There is lots of buzz recently about improving Democratic prospects for winning a majority of Senate seats in the midterm elections, and the consensus of the top political analysts is a lot brighter for Democrats than it was even a few months ago.

CNN editor at large Chris Cillizza sees the range of possibilities for Democrats between +/- 3 seats and Kyle Kondik of Sabato’s Crystal Ball has changed his election outcome estimate from “Likely Republican” to “Leans Republican.”

Of the 36 senate seats in play on November 6th, the Cook Political Report rates only 3 of the races as “Solid R,” 2 as “Likely R” and 1 as “Lean R.” The remainder range from “Solid D” (14); “Likely D” (5); “Lean D” (2); and “Toss-up” (8).

At The Princeton Election Consortium, Sam Wang writes,

Senate control is said to be a difficult challenge for Democrats. However, the eventual seat margin will be close, and the number of critical races is small. If we look at current polling margins, a swing of 3 points would be enough to put Democrats on the brink of having 51 seats. So in the Senate, Republicans have a handicap of 3 percentage points favoring them.

I should throw in here that close Senate races tend to break mostly in the same direction on Election Day. Which way they’ll break isn’t known; one way gets Democrats to 51-52 seats, and the other way gets them to 45-46 seats. It appears that Senate control could go either way.

Ruy Teixeira flags an encouraging survey reported in the conservative Weekly Standard, and notes:

Senate models are a bit thin on the ground but David Byler at the Weekly Standard has one that seems solid. Currently, he has Democratic chances of taking the Senate at 41.5 percent, quite an improvement over earlier runs of his model. This reflects continued good poll results for Democratic Senate candidates, including the many, many candidates who have to hold a seat in red states. Of course, a little better than 2 in 5 still means they’re more likely to fall short than not. But given the Senate map this year, an estimate this high is impressive.

Political analyst Stu Rothenberg sees “an almost impossible map” for Democrats.” However he believes that the GOP’s mounting problems indicate that “the Senate could be in play.” Vox’s senate analyst, Dylan Scott says “while Democrats will need a near-perfect November to win back control of the chamber, a fresh assessment of the Senate battlefield reveals that they should have several opportunities to pick up the seats they need.”

All in all, the odds still favor the Republicans to hold a senate majority, but Democrats have some good reasons to invest more resources in competitive senate races.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman answers an important question on the minds of many voters, “are Democrats really credible on health care?”

Almost five years after Obamacare went into full effect, the answer is a very clear yes. It hasn’t worked perfectly, and its successes haven’t come in quite the form its proponents expected. But it has delivered huge progress, especially in states run by politicians who are trying to make it work.

It’s worth remembering what Republicans said would happen before the A.C.A. went online: that it would fail to reduce the number of uninsured, that it would blow a giant hole in the budget, that it would lead to a “death spiral” of rising premiums and declining enrollment.

What actually happened was a dramatic fall in the uninsured, especially in those states that expanded Medicaid. The budget costs of expanding Medicaid and subsidizing other insurance have been significant, but estimates for 2019 suggest that these costs will be around $115 billion — much less than half the revenue lost due to the Trump tax cut.

Krugman concedes that premiums “rose sharply when the people signing up for those exchanges turned out to be fewer and sicker than insurers had hoped.” However, “the markets have now stabilized, with only modest premium increases for 2019 and insurers returning to the exchanges.”

In addition, “Medicaid is covering more than expected, so that overall gains in coverage have been surprisingly on target. In early 2014, the Congressional Budget Office projected that under the A.C.A., by 2018 there would be 29 million uninsured U.S. residents. The actual number is … 29 million.”

And, despite the assault on the Affordable Care Act by Trump and the Republicans, “Democrats built their system so well that it’s still standing despite everything thrown at it.” Further,

…Obamacare would be doing even better if it were run by people who weren’t trying to kill it. Look at what’s happening in New Jersey, where a Democratic governor and Legislature have used their powers to undo most of the Trumpian sabotage: 2019 premiums will actually drop 9.3 percent, even as they rise modestly in the nation as a whole.

