At Politico, Peter Schaefer interviews Greg Haas, organizing director of the Wyoming Democratic Party about the obstacles to organizing for Democratic candidates and policies in a deeply-red state. Some of Haas’s insights:

“Something I’ve experienced traveling around the state is that there is a palpable fear of even letting your friends know you are a Democrat, or even in line with what Democratic politicians are doing. There’s vandalism that takes place here, and people are scared of that.”

“In rural places, a candidate goes out on the campaign trail and they say that the first thing they have to do is distance themselves from the national party. Now, I don’t think they have to do that, but they feel like they have to do that. They say, “I’m not a Democrat like national Democrats.” So much news is nationalized, and there is so much news that is sensationalized. I think if you want to talk to people about local issues, that’s what you should focus on….Local Wyoming officials are not going to solve the border crisis in Texas. People’s emotions run high on those hot-button issues, but when it comes right down to it, this local community does not come together on party lines. It comes together on what’s best for the community.”

On job security: “There are more and more people who are really afraid of what’s going to happen to their family ranch, or am I going to lose my job? And when people are that scared, I think as humans we have a tendency to find somebody to blame.… You know, “This person that doesn’t look like me or the people I grew up with is either going to take my job, or my kids’ job, or they’re just going to mooch off or get everything for free.”

On key issues: “The important things for Democrats are fully funded public education, people being treated equally and freedom being afforded to all people. It’s also pretty important to a lot of people in Wyoming, Democrats or otherwise, that women have the right to control their own bodies and their health care and that agency isn’t taken away from them. Climate matters to a lot of people, not in terms of climate change necessarily, but clean air and clean water.”

On President Biden and other national Democrats showing up and claiming credit in rural states: “I absolutely think them showing up to explain and celebrate those programs could have immeasurable benefit. Them showing up would impact the narrative in the news, and it would help those who feel like they’ve been forgotten feel like they’re not. The people responsible for these good works are being too humble to talk about them….There’s a sign over there that says “Project funded by President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” and there’s a Wyoming Department of Transportation logo and U.S Department of Transportation logo….That’s the only sign I’ve seen for any project in the state that says exactly where the money is coming from.”

“People are so interested in the hot-button things. Right now, one of the parties is spending most of the time talking about the “invasion” at the southern border. There’s a lot of energy spent talking about that. That’s the go-to talking point. That distracts people from the good things going on — the successful economy, good things that are happening in Wyoming and across the country. From what I can see, the Republican strategy seems to be, “If we can just get people afraid, they’ll vote for us.”

To put Haas’s comments in perspective, keep in mind that “Wyoming is the most Republican state in the U.S. Wyoming has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of +25. Wyoming’s strong Conservative lean is attributed to its large rural, white, and Evangelical populations. Wyoming has voted Republican in every Presidential election since 1952, except for the 1964 election.” Even Liz Cheney was deemed not right-wing enough for Wyoming. It is also the smallest state in the U.S. in terms of population (less than 600,000), but has as many senators as the largest, California (nearly 40 million).

In his introduction to the interview Schaefer notes, “the national Democratic Party has invested millions of dollars in a “Red State Fund” to build out organizing in Republican strongholds. The Biden administration has also made huge investments in rural America through rural cooperatives and the bipartisan infrastructure law, which the president and his cabinet secretaries highlighted last fall on a two-week tour.” It will be a long, tough haul for Democrats to get some momentum in states like Wyoming, which gave Trump his largest popular vote margin in both 2016 and 2020. But it’s good to know that some long-haul Democrats, at least, are working hard on it.

At Roll Call, Stuart Rothenberg makes the case that 9 states will decide which party can claim victory in the 2024 elections. Rothenberg identifies “the nine states that in November will decide (1) the presidential contest, (2) the fight for the Senate, and (3) the fight for control of the House of Representatives.”

In the presidential contest,

Three Great Lakes states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin) and three Southern/Sunbelt toss-ups (Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada) are likely to pick the next president of the United States.

Donald Trump carried five of the six states in 2016 (losing only Nevada), while Joe Biden carried all six four years later. The margins in all those states, in both 2016 and 2020, were extremely narrow, and most nonpartisan handicappers expect they will be close again this November.

Rothenberg adds “Two other states are worth watching but aren’t likely to be as crucial: New Hampshire (carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020) and North Carolina (carried by Trump twice). Two states that divide their Electoral College votes by congressional district (Maine and Nebraska) merit your attention, as well. But none of those states come close to being as decisive as the Big Six.

As for the Senate,

“this year’s map strongly favors Republicans. Democrats (and independents who caucus with Democrats) sit in 23 seats that are up in November, while Republicans defend a mere 11 Senate seats this year….At least seven Democratic-held Senate seats are in play. Four of them are also in states that are crucial in the presidential contest: including Michigan (retiring Debbie Stabenow’s open seat), Nevada (Jackie Rosen), Pennsylvania (Bob Casey), and Wisconsin (Tammy Baldwin)…. Three of them are in reliably Republican states: Montana (Jon Tester), Ohio (Sherrod Brown), and West Virginia (Joe Manchin III), which is certain to flip to the GOP now that Manchin is retiring.

