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

The Washington Post is out with a large poll of the House battleground–the 69 most competitive House districts. The poll covered the period when the Kavanaugh controversy was coming to a head so should capture political movement from those events pretty well.

The topline is quite favorable for the Democrats:

“The survey of 2,672 likely voters by The Post and the Schar School at George Mason University shows that likely voters in these districts favor Democrats by a slight margin: 50 percent prefer the Democratic nominee and 46 percent prefer the Republican. By way of comparison, in 2016 these same districts favored Republican candidates over Democratic ones by 15 percentage points, 56 percent to 41 percent.”

If accurate, that’s quite a sea change in sentiment in these districts.

But I want to draw special attention to a couple of graphics in the story. The first shows some basic demographics of the likely voters in those districts. Note that despite all the talk about educated suburbanites, there are still far more white noncollege than white college voters in these districts (47 percent to 31 percent).

The second shows vote intention by some key demographics. Unsurprisingly, the Democratic advantage among white college women is large (62-37). But also of great significance is that white noncollege women–a more numerous demographic than white college women–are close to even between the parties (a mere 4 point Democratic deficit). If white noncollege women were polling more like their white noncollege male counterparts (a 20 point Democratic deficit), the Democrats’ chances of taking the House would be poor.

Understanding these facts about the House battleground is key to understanding what is going on in 2018 and lessons Democrats should learn for 2020.

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

Rebuilding the Blue Wall in the Rustbelt

Reid Wilson has a good article about this in The Hill. For reference, here are current RCP poll averages for D candidates for Governor and Senator in Rustbelt-ish states (note: not all of these states were typically included in the Blue Wall category).

Governor:

Some excerpts from three Working America e-blasts by executive director Matt Morrison, following up to his New York Times op-ed, “The Best Way for Democrats to Win Working-Class Voters“:

Our view of what’s working

In addition to what messages work with voters, we want to use our experience and analytics to share what’s proving to be most effective this cycle.

The Persuadable Voter: With such a volatile, yet seemingly polarized electorate, identifying the best voters to move from being undecided or opposed to supporting our candidates is essential, but difficult. One way we are solving this problem is by using our store of dozens of clinical persuasion experiments from the last eight years to identify the type of voter who is consistently responsive to canvass contact. This meta-analysis tells us that from Tacoma to Greensboro, and places in between, certain types of voters will consistently be persuadable.

While some of the attributes of this group are unsurprising —no college degree, younger, etc. — it is determining how these demographic and behavioral traits combine that makes the targeting more efficient. Per calculations by the Analyst Institute, this approach can increase our targeting efficiency by 80 percent.

To put these lessons into practice, Working America ran additional experiments earlier this cycle to validate that the model works in different environments (a Midwestern gubernatorial race and a coastal U.S. House contest). We are finding success among both expected and unexpected targets. Segments of our best persuasion targets this year include:

• Republicans and conservative voters under age 50
• Non-college female voters
• Latinx voters, many of whom regularly vote

Our Mobilization Targets: Similar to the meta-analysis of our persuasion experiments, we have combined the statistical power of dozens of turnout experiments to model which voters are most likely to increase their voter participation rates.

Much of the existing of meta-analysis, such as Gerber and Green’s authoritative book Get Out the Vote, points us to target lower-propensity voters (i.e. those with a 30%-50% likelihood to vote). That guidance is especially useful when the election context allows us to focus on these low-propensity voters, accepting that a large share will not vote even after being contacted.

What our new meta-analysis shows us is that there may be opportunities for increased turnout where we haven’t been looking, including among important segments of high-propensity voters (65%-80% vote likelihood). We have found this group can be mobilized as efficiently as lower-propensity voters — meaning we can achieve a similar proportion of vote gain, while spending less time and fewer resources in September and October trying to convince harder-to-reach low-propensity voters to turn out, and more time on the best bets. Examples of these types of voters include:

• Previously contacted voters, usually from earlier in the year or even earlier election cycles
• Those with whom we have the strongest ideological agreement

Importantly, mode of voting matters both in the short term and long term. During our work in 2014 in states with big vote-by-mail and early vote electorates, not only did we see increased turnout gains that cycle, but most of that increased turnout impact remained intact during the 2016 election two years later. As we think about 2018 as an opportunity to win more votes now, we are also looking at it from the perspective of how we realize the vote gain in 2020.