…Republicans, on the other hand, aren’t just lying about their health plans — pretending, for example, to protect people with pre-existing conditions when they aren’t. They’ve also been utterly wrong about everything, and have learned nothing from their mistakes.

Even the conservative Democrat Joe Manchin is running strong in a state Trump won by 42 percent by attacking the Republican plan to eradicate protection for people with pre-existing conditions. As Krugman concludes, “Democrats have earned a lot of credibility on health care: They delivered what they promised, and they have showed that they can build systems that work” — in stark contrast to their GOP opponents, who can’t pass any health care measures, despite having control of the presidency and majorities of both houses of congress.

Very interesting data from a Monmouth University poll of 8 competitive CDs (CA48, PA01, PA17, NJ03, NJ11, OH12, VA10, WV03). The general take below but there is a ton of detailed data provided in the writeup. Note particularly how well Democrats are doing among white noncollege women, losing them by a mere 6 points, while totally killing it among white college women.

“These eight House districts are particularly competitive because Donald Trump’s vote share was less than Mitt Romney’s in election precincts that encompass just under half of the combined electorate. Republican House candidates are doing worse in precincts where Trump underperformed even after controlling for the partisan lean of those precincts. Furthermore, Republican House candidates are not doing as well overall in Republican precincts as Democratic candidates are doing in Democratic precincts. This performance gap currently offsets the natural GOP lean of these congressional districts.”

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

There hasn’t been much polling specifically of Latinos in the 2018 election cycle and the subsamples in most polls are small enough not to be very trustworthy. So it’s nice to see Latino Decisions out of the gate with a tracking poll of Latinos that they will do every week until the elections.

Their first poll is now available. Topline for the Democrats for the House vote is good –a 70-22 advantage among likely voters. On the less positive side, mobilization leaves something to be desired–about three-fifths say they have not been contacted yet concerning their vote. This is not an election when you want to leave any votes on the table!

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

Hillaryland Says: It’s Time to Think Big!

I thought this was really interesting. Jake Sullivan, who was senior policy adviser on Clinton’s 2016 campaign, has a lengthy article up on the Democracy Journal website where he argues strongly that Democrats should embrace big, bold policy ideas. Presumably this is indicative of how folks in that sector of the party are thinking about things these days. One of the most telling nuggets in the article is this:

“In contending with Sanders, we often fell back on the argument that his proposed agenda simply wasn’t achievable. I cheered when Hillary styled herself as a “progressive who gets things done” during the first primary debate in Las Vegas, but while it was a great debate moment, it also created a trap that became apparent as the campaign unfolded. Instead of aspiration, we gave people arithmetic: His numbers didn’t add up! This was a mistake. There was a time and place for expressing caution on the sheer magnitude of spending in Bernie’s agenda, but it should not have been our core critique.”

So clearly some serious re-thinking is going on here. What kind of re-thinking? Sullivan starts his article this way:

“When political commentators aren’t talking about Donald Trump, they are often talking about how the Democratic Party has “moved to the left.” This is often phrased as a lament, the notion being that the party has been hijacked by its progressive wing. But what if that is missing the point? What if, when it comes to economic policy at least, it’s the country’s political center of gravity that is actually shifting? That is, what if not just one party, but the American electorate as a whole is moving to embrace a more energized form of government—one that tackles the excesses of the free market and takes on big, serious challenges through big, serious legislation instead of the more restrained measures to which we’ve grown accustomed? What would that mean for Democrats?”

