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

There’s been a lot of talk in the news lately about Trump’s approval ratings and how they’re paradoxically going up, even as he commits one outrage after another. What’s the real story?

1. On where Trump’s current approval rating, note that today Gallup released a new week of polling and he is back down to 41 percent, after the 45 percent reading from Gallup the week before that got quite a bit of notice.

2. In the 538 average, he is now a little over 42 percent; since close to the beginning of this year he’s been in a pretty tight range between 40 and 42 percent. This range, while low, is several points higher than he was running late last year.

3. Compared to other presidents, his approval rating at this point in his term, while running about 20 points below the historical average for all Presidents, is very close to Jimmy Carter’s, a little below Ford’s and 3-7 points below Reagan, Obama and Clinton (he is way below everybody else). So true that he is not at unprecedentedly low levels but also true that he is still dead last on net approval (approval-disapproval), as he has been throughout his Presidency.

4. So how to think about this? It’s bad but to many seems not as bad as it should be, given all that things Trump has done and said since he’s been in office. But given the state of the economy and other “fundamental” factors, a reasonable case can be made that he is drastically underperforming where he should be. I believe this to be true. Going by economic performance alone, historical patterns suggest that his approval rating should be somewhere in the 50’s rather than in the low 40’s..

5. It still seems to be the case that the latest outrageous behaviors by Trump, even if they aren’t pushing his ratings up, don’t seem to be pushing his approval ratings down either and, as noted, their current range is a few points higher than their range at the end of last year. Why is this? One possibility is that keeping the political spotlight on Trump as a singular individual and leader–however reprehensible many of his statements may be–diverts attention from various unpopular policies he and his party are intimately associated with. This helps solidify his base and reduce attrition among more persuadable voters, thereby keeping his ratings in their current low but stable range.

I think that’s the context you need to think about the latest ups and downs in Trump’s approval rating.

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

Stan Greenberg has an important new article out in the New York Times online. His core argument, backed up by considerable data, is that there is a significant divide in attitudes between Trump’s base and the rest of the GOP–a group that is quite large and whose flagging enthusiasm and potential openness to Democratic appeals could loom large in the coming election.

Greenberg draws the picture as follows:

“President Trump surprised nearly all political analysts with his decision to govern as a militant Tea Party and evangelical conservative and to make this the heart of his strategy for the midterm elections. Each provocation and each dog whistle — if we can even call them that anymore — make Democrats even more determined to vote and to register their rejection of Mr. Trump’s remade Republican Party. In our polling of registered voters nationally and in the Senate battleground states, a remarkable 79 percent of Democrats strongly disapprove of Mr. Trump, a number that rose to 87 percent in a survey completed last week. Mr. Trump is making Democratic base voters even angrier than you might expect.

But each provocation also produces a reaction in the non-Trump remnant of the Republican Party, and that is the political reaction most observers are missing. Moderate Republicans are much more likely than the rest of the party to be college graduates, to favor abortion rights, to be relaxed about gay marriage and Planned Parenthood, and to believe that climate change is a human-created problem. They were feeling homeless in the Republican Party even before Mr. Trump’s triumph.

The Catholic and nonreligious conservatives base may not be as animated as Mr. Trump’s base is by attacks on the Republican establishment, free trade and Nafta. They are less worried about the Affordable Care Act and would amend rather than overturn it. And they are more like Republicans in the past who accepted the welfare state and the social safety net that earlier generations had bequeathed to them.

Mr. Trump’s ever more aggressive vision pushes his “strong” job approval to an impressive 71 percent with the Tea Party and to 62 percent with evangelicals, but that does not quite match the enthusiastic, anti-Trump reaction among all types of Democrat.

Mr. Trump’s red meat strategy gets a decidedly less enthusiastic response with Catholic and nonreligious conservatives: Less than half of them strongly approve of Mr. Trump’s performance. The enthusiasm gap between the Tea Party and moderate Republicans stands at a stunning 40 points: 71 percent of Tea Party supporters strongly approve of Mr. Trump, compared with 31 percent of moderates.

As of now, those muted reactions to Mr. Trump among these other Republicans are translating into reduced interest in the elections and a potentially lower turnout in November…..

Mr. Trump’s base strategy has allowed him to take over the Republican Party and to marginalize and defeat those who will not get with the program, but it has also unified Democrats around their values and created an opportunity for anti-Trump Americans to engage with these Republican voters, even (and especially) if Mr. Trump will not.

