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

As a sort of companion piece to my post on Purple Texas, it’s worth considering the 2018 results in Extremely Blue California. Despite the endless articles conservative Republicans churn out on how California is a hellhole and only getting worse, the actual voters in that state don’t seem to see the GOP as in any way preferable to the Democrats who are allegedly ruining their state.

In 2018, Republicans got absolutely crushed in California Congressional races. Once they call CA-21 for Democrat TJ Cox, the GOP will have lost half of its already meager allotment of California House seats, diving from 14 to a mere 7 out of 53 seats. That’s bad–almost unbelievably bad for a party that was competitive in statewide elections and at least a healthy minority of House seats not so long ago.

What’s happening? Trump’s happening. And it’s causing an implosion in an already-weakened party in the nation’s biggest state. Ron Brownstein explains in a excellent, detailed article (lots of good data and California political history!) on the Atlantic site:

“The final ingredient in the GOP collapse was Trump. From the start, his open appeals to white racial resentments and the fear of social change faced enormous resistance in diverse, culturally cosmopolitan California: He won less than 32 percent of the state’s vote in 2016. That essentially tied Alf Landon in 1936 as the weakest performance for a Republican presidential nominee in California since 1860. (William Howard Taft won even less of the vote in 1912, but only because Theodore Roosevelt, the former Republican president running as an independent, narrowly carried the state.)

But despite the unmistakable indication of Trump’s local unpopularity, the California GOP delegation locked arms around his turbulent presidency. …California Republicans serving in Clinton-won districts voted more as if they were representing Alabama than swing seats in a state steadily becoming more Democratic. ([Mimi] Walters even told one interviewer that she thought Trump would win her affluent, diverse coastal district today and that she’d welcome a campaign appearance.)

Those choices emphatically caught up with them during this month’s sweep,….Now most California Republicans see little prospect of regaining many, or perhaps any of these seats, so long as Trump’s stamp on the party repels both minority voters and college-educated white suburbanites, key growing constituencies throughout the state. They have been reduced to a literal handful of inland districts, almost entirely isolated from the state’s racially diverse and economically dynamic metropolitan areas.

“The national party has become a cultural brand that’s anathema to the demographics that have grown here,” says GOP consultant Rob Stutzman, the former communications director for Schwarzenegger.

With Republicans so marginalized in the state—Democrats this month restored supermajorities in both of the state’s legislative chambers and routed the GOP in all statewide races—just raising enough money to make their case may grow increasingly daunting for Republicans, Stutzman says.

California may be an extreme case of the political risks the GOP faces in a changing nation as Trump focuses the party’s message and agenda ever more narrowly on the priorities and cultural preferences of older, blue-collar, rural, and evangelical whites.

But Cain, the Stanford political scientist, notes that California is not unique, particularly in the west. Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and even Utah and Texas are being reshaped by forces similar to those that have dyed California so deeply blue….

The most ominous prospect for national Republicans is the possibility that the California GOP’s slide into the ocean is only a preview of the growing strain they may face under Trump in the other southwestern states advancing along a similar trajectory of economic and demographic change.

“They have got themselves into this little echo chamber, and now Trump has added to that,” Cain says. “But obviously this blew up on the Republicans in California. And it’s blowing up on them in these suburban areas in the West and other parts of the country.”

Yup, there does seem to be a trend here. Why in California even white noncollege voters are going Democratic!–they supported Democrat Gavin Newsom for governor by a solid 10 point margin. Shockingly, white noncollege men also joined the party, giving Newsom a 5 point edge.

Interesting. And if I was a Republican, just a little bit frightening.

The following article by John B. Russo, visiting researcher at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, co-author of Steeltown U.S.A.: Work and Memory in Youngstown, and co-editor with Sherry Linkon of the blog Working-Class Perspectives. is cross-posted from The American Prospect.

The midterm elections showed that the Democrats’ blue wall is being rebuilt brick by brick in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and northern Illinois. A red wall also seems to be going up, and its bricks include West Virginia, Indiana, Iowa, southern Illinois, and Missouri. As these new political walls get built, one brick that once seemed to fit neatly with its blue neighbors looks to be turning red: Ohio.

