in the party has to reckon with this enormous bloc of Democrats, whose influence is enhanced beyond their considerable numbers by their dominance of the party’s infrastructure, allied NGOs and advocacy groups, and left-leaning media, foundations, and academia. Not to mention the money—ambitious Democrats need money and white liberals are a reliable source of cash for politicians who press the right buttons.

This clarifies why it is so difficult for Democratic politicians to carve out a truly moderate path. Back in the day, such a politician could balance the demands of white liberals with the considerable and countervailing tug from white moderates and conservatives. No more. White liberals are in the driver’s seat and Democratic politicians have calibrated their appeals accordingly.

The pull in that direction is enhanced by the fact that white conservative Democrats have practically disappeared and even white moderate Democrats are not particularly moderate by the standards of the country as a whole. In the Third Way survey, moderate white Democrats, while not as enthusiastically as white liberals, still give strong support to Medicare for All that would eliminate private health insurance, a Green New Deal that would rapidly eliminate fossil fuels, canceling student debt and free college, and an annual nationwide wealth tax on billionaires. Not so moderate!

So it is not irrational for ambitious Democratic politicians to put a finger on the scales for an agenda that puts white liberals in their happy place. Quite the contrary.

Read more…

Some insights from “Killing Kids in Iran While Kids in the U.S. Go Hungry” by Sarah Lazare at The American Prospect and Workday Magazine:

“…On the first day of the war, the United States bombed an elementary school in Minab, in southern Iran, killing 168 people, 110 of them children. The U.S.-Israel coalition went on to heavily bomb residential areas in Iran and Lebanon, and strike oil depots around Tehran, filling the air with thick, black smoke that blots out the sun and unleashes oily, toxic rain…The Pentagon estimates that the war costs $1 billion a day, according to Atlantic journalist Nancy Youssef, who cites “a congressional official.” For that amount, the United States instead could be paying the daily cost of food stamps for the 41 million people who need them, or the daily costs of Medicaid for the 16 million people who are expected to lose their coverage due to recent cuts, according to Alliyah Lusuegro and Lindsay Koshgarian of the National Priorities Project, an organization that researches federal budgets.

…Six in 10 people in the U.S. are against the airstrikes, according to a CNN pollreleased March 2. A whopping 82 percent of Democrats disapprove, found the poll, which mirrors the findings of another poll from Reuters/Ipsos. That survey determined just 7 percent of Democrats support the war, and just 27 percent of all adults…

Working-class Americans are already feeling the strain in their bank accounts. Since the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, gas prices have jumped 17 percent, an impact that—due to the realities of how our cities are designed—disproportionately harms working people. The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has also blocked a significant chunk of the world’s fertilizer, which raises input costs for food producers and will almost certainly lead to higher food prices.

Food insecurity increased in 2025, climbing to 16 percent in November of that year, according to the Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability at Purdue University. One in 7 households in the U.S. are “struggling to put food on the table,” Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, warned in February. “For the 47.9 million people, including 14.1 million children, who live in these households, food insecurity is not an abstract concept. It is a daily reality, and it has only gotten worse as the cost of food has continued to climb.”

Read more here.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The Democrats are set for a good—perhaps very good—2026 election. They seem almost certain to take back the House and the Senate, while still improbable, is within reach. But once they stop congratulating themselves for taking advantage of thermostatic reaction against a floundering Trump presidency, they’ll face a fresh and more daunting challenge: who to nominate for their 2028 presidential candidate?

That nominee is crucial for two reasons. Most obviously, Democrats should want a candidate who will maximize their chances of taking back the presidency. Successfully sorting through the potential nominees to find that candidate is not a given. On a deeper level, parties typically rebrand themselves after a period of coalitional attrition through a presidential nominee who newly defines their image (think Clinton, Obama). The 2028 nominee should ideally provide that new template for the national party.

That’s the assignment. The Democratic presidential primary electorate will be the ones carrying it out (or not). At this point, what can we say about those voters and what they might be inclined to do? Clearly it’s early and any poll that attempts to survey that electorate cannot precisely predict what it will look like in 2028. That said, Third Way has just released a treasure trove of data (topline, memo, presentation, crosstabs) on these voters that illuminates the playing field aspiring Democratic candidates will have to negotiate. Here are some of the most interesting findings.

