David A Graham explains the “surprising reason” why “White Voters Are Abandoning Trump” at The Atlantic. Staff writer Graham argues that, even more than the pandemic and tanking economy, “the driving factor for Trump’s collapse appears to be race.” Further,

Polls have consistently shown that Americans disapprove of his response to protests of police violence and believe that he has worsened race relations. In the New York Times/Siena poll, race relations (33 percent) and the protests (29 percent) are the only areas where issue approval lags behind his overall vote preference. In the Harvard/Harris poll, the same two areas earn Trump his worst marks of any issue, though they are still slightly higher than his expected vote.”

Voters are right that Trump is worsening race relations and handling the protests poorly. In the past two days alone, the president has retweeted (and then deleted) a video of one of his supporters shouting “White power!” and another of two white supporters pointing guns at black protesters marching past their house…As my colleagues and I have reported, exploiting racial tensions has been a way of life for Trump since the earliest days of his business career, and it was the unifying concept of his 2016 campaign. He has followed that path during his presidency, including his notorious response to a violent white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, in which he found “very fine people” on both sides.

Graham says, “What is different this time is the way people are responding”:

The hardest-core Trump supporters—especially non-college-educated white men—are unlikely to be swayed by the news. They are why Trump’s approval likely has a floor somewhere in the 30s, and why his share in national horse-race polls does too. But if reluctant Trump voters from 2016 are undergoing a change on their view of race relations, it could have seismic implications for his reelection.

Graham doesn’t dispute that former Vice President Biden’s positive image further undermines Trump’s tanking prospects, and notes that, “steady-rolling Joe Biden—creates a contrast that is unflattering for Trump, especially in times of crisis.”

With political preferences hardening and time running out, Graham concludes that “In a new YouGov poll, 94 percent of registered voters said they had already made up their mind about how they’ll vote in November. That gives the president little maneuvering room to regain them and get back in a winning position—especially since there’s not much chance that he’s going to change his own rhetoric or style.”

Put another way, Trump’s racially-driven ‘inflame the base’ strategy has reached its limit in a polarization-weary electorate. His mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic and limp response to the declining economy also make a Democratic landslide a growing possibility – if Biden and Democrats play a wise hand for the next 17 weeks.

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

The most militant activists in and around the Black Lives Matter movement continue to hector Biden to adopt strenuously radical demands such as defund the police. So far, he has refused. Excellent. There is no reason for him to do so. He doesn’t need the votes of these hyper-activists, since they are few in number, and as for the people these activists claim they represent, he already has strong support across the board. He doesn’t need to embrace defund the police to get their votes. And most of all, he just needs to keep the support he’s already built up among suburban, moderate, older and white noncollege voters to win a smashing victory. A ringing call to defund the police will only undercut, not build, the Biden coalition.

The fact of the matter is that people aren’t interested in getting rid of their current police force–as defund the police implies–and somehow replacing it with a new one. In a recent Quinnipiac poll, just 14 percent supported eliminating and replacing their current police department, while 81 percent were opposed. Even among black voters, the split was only 32 percent for/61 percent against.

In the same poll, 67 percent of voters said they supported the ongoing George Floyd protests. What that means–making the reasonable assumption that all eliminate and replace voters also supported the protests–is that 4 in 5 protest supporters do not want to get rid of and replace their current police force.

So defund the police just doesn’t cut it with American voters. And, no it doesn’t work to explain what the slogan “really means” is providing some more money for social services and changing the mix of police activities, etc, etc. If you’re explaining, you’re losing.

From the Politico article on this controversy:

“During the primaries, Biden bet everything on winning overwhelming support from African American voters, who eventually reversed the near collapse of his campaign in the first three states.

Biden’s advisers were often less attentive—and sometimes downright dismissive—of certain obsessions of the social media left. Biden did not discuss white privilege the way Kirsten Gillibrand did. He didn’t endorse reparations or the legalization of marijuana when some of his chief rivals did. He stubbornly insisted that the two most important primary constituencies were political moderates and older working-class African Americans, two groups without much influence online. The Biden campaign’s unspoken primary slogan could have been, “Twitter isn’t real life.”

This cautiousness and skepticism has spilled into the general election. One way to think of the Biden campaign’s navigation of racial issues is that he and his advisers care a lot more about addressing policy demands than they do about addressing cultural issues.