Consistent Engagement: The refrain every election cycle is that we must engage voters year-round, not just the last few months before an election. Yet, quantifying the value of that sustained engagement has proven difficult, leaving many to allocate resources and program to the same narrow window.

Our research shows that sustained organizing and engagement — whether done at the doors or through digital channels, or whether the target is persuasion or mobilization — consistently results in measurable vote gain effects 3-5X larger than late contact alone.

Many of the communities where political engagement has the most potential to increase — those with more voters who are people of color, young and low-income — simply do not receive this type of investment. Yet, our research finds time and again that shifting resources to contact these voters early and again during the last few months of an election is not only cost-neutral, but in most cases, significantly decreases the cost per vote.

——-

Highlights from the field:

I. We Are Growing: 11 states, dozens of campaigns and growing

II. “Minting” Progressive Voters: How we are using analytics to realign the politics of millions of members

III. The Digital Difference: Our high impact Door to Digital GOTV program is coming this Fall.

IV. Final Notes: Fran’s Front Porch, and Jane’s new documentary

I. We are growing. As of this writing, we are running voter contact programs out of a dozen offices across ten states (FL, CT, PA, OH, MI, IL, IA, MN, NM, ND, and CA), and adding more locations each week. By the end of the election cycle, we will have visited over 2.2 million voters and reached 650,000 through face to face conversations in dozens of important races. Some of our most exciting work is in races like PA-17, where Conor Lamb will defend the only House special election victory for Democrats since the Trump election. Another example is in Tallahassee and in Jacksonville, where we are fighting for Andrew Gillum, who would be the first African American governor in Florida history.

Despite the national political environment, most voters are focused on what’s closest to home—affordable healthcare, arguably the top issue this cycle. One story from the Minnesota gubernatorial contest:

One couple who identified as health care voters told us they were voting for conservative GOP nominee Jeff Johnson this election because they are conservative. The went on to say “honestly, we haven’t spent too much time thinking about it yet because our son is in the hospital.” They shared that they were having a rough time because they’re worried about their son’s hospital bills and how to pay for them when he got better, all while hoping the treatments were working. The canvasser responded by saying, “You know, that’s exactly why I’m here. I’m really worried about health insurance for my family too, and that’s why I’m talking to people about Tim Walz. He is pushing for a public option. No one should lose their house for hospital bills.” The couple agreed and promised to reconsider their vote. 

Indeed, when we look at elections across the country, those who are worried about health care back our endorsed candidates by a 25 percentage point margin, even when controlling for the partisan lean of voters.

II. “Minting” Progressive Voters. You may recall seeing our growing body of clinical research showing the multiplier effect on voter behavior derived from being a Working America member. An additional insight is that the impact lasts for years.

We studied the long-term effect of increasing voter turnout in 2014 elections in Iowa and Washington. In 2014, we added 4 votes for every 100 conversations. In a confirmation that voting can be habit forming, 2 of the 4 extra votes turned out in the 2016 contests.

This type of evidence points to the importance of early organizing in shaping long-term voter behavior. In a measurable way, Working America is literally building up a bulwark of votes with every conversation we have right now that will make the difference in the 2020 presidential race.

III. The Working America Digital Difference in 100s of Elections. Digital communications allow us to reach exponentially more voters. Our approach starts by establishing a relationship at the door and is amplified through digital channels. This layered communications combination shows remarkable potential to gain more votes at 1/8th the costs of a typical peer-to-peer text messaging program. We will be sending out a list of races around the country where our digital GOTV program aimed at our 3 million Working America members will add thousands of votes for our candidates.

What It All Means. We are building a set of tools that will win more elections. More importantly, they can be used to change how working people approach political AND economic choices for the long haul. These tools are our building blocks for large-scale engagement to make the economy fairer for working people.

—————

As part of our political program this year, we have revisited a number of Trump voters we canvassed in 2016. In January of that year, we sounded the alarm about Trump’s appeal to Ohio and Pennsylvania swing voters at a time when he was still widely dismissed. We saw that, among Republican voters, Trump had more support than all other GOP candidates combined. But what proved even more consequential were the 1 in 4 Democrats who planned to vote for him.