(1) The Democratic presidential primary electorate is dominated by women (61 percent), whites (65 percent), and non-college voters (60 percent). In addition, a clear majority (55 percent) are over the age of 55; just 12 percent are under 30.

(2) In terms of ideology, the Democratic primary electorate skews liberal to left as one would expect. The survey asks about ideology in two different ways:

• socialist/progressive/liberal/moderate/conservative
• very liberal/somewhat liberal/moderate/somewhat conservative/very conservative.

In the first categorization, socialist (6 percent) + progressive (11 percent) + liberal (43 percent) are 60 percent of the sample; in the second categorization very liberal and somewhat liberal are both around 31 percent making liberals 62 percent of primary voters when categorized in that way. Moderates in both categorizations are 34 percent of the sample while conservatives are a trace presence.

Naturally, liberals are to the left of moderates on most questions on the survey but this difference is attenuated if you use the first categorization, which subtracts out the socialists and progressives, who are very left, from the liberal category. Moderates are also relatively close to those who are somewhat liberal in the second categorization while those who say they are very liberal (which includes nearly all the socialists and progressives) are quite far to the left of both. Of course, one should remember that, in turn, moderates who vote in Democratic presidential primaries are quite far to the left of moderates in the overall electorate.

(3) Some common-sense ideas that candidates could include in their platforms generate almost unanimous support for candidates who back them. These include: “Building on the Affordable Care Act to cap health care costs for everyone, making it easier to choose your own doctor, stopping hospital price gouging, and streamlining medical bills” (96 percent overall support); “Providing more low-cost vocational training and apprenticeship opportunities, so people can get good-paying jobs in growing fields without a four-year college degree” (95 percent); “Investing in a range of energy sources, including clean energy, to meet our rising energy demand and bring down our bills” (95 percent)”; and “Overhaul ICE to focus only on dangerous criminals, not families who have lived in the U.S. for years and are contributing to their communities” (93 percent). Such proposals not only have overwhelming support within the Democratic primary electorate, they should also be salable to independents, swing voters, and some disaffected Republicans.

Read more…

From “CNN Data Guru Sees Warning Signs for GOP After ‘Dumpster Fire’” by Julia Owned at The Daily Beast:

CNN’s data guru said the closely watched primaries in Texas yielded a “tremendous” turnout for one party and a “dumpster fire” for another.

Harry Enten said 2.3 million Democratic voters in Texas came out for the hotly contested Senate primary between State Rep. James Talarico and House Rep. Jasmine Crockett, marking the highest-ever turnout at more than twice the average this century, with only 92 percent of the estimated vote in so far.

Ben Kamisar writes in “Poll: Majority of voters disapprove of how Trump has handled Iran” at NBC News: “A majority of registered voters disapprove of how President Donald Trump is handling the situation in Iran and believe the U.S. shouldn’t have taken military action against the country, according to a new NBC News poll…Though support for the White House is mostly polarized along party lines, a small but notable slice of Republicans is unhappy with the decision to launch a war in the Middle East. There was also a significant split between younger and older voters in the early days of the attacks…Fifty-four percent of voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran, compared with 41% who approve and 5% who say they either don’t have an opinion or aren’t sure. A similar share, 52%, say the U.S. should not have taken the military action, while 41% say it should have and 7% say they aren’t sure…The poll is an initial snapshot of how American voters are digesting a major new military endeavor launched by a president who campaigned against past “endless wars” when he sought to return to the White House in 2024…“This is a lower level of support than in most of the major military action that we’ve seen,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, who conducted the poll with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates…The results show clear, if expected, partisan polarization over the issue: An overwhelming majority of Democrats, 89%, say the U.S. shouldn’t have struck Iran. Among independents, 58% agree…The new NBC News poll also found a deep divide over the Iran war by age, with younger voters far more sour on the strikes than older voters…Two-thirds of voters under 35 say the U.S. shouldn’t have struck Iran, a sentiment shared by 53% of those ages 35 to 49. A slim majority, 52%, of those 50 to 64 support the strikes, while those 65 and older are split…There is also an educational divide in the survey — an increasingly common feature of polarized American politics. Voters without college degrees are about evenly split over the strikes, while those with bachelor’s or postgraduate degrees overwhelmingly believe the U.S. shouldn’t have struck Iran.”