“There is a conversation that’s going on on Twitter that they don’t care about,” one Democratic strategist observed. “They won the primary by ignoring all of that. The Biden campaign does not care about the critical race theory-intersectional left that has taken over places like The New York Times. You can be against chokeholds and not believe in white fragility. You can be for reforming police departments and don’t necessarily have to believe that the United States is irredeemably racist.”

Amen, you don’t and Biden doesn’t and that’s a very good thing!

Ronald Brownstein, columnist for The Atlantic, explains why “The Sun Belt Spikes Could Be a Disaster for Trump: Democrats were already gaining ground in the region before the pandemic hit,” and observes:

The wildfire of coronavirus cases burning through the Sun Belt’s largest cities and suburbs could accelerate their movement away from President Donald Trump and the GOP—a dynamic with the potential to tip the balance in national elections not only in 2020, but for years to come.

From Josh Kraushaar’s “Prepare for a Biden landslide: The biggest warning sign for Trump’s reelection: He’s starting to see softening support from his base” at The National Journal:

The latest Fox News poll, showing Biden with a 12-point lead over Trump, offers the latest hint that some of the president’s closest allies are starting to lose the faith….Indeed, Trump is seeing a little bit of slippage among white evangelical voters, the core constituency that fueled his victory in 2016. His approval rating among that voting bloc is 72 percent, with fewer than half “strongly approving” of his performance in office. The president is only winning 66 percent of the vote against Biden in a head-to-head matchup, with the former vice president tallying 25 percent support with evangelicals.

For context, Trump won the evangelical vote by a 64-point margin against Hillary Clinton, 80 to 16 percent. Winning two-thirds of the vote may sound impressive, but slipping 14 points in four years is a major problem.

Rural voters also comprised another solid bloc of Trump’s support in the 2016 election, handing him 61 percent of the vote. But the Fox poll shows Trump only winning 49 percent of the rural vote this time around, holding a mere 9-point lead over Biden. His 53 percent job approval with these small-town voters is barely above water.

Yes, there are a lot of things that can happen during the next 4 months. But there are no recent data  which the GOP can find encouraging. Kaushaar continues,

So what does it all mean for the November election? Right now, it looks more likely that Biden will win a landslide victory, picking up states uncontested by Democrats in recent elections, than it is that Trump can mount a miraculous turnaround in just over four months. Even as Trump tries to advance a law-and-order pitch amid growing violence and tumult in the nation’s cities, it’s unlikely to benefit the president because he’s the leader in charge. The chaos candidate is now the chaos president. Biden is the challenger pledging a return to normalcy.

Just look at the swing-state map: Biden is leading in every battleground state, according to the RealClearPolitics polling averages, with the exception of North Carolina where the race is tied. Trump trails by 6 points in the electoral prize of Florida, where the president’s newfound willingness to meet with Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro prompted a fierce backlash and quick White House retreat. He’s down 4 points in Arizona, a state that has only voted for a Democratic presidential candidate once since 1964. He’s not close to hitting even 45 percent of the vote in Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin—the Midwestern states he flipped to win the presidency…Public polling even shows Biden within striking distance in Georgia and Texas, two electoral prizes that would normally be safely Republican … unless a big blue wave hits in November.

All of the usual caveats about 4 months to go being a long time to go and the polls always narrowing in the last week of the campaign notwithstanding, the best data indicates that the GOP is on a fast track a rout of historic proportions for both the presidential election and down ballot.

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

Free David Shor! Or at least give the poor data analyst a job, since he’s been fired and now ostracized for the thought-crime of promoting the idea, based on an excellent study by political science professor Omar Wasow, that maybe riots associated with social movements do more harm than good. You can read the sorry details in this piece by Jonathan Chait that reveals the bizarre attacks leveled against Shor by those now intent on policing the left against such thought-crimes.

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

I was interested to read this article by Sydney Ember In the New York Times on “Bernie Sanders Predicted Revolution, Just Not This One“. It wasn’t a particularly good article but it had some interesting material in it on the views of left activists now that the Sanders campaign is over. it included this paragraph:

“Progressives at both the national and grass-roots level are still trying to push Mr. Biden to the left even as he has begun to adopt the language of systemic disruption. His willingness to satisfy their demands — on policing perhaps most urgently but also on issues like climate change and health care — could help determine whether he is successful in the general election.”