Also at risk is the seat of one independent who caucuses with the Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Sinema has not announced whether she will run for reelection (most likely as an independent). If she does, Arizona will likely have a three-way race in the fall.

Montana and Ohio stand out because of their conservatism and strong support of Trump in the last two presidential elections. But Tester and Brown have won in difficult circumstances before, and they survived during Trump’s 2018 midterm election (when Republicans picked up two seats) by delivering populist messages that appealed to working-class voters….Also at risk is the seat of one independent who caucuses with the Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Sinema has not announced whether she will run for reelection (most likely as an independent). If she does, Arizona will likely have a three-way race in the fall.”

In House races, Rothenberg notes

“most states won’t have competitive contests next year. But due to extensive redistricting in New York state and court-ordered new districts that could elect a few more minority members, Democrats could add House seats in November….The Empire State has at least six Republican-held seats that look to be at risk later this year, a number large enough to determine whether Democrats can flip the chamber and make House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries the new speaker in 2025.”

Rothenberg concludes, “If you really want to identify the voters most likely to pick the next president, you can forget about strong partisans from competitive states. It’s swing voters from the swingiest states, like Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, who will really matter if the race for the White House is close.”

Ezra Klein interviews Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,  for The Ezra Klein Show at The New York Times. An excerpt of the interview transcript is cross-posted here:

Today is the other argument, the argument the Democratic Party is not doing great. That, in fact, it’s doing quite badly. That it is losing something core to who it is, core to its soul, and it’s losing it because it is making bad strategic and even, as you’ll hear in his views, substantive decisions. So Ruy Teixeira is very well known in Democratic policy circles, longtime pollster and political strategist. And he wrote in 2002, alongside John Judis, a famous book called “The Emerging Democratic Majority.”

When this book comes out, things are looking real bad for Democrats. It’s the 9/11 era, George W. Bush is super popular. And here come Teixeira and Judis to say, actually things look pretty good for Democrats, that if you look at how the country is changing, the growth of nonwhite voters, the growth of the professional class, if you look at how those and other groups vote for Democrats, that just based on demographics you should expect the Democratic slice of the electorate to really grow. And if it grows, Democrats are going to begin winning.

Now it’s a weird time for that book to come out. George W. Bush wins again in 2004. But in 2008, reality begins to look a lot like what they’ve been describing. And then in 2012, when Obama wins on the back of huge, huge turnout among nonwhite voters, he has a share of the white electorate that is about what Dukakis had when he loses in 1988.

When Obama wins with that coalition, it really looks like Teixeira and Judis were right. And even the Republican Party seems to think so. It begins to think it has to moderate on immigration and put forward a kinder face. And then, of course, comes Donald Trump and upends us once again, wins when people think he cannot. And that sets off a set of soul-searching. What was wrong in the emerging Democratic majority? What did Teixeira and Judis get wrong? What did Democrats get wrong?

And so now they have a new book out called “Where Have All The Democrats Gone?” And this book’s fundamental argument is that most of what they said came to pass. But one thing happened that they had worried about in that book, and people didn’t really pick up on, which is that in order for that Democratic majority to happen, Democrats needed to keep the working class. And they, in particular, needed to at least hold down the ground they were losing with the white working class. And that did not happen — Democrats getting stomped among the white working class. There is some evidence of them losing at least some working-class Black and Hispanic voters, particularly men.

So the question is, why? It’s a question that Judis and Teixeira are trying to answer in the new book. You will hear in here that the view is both political and, I would say, substantive. Right? There’s an argument about what is good policy and also an argument about why that policy, why a much more moderate Democratic Party would be a more politically-effective one.

And so I wanted to offer this as the second way of thinking about the Democrats right now. That they have lost a constituency that, at their very soul, they are built to represent, and that they should be treating that as a real emergency. And then there’s the question of, what do you do about it? It’s a place where I think Ruy and I have some different views, but I was grateful that he joined me here.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ruy Teixeira, welcome to the show.

RUY TEIXEIRA: Hey. Thanks for having me, Ezra.

EZRA KLEIN: So I want to begin with the older book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” which gets published in 2002 and later takes on this status as a kind of artifact of a certain era of Democratic triumphalism. But it was helpful to me to remember that it was in 2002, which was a really bad time for the Democratic Party. So tell me what you were seeing then that made you write the book. What was the context for it? Because at that time it was counterintuitive.

RUY TEIXEIRA: The context in which John Judis and I wrote the book was looking at the way the United States had evolved away from the Reagan coalition through the Clinton years and the very early part of the 21st century. If you looked at how their political base was changing and how the country was changing, it was clear that Democrats were going to benefit from the sort of inevitable rise of the nonwhite population, which was heavily Democratic. We saw the realignment of professionals toward the Democrats. We saw dramatic shifts in the voting patterns of women, particularly single, highly-educated working women.