A new CNN poll found that “59% of Americans disapprove of Iran strikes and most think a long-term conflict is likely,” as Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy write at CNN Politics: “Nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of the US decision to take military action in Iran, as most say a long-term military conflict between the two nations is likely, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS…The poll, fielded shortly after US and Israeli attacks launched the war with Iran, finds majorities express doubts about President Donald Trump’s handling of the situation. Most say they lack trust in Trump to make the right decisions about US use of force in Iran, with 60% saying they do not think he has a clear plan for handling the situation and 62% saying he should get congressional approval for any further military action…Just over a quarter (27%) feel that the US made enough of an effort at diplomacy with Iran before using military force, with 39% saying the US did not try hard enough at diplomacy first and 33% unsure…The poll was conducted Saturday and Sunday, after news reports that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, had died in the attacks and largely before reports emerged of the deaths of six US troops…Overall, 59% of Americans disapprove of the initial decision to strike Iran, with 41% approving. Strong disapproval (31%) roughly doubles strong approval (16%). A marginally higher share (44%) say they favor the US trying to overthrow the Iranian government, with 56% opposed to that…Just 12%, though, would favor sending US ground troops into Iran, while 60% would oppose it and 28% are unsure…Most, 54%, say Iran will become more of a threat to the US as a result of this military action, with just 28% saying the strikes will make Iran less of a threat.”

In “Senate Republicans vote down legislation to halt Iran war in Congress’ first vote on the conflict,” Stephen Groves. Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick write at Associated Press: “Senate Republicans voted down an effort Wednesday to halt President Donald Trump’s war against Iran, demonstrating early support for a conflict that has rapidly spread across the Middle East with no clear U.S. exit strategy…The legislation, known as a war powers resolution, failed on a 47-53 vote tally. The vote fell mostly along party lines, though Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky voted in favor and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against…The war powers resolution gave lawmakers an opportunity to demand congressional approval before any further attacks are carried out. The vote forced them to take a stand on a war shaping the fate of U.S. military members, countless other lives and the future of the region…“Today every senator — every single one — will pick a side,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said before the vote. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”…Six U.S. military members were killed over the weekend in a drone strike in Kuwait…Trump has also not ruled out deploying U.S. ground troops. He has said he is hoping to end the bombing campaign within a few weeks, but his goals for the war have shifted from regime change to stopping Iran from developing nuclear capabilities to crippling its navy and missile programs…“We should be careful about opening a door into chaos in the Middle East when we cannot see the other side of it,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said in a solemn floor speech after the vote concluded…“Nobody gets to hide and give the president an easy pass or an end-run around the Constitution,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, the Virginia Democrat leading the war powers resolution.” In the House of Representatives, several members had something to say about the war. “One of them was Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo. “I learned when I was fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, that when elites in Washington bang the war drums, pound their chest, talk about the costs of war and act tough, they’re not talking about them doing it, they’re not talking about their kids,” Crow said. “They’re talking about working class kids like us.”

In Texas, State Rep. James Talarico won the marquee Democratic primary contest for the nomination to run for U.S. Senate against  the Republican nominee, who will be designated in a run-off election.  Democrats have reason to hope that their party will be unified for the midterm elections. Kayla Guo reports at The Texas Tribune, via click2houston.com, that Talarico’s opponent in the primary election, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett “said she had called Talarico to congratulate him on winning the nomination, and she suggested she would remain involved to boost the party in November. “Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person,” Crockett said in her statement. “This is about the future of all 30 million Texans and getting America back on track. With the primary behind us, Democrats must rally around our nominees and win. I’m committed to doing my part and will continue working to elect Democrats up and down the ballot.” Guo adds, “A Democrat has not won a U.S. Senate seat in Texas since 1988. And while Texas is not on national Democrats’ list of targets to retake the Senate, party leaders in the state see a prime opportunity this year to finally flip Texas, hoping that backlash to the Trump administration, a brutal Senate primary on the Republican side and the possibility of facing hard-right, scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton will all set the stage for an upset…The contest at the top of the Democratic ticket, meanwhile, drove over 1.5 million primary voters to the polls over the 11-day early voting period, more than doubling early turnout during the last midterm primary election in 2022, according to VoteHub.” A couple of lessons from the contest: 1. Money is still important. Talarico way outspent Crockett. Tasha Telaperas reports at Axios that Talarico’s campaign spent 7.6 million in advertising, plus he befitted by a couple million spent by PACs, compared to $845K spent by Crockett for TX. 2. Court the Latino vote in TX, as did Talarico, who “formed an alliance with Bobby Pulido, a Tejano music star,” who also won his own Democratic primary for TX-15. Talarico’s brand of Christianity, which called out cruel treatment of immigrants as unchristian, probably also helped him with Latinos and liberals. No doubt some voters liked Crockett, but believed Talarico’s moderate liberal tone had a better chance to win against the Republican nominee this year. Although Crockett didn’t win the primary, she could still become America’s most influential Democrat in the 2026 election, if she galvanizes November turnout in support of Talarico in Dallas and Houston — and especially if  Democrats win majority control of the U.S. Senate as a result.