Many Democrats seem ready to give up on Ohio. Michael Halle, who coordinated Hillary Clinton’s battleground state strategy before managing Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray’s campaign this year, told The New York Times that “it was time for Democrats to jettison Iowa and Ohio in future campaigns in favor of Arizona and Georgia.” Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri now says that that the Clinton campaign should have spent less time and money in Ohio and spent more in Georgia, Texas, and Arkansas. Speaking from ground zero for Democratic crossover voters in Youngstown, Mahoning County Democratic Chairperson David Betras commented after the midterms that it wasn’t the people who had left the party. Instead, Betras stated, the Democratic Party had left Ohio.

The Republicans in Ohio somehow overcame ongoing scandals involving their promotion of charter schools, sexual harassment charges against Republican leaders, and the schism between the Trump and Kasich wings of the Ohio Republican Party. The Democrats and community organizations also mounted an impressive organizing campaign that generated record turnout for a midterm election. Yet Republicans swept statewide offices save for the non-partisan Supreme Court races.

The Ohio results make Republican dominance clear. The Ohio GOP won 73 of 116 Statehouse races while collecting just over 50 percent of the total vote. That sounds close, but Republicans did not even field candidates in nine races. They also won 12 of Ohio’s 16 congressional districts with just over 52 percent of the overall vote. The results reflect past gerrymandering by the Kasich administration—which will only get worse as Republicans will control reapportionment in 2020.

So what’s the matter with Ohio? Conventional wisdom says that Ohio is too white, too working class (by education), and too rural to support Democrats anymore. That might seem to explain voting patterns in the midterms. Republican Mike DeWine won the largely white exurban, small town, semi-rural, and rural areas that dominate the state. Cordray won in urban and some suburban areas, mostly in the northeast, where the population includes many people of color. Unfortunately, those areas are chiefly found in just nine of Ohio’s 88 counties. Some of those blue regions, especially the traditional Democratic strongholds of Cuyahoga, Mahoning, and Trumbull Counties, no longer deliver enough votes to overcome growing Republican power elsewhere in the state.

But conflating race, class, and region misses several complicating factors. First, Ohio illustrates a point made recently by John McCullough, writing for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting: When pundits talk about the “working class,” they are usually not talking about class but about whiteness.  According to a 2016 Brookings Institution report, Ohio is whiter than other rust belt states (82 percent, compared with 77.6 percent in Michigan). And while much of the state is rural, its suburban and exurban areas are growing, and their predominantly white populations include both working- and middle-class residents.

Ohio’s whiteness explains only part of the problem, though. The Democrats also created their own obstacles through inbred party leadership and poor messaging. Despite a series of defeats, the Ohio Democratic Party still relies on the same leaders, consultants, and lobbyists who failed in past elections and have not developed a bench of future candidates. Twelve years ago, the last time Democrats won Statehouse races in Ohio, the party capitalized on Republican scandals. Not this year. Further, as Alec MacGillis has written in The New York Times, the Ohio Democratic Party, unions, and some progressive organizations failed to support more progressive Democrats or to invest time or money in “areas where the party is losing ground.”

Cordray and other statewide candidates also failed to offer concrete proposals that would address the economic challenges facing both working- and middle-class voters. The only candidate who focused on such policies was also the only Democrat who won statewide: Senator Sherrod Brown. Why? Brown’s campaign embraced his small town Ohio roots and stressed his consistent support of policies—like protectionist trade rules, increasing the minimum wage, and reducing prescription drug prices—that would improve the lives of working people. This message, combined with his long-standing commitment to campaigning in every county, red or blue, ensured that his message appealed to broad range of voters across races, class affiliations, and regions.

Unfortunately, Cordray wasn’t able to follow Brown’s model. Despite Cordray’s leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which should have defined him as a progressive who would defend ordinary people from Wall Street and corporate misbehavior, he failed to directly address the economic anxieties of working people. While Cordray and Brown voiced some of the same concerns—like lowering the cost of college education or addressing the opioid crisis—Cordray waited until late in his campaign to emphasize the kind of economic policies that have long been at the core of Brown’s political identity. He also lacked Brown’s track record and his down-to-earth style.