It may be as straightforward as reminding them why the Trumpified Republican Party needs to be repudiated in November. They may be looking for a genuinely conservative party. But these voters may also be open to voting for Democrats.”

The following posts, “Democrats Should Be Able to Walk Down the Street and Chew Gum at the Same Time” and “More on How Democrats Can Walk Down the Street and Chew Gum at the Same Time” by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, are cross-posted from his blog:

The New York Times Sunday Review treated us to an article by two history professors averring that, for Democrats, “Turning Affluent Suburbs Blue Isn’t Worth the Cost“. They posit a sort of zero-sum game between reaching these voters and reaching poorer and nonwhite voters. Sigh.

Fortunately, David Atkins at the Washington Monthly has an excellent takedown of this ridiculous–and politically harmful–contention:

“In order to clamber out of the political wilderness, Democrats must….win over some Trump voters using economic arguments that many would like to dismiss as impossible, as well as continue to gain ground in many increasingly blue, well-educated suburbs that cause queasiness to many economic progressives. And they must do so simultaneously, while maintaining and increasing commitments to both social and economic justice through sentencing reform, jobs guarantees and much else.

How is this possible? It’s fairly simple, actually. The answer lies in the fact that most voters–and particularly most persuadable voters—are not pure partisans. They are often what political scientists call “cross-pressured,” which means they hold multiple strong views that don’t fit neatly within one political party or another and force them to choose what they might consider the lesser of two evils in a two-party system.

It is self-evident that Trump voters by definition didn’t see a problem with voting for a racist, sexist buffoon. But many Trump voters also proved remarkably indifferent to Republican economic orthodoxy, and many want high taxes on Wall Street, robust jobs programs and investment in domestic industry, and libertarian social policy on many issues like drugs. Neither party will give them everything they want, but a committed progressive economic agenda that rejects the muddled market-directed pabulum of education and retraining as a solution to all ills can be successful in winning many of them over, even though the progressive commitment to racial and gender equality might rankle them as just so much social-justice-warrior political correctness. This isn’t idle speculation: a very large number of registered Democrats are already just so cross-pressured. Appallingly, a full third of Democrats have a negative opinion of the Black Lives Matter movement, and a quarter of Democrats think millions voted illegally in the 2016 election. If they register as Democrats anyway, it’s a fair bet that economics are their top priority. It stands to reason their number could be increased to regain some of the voters who chose Barack Obama twice, and then flipped over to Trump.

So, too, can cross-pressured affluent suburban Democrats be won over by a stridently economically progressive Democratic Party in spite of their potential reservations about their tax bracket, mutual fund returns, McMansion values and budget deficits. Sure, these voters might not like the idea of transaction taxes on Wall Street impacting their dividends or affordable housing being built near their bungalows, but their commitments to social equality and their desire not to have jingoists running the country’s trade and foreign policy mean that they will generally choose the party of both Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders over that of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

Republicans have understood this for decades. The three legs of their electoral stool (social, economic and foreign policy) don’t particularly like one another or mesh well together, but they have largely held together due to combined mutual interest.

A Democratic Party that takes seriously commitments to both social and economic justice can do likewise, even though some of the former may not be palatable to part of the white working class, and some of the latter may not be desirable among the well-heeled. It must do so if it wants to regain power.”

Yup, that’s why they call ’em coalitions! Time to move forward past pointless either-or debates.

David Jarman at Daily Kos Elections (don’t read the site?; you should!) provides a comprehensive rebuttal to the loony argument that Democrats trying to turn affluent suburbs blue are biting into the poison apple.

Jarman’s piece begins:

“Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a baffling and potentially harmful opinion piece by two history professors, Lily Geismer and Michael Lessner, titled “Turning Affluent Suburbs Blue Isn’t Worth the Cost.” In short, they argue that affluent suburban districts, if they elect Democrats, are likely to elect centrists who won’t pass the kind of progressive legislation that will adequately address economic and racial inequality. The short-term benefits of winning races in those districts, they say, will eventually be outweighed by the long-term harm created from a Democratic congressional caucus that’s too heavy on economic elites and not enough “real Americans.”

I’m going to propose a counterargument that may blow some minds with how off-the-wall it is: Maybe Democrats should contest as many races as possible, and try to win elections in as many places as possible, regardless of income, education, or race. There are different aspects to the Democratic agenda that can appeal to different types of people, and historically, electoral success for one party or the other has generally relied on putting up a big tent that can house a broad coalition capable of earning and sustaining a majority.