Of course, this has it exactly backwards. The extent to which Biden satisfies their demands could determine whether he fails this November, not whether he succeeds. There is absolutely no reason for him to adopt these groups’ demands, which are generally far less popular than the positions Biden has already adopted. He should remember to ask the question, paraphrasing a 20th century dictator’s query about the Pope, “How many armies do these groups have?” The answer is clear; he doesn’t need these groups, he needs the people he already has.

What is just as bad is that these groups are stepping on the chances for success of the very causes they espouse. Sheri Berman lucidly explains in this must-read article on Social Europe:

“Just as the Trump presidency has made crystal-clear the role played by the politically polarising, racially-inflammatory tendencies built into the Republican party since the era of Richard Nixon, the left needs to recognise that denigrating compromises and coalitions and shouting down opponents, rather than engaging with and trying to convince them, are incompatible with democracy.

We have seen these tendencies over the last days, as defences and rationalisations of rioting have abounded in sections of the left. And in a widely-reported scene in Minneapolis the mayor, Jacob Frey, a civil-rights lawyer, progressive and second-youngest mayor in the city’s history, gave an impassioned speech in favour of ‘deep seated, structural reform’—only to be surrounded by protesters telling him, inter alia, to ‘get the f*** out of here’, having refused to commit to fully defunding and abolishing the city’s police department.

The demand to ‘defund the police’, which has been central to the protests, is designed to mobilise the already committed and express anger, rather than attract a broad array of citizens to the cause. The goal, of course, is to create a new model of policing—less violent and aggressive, more deeply and organically embedded in communities, more integrally paired with expanded social-service organisations to deal with mental health and poverty-related issues with which cops are not trained to deal.

There is broad support for such reforms, yet if couched as ‘defunding’ or abolishing the police majorities are consistently opposed. If the goal is to win elections and institutionalise major structural reforms, emphasising confusing and confrontational slogans such as ‘defund the police’ is counter-productive. Unless, of course, the real goal is not to win elections and power but rather to ‘make a point’ or mobilise the already discontented—tendencies towards which parts of the left are all too prone and have left it consistently vulnerable to being overwhelmed by a more strategic and focused right.

Now is the time the American left has been waiting for. The protests over recent weeks have been a remarkable manifestation of the power of democracy—citizens from every state and every background have made their voices heard and forced American society to confront problems which it ignored for too long. The protests have also helped turn the tide against a president who represents the greatest threat to progress and democracy our country has experienced in modern times.

But to seize this opportunity the left needs to recognise that in a democracy there are only two ways of achieving your goals: you can compromise with those who disagree with your views or you can convince them that your views are correct. Illiberal behaviour, purity tests and name-calling are antithetical to both. The US is indeed at a critical juncture—the democratic left must recognise this and act accordingly.”

In short: don’t blow it.

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

Understandably, people focus on the margins in the trial heats and lately they’ve been very good for Joe Biden, averaging over an 8 point lead in recent polls. But that actually undersells how well Biden has been doing. Because the absolute level at which he’s been polling support is a very, very good sign. Put simply, he’s hitting 50 percent or higher consistently and that gives him a dominant position in the race.

If you have wished for more ads and stories about pro athletes and popular entertainers raising hell about voter suppression, check out Alex Reimer’s “LeBron James’ Voting Rights Push Could Be A Historically Significant Athlete-Led Political Campaign” at Forbes. Reimer notes, “James is forming a voting rights organization along with several other prominent Black athletes and entertainers. The group, called More Than a Vote, will go beyond traditional get-out-the-vote campaigns. It will combat voter suppression, with James using his gigantic presence on social media to shed light on attempts to restrict voting access for minorities…“Because of everything that’s going on, people are finally starting to listen to us — we feel like we’re finally getting a foot in the door,” James told the New York Times in an interview. “How long is up to us. We don’t know. But we feel like we’re getting some ears and some attention, and this is the time for us to finally make a difference…James’ efforts against voter suppression promise to be widely broadcast. But the truth is, James has enough reach on his own to make a tangible difference in public awareness. The three-time champion and four-time MVP boasts more than 136 million followers across his Twitter, Instagram and Facebook feeds. To put that in perspective, 137 million people voted in the 2016 presidential election, the NYT points out.”