Brown’s coattails were simply not long enough to carry other Democrats. In fact, Brown’s numbers may have been pulled down by the other statewide candidates. He won by only 6.4 percent, despite a weak Republican opponent and an 8-to-1 fundraising advantage, according to David Skolnick, political analyst for The Vindicator—the local paper in Youngstown, a Brown stronghold.

As the 2018 midterms make clear, Ohio Democrats cannot count on a strong organizing effort alone to yield victories. They also need the kind of clear message, wide-ranging outreach, and concrete proposals that Brown offered. If Democrats want to reclaim Ohio, they need to recognize that many Ohio Trump voters are also Sherrod Brown voters and vice versa.

But will the Ohio Democratic Party change its approach? Will there be a return to Ohio’s history of northern progressivism that Sherrod Brown channels? I doubt it. Even Brown acknowledges how conservative Ohio has become. And unless they embrace the kind of pro-worker world view that Brown has championed, Ohio Democrats will remain helpless as Republicans continue to cement the state within their red wall.

From Greg Sargent’s “Memo to Democrats: Don’t wring your hands about investigating Trump” at The Plum Line: “So here is our contribution to this debate: Shut up and stop wringing your hands, “cautious Democrats.” This whole fear appears to be based on the notion that Democrats face some sort of zero-sum choice between investigating Trump on the one hand, and focusing investigative authority on policy and governing on the other…If Democrats focus their oversight authority on serious abuses of power, governing fiascoes and corruption — and stick to where the facts lead — they’ll be, yes, investigating Trump, while also standing for a restoration of transparency, accountability, legitimate governance and the rule of law. There’s no need to allow this to get hyped into a false choice or a cause for hand-wringing, Democrats.”

Joan McCarter writes at Daily Kos that “Threats to health care helped swing older voters to the Democrats in the midterms.” McCarter explains, “According to exit polling for this midterm, Republicans had just a 51-49 advantage with the 50-64 group, and 50-48 among the over 65s. That was enough of a shift, along with higher-than-normal turnout among younger voters, to offset the advantage Republicans have had…But the threat to health care for people with pre-existing conditions, as well as Medicare and Medicaid, and the Democrats’ full-on embrace of the issue appears to have made all the difference. From mid-September to mid-October, analysis of House and Senate campaign ads by the Wesleyan Media Project found that 54.5 percent of all the ads from Democrats talked about health care, whereas just 31.5 percent from Republicans did. Go back to 2010, and from then until this cycle no more than 10 percent of ads from Democrats talked about the issue. That’s in all four elections before this one. Republicans owned it, being four times more likely to advertise against Obamacare than Democrats to defend it. It dominated issue ads this cycle, comprising more than a third of all the election ads. And three-fourths of those 1.2 million ads were from Democrats and organizations backing them.”

Katrina vanden Heuval, editor of The Nation and Washington Post columnist writes,”House Democrats won a majority in the midterms with a focus on health care and other kitchen-table issues. When the next Congress begins in January, though, Republican control of the Senate means that Democrats will have little ability to advance the policies they campaigned on. But even with a divided government and a president who is more interested in sowing division than developing legislation, Democrats can lay out markers for a bold alternative to Trumpism….With members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in line to chair 13 committees, the incoming majority can also connect much-needed oversight to a bold policy vision that frames a clear choice for voters heading into 2020…Midterm voters sent a loud message by electing a new generation of progressive activists to Congress. Party leaders would be wise to amplify their voices and the ideas that made them so compelling to voters and movement activists across the country.”

“A study published in the journal Political Psychology in 2017 found that children’s political views do tend to be similar to those of their parents at age 18, but then diverge rapidly,” notes Sandra Newman at Post Everything Perspective. “By the time a person reached age 35, the political attitudes of the county the person lived in were twice as likely to predict their political beliefs as the politics of their parents. By age 50, parental influence had almost entirely disappeared.”

In suspicious statistics news, The Washington Post’s Vanessa Williams notes at The Fix that, according to CNN exit polling following the miderm elections, 11 percent of African American men voted for Georgia gubernatorical candidate Brian Kemp — despite the same poll showing 97 percent of Black women voting for Democrat Stacy Abrams. The poll also says 75 percent of Georgia white female voters chose Kemp. An AP poll found only 8 percent of Black men voting for Kemp.