Moreover, this isn’t the right time to be writing off any seats or any capable Democratic candidates because they’re too hot or too cold. Given the existential threats to American democracy currently posed by those in charge of Washington, DC, I can’t even imagine the level of detached privilege that would lead one to say that we shouldn’t try to target some of the seats that are likeliest right now to fall into our grasp, and instead focus on the groundwork for a purer and more perfect party at some point in the future.”

He also notes:

There’s been a lot of recent research showing that college-educated whites (presumably, the authors’ vision of who lives in these affluent suburbs) are now somewhat more liberal in their policy preferences than non-college-educated whites. This is a reversal from, say, the mid-to-late 20th century. You can see this if you look at the changes in county-level election results over the decades, broken out by education level. You can also see it if you look at long-term studies that track the electorate’s views over time.

Researcher Sean McElwee has been one of the main proponents of this line of thought; he’s used data from the American National Election Studies (a long-term polling project conducted by political scientists that asks a battery of demographic and policy questions) to show that college-educated whites are now more liberal on questions about progressive economic policies than non-college whites are.

For instance, college-educated whites answer “yes” at a higher rate to questions like “Favor millionaires’ tax,” “Government should reduce inequality,” and “More regulation of banks.” Similarly, Democratic primary voters have become significantly less racist in the last decade: The number of Democrats who “strongly disagree” with the proposition that “If black people would try harder, they could be just as well off as whites” shot up between 2008 and 2016.”

After a very informative analysis of who currently represents these affluent suburban districts and who is now running in these districts, he concludes:

“Are people who’ve won the housing lottery via either privilege or simply by virtue of having gotten there first, but who are generally progressive in their values and policy preferences—who, at the national level, want a more equitable tax system, who want a higher minimum wage, who want more government involvement in providing health care to everyone, and above all, who want a non-embarrassing, non-threatening president, but who are NIMBYish in their beliefs about their own neighborhood—to be welcomed into the big tent, even though they’re imperfect? Or are they to be cast aside in pursuit of a Democratic Party unicorn that looks more like the one of old—when, it should be pointed out, they repeatedly lost presidential elections, under the banner of fellows like Adlai Stevenson, Walter Mondale, and George McGovern? I know which one I’d prefer.”

Me too. And so should you.

At CNN Politics, Ronald Brownstein addresses “one of the central questions about our steadily widening political and social divide: Is the fundamental fissure in American life now demographic or geographic?”

The answer, a growing body of evidence suggests, is both. And that may point to a future of even greater distance — and antagonism — between a Democratic coalition centered in racially diverse, largely secular, and post-industrial metropolitan centers and a Republican coalition grounded in small-town and rural communities that remain mostly white, Christian and rooted in traditional manufacturing, agriculture and resource extraction.

…Since the early 1990s, the two parties’ coalitions of support have steadily separated, both demographically and geographically. That process reached a new peak in the bruising 2016 presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Geographically, Clinton dominated the nation’s biggest places, winning 87 of the nation’s 100 largest counties, while Trump carried over 2,600 of the nation’s other 3,000 counties, most of them smaller. (He won more counties than any candidate in either party since Ronald Reagan in 1984.)

Demographically, the divides were just as formidable, with Clinton posting big margins among younger and minority voters, Trump romping among blue-collar and older whites, and college-educated whites dividing almost exactly in half between them. The parties’ positions in the House of Representatives largely follow these tracks, with Democrats relying mostly on diverse and white-collar urbanized districts, while most of the Republican caucus represents predominantly white and heavily blue-collar seats beyond the metro centers.

Brownstein sorts out the residential patterns of the key demographic constituencies, and notes that ” In an exhaustive recent study, the non-partisan Pew Research Center, for instance, found that non-whites comprised over half the population in the largest urban centers, about one-third in suburban communities, and only about one-fifth in small town and rural places. Whites without a college degree represented about three-in-10 urban residents, exactly four-in-ten in suburbs and nearly six-in-10 in rural places.” Further, “Each of the electorate’s three broadest groupings — whites without a college degree, whites with a four-year college degree or more and non-whites — bend steadily toward more conservative views as they move from the most- to the least-populated communities.”