Here is what we have learned from these recent conversations in central Ohio and southwest Pennsylvania:

1. The defection of these Trump voters from GOP candidates toward Democrats is widespread. Those most likely to defect were:
   1. Mid-partisan and Democratic-leaning voters
   2. Voters with a four-year college degree
   3. Voters aged 50-70
2. Better-known Democratic incumbents were more likely to benefit from these votes than lesser-known challengers.
3. The issues that are driving the most defectors to Democrats are affordable health care and concern about the economy.

It seems that this is about more than just a partisan shift. From our vantage point, these voters reflect the great volatility of American politics over the last decade. These swing voters are people who do not relate to either party, but are yearning for something to change.

To get a sense of what we mean, watch for yourself:

To see the data on these responses, click here.

So what does it all mean?

The progressive challenge is not just how we win 2018, but how we establish a home for voters who are adrift that stabilizes politics for an economically progressive governing majority.

The following article by John Russo, visiting scholar at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and Working Poor at Georgetown University and associate editor of the blog Working-Class Perspectives, is cross-posted from Working-Class Perspectives:

Two years ago, I described the Youngstown area as “crossover ground zero” for Donald Trump and the politics of resentment in working-class and rust belt communities. In local rallies during the 2016 campaign and since he took office, Trump has repeatedly promised an economic renaissance and immigration reform. These issues resonated with local voters.

His success in Youngstown might seem surprising, since Mahoning and Trumbull Counties usually vote by large margins for Democratic Presidential candidates. In 2012, 63.5% of Mahoning County voters supported for Obama, even more than in 2008. But in the 2016 Republican primary, more than 6000 Mahoning County Democrats switched parties, and another 20,000 people who had not been registered voters signed up to vote. Clinton won the Presidential race here by less than 1%, and Trump won in Trumbull County.

When I returned to Youngstown this summer, I wondered whether Trump’s support remained strong. In this highly nationalistic working-class community, the first thing I saw driving into the city were American flags were plastered wall-to-wall on overpasses. No wonder Trump made a “rare Presidential visit” in July 2017 to boost his flagging support and renew his appeal to “Make America Great Again.”

But as the summer went on, I sensed an undercurrent of uneasiness, especially among the area’s much-touted swing voters. While Trump crows about what a “great job” he’s doing, some of his supporters wonder whether local residents will benefit from the tax cuts. The national debt climbs to over one trillion dollars, and rising health care costs and gas prices have eroded any financial gains for most Americans. Yes, unemployment rates have fallen, but underemployment, low wages, reduced pensions, low property values, and increasing precarity in the Mahoning Valley have made it hard to believe in Trump’s economic happy talk. And talk among some in Congress about cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits to offset the deficit is adding to the local anxiety.

The local economic picture clearly does not offer many signs of hope. The GM Lordstown plant has eliminated two shifts, cutting 3000 jobs since Trump took office. According to recently retired UAW Local Vice President Tim O’Hara, about 40% of union members voted for Trump in 2016.  Dave Green, the current union President, has appealed to GM and President Trump to help bring a new car to the plant that currently builds the Chevy Cruze, but Trump has remained silent, and GM will not make a commitment. In fact, the company responded to the President’s trade policy by announcing that it will build a new car at its Ramos, Mexico plant, which also builds the Cruze. The local paper, The Vindicator, offered a blunt “reality check: Donald Trump is not going to intervene to save one of the leading employers in the Mahoning Valley.”

Yet Trump’s trade policy still appeals to many local voters. Youngstowners have long blamed the loss of its steel industry on unfair trade, and many here still support the protectionist ideas of Trump’s Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and local free trade critics like Democrats Sherrod Brown and Tim Ryan. But local steel producers and fabricators have indicated that instead of expanding their labor force here, they may downsize or move facilities to Mexico because of Trump’s trade policies, so more local workers can expect to lose good-paying jobs. As Trump supporter and local steelworker Michael Lang said in an interview with Reuters, “I voted for Trump because I thought he’d straighten things out, not do something like this.”

Few of the  retail, public sector, and healthcare workers I’ve spoken with admitted they had supported Trump. Those who did were evasive and seemed uncomfortable talking about him. It seems likely that workers in these jobs are anxious about the continuing budget cuts, loss of local state funding and government assistance, and more recently the closing one of the two local hospitals, which displaced 400 nurses and other staff. Service workers who supported Trump may be starting to understand the limits of the politics of resentment.