If you want to “Meet the Democrats Who Want Pelosi to Step Aside,” read Julie Hirschfield Davis’s New York Times profile, which observes that “Their ideological leanings and political profiles are diffuse…What the group shares is a determination to shake up the top echelons of the House Democratic Caucus, whose leaders have remained unchanged for more than a decade, with Ms. Pelosi, 78, at the helm; Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, 79, as the No. 2, and Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, 78, as the third ranking… the list of signatories to the letter is limited, representing fewer than 10 percent of House Democrats. In fact, their ranks may be shrinking as Ms. Pelosi pulls them to her one at a time.” Davis provides capsule introductions to each of the advocates of Dems having a different Speaker for the upcoming session.

WaPo Columnist Dana Milbank suggests a middle-ground appoach to the debate about whether Nancy Pelosi should be the  next House Speaker: “…she should be that transitional figure — now. By announcing that this will be her last term, she would deflate the insurgency against her, give new members a reason to feel good about voting for her, lead Democrats with discipline in 2019 and preside over an orderly transition…now is the time to make herself a lame duck (and coax Hoyer and Clyburn into that pond, too). Pelosi allies fear she would lose her fundraising clout if she announced this to be her last term. But Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who announced his retirement in April, did fine as a lame-duck fundraiser, even during a bad year for Republicans. His Congressional Leadership Fund raised nearly $144 million this cycle, and his Team Ryan joint fundraising committee raised an additional $64 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics…By announcing that this will be her last term, Pelosi would make herself the kingmaker (or queenmaker), while remaining the disciplinarian Democrats urgently need. This is the time to begin a departure on her terms.”

NYT columnist Paul Krugman explains “How Democrats Can Deliver on Health Care: New Jersey shows the way. You got a problem with that?” Krugman observes, “The most dramatic example of how this can be done is New Jersey, where Democrats gained full control at the end of 2017 and promptly created state-level versions of both the mandate and reinsurance. The results were impressive: New Jersey’s premiums for 2019 are 9.3 percent lower than for 2018, and are now well below the national average. Undoing Trumpian sabotage seems to have saved the average buyer around $1,500 a year…Now that Democrats have won control of multiple states, they can and should emulate New Jersey’s example, and move beyond it if they can. Why not, for example, introduce state-level public options — actuarially sound government plans — as alternatives to private insurance?”

“Big Business Is Stealing From Their Own Workers. Will Democrats Stop Them?” By Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast suggests more Democratic focus on a neglected issue: “If the Democrats’ job number one heading into 2020 is to win back some of those white working-class voters who deserted them in 2016, this general problem of wage theft seems like an awfully good place to start. It affects many millions of Americans of all races and in all places. Yet I don’t hear many Democrats talk about it. No one in the broader public even knows what “wage theft” means. Somebody stole your pay packet as you walked home from work? No. It’s what employers extract from employees in not paying them what they’ve earned…And Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who is a Democrat, has legislation that would similarly tax companies (though at a lower rate than Sanders) whose employees need public assistance and would offer some tax credits to companies that did the right thing and raised wages. So, stick and carrot, in other words. The Senate actually voted on it during the farm bill debate last June, and while it lost, it got the support of every Democrat. Note, every Democrat: Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp, Jon Tester, everyone. Democrats are and will be divided on some cultural issues, but on something like this, they can be 100 percent united.” Sounds like a winner.

The following article by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, is cross-posted from The Washington Post:

As a result of the recent midterm elections, Democrats flipped nearly 40 congressional seats and will control the House of Representatives. Impressively, nearly 6 million more Americans voted for a Democrat to represent them in the House than who did for a Republican. Further, Democrats took over seven governor’s seats and won hundreds of legislative races in statehouses across the country. To a significant degree, the American people rejected President Trump’s agenda benefiting the wealthy and the powerful, as well as his racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and religious bigotry.

But let me be clear: It is not good enough for Democrats to just be the anti-Trump party. If they want to keep and expand their majority in the House, take back the Senate and win the White House, Democrats must show the American people that they will aggressively stand up and fight for the working families of this country — black, white, Latino, Asian American or Native American, men and women, gay or straight. This means addressing the crisis of a broken criminal-justice system and reforming inhumane immigration policies. But it also means fighting to expand a middle class that has been disappearing for more than 40 years, reducing inequality in both income and wealth — which has disproportionately hurt African Americans and Hispanics — and aggressively combating climate change, the most urgent threat facing our planet.