Some insights from “Cornyn, Paxton in ugly runoff: 5 takeaways from Texas, North Carolina primaries” by Caroline Vakill and Julia Mueller at The Hill:

Texas Republicans are bracing for an ugly Senate runoff, while Democrats wait to see the outcome of its contest for the upper chamber, with primary season in full swing.

Voters in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas headed to the polls Tuesday to kick start the 2026 midterm cycle. Texas held competitive primaries for Senate, state attorney general and a number of House districts, which included several awkward Democratic matchups.

The Tar Heel State, meanwhile, weighed in on the primaries to succeed retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in addition to a heated House race between an establishment Democrat and younger progressive challenger…Republican runoffs were also projected in Texas’s 9^th, 23rd and 35^th Congressional Districts.

Vakil and Mueller note further:

In Texas, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) are projected to head into a May 26 runoff. Cornyn, Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) vied for the GOP nod, but no candidate was able to win more than half the vote outright to avoid a runoff on Tuesday…Republicans are already bracing for an ugly multi-month brawl, with tens of millions of dollars already spent in the GOP primary thus far…  “I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years,” Cornyn told supporters at his watch party, according to CBS Austin.

Meanwhile, the Senate Democratic primary between Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and state Rep. James Talarico had not been called as of 1:15 a.m. EST Wednesday. Talarico had more than 50 percent with about over 75 percent of the votes reported, according to Decision Desk HQ.

Vakil and Mueller add:

Litigation in Dallas County over extended voting on Tuesday roiled the Democratic contest, raising questions about whether a final tally would emerge on Election Day…The Texas Supreme Court’s decision to temporarily pause a lower court’s ruling allowing an extension of voting hours in Dallas County has not only stirred the Senate Democratic primary, but is also impacting a prominet House contest for the party…Dallas County has separate polling locations for both political parties, and confusion over this practice sparked calls from Democrats for the country to extend voting hours for Texans seeking to cast their vote at the correct polling location…A Texas judge allowed voting to be extended two more hours in the county before The Lone Star State’s highest court temporarily halted that decision, asking that any votes cast after 8 p.m. ET be separated from the final tally.

But it wasn’t all abut Texas, as Vakil and Mueller add:

The picture was less murky in North Carolina, where former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) and former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley were projected to win their respective primaries for Senate early Tuesday. The Tar Heel State is seen as a key pickup opportunity for Democrats given Tillis’s retirement.

Further,

Democratic turnout surged in Texas and North Carolina, adding to signs of the party’s midterm momentum…In Texas, early turnout in the Democratic primary outpaced Republicans and exceeded totals from recent cycles, energized by the marquee Senate race…  Roughly 1.4 million voters cast ballots in the Democratic primary during early voting, which ended Friday, according to unofficial data from the Texas secretary of state’s office. Across the aisle, roughly 1.2 million voted early in the GOP election…In 2018, when Democrats came within just a couple points of flipping another Senate seat, roughly 1.1 million turned out across early and Election Day voting in the party’s primary, compared to 1.5 million in that year’s Republican contest.