Clearly, neither Trump’s campaign promises nor his policies are making Youngstown great again. The question is, will the community’s continuing economic struggles lead people to turn against Trump and the Republicans? Or bring them back to the Democrats? NPR reporter Asma Khalid, who has tracked Trump’s support in Youngstown for the past two years, is uncertain. Among the “disillusioned” Democrats she spoke with, some still support Trump, though they also  plan vote for Democrats like Brown and Ryan this November.

Mahoning County Democratic Chairperson David Betras also doubts whether the Trump fever has broken in Youngstown. The best he can say is that “the temperature is going down.” His advice to Democrats: follow the lead of Brown and Ryan — stress concrete economic programs, healthcare, education, and building trust. A focus on the economy, Betras believes, will win out, even as Trump and the Republicans try to distract voters with often-racist cultural divides, like whether NFL players should be allowed to kneel.

Yet many in Youngstown are fed-up with both parties. When I asked retired small businessman, Democrat, and Trump enthusiast Sam Carely who he supports in 2018, his response reflects a distinct lack of enthusiasm: “I am not sure if I will vote. But if I do I would probably vote for a Democrat — if I could find a reason.” Carely is tired of interparty fighting, and he is not alone. Many would prefer to vote for Democrats, but they are desperate for an economic plan that isn’t just campaign rhetoric.  For them, as for many voters around the country, the Trump fever will only break when Democrats give them something to believe in.

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

Some interesting internals in this writeup of the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll by John Harwood. The data on white noncollege women are stunning. As I’ve noted before, serious defection from the GOP among this group would make a severe dent in their coalition.

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

Dante Chinni and Susan Bronson have a very interesting article up on the NBC News site, going over the final turnout numbers for this year’s primaries. Here’s the basic story:

“Democrats have been turning out in record numbers this year, and midterm history suggests that could have real significance in November.

The following article by Matt Morrison, executive director of Working America, an organizing arm of the AFL-CIO, is cross-posted from the New York Times.

When we asked 4,035 working-class voters in battleground races to name an elected official who was fighting for them, the top response was not a Republican or a Democrat. It was “no one.”

That goes a long way toward explaining why debates among political elites about the strategic direction Democrats must take to win in 2018 and 2020 continue to miss the point. Should Democrats pursue moderate or liberal policies? Should they persuade white working-class voters or mobilize a diverse base? These arguments feel utterly irrelevant to the daily choices of working-class voters.

How do we know? Since Donald Trump’s election, my organization, Working America, a political organizing arm of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., has spoken with 450,000 voters across 17 states. The overwhelming sentiment from these conversations was captured by an African-American voter in central Ohio named Carol (the voters’ last names weren’t provided). Asked to consider the difference in her economic well-being when Democrats are in power versus Republicans, she replied, “Does it even matter?”

Carol, and tens of millions of working people just like her, harbor a deep skepticism that politicians of either party can deliver any kind of meaningful change for them. Our current politics fail to engage working people in a conversation about what matters to them and to draw connections between their lived experience and the reason they should cast a ballot in the first place.

Working-class people share common anxieties about their economic security. Like Carol, they see few solutions from the politicians in either party seeking their vote.

Darren, a white voter in his mid-40s who lives in Philadelphia, said that “we mean nothing” to politicians. “Regular people don’t have money.”

Working-class voters like Darren, a longtime Democrat who voted for Mr. Trump, aren’t ideological; they’re fed up and politically adrift. Persuadable voters like Darren and pessimistic Democrats like Carol are looking for politicians with tangible solutions to help the majority of Americans who have been left out of the country’s growing prosperity.

A voter in Pennsylvania’s 18th District — where Conor Lamb won a special election this year — said, “I care about right here,” as he pointed to his feet on his doorstep. “Tell me what they’re going to do right here.”

Policy prescriptions and white papers don’t overcome this cynicism. The growing number of people living in areas with dwindling newspaper subscriptions or with Sinclair-owned television stations that spend more time on “must run” segments and less time on local issues never even hear the policies in the first place.

For Democrats, simply turning up the volume on political communications through these same channels has not quelled the distrust or broken through. My organization has found that we can get so much more with a different approach: Start where the voters are.

First, our experience running a large-scale, year-round field canvass reveals a somewhat obvious truth. Beginning the conversation by asking, “What matters to you?” instead of telling voters what should matter to them gets a more receptive audience.