On the one hand, non-college whites almost always expressed more conservative views than did either non-whites or whites with a college degree living in the same kind of geographic area…When asked, for instance, whether immigrants had a positive impact on their community, in urban areas 62% of college-educated whites and 51% of non-whites, compared to only 36% of non-college whites said yes. In suburban areas, 56% of college-educated whites and 50% of non-whites, compared to just 32% of blue-collar whites, saw a positive impact. In rural areas, about 40% of both college whites and non-whites saw a positive impact, compared to only about one-fourth of non-college whites.

Likewise, in urban, suburban and rural communities alike the share of college-educated whites and non-whites was greater (often much greater) than the proportion of blue-collar whites who agreed that whites still have advantages over African-Americans; agreed that women still face significant obstacles in society; agreed that society can prosper without people making marriage and child-rearing a priority; and agreed that the growing number of newcomers strengthens, rather than weakens, America. Urban and suburban minorities and college-educated whites were also much more likely than their white blue-collar counterparts to say government should do more to solve problems. (Rural blue- and white-collar whites largely converged on the question.) The sole wrinkle in this general pattern is that in urban areas non-whites were slightly less likely than blue-collar whites to express liberal views on abortion and gay marriage — a reflection of the deep culturally conservative strains in many African-American and Hispanic churches.

But, just as important, Pew’s survey also found that the share of each major demographic group expressing liberal views was almost always greater, often much greater, in larger than smaller places…The share of college whites who said government should do more to solve problems rose even more precipitously from about two-fifths in rural places, to just over half in suburbia, to nearly three-fourths in urban centers…Among non-whites, the share supporting more government activism similarly grew from 62% in rural communities, to 65% in suburbs to 78% in urban centers.

Additional data from Browstein’s article supports the patterns with ‘social issues,’ including same-sex marriage, immigration and reproductive rights. The data amplifies “the persistent power of place” in American politics, as well as demographic realities in “shaping political attitudes.”  He adds that the survey results “reinforce the argument that Ruy Teixeira, a longtime liberal electoral analyst, and author John Judis made in their landmark 2002 book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” In that book, the two argued that Democrats had a better chance of reaching blue-collar whites who chose to live amid the diversity of urban centers than those who located in more racially and religiously homogenous communities outside the metropolitan core.” He quotes Teixeira on some of the reasons for the attitudinal differences:

“One is you hang around in an area where certain types of ideas are dominant and you tend to absorb those attitudes,” he said. Second, he continued, in small places people are less likely to actually face personal interaction with the sources of so many cultural flashpoints. “There is a well known relationship about … having certain attitudes about immigration or feminists and not encountering many,” he notes…Finally, he said, these impulses are reinforced by the growing economic gap between thriving larger metropolitan areas and smaller places that are struggling to hold population and jobs. “The fact is that a lot of these white non-college voters who are living in dense areas are living in areas that are working, where economic mobility is feasible, and that takes the edge off of their cultural conservatism,” Teixeira says.

Brownstein explains that “The November midterm election seems likely to further extend this crevice between what I have called the Democratic “coalition of transformation” and the Republican “coalition of restoration.” All polls suggest Republicans face enormous risk in white-collar suburbs and urban districts crowded with college-educated whites and minority voters resistant to Trump. But the Democrats’ prospects appear much more limited beyond those urban centers.”

Brownstein sees an opportunity for Democrats, noting that “In Pew’s data, large majorities of blue-collar whites across rural, suburban and urban communities agreed that the economy favors the powerful; across all three areas, in fact, they were nearly as likely to agree with that sentiment as were minorities and college whites.” He concludes with Teixeira’s observation that, “The chink in the armor [for Republicans], such as it is, there is a conflict between these [blue-collar and rural] voters’ views of the rich and powerful in general and their views of entitlement programs and the way Republicans really do approach policy…If [Democrats] can convince more people that it’s a really top priority to help you and your community, they would look the other way on some of their cultural conservative views.

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

When people think of demographic change in America, they are most likely to think of the rise of racial minorities and the decline of whites. And this is indeed a large and important trend.

Yet, despite this “browning of America” and the presumed disadvantage this poses to the GOP since they do so poorly among minority voters, the Republican party remains in a strong political position due to increased support they have managed to cultivate among whites. Many Democrats fear, and Republicans hope, that this approach can stave off the effects of minority voter growth indefinitely.

Washington Post syndicated columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. has a perceptive take on Trump’s politics of distraction, media enabling of it and what means for Democrats. As Dionne sees it:

Good reporters and editors labor mightily to be fair-minded in their reporting of episodes and events, and I’ll defend them to my last breath. But the larger battle, captured by the phrase “winning the news cycle,” involves a fierce competition to push reports that help your own side to the top while sidelining those that serve the interests of your opponents.

