Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is feeling the heat these days, with declining poll numbers, increasingly critical media coverage, including allegations of corruption and hard-hitting billboards (see here, here and here,) in his home state. He has also acquired a disparaging nickname, “Moscow Mitch,” thanks to his Putin-friendly policies.

McConnell gloried in his former nickname, “the Grim Reaper.” But the “Moscow Mitch” moniker seems to have legs, judging by the latest tally of Google hits (58,700,000) the term generates. Indeed, the usually unperturbable McConnell is ticked off about it, according to recent reports.

McConnell’s failed “leadership” history does add up to a disturbing portrait of an out-of-touch politician, whose arrogance and callousness toward anyone outside the shrinking base of Republican voters invites harsh criticism and growing protests. But he may be on the verge of an even steeper deterioration of his image, thanks to his rigid views opposing gun safety reforms in the wake of the three mass shooting during the last 9 days.

For a look at McConnell’s awful record on the issue, check out the blog, “On the Issues: Every Political Leader on Every Issue,” a blog affiliated with Snopes, which provides a some of the history of McConnell’s obstruction of gun safety, including:

Voted NO on banning high-capacity magazines of over 10 bullets in 2013.

Opposed the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty in 2013.

Voted YES on allowing firearms in checked baggage on Amtrak trains in 2009.

Voted YES on prohibiting foreign & UN aid that restricts US gun ownership in 2007.

Voted YES on prohibiting lawsuits against gun manufacturers in 2005.

Voted NO on banning lawsuits against gun manufacturers for gun violence in 2004.

Voted NO on background checks at gun shows in 1999.

Voted YES on loosening license & background checks at gun shows in 1999.

Voted YES on maintaining current law: guns sold without trigger locks in 1998.

But McConnell has probably done even more damage to gun safety prospects with his most damaging   power as majority leader —  killing debate and votes on gun reforms in the Senate. Recently, he  blocked a bill that would prohibit most person-to-person firearm transfers without a background check. The bill passed the House by wide margins. McConnell placed the bills on the Senate calendar, instead of referring the legislation to a committee for action.

Democrats, of course, are hopeful that McConnell can be defeated at the Kentucky polls in 2020, even though KY is a red state. McConnell has a strong opponent in Democrat Amy McGrath. If McConnell survives McGrath’s challenge, however, there are two other ways he can be removed from the majority leadership: 1. Democrats win a Senate majority, and 2. Republicans hold their Senate majority, but suffer such deep national losses across the board that they decide they need a new leadership face. Any one of these three possibilities is a plausible outcome.

Regardless of his re-election prospects, McConnell may now be a significant liability for his party at the national level. As the most well-known Republican after Trump, he will be the “face” of his party if Trump is defeated and he is re-elected. As a GOP politician with high name recognition, he already fills that role to some extent.

In his post, “Mitch McConnell Will Be The Boogeyman Of The 2020 Election,” Kevin Robillard, senior political reporter for HuffPo, notes that a poll of 12 presidential battleground states by the Democratic campaign finance reform group End Citizens United indicates some trouble ahead for the Majority Leader.

After being exposed to messaging about McConnell, the Democratic advantage grew to 12 percentage points. That was more effective than messages about President Donald Trump (6 percentage points) or congressional Republicans overall (9 percentage points)… McConnell’s approval rating among swing-state voters in the survey is just 26%, with 50% viewing him unfavorably. Among independents, just 18% view him favorably, and 58% have a negative opinion. In counties that swung from former President Barack Obama to President Trump, his approval rating is 25%, while 53% have a negative opinion.

Meanwhile Democrats should prioritize support for the “Ditch Mitch” movement, fund his Democratic opponent and crank up the heat on McConnell on all fronts, especially regarding gun safety, which is increasingly viewed as a national security issue.

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

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

The spate of House Republican retirements in Texas has gotten people thinking again about Texas’ political trajectory. How seriously should we take this?