Next, when we introduce new information by telling voters about something they don’t know rather than telling them that what they think they know is wrong, you can see the light come on.

Elaine, 70, a white Trump voter in Grove City, Ohio, told us she watches Fox News “in the morning till I go to bed.” Yet when we told her about our push to raise wages and improve working standards, something clicked for her. She shared that her adult children are struggling with low pay and poor benefits.

Like Elaine, two-thirds of Ohio Trump supporters agreed, when we asked them last summer, with a battery of progressive economic policies, including ending employers’ treating workers as independent contractors, so that they’re not saddled with tax and benefit costs, and measures that make it easier to unionize. They had just never heard any politician addressing these issues. The irony is that even where there’s ubiquitous content, people feel less informed. But when swing voters like Elaine can discuss and reason out loud, they can connect powerful stories from their own lives to pragmatic progressive policies — only if they hear about them.

We can’t assume voters like Elaine, Darren and Carol will pull the lever for a progressive in 2018. For this approach to be successful, it must be grounded in more than anecdote and observation. We need evidence that’s produced by clinical research about what changes minds.

An authoritative analysis by the political scientists David Broockman and Josh Kalla comparing nine Working America campaigns with 40 other clinical experiments measuring all major forms of voter communication validated our approach. By engaging in sustained organizing with voters identified via clinical analysis as the best targets, even in communities saturated with campaign communications, we were able to persuade swing voters to vote for Democrats in 2016 in places such as Ohio and to mobilize the party’s base voters in places such as North Carolina.

The recipe is simple: credibility derived from listening, compelling solutions, new information that breaks through and thoughtful analytics. And it works with working-class swing voters and disaffected Democrats equally.

Winning back the confidence of these voters is essential for gaining control of Congress and for building strength in the states ahead of redistricting fights after 2020.

Putting a check on the White House in 2018 won’t fix what’s broken. Radically changing how voters perceive their own agency in relation to politics will. Follow this recipe and progressives can win and govern for a generation.

At CNN Politics, James A. Barnes writes that “Late summer surveys by CNN and other organizations show senior voters tilting decisively towards Democratic congressional candidates. That would dramatically reverse the recent pattern in midterm elections when the elderly provided a major boost to GOP candidates.” Barnes adds,

In CNN surveys conducted in early August and early September, registered voters who are 65 years of age and up preferred Democratic congressional candidates to Republicans by margins of 20 and 16 percentage points, respectively. CNN is not the only news organization to report this kind of GOP deficit among seniors. A late August Washington Post-ABC News survey found that if older voters were casting their ballots today, they would back Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives over Republican candidates by a whopping 22-point margin, 57% to 35%. Similarly, a national poll by Marist College conducted in early September found that among voters 60 years of age and up, they favored Democratic congressional candidates by a 15-point margin.

This is a potentially huge problem for Republicans: In the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections when Republicans regained control of the House and Senate, respectively, GOP candidates were solidly backed by voters 65 and up. When Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, they had a narrow advantage among senior voters.

Barnes notes that “Seniors are customarily more risk-averse than younger voters. Upheaval and uncertainty in government policies can make older voters apprehensive…In many instances, Donald Trump has governed in an opposite manner. And his brash personal style can sometimes come across as reckless. Barnes believes that Trump’s chaotic foreign policy, along with his reckless domestic initiatives and brinksmanship, is a turn-off for many seniors.

And it’s not just GOP-held House seats that are in danger. As Barnes writes,

But it may be in the midterm Senate contests where this trend could have its most profound impact. Democrats have six potentially vulnerable Senate incumbents: Florida’s Bill Nelson, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, Montana’s Jon Tester, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. President Trump carried those last five states by double-digit margins in the 2016 election, and he is a frequent presence in Florida, where he narrowly bested Hillary Clinton and maintains a Palm Beach retreat.

Four of those states, Florida, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia, are among the top ten states with the highest proportion of elderly (65+) residents according to the last decennial census. (Missouri was ranked 16th and Indiana ranked 33rd.)

All of those Democratic incumbents have been elected before, and in Nelson’s case, he’s won three previous Senate races. They are known quantities, and if elderly voters in those states decide to look for a check on Trump, they have a familiar face to cast a ballot for.