In the Trump era, this clash has fundamentally changed because the president and his lieutenants have realized that lying works; shameless dissembling is now standard operating procedure for the White House. Partisan outlets go with President Trump’s versions of events, even when they are demonstrably false. Mainstream outlets feel duty bound to report them, even as they debunk the lies.

Moreover, our chief executive instinctively knows what Alexander Hamilton taught long ago: that the despot’s “object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’ ” If the news gets troublesome, Trump and his minions create all manner of controversies and distractions that consume a lot of media space and time.

Dionne adds that “His latest discovery is how his pardon power can be a big news-cycle hit, especially when a celebrity is blended in.” Dionne notes other recent distractions, including the disinviting of the Philadelphia Eagles to the white house and blasting NFL players for their take-a-knee protests. You can add a few, if you like, including insulting his own Attorney General and heads of state who have been among the staunches allies of the U.S., hiring bomb-throwers like Giulani, announcing plans for a Soviet-style military parade and unrelenting tweets designed to provoke controversy and distractions du jour, to name a few.

Trump’s distractions can be divided into two categories: deliberate distractions, like those noted above, and his Administration’s numerous spontaneous eruptions of incompetence, such as ignorant comments about Canada’s responsibility for the white house burning down in 1812 or the anniversary of D-Day reminding us of our great relationship with Germany, keep the media in a tizzy, just trying to keep up. Too often, big media gets suckered into giving the sideshows far more coverage than the incidents deserve. But mostly, the press can’t just simply ignore the distractions, or their competitors will provide the coverage and dominate the market.

It’s gotten so bad that, as Dionne notes, “the sheer volume of corruption reports — starting with would-be Chick-fil-A spouse and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt — means that they start to drown each other out.” There is still a growing problem of false equivalence reporting, which often distorts the reality in a way that lets Repubicans off too easy. As Dionne explains,

Then there is the challenge of balance. So much of the journalism about Trump is negative because of what he does every day and because hard-working reporters and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation regularly turn up embarrassing facts. Therefore, journalists feel obligated to make sure that everyone knows they can be just as tough on Democrats. Looking “partisan” is a grave transgression. Trump and the Republicans try to paint this scarlet letter on the media almost daily.

Hats off to those members of the media who don’t fall for the distractions, and continue to report in-depth about the critical political issues, such as health care, pollution, war, racial discrimination and others. As for the enduring ‘divided Democrats’ and ‘the Democrats have been taken over by the extreme left’ themes frequently parroted by the more easilly-distracted journalists, Dionne clarifies the reality:

Lord knows, Democrats have their problems. Their own politicians regularly point them out by way of scoring points in the party’s factional wars. But with this year’s primaries nearly over, let’s at least shelve certain story lines that are simply wrong.

Contrary to a popular meme, the Democratic primary electorate is not veering sharply to the left. Left-wing candidates did not fare particularly well because rank-and-filers aren’t interested in ideological warfare and are choosing on the basis of personal qualities — it really helps to be a woman this year. Democrats cast pragmatic primary ballots in large numbers because they devoutly want to end their powerlessness.

This pragmatism is what allowed Democrats to avoid catastrophe in California on Tuesday.

Because of the state’s appropriately nicknamed “jungle primary,” the top two finishers in the first round compete in November, even if they are in the same party. Although a couple of races were close, it appears there will be Democratic candidates on the ballot this fall in every target district. Democratic voters successfully identified their own strongest contenders, and party-supported advertising pummeled Republican candidates who threatened to shut the Democrats out. A gang we thought couldn’t shoot straight actually hit the mark.

Dionne concludes by noting that “Trump tests journalists and news consumers in a way they’ve never been tested before. Like would-be autocrats elsewhere, Trump is pursuing a strategy of disorienting the citizenry with a steady stream of provocations, untruths and diversions. We cannot afford to treat any of this as the usual spin or garden-variety politics.”

The daily distractions pumped out by Trump and his Administration remain a difficult obstacle for Democrats, who are trying to get more media and public attention focused on the critical issues facing America, especially those that favor their party. The not so unrealistic hope is that ‘Trump fatigue’ is spreading to the point where enough of his support will evaporate by election day to give Democrats a House majority.