Certainly one should take this seriously as a big boost to Democrats’ chance of retaining control of the House in 2020. But what about winning a statewide race in Texas in 2020, particularly of course in the Presidential race? This is still a very heavy lift though these developments should remind us that Texas is rapidly changing in this era, so such a result is no longer out of the question. As Sean Trende, the election analyst for the conservative RCP site, and one uninclined to pump up Democrats’ chances, recently tweeted:

“People grossly oversold GOP vulnerability in TX pre-Trump and are grossly underselling it now. Texas is an overwhelmingly urban/suburban state, so GOP weakening in the suburbs is felt disproportionately in TX. It could go blue, quickly, under this current configuration.

People really underestimate how many people live in rural/small town areas east of the hundredth meridian (so wi, oh get redder), and overestimate how many live west of it (tx, az get bluer)”

Trende’s point is underscored by data from University of Houston professors Renee Cross and Richard Murray:

“Metro Texas and the state’s outlying Anglo counties were similar in both demographics and partisan voting patterns for most of the latter half of the 20th century, even as high birth rates and migration from elsewhere in Texas and nearby states propelled urban growth after World War II.

Those metro counties boomed in the 1990s, a trend that has only accelerated. Between 2010 and 2018, the 27 metro counties added almost 3 million people, compared to just 375,000 for the 199 non-metro, non-bordercounties — growth that profoundly altered the demographic makeup of the state’s metropolitan areas. Anglo growth slowed as birth rates dropped and migration from elsewhere in Texas and neighboring states slowed; metro growth now is driven by international immigration and higher birth rates among non-Anglo urban residents…

Republicans are now a clear minority in the large metro areas of Texas.

The shift is illustrated by Fort Bend County, a suburban area southwest of Houston with large Latino, Asian American and African American populations. Mitt Romney defeated President Obama there by 15,000 votes in 2012, and all local Republicans easily won election. In 2016, Trump lost Fort Bend by 18,000 votes. In 2018, O’Rourke topped Cruz by 31,000 votes, and all 10 Republicans in contested countywide elections were defeated.

What does this mean for 2020? Metropolitan growth in Texas will certainly continue, along with its ever-growing share of the vote — 68% of the vote in 2016. And the latest census estimates suggest the Latino population is increasingly choosing to live in metro areas. Expect a growing difference in how metro Texas votes compared with the outlying counties.”

So, could this really happen in 2020? Well, a lot of things would have to go right. Clinton lost Texas by 9 points in 2016. Ongoing demographic change should knock that deficit down to about 7.4 points in 2020, even if all other voting behavior remains the same. Then if Democrats managed a big margin swing in their favor (15 points) among Hispanic, Asian and other race voters, that should bring the deficit down further to around 3.2 points. Then you are in a position where some combination of increased support among whites (college or noncollege, but likely mostly college) and stronger Latino turnout could put the Democratic candidate over the line.

That’s a lot of “if”s. But it is no longer out of the question.

It’s all thoughts, prayers and no action for Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans. “As the nation reeled Sunday morning from news of a second mass shooting in the span of 13 hours, Democratic lawmakers began demanding that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell take action this week on long-stalled gun control legislation they argue could help prevent the next large-scale tragedy,”  Devan Cole and Caroline Kelly report at CNN Politics. “Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, wrote in a tweet Sunday that she’s “ready to go back tomorrow” to take legislative action. “Inaction is unacceptable. No more talk. The time for passing legislation is now. I’m ready to go back tomorrow…On a state level, just nine states and the District of Columbia ban large-capacity ammunition magazines. The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence lists California, Colorado, Connecticut, Washington, DC, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Vermont as places with bans that include the sale, possession, and/or manufacture of such magazines. The laws vary from state to state and define the magazines as holding either 10 or 15 rounds.”