Twenty-three years ago, after the Republicans took control of Congress for the first time in four decades, House Republicans led by Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) passed a series of bills through the House that had been on their wish list for years. Their guide was the so-called Contract with America, a radical right-wing agenda full of tax breaks for the wealthy, massive cuts to programs vital to working families, and racist and cruel bills to “reform” welfare and our criminal-justice system.

While I strongly disagree with Gingrich on virtually every issue, the House Democratic leadership should take a page from his playbook by passing a bold agenda through the House. Starting on the first day of the new Congress, the Democratic leadership in the House, supported by their colleagues in the Senate, should be just as bold in passing an agenda that reflects the needs of working Americans — centered on economic, political, social, racial and environmental justice.

Specifically, during the first 100 days, Congress must pass a legislative agenda that includes:

Increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour and indexing it to median wage growth thereafter. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage that must be increased to a living wage — at least $15 an hour. This would give more than 40 million Americans a raise and would generate more than $100 billion in higher wages throughout the country.

A path toward Medicare-for-all. The Medicare-for-all bill widely supported in the Senate has a four-year phase-in period on the way to guaranteeing health care for every man, woman and child. Over the first year, it would lower the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55, cover dental, hearing and vision care for seniors, provide health care to every young person in the United States and lower the cost of prescription drugs.

Bold action to combat climate change. The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear we have just 12 years to substantially cut the amount of carbon in our atmosphere, or our planet will suffer irreversible damage. Congress must pass legislation that shifts our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and renewable energy. We can lead the planet in combating climate change and, in the process, create millions of good paying jobs.

Fixing our broken criminal-justice system. We must end the absurdity of the United States having more people in jail than any other country on Earth. We must invest in jobs and education for our young people, not more jails and incarceration.

Comprehensive immigration reform. The American people want to protect the young people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and to move toward comprehensive immigration reform for the more than 11 million people in our country who are undocumented. And that’s exactly what we should do.

Progressive tax reform. At a time of massive and growing inequality in both income and wealth, Congress must pass legislation which requires wealthy people and large corporations to begin paying their fair share of taxes. It is unacceptable that there are large, extremely profitable corporations in this country that do not pay a nickel in federal income taxes.

A $1 trillion infrastructure plan. Every day, Americans drive to work on potholed roads and crumbling bridges, and ride in overcrowded buses and subways. Children struggle to concentrate in overcrowded classrooms. Workers are unable to find affordable housing. The structures that most Americans don’t see are also in disrepair — from spotty broadband and an outdated electric grid, to toxic drinking water and dilapidated levees and dams. Congress should pass a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to address these needs while creating up to 15 million good-paying jobs in the process.

Lowering the price of prescription drugs. Americans pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs because, unlike other countries, the United States doesn’t directly regulate the price of medicine. The House should pass legislation to require Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices and allow patients, pharmacists and wholesalers to purchase low-cost prescription drugs from Canada and other countries. It should also pass legislation to make sure that Americans don’t pay more for prescription drugs than citizens do in other major countries.

Making public colleges and universities tuition-free and substantially reducing student debt. In a highly competitive global economy, we must have the best-educated workers in the world. Every young person in America, regardless of income, must have the opportunity to receive the education they need to get a decent job and make it into the middle class. The House should pass the College for All Act to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and substantially reduce student debt.

Expanding Social Security. When 1 out of 5 seniors is trying to get by on less than $13,500 a year, we must expand Social Security so that every American can retire with dignity and security. The House should pass legislation to expand Social Security benefits and extend its solvency for the next 60 years by requiring that the wealthiest Americans — those making more than $250,000 a year — pay their fair share of Social Security taxes.

Here is the bottom line: Instead of us having a Congress that listens to wealthy campaign contributors, it is about time we had a Congress fighting to create an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just those on top.