A good video to share with South Carolina voters who may want to elect a new senator with consistent principles — Sen. Lindsey Graham blasts Trump and lavishly praises Biden in 2016. from a new ad by Republican Voters Against Trump:

New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall notes that, “in an unpublished working paper, “Sorting Apart: Partisan Polarization in the American Electorate, 1972-2016,” Stanley Feldman writes, “It’s clear that preferences have shifted significantly in a more conservative direction over this time period among Republican identifiers,” Feldman wrote, adding that contrary to those who argue that racial hostility among working class whites is the deciding factor in elections, he and his co-authors found that “It’s not the case that conservative racial issue preferences are concentrated among low-income whites. High-income Republicans are more conservative on racial issues than low-income Republicans.””

Edsall notes further, “Joe Biden’s lead over Trump has grown from 5.6 points to 8.1 points since Floyd was killed on May 25; Trump’s disapproval rating has risen and his approval level has fallen over the same period; and the Democratic advantage in the generic congressional vote has inched upward…While a leftward movement among voters, particularly on racial matters, is, at the moment, indisputable, these and other social and cultural issues remain volatile, and Republicans remain undeterred…Joe Trippi, a Democratic consultant, is thinking landslide too, but not Stephens’s landslide: ‘The more wound up we get on coronavirus and unemployment and race, the more chaos we see. If Trump is chaos and Biden is community, what will the country choose? I think a whole bunch of suburban G.O.P. women, younger G.O.P., business G.O.P. and college educated G.O.P. choose Biden and community. G.O.P. women are exhausted by the chaos.'”

In their article, “There’s A Huge Gap In How Republicans And Democrats See Discrimination” at FiveThirtyEight, Meredeith Conroy and Perry Bacon, Jr report on “findings about perceptions of discrimination and perceptions of various groups in American society, based on recent polling from the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape project.” Conroy and Bacon report that “An overwhelming majority of Democrats thought black and Muslim Americans face “a great deal” or “a lot” of discrimination in America today, as opposed to “a moderate amount,” “little” or “none at all.” Perceptions of discrimination against black people have surged among all groups, including Republicans, in the wake of Floyd’s death. But the vast majority of Democrats thought that black people in America faced high levels of discrimination even before Floyd’s death.² About half of Democrats also thought women face a lot of discrimination…In contrast, only about half of Republicans thought that black people and Muslims face high levels of discrimination, and only about a quarter thought that women do. The majority of Republicans thought those groups face “a moderate amount,” “little” or “no” discrimination at all.”

Conroy and Bacon note further that “Nearly half of Democrats expressed unfavorable views about police and evangelicals. Unfavorable views of the police have substantially increasedfrom polling before Floyd’s death,⁵ but Democrats’ unfavorable views of evangelicals were already very high and remain so. About a quarter of Democrats said they had unfavorable views of white Americans; a quarter said the same of undocumented immigrants,⁶ even though the Democratic Party is increasingly supportive of immigration and immigrants…In contrast, large shares of Republicans expressed unfavorable views of undocumented immigrants, LGBT Americans and Muslims. More than 20 percent of Republicans said that they had unfavorable views of black Americans and police, with the latter group having increased in unfavorability substantially since Floyd’s death.⁷”

“There were also some notable differences among Democrats,” Bacon and Conroy note. “For example, Democrats under 45 were significantly more likely than those over 45 to say they had an unfavorable view of the police (54 percent compared to 38 percent). Black Democrats were more likely than white Democrats to have unfavorable views of the police (58 percent to 41 percent). Black and Hispanic Democrats were about twice as likely as white Democrats to view LGBT Americans unfavorably, and about 30 percent of both groups expressed unfavorable views of white Americans. And white Democrats, in particular, viewed evangelicals unfavorably (50 percent)…

Conroy and Bacon conclude, “When social identities are threatened (real or imagined threats, often made salient by group leaders), individuals retreat to the safety of their in-groups, and react defensively with more negative feelings toward outside groups. And given the effectiveness of in-group retreating for political outcomes, there is little chance of this changing anytime soon, at least from political leaders who stand to gain the most from these identity-based fights…The activation of social identities can have positive democratic outcomes, too. For instance, Trump’s anti-Latino rhetoric led to increased political activity from Latinos with a stronger racial identity. And as we wrote about last week, strong racial identity among black Americans leads to collective voting to defend group interests. Moreover, if a sense of shared identity can be triggered, partisans can come together to prioritize national interests…But so long as the parties remain largely distinct in terms of the group identities of their members — and how those members feel about other groups — ingroup and outgroup conflict is easily activated.”