Rep. Tim Ryan, another Democratic presidential candidate, was even more explicit: As Tom Boggiani reports at The Raw Story, “We have got to put pressure on Mitch McConnell to start with the background check bill,” he exclaimed…The GOP needs to get their shit together and stop pandering to the NRA,” he added, before going after Trump and Republicans who stand by and say nothing when the president encourages violent white nationalism…“It’s like when the president made the comments about good people on both sides in Charlottesville. how many Republicans really stood up and said what was on their heart? You know, in their heart and minds? Not many, hardly any.” he stated.”

In his NYT column, “The Heartland is Moving in Different Directions,” Thomas B. Edsall observes: “The Democrats’ ability to wrest back Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa faces a steep hurdle. The population of the Rust Belt is aging at a much faster pace than the rest of the country. Exit polls show that people over the age of 50 put Donald Trump in the White House, and the Midwest has them in droves…In five states — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Wisconsin — the number of 18-to-35-year-olds, the most liberal age group, grew by 56,448 between 2016 and 2018, according to Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings…That growth pales in comparison with the rising number of people 65 and older, a core of Republican support, which grew by 685,005 — an advantage of better than 12 old people for each young person. Nationwide, from 2016 to 2018, 18-to-35-year-olds grew by 677,853 while the 65 and over population grew by 3,207,209 — a smaller advantage of 4.7 old people for each young person, according to Muro…Polls consistently show that older voters are more Republican than younger voters: In 2017, for example, Pew found that 18-to-35-year-olds skewed Democratic 54 percent to 39 percent; voters over 70 were 48 percent Republican and 41 percent Democratic.”

It gets worse, as Edsall explains: “The aging of the Rust Belt population is a major factor in a closely related trend, the declining share of self-identified liberals in the region…Pew Research reports that from 2010 to 2017, the percentage of people who say they are liberals in the Midwest — defined broadly as Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas — dropped from 23 to 19 percent, while the percentage describing themselves as conservative fell by a statistically insignificant 1 percent, from 38 to 37 percent. Moderates grew from 33 to 37 percent.”

But Edsall does see some hope for Democrats in that “the growing urbanization of the Midwest, combined with the decline of pro-Republican rural communities…may improve the odds for the Democratic Party and its candidates.” He cites a Brookings study, which found that in the 2018 midterm elections “10 of the 15 districts that flipped from Republican to Democratic in Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Iowa “have income growth rates that exceed their state averages…Of the remaining five flipped districts, in which growth was below the state average, three were in Pennsylvania, where Democratic victories resulted from a state Supreme Court decision ordering the replacement of the Republican gerrymander of congressional districts, making those districts much more favorable to Democratic candidates.” Edall concludes, “While the trends and the data are often conflicting and inconclusive, I’d say on balance that the developments are encouraging for Democrats, albeit modestly.”

From “The 2020 Congressional Elections: A Very Early Forecast” by Alan I. Abamowitz at Sabato’s Crysgal Ball: “Barring a dramatic shift in the electoral landscape, Democrats appear very likely to hold onto their majority in the House of Representatives in the 2020 elections and make at least modest gains in the Senate. However, there are significant caveats with both projections. Obviously, one of those is that it is very early and that the president’s approval rating and the generic ballot could very well be different late next summer…In the House, we are in an era with limited ticket-splitting and a weak incumbency advantage. Additionally, the overall House map has a Republican lean: Republicans could win the House back by defeating fewer than two-thirds of the 31 Democrats who hold seats that Trump carried in 2016 (and only three Republicans hold seats that Hillary Clinton carried). The confluence of these factors could allow Republicans to overperform the projection in this model, particularly if Trump is reelected…While the model predicts a good chance of a Democratic majority in the Senate in 2021, that prediction should be taken with considerable caution considering the margin of error of the model and the fact that only a handful of Republican seats that are up next year are in Democratic-leaning or swing states. Moreover, if Democrats do take back the Senate, it will almost certainly be by a very narrow margin, which would make it difficult to pass the sort of progressive legislation advocated by many of the party’s 2020 presidential candidates.”