And we looked at the more sort of dynamic Metropolitan areas of the country that we called ideopolises, and it was clear they were realigning toward the Democrats. So you could put these sort of demographic, ideological, and economic changes together and say, well, it looks like the way the country’s changing overall is moving in a direction that’s consistent with what we called at the time Democrat’s “progressive centrism,” and if they played the cards right, could conceivably develop a dominant majority that might last for some time. Even though, of course, it didn’t mean they’d win every election or even the very next election after the book was published, which was 2002.

Roiling underneath the surface there, Ezra, was a caveat we had in the book about the white working class, because we were very careful to note that secular tendency of the white working class to move away from the Democratic Party was a problem, and the Democrats really needed to stop the bleeding there and keep a strong minority share of the white working class vote overall nationally, maybe around 40 in the key Rust Belt states that were heavily working-class, more like 45. And if they did that, they could build this coalition. But the political arithmetic would get vexed and difficult if the white working class continued to deteriorate in their support for Democrats.

EZRA KLEIN: You mentioned something there, which is the ideological trends of the time, like the professional class becoming more Democratic. That hadn’t always been true. So what did you see happening ideologically in the parties around that time that was shifting these coalitions?

RUY TEIXEIRA: Right. Well, the professionals part was really important in our analysis. And if you looked at professionals, not only were they becoming a much larger part of the US occupational structure and of the electorate and, of course, they vote way above their weight in terms of turnout, but they were moving in a direction in terms of their views on cultural issues which was quite liberal.

Then also professionals, by virtue to some extent of their position in society and their occupational structure, they tend to be more public-spirited. They tend to be more sympathetic to the role of government. And those views seemed to be strengthening as professionals became a larger part of the American electorate. And we thought that was really going to help the Democrats. And, in fact, that turned out to be true, in a strict quantitative sense. They did, in fact, realign heavily toward the Democrats. It really starts in the late ’80s, kind of strengthens in the ’90s, and goes forth in the 21st century to the point today where professionals, by and large, can almost be considered a base Democratic group.

EZRA KLEIN: So then tell me what happens on the way to the Democratic majority. So you have this new book called “Where Have All The Democrats Gone?” It just published in late 2023, and it’s a bit of an update. Why didn’t this durable Democratic coalition emerge?

RUY TEIXEIRA: Well, point number one is something that we foreshadowed in “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” which was that the Democrats had a potential Achilles’ heel in their coalition in terms of the white working class. If that group started moving away smartly from the Democrats again, that would throw the whole thing into question. And that did, in fact, happen after Obama’s victory in 2008.

If you look at 2010 election where the Democrats get crushed to lose 63 seats, it’s a lot because white working-class voters bail out from the Democratic Party in lots of areas of the country, particularly the upper Midwest. 2012, Obama manages to get re-elected, and that was viewed or characterized as the return of the Obama coalition. But the part of the Obama coalition they missed is, he ran a kind of populist campaign against the plutocrat Mitt Romney, running on the auto-bailout and other things like that, and he really managed to grab back a lot of those white working-class voters in the upper Midwest. And if he hadn’t done that, he would have lost that election.

But the coalition of the ascendant kind of analysis that Democrats had been playing with becomes ever stronger. In fact, after 2012, in an odd sort of way, the Republicans even embraced it with their post-election autopsy. The Democrats were riding this demographic wave, it was going to wash over the country, and the Democrats were going to potentially be dominant.

But I think Trump — [LAUGHS]: Trump had a different opinion. He thought that, in fact, there was a wellspring of resentment among the working class in the United States that a politician like him could tap, and that the Democrats were going to have a lot of difficulty defending against, and that turned out to be the case.

So that’s part of what happened to the Democratic coalition. Another part of the Democratic coalition that is — I mean, the change that’s really still unfolding today that’s very important is, if you look at 2020, even though Biden did manage to squeak through in that election, not nearly as big a victory as they thought they’d get, he managed to hold what white working-class support they had, in fact, increase it a little bit. But what was really astonishing is the way Democrats lost nonwhite working-class voters, particularly Hispanics. There was big, big declines in their margins among these voters, declines that we’re still seeing today in the polling data.

So one way to think about 2020 and where we are today, is that racial polarization is declining but class polarization, educational polarization, is increasing. And that’s a problem for a party like the Democrats which purports to be the party of the working class.

EZRA KLEIN: Well let’s pick up on this question of the working class and how do we define it. At different times we’ve talked about the working class here, the white working class. What is your measure of the working class?

RUY TEIXEIRA: I use the standard definition at this point, which is those voters lacking a four-year college degree. There’s obviously different ways you could do it. If you’re going to use a more traditional definition, which is essentially impossible to operationalize in most polls, you would use blue-collar and low-level service workers as opposed to managerial and professional workers.

You could do it by income. There’s no right, scientific way to do this. But the way I typically do it is to look at the four-year degree and more, and less than a four-year degree. And that’s pretty standard at this point, and it’s certainly the easiest thing to operationalize in polls.