He answers his own question in a remarkably robust fashion:

“This essay proceeds from the premise that we have reached another turning point. Just as the Great Depression discredited the ideas of the pre-New Deal conservatives who fought for total laissez-faire outcomes in both the political branches and the courts, so the Great Recession once again laid bare the failure of our government to protect its citizens from unchecked market excess. There has been a delayed reaction this time around, but people have begun to see more clearly not only the flaws of our public and private institutions that contributed to the financial crisis, but also the decades of rising inequality and income stagnation that came before—and the uneven recovery that followed. Our politics are in the process of adjusting to this new reality. The tide is running in the other direction, and, with history serving as our guide, it could easily be a decades-long tide…

In the face of Trump, some Democrats will be skittish about embracing big, bold economic policy solutions for fear of alienating independents and moderate Republicans who can help defend our national institutions, our core values, and our democracy. What these trends suggest is that Democrats do not have to choose between shoring up the “vital center” in American politics and supporting a more vigorous national response to our economic challenges. Both are possible. Indeed, both are necessary to defeating the long-term threat of Trumpism.

Most important, the bottom line is that Democrats should not blush too much, or pay too much heed, when political commentators arch their eyebrows about the party moving left. The center of gravity itself is moving, and this is a good thing. The government’s role in checking the excesses of the free market and supporting workers and families should and will be redefined in the years ahead…..

We Democrats do need to embrace a big, bold policy agenda. We do need to heed the calls of Franklin Roosevelt, who asked us to save capitalism from its excesses, and Lyndon Johnson, who asked us to think ambitiously about how government—and yes, government programs—can help do that. But, crucially, we need to apply their principles to a new economic landscape.

What we need, ultimately, is to encourage the rise of New Old Democrats.

Here’s the old part: reclaiming a willingness to take energetic government action when the circumstances call for it, based on a respect for the free market but also a recognition that the free market alone will not serve the public interest without checks against abuse, corruption, and unacceptable levels of inequality. Roosevelt knew this as well as anyone. My hero Hubert Humphrey, another son of Minnesota, knew this too. They saw that public policy can solve these problems—that the rise of inequality and the loss of mobility is not chiefly a story of abstract “market failures,” but of self-serving actors intentionally distorting markets, and government failing to stop them.

Here are the new parts:

We need to marry the principles of Roosevelt and the ambition of Johnson with updated understandings of how the job market works, how families live, and how corporate and political power are exercised in the globalized, technology-driven landscape of the twenty-first century.”

New Old Democrats. Not sure that’ll catch on but I take his point and generally agree with it. As I do with most of the policy ideas he advances under four “Core Pillars for s New Old Democratic Platform” I was particularly taken with Pillar #3: “Tackle the geography of opportunity so that all regions experience a middle-class revival”. This is absolutely essential given current economic trends and has not, until very recently, gotten enough attention from Democrats. As Sullivan notes:

“Old Democrats thought a lot about communities that had been left behind in the face of social and technological change. Roosevelt invested in rural electrification. Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson fought urban and rural poverty. Today, the geography of opportunity should be a central focus once again—specifically, the disparity in growth and dynamism between cities and rural communities, the urban core and wealthier neighborhoods, the suburbs and the exurbs, the coastal metropolises and mid-sized cities in the middle of America.”

Amen to that. Exactly which big ideas Democrats should be pushing to address this big problem–and others–is a reasonable subject for debate and I think it’s fair to say Sullivan does not have the definitive take. But that’s fine. These are the debates Democrats should be having in the run-up to 2020 rather than the endless and rather pointless debates about base mobilization vs. reaching swing voters (Spoiler alert: you need to do both!) Sullivan points the way to a healthier and way more interesting and important discussion.