“Paralyzed by caution, and its worst instincts justified through a gradual takeover by corporate interests, the Democratic Party has in many ways been its own worst enemy,” Branko Marcetic writes in his article, “Corporate Democrats Have Been in the Driver’s Seat for 30 Years. Not Anymore” at In These Times: “Rather than proposing far-reaching redistributive policies, national Democrats have by and large moved to the right while pushing means-tested, tepid proposals meant not to offend corporate backers or scare off mythical “Reagan Democrats.” The result has been a party that’s failed to inspire its core constituency—working-class voters—to show up at the polls.” in the third presidential debate, however, “both Sanders and Warren tied signature policies like Medicare for All, a wealth tax, free tertiary education and student debt cancellation to their broader vision of political change, rebuking Democrats’ three-decade-long strategy of scurrying in fear at the sight of their own shadow. Warren thundered that the Democrats need to be the party “of big, structural change.” Sanders argued that “to win this election and to defeat Donald Trump … we need to have a campaign of energy and excitement and of vision. We need to bring millions of young people into the political process in a way that we have never seen.”

Alex Pareene says it exceptionally well in “The Simple, Odious Reason Mitch McConnell Opposes Election Integrity: The sinister influence on the Senate majority leader is not the Kremlin, but a Republican Party that seeks to keep certain Americans from voting” at The New Republic: “America’s elections are a patchwork of fiefdoms, many run by secretaries of state (many of whom are Republicans), some directly run by state parties themselves. Republicans oppose federal reform of the system because it could deny them the ability to create chaos—chaos that sends the other side’s votes to the wrong polling places, purges thousands or hundreds of thousands from the rolls, and strands urban voters in long lines. Chaos that could create opportunities for—and plausible deniability about—more serious fraud and criminality. Chaos that makes it hard to believe this Senate will ever allow truly secure paper ballot regulations, with strict regular audits, to become a national requirement.”

Just some final thoughts on all of the hand-wringing about Democratic presidential candidates beating up on each other and embracing less than popular reforms. 1. It’s early. Dems must be unified a year from now, but not now. In fact, if they were, it would be weird, maybe even creepy. Let the GOP be the Children of the Corn. 2. A lot of the less popular ideas are being field-tested and the candidates need to be battle-tested before they face Trump, as de Blasio said to Biden in the fourth debate. Sometimes leaders can buck opinion trends for a while enroute to building a new consensus. The presidential candidates will surely tweak their health care proposals in the months ahead, as Harris recently did. Elizabeth Warren, for example, is smart enough to know that she has to make more room for those who want to keep their health insurance policies. American needs a well-argued debate between advocates of Medicare for all and the public option, and that’s exactly what we are getting from Democrats, while Republicans grumble vague put-down on the sidelines. 3. The chaotic big field we see in the debates is actually a good thing because it shows which party has the vitality needed to make major changes. The sky isn’t falling just yet…although the climate crisis could be a game-changer a year from now.

With all the attention naturally focused on the 2020 presidential races–and secondarily the fight for the Senate–it’s worthwhile now and then to check in on House races, as I did this week at New York:

House Republicans have been plotting to retake control of the chamber they lost last year. As I noted earlier this year, flipping the House next year is not impossible but would defy recent precedents:

“[H]istory suggests it will be very difficult for Republicans to make the net gains of 19 seats necessary to flip the House, which hasn’t changed hands in a presidential election since Dwight D. Eisenhower’s landslide win in 1952. But on the other hand, there are 31 House Democrats in districts Trump carried in 2016 (and after 2018, just three Republicans in Clinton ’16 districts), so it would be wise to keep an eye on the House races.”

Obviously Trump would need to do very well at the presidential level to give his party’s House candidates the requisite lift. His perpetually mediocre job approval ratings are echoed in the congressional generic ballot (the typically predictive poll that indicates partisan House voting intentions), where Democrats currently have a 6.7 percent lead, according to the RealClearPolitics averages.