For Democrats, urging the media and voters to address the major issues, instead of the daily distractions, is a continuing challenge — and it’s one Dems must get better at meeting to build an enduring majority.

The following article by TDS contributing editor Andrew Levison, author of The White Working Class Today: Who They Are, How They Think and How Progressives Can Regain Their Support and other books and articles focusing on the working-class in American politics, is cross-posted from a TDS e-blast:

Well, OK, it’s not exactly top secret.

What actually is available is a new book that on the surface appears to be an in-depth sociological portrait of Trump voters in a wide range of Rust belt cities, small towns and rural areas. It presents the conclusion that, contrary to popular stereotypes, these folks are really all just basically decent Americans–heartland populists who voted for Trump out of a mixture of patriotism, legitimate economic grievance, defense of traditional values and anger at condescending coastal elites.

At first glance the book, The Great Revolt–Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics, looks like a substantial and indeed an impressive piece of ethnographic research. One of the authors, a professional journalist, is described as having traveled 27,000 miles across the upper Midwest in order to interview over 300 people. The book includes 23 extended profiles of individuals, each one presented in substantially greater depth than the usual journalistic dispatches that one encounters in articles in newspapers and magazines.

But there’s something about these profiles that’s just a little bit odd. Not a single one of the 23 subjects who are profiled expresses even the most microscopic iota of prejudice or bigotry toward any group–not African Americans, not Latinos, not Muslims, not GLBT individuals. In the book they and the over 300 interviewed people that they represent are all described as being just decent, hard-working, “salt of the earth” Americans–Norman Rockwell illustrations come to life. Most of the people interviewed, in fact, are either Obama-Trump voters or independents and not one is a firm Rush Limbaugh ideological conservative.

Since the book clearly gives the reader the impression that it is presenting a representative group of “typical” Trump voters, and not a carefully selected subgroup of tolerant, non-racist Trump supporters, this is, to put it mildly, more than a tad improbable. Interviewing over 300 “typical” Trump supporters without encountering a single racially prejudiced individual is statistically about as likely as interviewing 300 attendees at the annual National Book Awards ceremony and not finding a single English major or interviewing 300 people at a Grateful Dead concert and not finding anyone who had ever smoked marijuana.

But when the book is viewed, not as sociology, but as a market research document prepared for the major GOP advertising agencies, it suddenly becomes both extremely interesting and profoundly important for Democratic candidates to study and understand.

When a major business corporation like Ford or Apple begins to plan a massive ad campaign for a new product like their latest model car or home entertainment system the company’s ad agency usually starts by doing a substantial amount of focus group and interview research in order to prepare a series of “target customer profiles”— detailed descriptions of the intended audience. These profiles are designed to guide ad copywriters about how to talk to them. These documents typically analyze how the people in the target audience see themselves and how they want to be seen by others, about what things they value and care about in their lives and about their trials and disappointments in the past and their dreams and hopes for the future. The goal of these documents is not to create a totally objective psychological profile but rather a picture of how these customers like to think about themselves and how to use this information to sell them goods.

Seen this way, the book suddenly makes sense. It is organized into seven categories that the authors call “archetypes” but the labels they attach to these categories clearly locate them in the familiar world of market research and market segmentation e.g. “Red Blooded and Blue Collared,” “Rotary Reliables,” “Rough Rebounders.” These are the typical kinds of names that ad agencies give to defined submarkets within an overall target audience, groups that they intend to individually target with special ads and other messaging.

As a result, what the book actually provides is seven detailed customer marketing profiles–guides for how a GOP candidate should craft his or her ads to appeal to the non-racist sector of Trump voters who will not vote for Trumpist candidates in 2018 simply because such candidates offer an explicitly racist or conservative ideological platform.

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

With the expansion of Medicaid in Virginia last week, it’s a good time to remind ourselves that, despite all the fulminations of conservatives about shrinking government, it’s damn hard to actually shrink the safety net because, well–people like it!

James Hohmann of the Washington Post noted after the VA expansion: “It’s another nail in the coffin for efforts to repeal Obamacare and a fresh reminder of how difficult it is to scale back any entitlement once it’s created. Many Republicans, in purple and red states alike, concluded that Congress is unlikely to get rid of the law, so they’ve become less willing to take political heat for leaving billions in federal money on the table.”