And it’s not like it’s without substantive value. I mean, we look at the economic and cultural trajectory of non-college as opposed to college folks, and they look very different. I mean, this has been a country, in the last 40 years, that has been much, much better to people with a four-year college degree than people who lack it. That’s very well-established in all the empirical data.

The new Quinnipiac Poll, which finds Biden leading Trump, is generating a lot of buzz, even though it could be an outlier and it’s only one poll. Sarah Fortinsky reports on it with a slightly different take at The Hill:

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley leads President Biden by 5 points in a hypothetical head-to-head 2024 match-up, according to a poll released Wednesday, but she trails him by 7 points in a five-person race including third-party candidates.

In the Quinnipiac University national poll, Haley’s popularity among independents would boost her numbers in a one-on-one match-up against Biden, but her weak support among Republicans would hurt her when factoring in independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In a two-person race, Haley receives 47 percent support and Biden receives 42 percent support. Among independents, 53 percent support Haley and 37 percent support Biden. Among Republicans, 79 percent support Haley and 4 percent support Biden. Among Democrats, 89 percent support Biden and 10 percent support Haley.

In a five-person race, however, Haley loses independent and Republican voters, letting Biden pull ahead with a 7-point lead. Biden receives 36 percent support, Haley receives 29 percent, Kennedy gets 21 percent, Independent Cornel West gets 3 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein gets 2 percent.

With five people in the race, Haley sees her support among Republican drop from 79 percent to only 57 percent. Kennedy would get 24 percent GOP support, Biden would get 3 percent and West would get 1 percent.

Fortinsky adds that “Biden holds a 6-point lead over Trump one-on-one, 50 percent to 44 percent. A five-person race, however, narrows his lead, bringing Biden’s support to 39 percent, followed by Trump’s support at 37 percent. Kennedy then follows with 14 percent, West receives 3 percent and Stein receives 2 percent….In a head-to-head matchup against Biden, Haley outperforms Trump, thanks to independents. Add third party candidates to the mix and her numbers slip in part because of her weakness among Republicans,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said in the poll’s press release.”

As always, one poll doesn’t flag a credible trend, especially this early in the 2024 campaign. But if other polls going forward reveal similar results, the Kennedy factor may be significant in deciding the election outcomes in November – one way or the other.

From “GOP senators seethe as Trump blows up delicate immigration compromise” by Manu Raju, Melanie Zanona, Lauren Fox and Ted Barrett at CNN Politics:

Senior Senate Republicans are furious that Donald Trump may have killed an emerging bipartisan deal over the southern border, depriving them of a key legislative achievement on a pressing national priority and offering a preview of what’s to come with Trump as their likely presidential nominee.

In recent weeks, Trump has been lobbying Republicans both in private conversations and in public statements on social media to oppose the border compromise being delicately hashed out in the Senate, according to GOP sources familiar with the conversations – in part because he wants to campaign on the issue this November and doesn’t want President Joe Biden to score a victory in an area where he is politically vulnerable.

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged in a private meeting on Wednesday that Trump’s animosity toward the yet-to-be-released border deal puts Republicans in a serious bind as they try to move forward on the already complex issue. For weeks, Republicans have been warning that Trump’s opposition could blow up the bipartisan proposal, but the admission from McConnell was particularly striking, given he has been a chief advocate for a border-Ukraine package.

Now, Republicans on Capitol Hill are grappling with the reality that most in the GOP are loathe to do anything that is seen as potentially undermining the former president. And the prospects of a deal being scuttled before it has even been finalized has sparked tensions and confusion in the Senate GOP as they try to figure out if, and how, to proceed – even as McConnell made clear during party lunches Thursday that he remains firmly behind the effort to strike a deal, according to attendees.

“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is … really appalling,” said GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump.

He added, “But the reality is that, that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president not to try and get the problem solved. as opposed to saying, ‘hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’”

The CNN Politics writers note that, “Underscoring just how damaging Trump’s comments and campaign to kill the border deal have been in the Senate, one GOP senator on condition of background told CNN that without Trump, this deal would have had overwhelming support within the conference….“This proposal would have had almost unanimous Republican support if it weren’t for Donald Trump,” the Republican senator said.

One of the few Republican senators who favor the border security deal, “Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who has made no secret of her frustration with Trump over the years, said members need to remember how big this moment is for the border and for Ukraine and put their own politics aside.

“I’m not giving up. This is not about Trump and this is not about me. This is about our country. This is about democracy around the world. This is about security for our own country and so let’s keep pushing to get this border deal,” she said. “Let’s stand by the commitments that we have made for our friends and our allies so that our word actually means something.”