But there’s another factor that could hobble Republicans in their efforts to flip the House: retirements. Because incumbents on average run better than newbies or challengers, reducing the number of them will often reduce the potential for partisan gains. Additionally, members of Congress often anticipate a bad year before it materializes (much like animals sensing an approaching storm), so a wave of retirements is almost always a bad sign for the party experiencing it. In 2018 26 House Republicans headed for the exits (not counting those running for higher office), the fifth-largest total since 1974, which contributed to the Democrats’ big year. And now, as Reid Wilson reports, there are fears another wave of House GOP retirements is building:

“House Republicans plotting to win back their majority in Congress fear they are on the brink of a massive wave of retirements that could force them to play defense in a high-stakes presidential election year.

“Three House Republicans said last week they would not seek another term next year, catching party strategists off guard. Those announcements came earlier than in a typical election cycle, when members who are ready to hang up their voting cards usually wait until after the August recess or after the Christmas break.”

So far just four Republicans have announced an imminent retirement (not counting two who are running for higher office), but party officials have a bad feeling about what might happen very soon:

“Republican strategists say they are bracing for a new wave of exits after members check in with their families over the August recess. Two dozen Republicans won their reelection bids in 2018 by fewer than 5 percentage points; another 25 won by fewer than 10 points.

“’There are going to be a lot more [retirements] to come,’ said one consultant who works for House Republicans. ‘Between people finding themselves having to actually work hard for the first time in their long, lazy careers and members who came in in the majority and now hate life in the minority, it’s just getting started.’”

Some members hanging it all up, of course, come from safe districts that Republicans will undoubtedly keep, but one of last week’s retirees is probably more typical: Texas’s Pete Olson, who represents an increasingly marginal suburban district near Houston. Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman immediately labeled the race to succeed Olson as highly competitive:

“House Democrats got a boost on Thursday when Texas GOP Rep. Pete Olson announced he wouldn’t seek reelection in 2020. In 2018, Olson barely held off Democratic former foreign service officer Sri Preston Kulkarni 51 percent to 47 percent, and a competitive rematch was already brewing. In the second quarter of 2019, Kulkarni out-raised Olson $420,000 to $373,000. Now, this seat will move to the top of Democrats’ takeover target list.

“The rapidly growing southwest Houston suburbs are undergoing a rapid demographic shift: the 22nd CD, once held by Tom DeLay, is now just 40 percent white (down from 45 percent in 2010) and voted for President Trump by just 52 percent to 44 percent, a third of Mitt Romney’s 25 point margin in 2012. The district is 26 percent Hispanic, 19 percent Asian and 12 percent black, and 43 percent of adults hold college degrees, among the highest in the state.”

If there are a few more developments like this one, the GOP’s odds of grabbing the Speaker’s gavel for Kevin McCarthy will dwindle even more.

After I wrote this piece, Texas congressman Will Hurd, the only African-American Republican Member in the House, representing a very marginal district, announced his own retirement. It may or may not have been related to the president’s recent spasm of racist utterances. But it’s bad news for the GOP in any event.

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

So, Where Are We After the Latest Round of Debates?

John Judis’ piece on the Talking Points Memo site is a good place to start, which runs down many of the disquieting and counter-productive (from the standpoint of Democratic victory) stances taken by various Democratic candidates. By my count, he hits points 1,2, 5, 6 and 7 of the Common Sense Democrat creed in his discussion.

As for effects on the nomination race, I think Biden will remain the front-runner with Warren, Harris and Sanders below that and Harris perhaps slipping a bit. Booker preformed well and may get some sort of bump. But, for all the strident positions taken and various attack lines launched, particularly at Biden, I doubt if things will change too much.

It’s interesting to speculate about why so many candidates feel obliged to take non-viable political stances in their quest for the nomination. Kevin Drum has a theory which I cannot completely discount: He blames it on “the twitterization of the progressive movement”.