More here.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Can Democrats be effective populists? They’d certainly like to believe so. They’d particularly like to believe that if they turn up the volume high enough on economic populism, they can neutralize Trumpian populism and direct anger at the true elites who preside over a broken system. For example, Texas Democratic Senatorial candidate, James Talarico, generally seen as the Democrats’ best shot for flipping that state’s Republican-held Senate seat, has this pitch:

Similar pitches are being made by many Democratic candidates and office-holders, including Graham Platner of Maine and the party’s shining new star, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. What they have in common is a complete lack of interest in addressing what Talarico refers to as “the culture wars.” The real issues are economic; the culture stuff isn’t important (“a smokescreen”) and not negotiable anyway.

Can the Democrats get away with this? Can an economics-only populism really succeed in a populist era where anger at elites is so widespread and so many voters see the system as completely broken?

The answer is no. This narrowly-defined populism is doomed to fail.

An aggressive economic populist pitch by itself is not a get-out-of-jail free card for a party whose brand among working-class voters has been profoundly damaged. It’s just a comforting myth for Democrats who don’t want to make hard choices.

Working-class voters are acutely aware that the professional-dominated educated upper middle class who occupy positions of administrative and cultural power is overwhelmingly Democratic. For the working class, the professional upper middle class may not be the super-rich but they are elites just the same. These voters harbor deep resentment toward the cultural gatekeepers who they feel are telling them how to live their lives, even what to think and say, and incidentally are living a great deal more comfortably than they are.

This is a bitter pill for most Democratic elites to swallow. In today’s America, they are the “Establishment” even if in their imaginations they are sticking it to the “Man” and fighting nobly for social justice. The failure to understand that they themselves are targets of populist anger is a central reason their populist pitch fails—and will fail—to get traction among the working class. Call it the “old wine in new bottles” problem—these voters hear the economic populist words but they sense that behind them is the same old Democratic Party with the same old elites and the same old cultural priorities.

It therefore follows that Democrats’ attempts to pose as populists will fail to convince without a strong dose of cultural populism. Unless Democrats are willing to align with populist sentiment on cultural issues and therefore confront their own elites and associated NGOs and institutions, working-class voters will not take them seriously as populists, viewing them merely as an alternative set of elites.

And an alternative set of elites who do a very poor job governing where they have the most power. Here again Democrats’ purely economic populism falls short. Deep blue states and cities are notoriously reluctant to confront the NGO-activist-industrial complex and the congeries of interest groups, including public sector unions, who drive up costs and make it near-impossible to govern efficiently and preserve social order. For ordinary voters, this amounts to siding with the Democrats’ own elites against the people.

No wonder that even with the thermostatic reaction against Trump and his administration’s excesses and failures, Democrats as a party are still not deriving commensurate benefits. As my Liberal Patriot colleague Michael Baharaeen notes:

As Baharaeen also notes, the one group that has moved most meaningfully to the left over the period is white college graduates (by 12 points). This group of course heavily populates the very elites that “populist” Democrats are so reluctant to confront.

Democrats will eventually have to take on cultural populism as part of their brand or just give up on ever being a working-class party again. Simple economic populism is hopelessly inadequate. The voters they need to reach overwhelmingly believe illegal immigration is wrong and should be deterred and penalized not indulged. They believe crimes should be punished, public safety is sacrosanct, and police and policing are vital necessities. They believe, with Martin Luther King, that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” and therefore oppose discrimination on the basis of race no matter who benefits from that discrimination. They believe biological sex is real, spaces limited to biological women in areas like sports and prisons should be preserved, and medical treatments like drugs and surgery are serious interventions that should not be available simply on the basis of declared “gender identity,” especially for children.

So where are the Democrats’ cultural populists who are willing to robustly defend these sentiments? Essentially non-existent. That bodes poorly for the party’s long term prospects and likely ensures a long life for right populism to the country’s detriment.

• Boston Review is holding a forum on”How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism,” which features contributions by Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbaugh, along with:
• Cori Bush
• Amanda Litman
• Matthew Yglesias
• G. Elliott Morris
• Julia Serano
• Eric Rauchway
• Suzanne Mettler & Trevor E. Brown
• Thomas Ferguson
• Timothy Shenk
• Jared Abbott & Milan Loewer
• Jenifer Fernandez Ancona
• Lily Geismer
• Danielle Wiggins
• William A. Galston
• Henry Burke