Some instructive excerpts from “These New Hampshire voters don’t love everything Trump says. But here’s why they’re planning to back him” by John King at CNN Politics:

“Portsmouth, New Hampshire CNN — Andrew Konchek has a long list of complaints about Donald Trump. But there’s one reason he is ready, again, to set all those worrisome things aside…..“I’m with Trump because he supports fishermen, you know, and obviously it’s my livelihood,” Konchek said in an interview at the Portsmouth pier….Konchek says politicians and regulators repeatedly ignore suggestions from those who work on the water about how to protect the climate and the fish stock in a way that also allows working class fishermen like him to make enough to get by….Trump opposes planned green energy wind farms off the coast that Konchek believes would destroy the historic fishery just off the jagged coastline where New Hampshire and Maine meet….While in Portsmouth last week, Trump also said he would on his first day back in office get rid of the government observers who are on board every trip to make sure fishermen honor quotas and other rules….“Trump does not support the Green New Deal or the wind farms and I know that he backs us fisherman,” Konchek said….Konchek sees a vote for Trump as a vote to save his job….“I don’t like the way that he speaks sometimes. He can be a little ignorant and rude.”….“He’s kind of a bully,” Konchek said….“But you think he fights for you?” we ask….“I do. Yep.”….So Trump gets his vote Tuesday.”

Ditto for Debbie Katsanos….”She is an accountant, voted for Bill Clinton twice, backed Trump beginning in 2016 and, like many voters we meet, is past her boiling point with Washington and politicians…..“At first I didn’t like him and thought he was a big blowhard,” she said. “But then I started listening. … He talked like, he talked like me. I felt I could carry on a conversation with him.”….Not that she agrees with everything Trump might say in that conversation….“I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid,” Katsanos said. “He could tell me the moon is made out of cheese. I’m not going to believe that, you know.”….So who won the 2020 election?….“Oh, Biden,” Katsanos said….Her bottom line on Trump: “Sometimes he just doesn’t know when to shut up.”….But he will get her vote Tuesday because of her bottom line on what she wants most from Washington….“Close the border and get this economy moving again” is her list. “He’s got faults,” she says of the former president. “He’s not a saint. He doesn’t walk on water. I think he relates to people. He’s relatable.”

“Deven McIver will cast his primary ballot in Thornton – population 2,809….“I’m going to for Trump,” he told us during a break from his work at a quarry preparing giant slabs of stone to be crushed into construction gravel….It is mostly Trump country up here, though McIver, 46, says he voted for Barack Obama in 2008….“I said, ‘Oh, we’re going to have all this change and stuff,’” McIver said….But he skipped the 2012 election because he was disappointed by Obama and didn’t like Republican Mitt Romney. Then in 2016, he was excited enough by Trump to vote in the primary….“Because he wasn’t a politician,” McIver said. “So I thought this will be interesting.”….“Pretty good,” is McIver’s grade for Trump’s term as president. He was especially troubled, though, by “a lot of people coming and going” in top White House and agency jobs….“I don’t pay attention to it,” is his answer when asked about the caustic Trump social media posts and attacks he dishes out at his rallies. “I’m more busy getting up, getting ready to go in the morning.”….McIver doesn’t see himself as qualified to assess whether all the legal cases against Trump are legitimate….But while Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in all those cases, rails against prosecutors and judges and anyone he sees as a threat, and his MAGA supporters blame anyone but Trump, McIver takes a calm wait-and-see approach….“He has to go through a process for that,” he said. “And how it turns out is how it turns out.”….“If he’s convicted on it, then he goes to jail,” McIver said. “I guess he won’t be president.”….“Sometimes he’s not his own best friend,” he said. “He’s different. … It’s a show.”….McIver makes $40,000 a year, enjoys the work and is grateful his commute is just a few miles so he has more time with his family….It is a paycheck-to-paycheck life and inflation is especially tough on those with little to no margin in the family budget….“With Trump, I was doing pretty good. I was able to save more,” McIver said. “Right now, it is harder. … Your groceries are expensive and the cost of everything you purchase is expensive.”….“I know what I’m going to get,” McIver said. “I know he will fix the border and work on the economy.”….But he makes clear he is “just a regular Republican.”….“I don’t stand on the side of the the road with a flag every Saturday.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

With the Iowa caucuses in the rear view mirror, it seems even more likely that Trump will be the GOP candidate facing off against Biden this November. That should concentrate the mind. Right now Biden is running behind Trump in national polls and in every swing state with the possible exception of Wisconsin. In some of these states Trump’s lead is quite substantial: 5 points in Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada and 7 points in Georgia.

Of course it’s still early days. But let’s just say none of this is a good sign for Team Biden.

Right now the number one issue for voters is the economy and inflation and, as has been widely noted, Biden’s economic performance is viewed very poorly by voters. The latest ABC News poll has Biden’s approval rating on the economy at 31 percent. Only 13 percent say they are better off financially since Biden took office, compared to 43 percent who say they are worse off. When given a choice between two statements, 71 percent say “the economy is in bad shape, given higher prices and interest rates” rather than “the economy is in good shape, given low unemployment and rising wages” (24 percent). Perhaps most worrisome, in the latest CBS News poll half of voters believe that if Biden wins in November, his policies in a second term would make them financially worse off, with just a fifth saying those policies would make them better off. In contrast, half of voters think Trump’s policies, if he wins, would make them financially better off, compared to 30 percent who think his policies would make them worse off.