“No matter how carefully you curate your Twitter feed, and no matter how much you try to take Twitter with a grain of salt, it will inevitably overexpose you to a very specific subset of the progressive movement. This is not just the activist subset. It’s a group that’s way leftier, way louder, way less tolerant, way woker, way younger, and way whiter than the Democratic Party as a whole. Even if you think you’re sophisticated enough to understand this and account for it, spending time on Twitter almost certainly skews your view of the progressive movement….

Many of the Democratic candidates seem like they’re in thrall to the lefty twitterverse, deathly afraid of doing anything that might bring down a viral storm on their heads. And it’s hard to blame them, since campaign reporters also love Twitter, and will turn these viral shitstorms into page A1 stories in the New York Times.”

An interesting twist on this is to consider how this might be leading candidates especially banking on black support like Harris and Booker astray. They appear to be assuming that attacks on Biden on race and on his association with various controversial aspects of Obama’s record will eventually pay off with black voters.

But what if they’re wrong? What if in reality this sort of stuff appeals more to a particular sector of woke white liberals than to black voters? That certainly seems to be the pattern so far. And the latest debates may just confirm that. From a Politico article on reaction to attacks on Obama’s record:

“Henry Crespo, former chair of the Democratic Black Caucus of Florida, who watched the debate with about a dozen fellow black Democratic officials and operatives, cold-called a POLITICO reporter outraged with what he saw transpire on the debate stage Tuesday and the following day, when Harris and Booker appeared to him to be insufficiently supportive of Obama.

“Obama is an icon in our community. And they’re attacking his legacy Obamacare? And Joe Biden is the one defending it?” he asked.

“We were sitting here watching this and wondering: ‘What the hell are you doing? What is wrong with our party?’ It’s like they want to lose,” Crespo said, adding that Democrats like him resent Harris and Booker for attacking Biden’s record on race.

“Joe Biden is not Bull Connor,” Crespo said. “You just can’t make us believe it.”

Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.), Biden’s campaign co-chair and the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said Obamacare is widely supported among African Americans because it’s good policy and people know how hard it was for Obama to pass his signature health law.

“I don’t think it’s the wisest move to go after it. You’ve got to realize when you go after it, you’re doing exactly what Trump and Republicans have tried to do, which is repeal Obamacare,” he said. “When you talk about the Affordable Care Act, there’s deep, deep appreciation for it. That was a hard-fought win.”…

“The attacks, particularly from Harris and Booker, have been backfiring with black voters who always show up in Democratic primaries,” said Patrick Murray, a Monmouth University pollster who released a survey last week showing Biden capturing 51 percent of the African-American vote in South Carolina’s Democratic primary, where more than 60 percent of the electorate is black.

“Black voters are significantly less liberal than white voters in the Democratic primary,” Murray said. “So if their strategy is to attack him because he’s not woke enough on race or left enough on issues like Medicare for All, it’s not going to help you with these voters.”

Murray said polls show the dismissal of Obamacare made no sense more broadly with Democratic voters who like the program. Surveys also show voters prefer Biden’s proposal to add a Medicare-like public option to Obamacare rather than scrapping all private insurance and instituting a Medicare for All plan.”

More broadly, Ron Brownstein reminds us that, beyond the leanings of black voters, the overall structure of the Democratic primary electorate makes an approach that works best with woke white liberals and the twitterverse unwise.

“While the attacks on Biden from his left could further erode his position with the party’s progressive wing, his rivals may have simultaneously painted themselves more deeply into an ideological corner that constrains their capacity to grow among more centrist Democratic voters.

In the 2016 race, voters who identified as “very liberal” were the only ideological group in which Sanders ran evenly with Hillary Clinton. But they represented only about one-fourth of all primary voters, according to a cumulative analysis of 2016 exit polls by CNN. Voters who identified as “somewhat liberal” (just over one-third) or “moderate and conservative” (about two-fifths) cast a larger share of the vote. Likewise, voters over age 45 cast fully 60 percent of all primary votes in 2016, compared with about one-sixth for voters under 30.”