Sullivan is not unaware that some will see his recommendations as some sort of dismissal of what we might loosely call “identity politics”. He urges us not get dragged down into that kind of argument. Instead his view is that:

“[T]he only way out is through. Hillary Clinton was fundamentally right when she said that we need to deal with all of the barriers holding people back—not just the economic and political barriers, but obstacles of racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination. We should not be apologetic about that, or tiptoe around it. The task—and where we fell short—is to figure out how to speak honestly about these barriers in a way that allows everyone to see themselves as part of a common effort, a shared effort, an effort that benefits the whole country. While I disagree with those who argue that Democrats should de-emphasize or outright avoid what some see as “inconvenient” issues touching on race or identity or immigration, I take their point that an explicit list of groups in a candidate’s stump speech can end up dividing more than uniting. Which brings me back to Hubert Humphrey. We need “happy warriors”—strongly crusading against injustice and disadvantages and doing so in a way that is hopeful and summons us to shared purpose.”

Sign me up!

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

Democrats’ hopes are high that two Sunbelt prizes that seemed out of reach to them not long ago might fall to them this year: the governorship of Georgia and Ted Cruz’s Senate seat in Texas. Just in the last few days, both the Washington Post and New York Times have run detailed articles about each of these contests.

So can the Democrats do it? They’re running strong in both places and enthusiasm among Democrats and their core constituencies seems to be high. That is very important obviously and they can’t win without it.

Andrew Gillum’s upset victory in the Florida gubernatorial primary is being hailed by progressives as a win for the Democratic left, complete with Bernie Sanders endorsement. Although there are no available exit polls that pinpoint his level of support with various demographic groups, there are some clues worth considering. In Isaac Stanley-Becker’s “‘The young people will win’: Post-Parkland vote in Florida tests youth power” in the Washington Post, he observes:

Gillum’s pitch to African Americans and young people was at the center of his primary campaign, spokesman Geoff Burgan told the Tampa Bay Times, saying these groups represent “people who have typically dropped off.”

In fact, his youth has long been a focal point of his political career. Born in Miami to a school bus driver and a construction worker, Gillum, at 23, became the youngest person ever elected to Tallahassee’s city commission. He went on to help found the Young Elected Officials Network, part of the liberal advocacy group People For The American Way. He became the group’s director, working to support politicians 35 and under.

Though vastly outspent by his primary opponents, Gillum did net the endorsement of billionaire Tom Steyer, whose political action committee, NextGen America, ran a digital advertising campaign targeting young voters on social media. The 30-second spot, emphasizing progressive issues such as corporate taxes and a “Medicare-for-all” health-care system, advised, “For anyone who’s been told to quiet down, to wait their turn, that it’s not their time, Gillum is our guy.”

Put together Gillum’s evident appeal to young voters with some recent statistics noting an uptick in young voter registration and in Florida, and the case for young voters having a pivotal influence on the primary outcome becomes stronger. Noting also that a “ruling from a federal judge last month invalidated a Republican-imposed ban on early voting on college campuses,” Stanley-Becker writes,

Data suggests that the deadly shooting in the South Florida suburb was politically energizing. An analysis released last month by TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm, revealed that registration rates for people under 30 increased significantly in swing states during the last seven months. In the several months before the Valentine’s Day shooting, voters between the ages of 18 and 29 accounted for more than 26 percent of new voter registration in Florida, according to TargetSmart. The data showed an increase close to eight percentage points in the months after the shooting.

Despite these clues, we don’t have enough hard data to firmly attribute Gillum’s victory to young voters and those who want stronger gun safety measures. And African American turnout and support of Gillum could well have been pivotal in the largest swing state.

What is certain, is that the GOP is going to go all out to defeat Gillum. Democrats should prepare for record level donations from Republican sugar-daddies to Gillum’s opponent, Ron Desantis, and, given Florida’s history, aggressive voter suppression.

Most of the media attention will stay focused on the battle for a House of Representatives Majority. But Andrew Gillum’s victory in the Florida Democratic primary sets up what is likely to be the marquee governor’s race. Slide up the sound icon and get acquainted:

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

Vanessa Williamson of Brookings has a good piece out on their website about the political effects (or lack thereof) of Trump’s tax cut. This is a solid article which, in passing, concisely and fairly summarizes a lot of the political science research relevant to this issue. Recommended, though I guess I’m less sure Democrats could make a big issue of this even if they wanted to. Perhaps they should be satisfied with the fail of the issue for the GOP.