Not good. Maybe economic perceptions will improve over the course of the year. Maybe the Biden campaign’s economic messaging will improve after the debacle of “Bidenomics” (the Blueprint public opinion research group has some good ideas about this). Maybe the Democrats’ relentless drumbeat about “MAGA Republicans” and how “Democracy is on the ballot” will neutralize Trump’s advantage on the economy (and on mental and physical fitness). Maybe.

But it’ll be an uphill climb. And lurking in the weeds is voters’ second most important issue: immigration and the border. The Democrats are in such terrible shape on this issue that it could tip the balance decisively in Trump’s favor.

Start with this: Biden’s approval rating on “handling the immigration situation at the U.S.-Mexico border” is now 18 percent. Eighteen percent! That’s really, really bad and the lowest presidential approval on the issue ABC News has measured since 2004.

In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, Trump is preferred over Biden by 30 points, his greatest lead on any issue. In the latest Fox News poll, voters favor a wide variety of measures to crack down on illegal immigration: increasing border agents (79 percent); deporting illegal immigrants (67 percent); penalizing hiring illegal immigrants (64 percent); using the US military at the border (58 percent); and even building a border wall (54 percent).

Illuminating detail comes from a December survey conducted by the Blueprint group. Between Trump and Biden, who are voters most likely to think is close to their views on immigration? It’s Trump by a country mile: 44 percent of voters say Trump is close to their position, compared to a mere 25 percent who say Biden is close to their position. Even Hispanic voters are more likely to say Trump is close to their views on immigration than to say Biden is! (To understand this last data point I recommend Politico reporter David Siders’ sobering article, “There Are a Lot of Mexican People Looking Forward to Trump,” based on a reporting trip to El Paso, Texas.)

Across all voters, 56 percent say Biden is more liberal than they are on the immigration issue. Given a binary choice, voters prefer an approach that would “increase border enforcement and make asylum and refugee policies stricter” (61 percent) to one that would “increase legal pathways to immigrate to the United States” (39 percent). And they are far more likely to say rules on refugee and asylum status should be made stricter (53 percent) rather than looser (14 percent), and to believe that the US should take in fewer (52 percent) rather than more (17 percent) refugees and asylum seekers.

What part of “We need to get a lot tougher on border security” don’t Democrats understand? Of course, they are starting to bend a little on the issue, as we are currently seeing with the negotiations over linking border security changes to supplemental funding for Ukraine and Israel. We shall see how much they are willing to bend and how much Republicans, especially House Republicans, are willing to play ball.

Frankly, it’s a bit late in the day to finally be moving on this issue and only under duress from the Republicans. The border debacle has been unfolding throughout Biden’s term and the political damage has been accumulating. A big part of the problem is that there are a lot of Democrats who didn’t—and don’t—really want to do much about border security.

As David Leonhardt noted in The Atlantic :

Once a country has established borders, it must confront the unavoidably thorny issue of which outsiders it should admit and which it should not…“For those who believe in a multicultural America, this question can be uncomfortable to confront, because any system short of open borders invariably requires drawing distinctions that declare some people worthy of entry and others unworthy,” Jia Lynn Yang, a journalist, wrote in her history of immigration law. Because of this discomfort, the modern Democratic Party has struggled to articulate an immigration policy beyond what might be summarized as: More is better, and less is racist. The party has cast aside the legacies of [Barbara] Jordan and other progressives who made finer distinctions.

Leonhardt summarizes in a recent column:

Today, many Democratic politicians are willing to accept high levels of undocumented immigration and oppose enforcement measures that the party once favored. Some Democrats, especially on the left, argue that the government doesn’t even have the power to reduce migration much.

“More is better and less is racist” isn’t much of an immigration policy but it is the default position of many Democrats. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has said that her members wouldn’t get behind any immigration legislation endorsed by Republicans. The delusional Jayapal added that any GOP-endorsed immigration legislation would hurt, not help, the Democrats in swing states this November.

“Compromises? We don’ need no stinkin’ compromises!” For these Democrats moving toward actually-existing public opinion on immigration is a betrayal and, of course (that magical concept), would demobilize the all-important progressive base. With “allies” like this, Biden will likely have a hard time re-positioning himself and his party on this critical issue.

I have noted the tendency of Democrats to indulge in the Fox News Fallacy on a variety of issues. To wit: if Fox News is going after the Democrats on some issue, it is likely made up and nothing Democrats should worry about. There is no starker example of this than Democrats’ attitude toward the immigration surge at the southern border. Cast your mind back to the early days of the Biden administration when the party line was that the situation at the Mexican border should not be called a “crisis”—only the bad people at Fox News use that word!—and that an initial surge at the border would go away on its own as the hot weather season arrived.