Noah Smith of Bloomberg has a bigger picture piece on positive trends in the social safety net, which I think many people on the left are not cognizant of or downplay:

U.S. government transfers have been increasing over time. The U.S. system of taxation and spending has become more progressive during the past two decades. Per-capita government transfers were about $8,567 a person in 2016, up from about $5,371 at the turn of the century (adjusted for inflation) — an increase of 60 percent.

The increasing generosity of the U.S. safety net in the 21st century began under President George W. Bush. Although mostly remembered for the war in Iraq, Bush in many ways fulfilled his promise to be a compassionate conservative. Major expansions of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, were carried out in 2002 and 2008. Bush’s Medicare reform added prescription-drug benefits to the government’s premier health-care program. And Bush’s so-called housing-first policy reduced homelessness dramatically during his second term. Overall, real per-capita government transfers increased by about 38 percent during the eight years of the Bush administration.

Under President Barack Obama the pace of welfare expansion slowed a bit, probably as a result of the Great Recession. But it didn’t stop. Food stamps continued to expand, extended unemployment insurance helped many during the recession, and homelessness kept declining. Obama also implemented a number of tax credits for low-income families and passed the Affordable Care Act, which subsidizes health insurance.

After 16 years of expansions in the safety net under Republican and Democratic presidents alike, the U.S. has a much more robust welfare state than people seem to realize. The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, using the U.S. Census Bureau’s new comprehensive poverty measure, estimates that government transfers have driven child poverty to a record low. Thanks mostly to government aid, the number of American children in poverty has fallen from more than one in four in the early 1990s to about one in seven today.

The following article by Eleanor Clift is cross-posted from The Daily Beast:

Macomb County, Michigan is where Democrats go for the hard truths to save their party. The working-class suburb of Detroit sent Bill Clinton to the White House and delivered two solid wins for Barack Obama before turning on the Democrats and giving Donald Trump 54 percent of its votes.

Globalization stole many good-paying jobs from Macomb, leaving fertile ground for Trump’s anti-trade message. Democrat Debbie Dingell, who represents the Detroit area — as her husband did before her, and his father before him – recalled to the Daily Beast how she confronted Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.

“I told her in no uncertain terms, if you leave Michigan and people here don’t know you’re opposed to the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), and will be opposed to it when you’re president – You can just forget it,” Dingell said.

She meant forget being president, which is what happened. Dingell still gets exercised over how her frantic calls for action then were ignored. “Anybody I talked to, I said it was a problem,” she recalled. “It was clearly a problem in Michigan. I was told not to worry, everything was fine.”

Democrats were so confident the “blue wall” would hold that Clinton made just one trip to Michigan that August, telling workers at Futuramic Tool & Engineering in suburban Detroit that she was against TPP, and would be as president. It wasn’t reassuring, not with President Obama openly lobbying for the trade deal, telling naysayers it would get done in the lame duck Congress after the election.

“Obama wanted it as a legacy issue, and that left her (Clinton) clearly muddled and jumbled,”  Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg told the Daily Beast. “Trade was a major factor in Trump’s victory, and she was perceived to be ambivalent. She was so concerned with not appearing to have any distance from Obama on the economy.”

Greenberg shares her angst about Macomb. He has made a career out of monitoring attitudes in the working-class suburb. The insights he gleaned more than 25 years ago paved the way for Bill Clinton to reorient the Democratic Party more to the center, allowing a Democrat to win the White House after 12 years in the wilderness.

The veteran pollster says Democrats don’t yet have a winning economic message that speaks to the real struggles people are having. Rising health care premiums top the list, he says. “I can’t tell you how powerful the health care issue is. People are in tears about the cost of health care, and they blame the Republicans.” The salience of the health care issue is a key takeaway from focus groups Greenberg conducted in March in Macomb with Trump voters and Detroit area base voters. He found that white college-graduate women “seemed as much a base, anti-Trump group as the African Americans.”

Greenberg sees Macomb as a bellwether for the country. In 2008, these working-class voters supported Obama, making a judgment about him that transcended race, “that he wouldn’t just work for his own folks, he would work for everybody.”

They voted for Obama because of economic self-interest, and they voted for Trump for the same reason. Working-class men in Macomb support Trump by two to one, and many have paid a high price for their vote in their own family. The politicized, polarized civil war in the country is in the family, says Greenberg, with older voters blaming the mainstream media’s “fake news” for their millennial children failing to understand what Trump is trying to do.

“Clean up corrupt government is not enough for them. Identity politics are not enough,” he says. Asked what he thinks of the Democrats’ new slogan, Better Deal, he replies, “Not a fan of it.”