Many midterm polls indicated that the strongest issue favoring Democrats was health care reform. But how ready for congressional approval are the various Democratic proposals? In her aritlcle, “On ‘Medicare-for-All,’ Democrats Tread Lightly: It polls well. But Dems say the proposal isn’t ready for floor action,” Mary Ellen McIntire explores the question at Roll Call.

“Progressives in the House are calling for a vote on a single-payer “Medicare-for-all” bill in the next Congress,” writes McIntire, “but the expected chairmen who will set the agenda for next year say they have other health priorities.” Further,

A handful of potential presidential candidates expected to declare interest have already co-sponsored “Medicare-for-all” legislation, an issue that was also a flashpoint in Democratic primaries over the past year.

Most Democrats say the proposal, which polls show enjoys significant public support, hasn’t been fully fleshed out and isn’t ready for floor consideration. The drawbacks, like a major tax increase, the type of changes that would be needed to the Medicare program and the reality that millions of Americans would lose their current coverage plan, could become politically dangerous, they say.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, founder of the Medicare-for-All Caucus sees it a little differently:

“We should continue to try to shore up health care as we have it, but we really have to be pushing to a complete transformation of our health care system and not just trying to do little fixes here or there because we’re still leaving out too many Americans who are literally cutting their pharmaceuticals into half because they can’t afford it, or getting off of health care because it’s not a choice to pay another $300 a month,” she said.

The debate is important for securing the public image of the Democrats as the only party which is serious about health care reform, while their GOP adversaries are still floundering without a coherent response to popular reforms of the Affordable Care Act, such as protection for those with prior conditions.

However, “Until they do a better job of selling this thing, I don’t want to see this become a litmus issue for 2020,” argues Jim Manley, a Democratic operative who worked for former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett adds, “We’ve not fully explored cost, transition, the effect of on people who have — such as many union workers — strong policies now…There’s so many aspects of it, so I wouldn’t envision that there would be any early vote.”

Rep. Jayapal counters that “We have to change our notion of what wins in swing districts.” McIntire notes that “Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green said lawmakers should vote on a “Medicare-for-all” bill next year even if it would fail…Let’s pass things that will pass the House but are almost certain to die in the Senate so there’s a bright north star the sky for 2020 voters signaling what Democrats would do if given more power.”

Meanwhile, other Democrats are already moving forward with both piecemeal and comprehensive proposals that poll well, McIntire explains:

In the Senate, Democrats have offered at least six bills ranging from a Medicare buy-in proposal from Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan to a “Medicare-for-all” single-payer plan from independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. Several senators seen as likely presidential candidates have either offered their own plan or signed on to one or more proposals.

Take Sen. Cory Booker, who is expected to enter the primary fray. He has co-sponsored six bills that would expand on the health law. Sen. Kamala Harris has signed on to five, while Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand co-sponsored four of the measures.

So, it’s likely that both the ‘Medicare for all’ proponents and the advocates for more incremental reforms are going to push health reform legislation in the next congress, despite the likelihood that all such Democratic proposals will be blocked in the Senate. If the two camps work together, they can reinforce each other’s efforts — and strengthen the Democratic brand regarding the top concern of American voters.

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

Paul Starr has an excellent article up on The American Prospect website running down how the Democrats are now winning on health care. Starr notes:

“It took a long time, but the Affordable Care Act finally paid off politically for Democrats in the 2018 election. According to exit polls, voters rated health care the top issue, and they trusted Democrats on it more than Republicans….

In 2018, unlike the other elections since the ACA’s passage in 2010, voters had seen what Republicans were actually proposing to do about health insurance….[T]he legislation passed by Republicans in the House and endorsed by Trump would have resulted in millions of people losing coverage and sharply increased costs for others, especially for older people buying insurance in the individual market. Unable to pass that bill in the Senate, Republicans saw the whole repeal-and-replace effort collapse.

Seizing on the Republicans’ failed rollback, Democratic congressional candidates and the groups supporting them highlighted health care more than any other issue. According to an analysis by Wesleyan Media Project, 54.5 percent of all Democratic ads from September 18 to October 15 discussed health care; those ads focused overwhelmingly on protecting people with preexisting conditions and on Republican efforts to undo the progress under the ACA….