Well, here we are three years later and this is where we’ve wound up, as summarized by John Judis at The Liberal Patriot:

[O]f the 3.1 million undocumented immigrants who entered the United States at the Southwest border in FY 2023, about 1.5 million entered the maze of the immigrant court system, 300,000 were paroled, and 600,000 got through undetected. That’s about 2.4 million undocumented migrants in addition to the 1.1 million authorized to receive permanent visas under current immigration law. That’s an influx of undocumented immigrants that matches the population of Chicago or Houston. Given that migrants who were expelled could try again, America’s borders have been de facto open during the first three years of the Biden administration.

Not good! Rather than being dismissive of concerns about illegal immigration, it now seems obvious Democrats should have taken them more seriously from the very beginning. Trump of course will be delighted to take advantage of the Democrats’ colossal blunder. Could it hand him victory this November? It is my sad duty to inform you that yes, this is quite possible.

For the Commerce Club, the oldest and largest public affairs forum in the United States, George Hammond interviews John B. Judis, Editor-at-Large, Talking Points Memo and co-author with Ruy Teixeira of Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes :

“If there’s one state in the nation you can call MAGA country, it’s Iowa,” Heather Digby Parton writes at Salon. “It’s something like 95% white, older than most states, extremely rural and the Republican Party there is as conservative as it gets. And yet, 40% of the voters who came out voted for someone else. Yes, sure, a good many of them voted for Trump-plus and Trump- X (DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy), but nearly 20% of them voted for the daughter of immigrants positioned as the “moderate ” in the race. Recall, Trump beat Joe Biden statewide by 53% in 2020. He won the Republicans by an even smaller majority on Monday. That is not a good sign….Only 110,000 people turned out, which comes out to about 15% of registered Republicans. This means that he only won 7% of GOP voters in the state of Iowa, a MAGA stronghold. Considering that this is the beginning of his supposed big comeback, that’s pretty underwhelming….The Des Moines Register poll which was released last weekend showed some other rather surprising numbers about the Republican electorate in Iowa. It found that if Trump is the nominee 11% said they would vote for Joe Biden while another 14% said they would vote for a third party candidate or someone else. That adds up to 25% of the party saying they will vote for someone else in the general election. That seems worth pondering. And we hear constantly about how all these criminal and civil proceedings just make his base love him more, but even more concerning for the Trump campaign should be the fact that according to the entrance polls, 32% of caucus participants believe that if Trump is convicted he will be unfit for the presidency.”

Parton continues, “All this does raise the question: Why are the national polls so close?….In the last few months, the polls have shown Trump and Biden neck and neck within the margin of error. You would think that if there was really a substantial faction of Republicans and GOP-leaning Independents who aren’t going to vote for Trump it would be showing up. But remember, the data we’ve been discussing was all from Iowa, a state that has been inundated with campaign ads and personal appearances by the Republican candidates for the past year. Unlike the rest of the country, they’ve been forced to pay attention to this race. They are the canaries in the coal mine….As evidence of how important this is, CNN reported that “the majority of undecided voters simply do not seem to believe – at least not yet – that Donald Trump is likely to be the Republican presidential nominee.” If you’re reading this you probably find that to be absurd. He’s the front-runner! But most of America has tuned out the Trump show since he left office. When they realize that he’s going to be the nominee and the show is unavoidable again, they are going to see what at least a quarter of Iowa Republicans and all of Iowa’s Democrats have been seeing these past few months and it’s not pretty. Let’s just say, that show has not aged well….Sure, Trump won Iowa and he’s highly likely to win New Hampshire and all the rest of the states as well. The Republican Party establishment will back him to the hilt and he’ll have plenty of money to wage his campaign. But there are some very big cracks in his coalition and they are becoming more and more pronounced. Remember, if the election is close, as it may very well be, it would only take a small number of GOP and Independent defections in the right states to put the country out of this misery at long last.”

Food and gas costs are frequently cited as pushing the public’s concerns about inflation. Could the increase in out-of-pocket spending for health care also be a leading cause of President Biden’s low approval ratings? According to Caitlin Owens at Axios, “Families with workplace health insurance may have missed out on $125,000 in earnings over the past three decades as a result of rising premiums eating into their pay, according to a new JAMA Network Open study….While employers, rather than workers, typically bear the brunt of rising health insurance costs, the study is further evidence that rising premiums are costing workers through wages they would have otherwise received….Premium growth has long outpaced wage growth, meaning that health insurance has become a larger and larger part of workers’ total compensation as employers pay out more in health benefits….a larger percentage of total compensation for low-income workers — who are disproportionately people of color — than those with higher incomes….Employer insurance has gotten more and more expensive as health care itself has gotten more expensive — the average workplace health plan last year cost $24,000 for family coverage, with employers covering about three-quarters of the cost, according to KFF….Although workers most directly feel the impact of their health care spending through out-of-pocket costs, economists have long argued that soaring premiums have suppressed wage growth….In 1988, health care premiums on average accounted for 7.9% of a worker’s total compensation, which includes wages and premiums. By 2019, that had increased to an average of 17.7%, the study found.”