“Of course, polls can vary a lot between now and Election Day, and Democrats may not be able to sustain the hefty margins they’re currently receiving from seniors in several polls,” Barnes concludes. “But to win back the House and the Senate, they probably don’t need to. As the 2006 election showed, even a narrow margin of victory among elderly voters can help facilitate a Democratic takeover of Congress.”

Brian Stryker, a partner of Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, has an e-blast memo on “Campaigns: More Messaging about Skills Training,” which makes a compelling case for “skills training-that has been effective in persuading historical Democratic voters to return to the fold.” As Stryker, who specializes in advanced statistical analysis, turnout modeling, and non-traditional survey methods such as cellphone and Internet research, writes,

Not only has talking about skills training helped win us special elections across blue-collar America in the last year and change, it’s also consistently one of the best-polling reasons to support Democratic candidates across the Midwest/Great Lakes region of the country that swung so hard against us in 2016.

This is not to suggest Democrats stop talking about the value of classroom/college education and the need to get costs/debt down – they still have message value with many voters. It’s more to suggest highlighting alternatives in our messaging and realizing post-recession, many voters view non-college paths as a viable and successful alternative. We do well to hit on this issue that speaks strongly to voters who can’t, don’t want to, don’t want the debt, or for other reasons don’t see themselves sitting in college classrooms for four years.

Stryker makes som specific messaging points regarding skills training, including:

• Make this more about children, not adults. Campaigns too often conceptualize skills training solely as a job re-training message, when in fact voters react more positively to it when framed as a program for young people in high school or just after it. Voters talk in focus groups about the lack of shop classes or other work-oriented classes in high school any more. Many also raise the example of a child they know who they feel won’t succeed in college but could work hard and earn a living with their hands if given the chance. They also talk about how many high paying jobs are out there in the real world and how they are in demand if young people will just go get the skills needed to succeed.
• Think of skills training as a cultural touchstone, not just an economic one. Skills training speaks to people on a pocketbook level, for sure. But there’s a deeper cultural resonance among people who value hard work and don’t think hard work includes sitting at a desk. To many voters, it speaks to the honor of putting in a day’s work as a plumber, crane operator, mechanic, or working in advanced manufacturing. Respect for that type of work isn’t something blue-collar voters are hearing from all corners of the Democratic party, at least not as much as they need to be.
• Frame it in terms of a path for children who college isn’t right for. When presented with this concept in an ad or on paper in a focus groups, non-college voters talk about the “college for all mentality” that doesn’t speak to them or their reality. As a party, we should more explicitly talk about providing alternatives for kids besides just a four-year degree.
  • • Acknowledge that college isn’t for everyone. We hear a lot of “college isn’t for everyone” in focus groups from people who did and didn’t go to college. Voters don’t think of that as something to look down on someone for-there’s value to them in skilled trades and hard work-but they that elites look down on people who aren’t willing or able to go to college. Democrats would do well to talk about the inherent value of these paths that we should be providing for kids if college isn’t going to work for them.

Stryker adds that the message polls particularly well “with white blue-collar voters across the Midwest and Great Lakes states” as well as with white Obama-Trump and Rust Belt voters. But it also resonates with voters of color, college-educated whites and swing voters across the nation. He notes that it also “shifts the jobs debate from businesses (tax cuts and red tape/excessive regulation) to workers (raises, better jobs, training), which is more favorable terrain for Democrats. So we shouldn’t just silo this into an education message, it should also be about economic opportunity for kids.

In addition, skills training messaging also helps to educate the public about the important role of trade union training facilities and apprenticeship programs, and that “unions provide people a great path to the middle class. The more voters get that, the more they support the right to organize and a whole host of union priorities.”

Nearly all Democratic candidates can benefit from incorporating thoughtful skills training advocacy and proposals into their messaging — and it’s a message that strengthens the Democratic ‘brand’ as the political party that serves the prioroties of working people.

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

Politico is out with a new poll of Ohio voters which underscores just how contested the Rustbelt has become in the Trump era. Far from being lost to the Democrats in the wake of the Trump election, Democrats are coming roaring back, riding a wave of discontent with the Orange One and his party.

In the new poll, Democrats lead the Congressional ballot by 7 points in the state, Democratic Senatorial incumbent Sherrod Brown is crushing challenger Jim Renacci and Democrat Richard Cordray is running about even with Mike DeWine in the governor’s race