Not only do the election results put an end, at least for the next two years, to Republican congressional efforts to undo the ACA; the voters also chose to extend coverage. Five states are now likely to expand Medicaid—three (Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah) where voters passed referenda in favor of expansion, and two (Kansas and Maine) where a shift from a Republican to a Democratic governor removes the last obstacle to expansion.”

Starr advocates that Democrats now move to extending and improving the ACA, particularly in the context of the 2020 election campaign. I agree completely. Starr in particular advocates what he calls “Midlife Medicare”, making Medicare available to those 50-64. I am fine with that though there is a lot to be said for “Medicare for All”, especially in a campaign context. Even if such an approach is difficult to implement all at once, it can serve as both a rallying cry and an identifying principle for various, more specific reforms.

I would broaden Starr’s argument about the ACA and left strategy as follows. Over time, the left has accomplished many things, from building out the social safety net to cleaning up the environment to protecting public health to securing equal rights for women, black people, and gay people. These and many other gains of the left have a very important thing in common: They are “sticky.” That’s a term borrowed from economics that means, simply, they will be hard to reverse. They provide benefits that people do not want to lose — and, what’s more, they shift norms of what is right and wrong.

Social Security and Medicare are great examples of policies that once seemed radical and now are simply a part of life. The Affordable Care Act’s core innovations may turn out that way, as well, despite the controversy that has dogged the program from its inception — and the declared intent of the current administration to eliminate it.

The ACA has provided benefits to millions who don’t want them taken away, and helped to establish the principle that every American has a right to health care, guaranteed by the government. That’s why the Republican attempt to radically downsize the program hit a buzzsaw. To be sure, Republicans will keep trying. But, in the end, they will not be able to “repeal and replace” with a fundamentally less generous program.

Instead, it’s more likely that the ACA, either under that name or another, will get more generous over time. As the late conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer noted during the initial ACA repeal fight: “A broad national consensus is developing that health care is indeed a right. This is historically new. And it carries immense implications for the future. It suggests that we may be heading inexorably to a government-run, single-payer system.”

Krauthammer was despairing, but the left should be heartened by the observation. Indeed, at this point, Trump and the GOP have been reduced to hoping that if they neglect the ACA, it will collapse on its own — yet that doesn’t seem to be happening The very desperation of this “strategy” is a sign that Krauthammer may have been prescient about where American health care policy is headed.

So it has turned out. Repealing the ACA turned out to be way, way, way harder than Trump and the GOP anticipated and ultimately it failed. This emphasizes a basic characteristic of American public opinion that Trump and the GOP failed to understand and the left would do well to remember.

The dominant ideology in America combines what political scientists Christopher Ellis and James Stimson refer to as “symbolic conservatism” (honoring tradition, distrusting novelty, embracing the conservative label) with “operational liberalism” (wanting government to do more and spend more in a wide variety of areas). In their definitive book, Ideology in America, they characterize symbolic conservatism as:

“…fundamentally different from culturally conservative politics as defined by the religious right. It is respect for basic values: hard work, striving, caution, prudence, family, tradition, God, citizenship and the American flag….[I]t is the mainstream culture….It is woven into the fabric of how ordinary Americans live their lives.”

And on operational liberalism they note:

“Social Security is…no exception. Most Americans like most government programs. Most of the time, on average, we want government to do more and spend more. It is no accident we have created the programs of the welfare state. They were created—and are sustained—by massive public support.”

Thus, there was no insuperable ideological obstacle to the ACA and, indeed, there is no insuperable ideological obstacle to a substantially expanded role for government in health and other areas in the future. Indeed, such an expansion would be fully in accord with Americans’ durable commitment to operational liberalism.

Of course these expanded government programs will not happen all at once. Far from it. Like the programs of the past, they will be phased in gradually over time, in fits and starts, frequently in inefficient and suboptimal forms (like the ACA!). That’s the messy business of politics in a democracy. But happen they will and once enacted they will be hard to get rid of; instead, just as in the past, the programs will be modified, improved and even expanded. The reason is simple: people like programs that make their lives better and are far more likely to respond to program defects by demanding they be fixed than by demanding programs be eliminated.

Just like with the ACA.