At Bloomberg, Margaret Newkirk has a post that outs the GOP’s phony “get tough” on undocumented workers policy. As Newkirk writes in “E-Verify Laws Across Southern Red States Are Barely Enforced“:

In 2011 states across the Southeast passed laws that threatened private employers with dire consequences—including losing their license to do business—if they didn’t enroll with a federal data service called E-Verify to check the legal status of new hires. Modeled after 2008 measures in Arizona and Mississippi and billed as a rebuke to a do-nothing Obama administration, the laws went further than those in the 13 states that required checks for new hires only by state agencies or their contractors.

Seven years later, those laws appear to have been more political bark than bite. None of the Southern states that extended E-Verify to the private sector have canceled a single business license, and only one, Tennessee, has assessed any fines. Most businesses caught violating the laws have gotten a pass.

In Georgia the department charged with auditing compliance with the E-Verify law has never been given money to do so. In Louisiana, where the law against hiring unverified employees can lead to cancellation of public contracts or loss of business licenses, no contract has been canceled, no licenses have been suspended, and the state reports zero “actionable” complaints since the mandate went into effect in 2012. In Mississippi no one seems to know who enforces the E-Verify law. The mandate appears to give that job to its Department of Employment Security, which knows nothing about it and referred questions to the attorney general’s office, which says it doesn’t know who’s responsible.

The same is true in Alabama, where the state labor department points to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, which neither enforces the law nor knows who does. District attorneys, who field complaints under the mandate, say enforcement falls to the state attorney general’s office, which hadn’t heard that. “What is it we’re supposed to be doing?” spokeswoman Joy Patterson asks. “I’m not aware of anything like that.”

No doubt many Republican voters in these states are unaware that they have been hustled by their state legislators and governors, especially from those who bellow the loudest about “getting tough” on undocumented workers. As the conservative Cato Institute’s analyst, Alex Nowrasteh puts it “These are states that very much want to enforce immigration laws, where the electorate is solidly behind it and the politics is behind it, and even there they don’t want to enforce it.”

Advocates of The Legal Workforce Act, a bill that would institute a national E-Verify system know this to be the case. Still, they hope to put on a big show about it, when the bill comes up for debate in September, and reap support from voters who have been deluded that undocumented workers are a threat to their jobs.

Federal contractors have been required to E-Verify since 2009. Newkirk points out that, while “knowingly” hiring undocumented workers has been against the law since 1986, employers have finagled their way around the law in various ways:

The “knowingly” language spawned a cottage industry of fake documents, layered hiring—subcontractors who hire subcontractors who hire subcontractors—and the use of temp agencies and independent contractors, all shielding employers from knowledge of a worker’s status. Critics say E-Verify encourages discrimination and is filled with loopholes. It failed to flag the illegal status of Cristhian Rivera, who was accused in the recent death of Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts.

E-Verify enforcement is largely a missing issue in the midterm campaigns. Newkirk notes that:

…the E-Verify laws were absent from Georgia’s recent GOP gubernatorial primary. Despite campaigning on how tough they would be on immigrants, neither candidate referred to the laws. The winner, Brian Kemp, ran ads saying he’d haul illegals away in his pickup. “They talked about sanctuary cities and rounding up criminal aliens in a truck, all these distractions,” [president of the Dustin Inman Society D. A. ] King says. “The root cause of illegal immigration is illegal employment. And none of our candidates made a peep about that.”

Obviously, the Republicans want to have it both ways — strut around as tough on undocumented workers, while giving employers, who are the key to E-Verify, the old wink-wink free pass. Kemp is probably the poster-boy for the two-faced scam. His bet is that the media will let him get away with it. We’ll know if that has been the case on November 6th.