In short, it could be that some of the leading candidates are drastically underestimating the number of Common Sense Democrats and vastly overestimating the number of woke progressives. So far, that’s to Biden’s advantage.

There’s nothing I enjoy more than a challenge to a deeply entrenched bit of conventional wisdom, and I had the chance to write about one this week for New York:

It’s generally assumed that if Donald Trump could just talk about the economy (or let the numbers do the talking for him) and lay off the racism and misogyny and other unpleasantness he so enjoys, he’d have a much better chance of reelection.

But now comes Tom Edsall with some contrary analysis suggesting that good economic times may not be so great for Trump, at least in the pivotal Midwest region:

“John C. Austin, director of the Michigan Economic Center and a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, has explored the politics of the Midwest from a different vantage point. He examined income and other economic trends in 15 Midwestern congressional districts, including Pennsylvania, that went from Republican to Democrat [in 2018]. In the July 27 issue of Politico Magazine, Austin made a point of saying that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Contrary to the perception that a rebounding economy will work to the president’s benefit, there is growing evidence in Michigan and throughout the Rust Belt that metro areas that are bouncing back — and there are a bunch — are turning blue again. Austin noted that 10 of the 15 districts that flipped from Republican to Democratic in Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Iowa ‘have income growth rates that exceed their state averages.’

“Of the remaining five flipped districts, in which growth was below the state average, three were in Pennsylvania, where Democratic victories resulted from a state Supreme Court decision ordering the replacement of the Republican gerrymander of congressional districts, making those districts much more favorable to Democratic candidates.”

Why would people apparently benefiting from “Trump’s economy” vote Democratic more often? Perhaps they are simply less resentful:

It’s also possible that the demographic groups benefiting most from “Trump’s economy” are more likely to lean Democratic to begin with than those in low-growth or struggling small towns and rural areas. In any event, the phenomenon Edsall notes was not limited to the Midwest in 2018:

“The Economic Innovation Group, a Washington think tank that studies regional inequality, ranked all 435 congressional districts into five groups based on their economic condition: the prosperous, the comfortable, the mid-tier, the at risk, and the distressed.

“An examination by the group of all of the congressional districts across the nation that flipped in 2018 from red to blue produced intriguing results.

“Of the 43 congressional districts that shifted from Republican to Democratic control, 23, more than half, were ranked as prosperous, and seven, or 16.3 percent, were ranked as comfortable. Altogether, almost 70 percent of the districts that switched from Republican to Democratic were ranked in the top-two economic categories.”

This kind of data suggests that since relatively good economic times didn’t help Trump’s party last year, they may not next year, either. And it may help explain why Trump has lately been opening the spigots on a fresh effusion of filthy racist invective: Maybe he really does need it to build the resentment toward “outsiders” that stimulates his base, whether by distracting them from their economic misery or offsetting the pacific effects of economic growth.

Edsall also notes that a major noneconomic trend is working in Trump’s favor as he tries to replicate his 2016 Midwestern success: The region’s population continues to age.

“In five states — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wisconsin — the number of 18-to-35-year-olds, the most liberal age group, grew by 56,448 between 2016 and 2018, according to Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings.

“That growth pales in comparison with the rising number of people 65 and older, a core of Republican support, which grew by 685,005 — an advantage of better than 12 old people for each young person. ”

The underlying reality may be that Trump is far more dependent on grumpy old men living outside thriving metropolitan areas than on the diverse populations living in them. If so, we can expect him to keep the hatefest going and to ignore the advice of “experts” telling him that his theme song should be “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

“Booker was a happy warrior — balancing attacks (primarily against former Vice President Joe Biden) with an optimistic demeanor. Booker spoke powerfully about criminal justice reform and immigration…Booker has considerable natural gifts as a candidate — and they shone through on Wednesday night.” – Chris Cillizza at CNN Politics.