Here’s a teaser from William A. Galston’s response: “I am sympathetic to Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach’s argument that the term “moderation” conceals more than it reveals and threatens to mislead party reformers who seek to strengthen the Democratic Party as a bulwark against autocracy. I fear, however, that much of their argument is open to the same criticism.The authors lead off by intimating that Kamala Harris might have won with a less moderate campaign. Maybe so, but they offer no evidence. In reality, she lost for several reasons: because she was the successor to an unpopular president from whom she did nothing to separate herself; because the issue of reproductive rights, on which she bet heavily, receded in importance compared to the 2022 midterm elections; because the Biden administration was seen (rightly, in my view) as having botched the two issues—inflation and immigration—whose salience rose the most relative to 2020; because her campaign did not even try to counter Trump’s “Kamala is for they/them” attack ad that served as effective synecdoche for a host of unpopular progressive stances on cultural issues; because Trump was seen as a stronger leader more likely to bring needed change and better equipped to handle a crisis; and finally, because messaging about democracy being “at risk” did not work the way her campaign expected. Some 73 percent of voters regarded democracy as “threatened,” but Trump beat Harris by 50 to 48 in this group. He did even better among the 4 in 10 voters who saw democracy as “very threatened,” carrying them by 52 to 47.

Could Harris have overcome the multiple handicaps with which she began? The most obvious road not taken was a bold step to distinguish herself from the president she served. Those with long memories will recall that after Vice President Hubert Humphrey broke with President Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam, he nearly erased the fifteen-point edge that Richard Nixon enjoyed in late September of 1968 and almost caught him at the finish line. Would a similar break—on immigration, say—have helped Harris? We will never know…”

• More here.

In “Trump’s Tariffs Weren’t Really About Trade Policy,” Harold Meyerson writes at The American Prospect:

Now that the Supreme Court has relegated Donald Trump’s tariffs to the history books, their obituaries need to make clear how utterly out of sync with any previous tariffs they actually were. Nothing in their raisons d’être or implementation bore any resemblance to any previous American tariffs.

(On Saturday, Trump levied 15 percent tariffs on goods from all nations under a different law, but that law stipulates that the tariffs are only good for 150 days unless Congress votes to extend them—a vote that would be tantamount to electoral suicide for many Republicans up for re-election in November.)

To begin, the tariffs of the 19th century, for which Trump has been volubly nostalgic, were enacted to protect America’s fledgling new industries, centered in Northern states, from competition from the more developed industries of Britain and Europe. By contrast, as early as the 1820s, leaders of the almost entirely agricultural American South, John C. Calhoun most particularly, railed against tariffs that had been enacted to give breathing space and growing room to these nascent industries (the “tariff of abominations,” Calhoun termed it). The Southern slave plantation owners whom Calhoun represented loathed having to pay more for the European-made luxury goods they enjoyed; the Southern industrialists—well, there were no Southern industrialists. But the owners of the New England clothing and iron mills, and later in the century the owners of the massive steel mills, welcomed tariffs that enabled them to grow their domestic markets free (or at least freer) from British competitors.

Trump’s innovation in tariff-ology is that the domestic industries he’s most insistent on protecting aren’t fledgling or new; they’re dying or dead. Far from being threatened by foreign competition, they’re industries that rival nations either are scaling back or have abandoned altogether. So Trump attempts to resurrect coal, while blocking the further development of wind and solar power. He promotes fossil-fueled cars and cripples the domestic sale and construction of EVs, enabling our chief economic competitor, China, to take a giant step toward cornering the burgeoning global market in EVs, and then cars in general. When it comes to our most cutting-edge industry, AI computer chips, Trump has allowed their manufacturer, Nvidia, to sell them to China so long as his government gets a take—25 percent of the proceeds—from every sale.

So Trump’s policy protects industries which our competitors are rapidly transferring away from, even as we abandon the essential industries of the future that our competitors are working furiously to develop. This isn’t to say that selective tariffs aren’t still sound policy in major American industries that remain central to the nation’s prosperity, autos and steel in particular. But both those industries (and the auto- and steelworkers they employ) would be in a lot better long-term shape if Trump allowed them to position themselves for future markets by going electric. Instead, his myopic view of transactional policy leads him to consider it a win when he wrangles a quarter share of Nvidia’s proceeds from bolstering Chinese power. In for a penny, out for a pound: That’s the economic logic behind Trump’s trade policies.

More here.