Peter Dreier points out that “The Nine New Democratic Black Congress Members Come From Heavily White Districts” at The American Prospect. As Dreier explains:

The blue wave had some black riders. Every African American Democrat in the House running for re-election in this year’s midterms won his or her race.  In addition, voters sent nine new black members, all Democrats, to Congress. As a result, the number of black House members will grow to an all-time peak of 55, even if, as appears possible, both black Republicans(Utah’s Mia Love and Texas’ Will Hurt) lose their seats.

What’s unusual about the nine new members is that all of them prevailed in predominantly white and mostly suburban districts. Five of the nine are women.

That raises an interesting question for Democrats. Is the route to future electoral success for Democrats running more African American candidates, who are good at building multi-racial coalitions? The trendline suggests that is a good possibility, as Dreier elaborates,

Despite the white racism that President Trump has both fostered and uncovered, it is also clear that a growing number of white Americans will support black candidates. In 1958, when the Gallup poll asked Americans if they would vote for a black person for president, only 38 percent said yes. That number grew to 77 percent in 1978 and 96 percent in 1997. Of course, telling that to a pollster is not the same thing as pulling a voting lever for a black candidate. But evidence indicates that more and more white voters are walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

Dreier spotlights a few races, including Democrats Lucy Mcbath’s upset in GA-6, Lauren Underwood’s win in IL-14 and Antonio Delgado’s victory in NY-19. Dreier also notes the winning Democratic campaign’s of Colin Allred in TX-32, llhan Omar in MN-5, Jahana Hayes in CT-5, Ayanna Presley in MA-7, Joseph Neguse in CO-2 and Steve Horsford in NV-4.

Dreier notes that “These nine victories reflect the political dynamics that helped the Democrats gain a significant majority in the House this year. Three (McBath, Underwood, and Allred) flipped traditionally GOP districts, two (Delgado and Horsford) won in swing districts, and four (Omar, Hayes, Pressley, and Neguse) prevailed in safe Democratic districts.”

Also, look at how well Stacy Abrams and Andrew Gillum did in Georgia and Florida, respectively. It may be that, if no votes were wrongly suppressed, both of them would be the governors-elect of their states, perhaps by comfortable margins. Both candidates demonstrated exceptional prowess in coalition-building.

Perhaps the pivotal fact behind these nine Democratic victories is that African Americans tend to vote Democratic roughly nine times out of ten in recent congressional elections. Nominating Black candidates will naturally increase African American voter interest in specific races. And, if those Black candidates are skilled at reaching out to voters of other races and building multiracial coalitions, so much the better for Democrats.

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

Et Tu, Rural Areas?

One week on from the November election, it’s become quite clear that the Democrats had an excellent election–better than it initially appeared on election night. But what of rural areas? The conventional wisdom seems to be that Democrats kicked ass in urban and suburban areas while losing ground in rural America.

Just one problem: It’s not true! While Democrats certainly didn’t “win” rural areas, they didn’t lose ground either. In fact, they gained ground. Consider the following.

1. Yair Ghitza of Catalist has showed that Republican candidates at all levels systematically did worse in rural areas than Trump did in 2016.

2. Researchers at the Atlantic found that Democrats gained more ground (relative to 2016) in pro-Trump manufacturing counties and Obama-Trump counties than they did in majority-minority counties. In fact, Democrats flat-out carried the vote in Obama-Trump counties and were basically back to 2012 levels of support in these counties.

3. Daniel Block on the Washington Monthly site notes that:

“On the whole, Democrats performed better in rural areas during these midterms than in 2016, which helped the party win some of its most consequential victories….

Among Wisconsin counties with fewer than 55,000 residents (a larger number for a much bigger state), Evers lost with 43 percent to Walker’s 55.8 percent. But he would have lost the entire election had he performed as poorly as Clinton, who was defeated in these counties 37.8 percent to 56.5 percent. Matching Clinton’s vote share would have cost him 29,537 votes. If even five percent of these lost votes went to Walker, Evers would have been defeated. If Walker had matched Trump’s 2016 Wisconsin rural showing, he would have won reelection by 2,307 votes.”

So progress was made in rural areas in 2018. Democrats should seek to continue that progress in 2020 and avoid the temptation to write these areas off because that’s the other side’s territory. That didn’t work in 2016 and it won’t work in 2020 either.