The Biden campaign has handled its share of incoming flak during the last year for its sunny view of economic trends. Despite the common wisdom that their optimism is not justified, there is some new polling data which suggest otherwise.  In “Americans are actually pretty happy with their finances” by Felix Salmon at Axios Markets. writes, “Americans overall have a surprising degree of satisfaction with their economic situation, according to findings from the Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll….That’s in spite of dour views among certain subsets of the country — and in contrast to consumer sentiment polls that remain stubbornly weak, partly because of the lingering effects of 2022’s inflation….The Axios Vibes poll has found that when asked about their own financial condition, or that of their local community, Americans are characteristically optimistic….GDP growth is the highest in the developed world, inflation is headed back down to optimal levels, and consumer spending keeps on growing….63% of Americans rate their current financial situation as being “good,” including 19% of us who say it’s “very good.”….Americans’ outlooks for the future are also rosy. 66% think that 2024 will be better than 2023, and 85% of us feel we could change our personal financial situation for the better this year….That’s in line with Wall Street estimates, which have penciled in continued growth in both GDP and real wages for the rest of the year…. 77% of Americans are happy with where they’re living — including renters, who have seen their housing costs surge over the last few years and are far more likely than homeowners to describe their financial situation as poor….The survey’s findings were based on a nationally representative sample of 2,120 U.S. adults conducted online between Dec. 15-17, 2023.”

The following article by Clark Merrefield is cross-posted from The Journalist’s Resource  (January 12, 2024).

The U.S. economy is in good health, on the whole, according to national indicators watched closely by economists and business reporters. For example, unemployment is low and the most recent jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows stronger than expected hiring at the end of 2023.

Yet news reports and opinion polls show many Americans are pessimistic on the economy — including in swing states that will loom large in the 2024 presidential election. Some recent polls indicate the economy is by far the most important issue heading into the election.

Journalists covering the economy in the coming months, along with the 2024 political races, can use academic research to inform their interviews with sources and provide audiences with context.

The studies featured in the roundup below explore how people filter the national economy through their personal financial circumstances — and those circumstances vary widely in the U.S. The top tenth of households by wealth are worth $7 million on average, while the bottom half are worth $51,000 on average, according to the Institute for Economic Equity at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

We’ve also included several questions, based on the research, which you can use in interviews with policy makers and others commenting on the economy, or as a jumping off point for thinking about this topic.

The economic state of play

Similarly, 78% of people who responded to a December 2023 Gallup poll rated current economic conditions as fair or poor. Gallup pollsters have reported similar figures since COVID-19 shutdowns began in March 2020.

Explanations and insights

The tone of news coverage is one possible explanation for the disconnect between actual economic performance and how individuals perceive it, according to a recent Brookings Institution analysis. Since 2018 — including during and after the recession sparked by COVID-19 — economic reporting has taken on an increasingly negative tone, despite economic fundamentals strengthening in recent years, the analysis finds. The Brookings authors use data from the Daily News Sentiment Index, a measure of “positive” and “negative” economic news, produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

The six studies featured below offer further insights. All are based on surveys and polls, some of which the researchers conducted themselves. Several also explore economic perception in other countries.

The findings suggest:

• Economic inequality tends to lead people into thinking the economy is zero-sum, meaning one group’s economic success comes at the expense of others.
• In both wealthy and poorer countries, belief in conspiracy theories leads people to think the economy is declining — things were once OK, now they are not.
• In the U.S., political partisanship may be a more accurate predictor of economic perception than actual economic performance.
• Households at higher risk of experiencing poverty are less likely to offer a positive economic assessment, despite good macroeconomic news.

Research roundup

Economic Inequality Fosters the Belief That Success Is Zero-Sum
Shai Davidai. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, November 2023.

The study: How does economic inequality in the U.S. affect whether individuals think prosperity is zero-sum? A zero-sum outlook indicates that “the gains of the few come at the expense of the many,” writes Davidai, an assistant professor of business at Columbia University, who surveyed 3,628 U.S. residents across 10 studies to explore the relationship between inequality and zero-sum thinking.

In one study, participants answered questions about how they experience economic inequality in their personal lives. In another, participants read about the salaries of 20 employees at one of three randomly assigned hypothetical companies. The first company had a range of very low and very high salaries. The second had high salaries with little variation. The third had low salaries with little variation. Participants were then asked if they interpreted the distribution of wages as equal or unequal, as well as about their political ideology. Davidai uses several other designs across the 10 surveys.

The findings: Participants who read about the company with highly unequal salaries were more apt to report zero-sum economic beliefs. Overall, when controlling for factors including income, education and political ideology, the perception of the existence of economic inequality led to more zero-sum thinking. Davidai also suggests that while people with higher incomes may not perceive their own success as having resulted from others experiencing loss, the existence of inequality could lead them to think generally about economic gains in zero-sum terms.

Read more…