The 1992 election that propelled Bill Clinton to the White House was famously staked on the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid.” Greenberg still thinks that has to be the bedrock message even with another month of positive job numbers released last Friday. People believe the economy is growing and more jobs are available, “but that has not diminished their frustration and insecurities about their stagnant pay in the face of rising costs,” Greenberg writes in his latest report on “Macomb and America’s New Political Moment.” Anti-Trump voters are consolidated and motivated, “and increasingly intent to vote,” Greenberg concludes. “They are seeking out tools and information to win arguments” and to convince themselves that Democrats have a vision that is about more than just reflexively resisting Trump.

It is a time unlike any other in recent history when the stakes are so elevated that both sides speak about a virtual civil war in the country, and in their own families.

Anti-Trump voters are consolidated and motivated, “and are increasingly intent to vote,” Greenberg says. “They are seeking out tools and information to win arguments,” and to convince themselves that Democrats learned from the last election and have a vision for the economy, and for the country, that is about more than Trump.

It appears that Trump’s labored efforts to proclaim the death of Obamacare have proven highly premature. As Jennifer Rubin writes in her column, “What Virginia’s expansion of Medicaid means,”  in the Washington Post,

This is a victory for the Affordable Care Act, no question. Obamacare made Medicaid expansion possible and, whatever you think of the efforts by the administration and Congress to chip away at the ACA, an expansion of this size suggests President Barack Obama’s health-care legacy is on firmer footing than Democrats feared when they lost the White House, as well as their majorities in the House and Senate.

As Ed Kilgore noted at New York magazine,

For a health-care law that Donald Trump has been declaring “dead” or “dying” since 2013, Obamacare seems to have a lot of life in it yet, no thanks to his administration. Obama himself is probably sharing a bit of the good feelings among Democrats in Virginia.

For Democrats, Virginia’s Medicaid embrace is a big win, with far-reaching implications. As Rubin explains, “Achieving Medicaid coverage for 400,000 additional people is a mammoth victory for Democrats in a state that has been trending blue for years, but now seems firmly in that party’s column. The vote holds multiple lessons for both parties.”

And looking ahead to the months leading up to the midterm elections, Rubin observes,

This will be a big issue in November when multiple states (Utah, Idaho, Nebraska) will vote on Medicaid expansion, which delights Democrats. Democrats are returning to their bread-and-butter issues (e.g., wage stagnation, lack of access to health care) as they remind voters which party defended the ACA, and which party voted to eliminate it without an adequate replacement. The Medicaid issue will help the Democratic Party turn out its base, which is already pumped up to cast a symbolic vote against Trump.

…The Medicaid issue affects nearly every state and federal race. Democrats will argue that Republicans “want to take away health care” while Republicans will be forced to defend their votes and take a stance on expansion. That’s a problem given how popular Medicaid expansion has become. (“A poll conducted late last year by Public Opinion Strategies and the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association found 83 percent of the state’s residents supported the expansion, including a majority of self-identified Republicans. . . . Polls show that two thirds of Utah voters support the Medicaid expansion in their state. So it’s unlikely to be close,” The Post report continued.) Meanwhile, Maine’s controversial Republican Gov. Paul LePage is being sued for failure to expand Medicaid after a state referendum approving it passed with 59 percent of the vote.

In addition, Rubin writes,

Virginia will be the 33rd state (along with the District of Columbia) to approve Medicaid expansion. Medicaid expansion appears here to stay, and despite the best efforts of the GOP House and right-wing pundits, has widespread, bipartisan support in every geographic region, with the exception of the Southeast (which includes some of the poorest states) and the Great Plains (although Nebraska and Idaho could join Virginia). “In a nutshell, Medicaid is the absolute star of the Trump presidency despite every effort on their part,” said Andy Slavitt, the former head of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who served during the Obama administration. “By the end of his term, you could see five more states expand. And there is a tipping point for the hold out states at that point. The irony of course is that this is a far more Democratic idea than exchanges, a Republican idea [originating at the Heritage Foundation].”

Don’t be surprised if the political fallout provokes an infantile tantrum on the part of Trump and a doubling down on dubious, spiteful executive orders to further weaken Obamacare. There may also be some grumbling on the left about the Virginia tweaks requiring either work or volunteer service and cost-sharing. All in all, however, it’s a great victory, not only for Virginia Democrats and Obamacare, but down the road, for millions of Americans who currently lack affordable health care.