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. has this encouraging observation about Biden and his campaign for Democrats: “He has offered policy-laden critiques of Trump’s handling of covid-19, the economy and the policing issue. Later this month, those familiar with his thinking say, he’ll offer a plan for big investments in job creation. They will focus on strengthening the nation’s domestic industrial base, clean energy and caregiving to children, the elderly and the disabled…In other words, Biden is not acting as if he thinks the election is already won, and he’s not averse to big proposals. As one Biden insider notes, the former vice president’s agenda — on health care, education, climate change and policing, for example — is “much more progressive” than the programs offered by Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016…This doesn’t mean he’s moved “too far left.” On the contrary, the ideas he has plucked from the progressive portfolio are vote-winners, not vote-losers. Lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60 is very popular with voters between the ages of 60 and 65. Free public college for students from families with incomes under $125,000 a year is popular, too.”

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

Does Biden Need the “Enthusiastic Support of Black Voters”?

That’s the claim of a letter sent to the Biden campaign by 50 or so liberal organizations, who allege he will not get that enthusiastic support unless he embraces a lengthy series of demands included in their letter. These demands include reparations, defunding the police and withdrawing support for investments in community policing.

There are two things wrong with the letter’s argument. First, Biden already has sufficient black support to win the election, even though he is currently running a little behind Clinton’s 2016 pace. Moreover, recent data suggest that support is firming up (see below). The fact of the matter is that Biden is solidly ahead at the moment because he has reasonable nonwhite support and is running way ahead of Clinton among both white college and noncollege voters. He would benefit from increased black support relative to the current baseline–the more votes and the bigger margin he has, the better–but he does not “need” that to win the election.

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

It’s important to understand what public opinion is and is not saying about the protests, BLM and the police.

First, as widely understood, net favorability toward Black Lives Matter has spiked upward in the last few weeks. The public generally sees the associated protests as justified, overwhemingly condemns the killing of George Floyd and police brutality generally and is increasingly likely to see a racial bias problem in policing.

Not surprisingly, support for reforming the police and police practices is now very strong indeed, as poll after poll has shown (see graphic below for one example).

But that does not mean the public is suddenly on an anti-police vendetta and wants to defund or abolish (!) police forces. That is a view among some BLM and associated activists but it is wildly unpopular with the public (see below for a representative polling result). Even “cutting funding” for the police isn’t popular and the most anodyne formulation possible–reducing the police budget in your community to shift funding to mental health, housing and education–only garners 39 percent support vs. 60 percent opposition (Ipsos). This result no doubt reflects the fact that most people are very or somewhat satisfied with the job the policy are doing in their local community (71 percent, Monmouth).

Finally, the embrace of the Black Lives Matter by the public does not mean the embrace of what you might call the ideology of the movement, which sees the US as a white supremacist society where radical steps like defunding the police are a necessity. It reflects, rather, horror at the specific George Floyd incident and a general opposition to racism and policy brutality that is rooted in the deeply-held value that all should be treated fairly. This is shown by a recent Yougov/Economist result where people were asked about whether they had positive or negative reactions to different slogans, including Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter. The associations with Black Lives Matter were 52 percent positive/22 percent negative. The associations with All Lives Matter were….56 percent positive/23 percent negative.

So it’s a different world out there than you find on Twitter or among activists or within elite media circles. But that world is the real one and the one where change has to take place.

I’ll give the last word to the very wise James Clyburn:

“When you allow people to use incendiary terms, we create a climate within which we can’t get much done,…‘Defund the police’ is unnecessarily confusing, I think all of us know that sound bites tend to get interpreted in all kinds of ways and if you’ve got to explain the sound bite, you’re losing the whole issue.

For me, the word defund means what Merriam-Webster says that it means. So if you’re talking about reallocating resources, say that. If you mean reimagining policing, say that. If you’re going to reform policing, say that. Don’t tell me you’re going to use a term that you know is charged — and tell me that it doesn’t mean what it says.

Nobody wants George Floyd to be remembered by a burning building — we want to remember him by reforming policing,”

Amen.