Julian Castro had another very good night. He has a striking personal dignity and seriousness of purpose that should appeal to many voters. But he also showed a talent last night for laser-targeted attacks. As Cillizza noted, “He probably had the line of the night, hitting back on Biden with this hammer: “It looks like one of us has learned the lessons of the past and one of us hasn’t.” Castro was forceful and effective on immigration and really stuck it to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on how to handle the officer who choked Eric Garner.”

Here’s what we have to give to the embattled front-runner, according to Time Magazine’s Philip Elliot: “Biden took the lashing and lives to fight on. Advisers had spent the month since the first debate bracing for impact. They knew the aura of inevitability was not going to protect them and told him to anticipate wallops far worse than what Harris offered in Miami. Biden had tweets drafted and ready to go for a number of anticipated attacks, including a thread about that 1981 op-ed. It wasn’t a command performance for the front-runner, but he took incoming from all over the stage and appeared to come away relatively undaunted.”

Nate Silver observed at FiveThirtyEight: “My view at the start of the night was that Booker needed to differentiate himself in a positive way from Harris and I think he did that — not with any particularly interesting strategy or by taking her on directly, but just from being fairly sharp throughout the evening when she was quite uneven. Will it move the polls? I don’t know. I think Harris might be in for a skeptical news cycle or two given that she already has lost a lot of her bounce from the first debate.”

In a night of well-targeted zingers, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard scored a brutal one against Sen. Kamala Harris, with her comment, as reported by Stephanie Saul of the NYT: “Now, Senator Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president. But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.”

Gabbard had a lot more to say about Harris. But, caught off guard by Gabbard’s attack, Harris did a good job of defending her record, noting that she now supports pot legalization and banning the death penalty. But Harris missed an opportunity to counter-punch during the nationally-televised debate. After the debate Harris called Gabbard “an “apologist” for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, referring to her meeting with the dictator and previous claims that he’s not an enemy of the U.S..” We can only hope that they won’t squander their respective gifts on a personal feud. Gabbard is an eloquent critic of militaristic foreign policy and Harris provides the Dems’smost blistering take-down of Trump’s litany of abuse.

Sen Gillbrand also had a notable zinger, directed at the GOP’s ‘leader’: “So the first thing that I’m going to do when I’m president — is I’m going to Clorox the Oval Office.” To the relief of envioronmentalists, she followed up with the less toxic, “The second thing I’m going to do, is I will re-engage on global climate change.”

Here’s a ‘tale of the tape’ 2nd night debate metric from Veronica Rocha, Meg Wagner, Amanda Wills and Elise Hammond, also at CNN Politics:

At The Guadian, Art Cullen, editor of The Storm Lake Times, opined: “Front-runner Biden defended his record vigorously, bonded himself to President Obama on civil rights, and reminded viewers of his experience on the world stage. The real winner over two nights: universal healthcare, strongly endorsed by every candidate. It remains the top issue among primary voters. And nothing over two nights appeared to materially interrupt Elizabeth Warren’s steady momentum, while Harris did not have the best night.”

‘Medicare for All’ took its share of lumps during the fourth presidential debate, since it has been creamed in a host of recent opinion polls. Yet, “A pure Medicare-for-all plan is much easier to describe than these complicated plans that try to thread the political needle,” said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “This was a huge problem for the Obama administration in trying to sell the Affordable Care Act,” quoted in 4th debate coverage by WaPo’s Jeff Stein and Yasmeen Abutaleb.

The overlooked Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who makes as much sense as any of the candidates and has an actual track record to back it up, made an important point in the 4th debate, reported here by Ella Nilsen of Vox: “We are all going to work like the dickens to get more Democrats elected to the Senate. If we get a majority in the US Senate because of the position of these senators, not a damn thing is going to get done,” Inslee said. “And I’ll tell you why, with all their good intentions — and I know they’re sincere and passionate — but because they embraced the filibuster, Mitch McConnell is going to run the US Senate even if we take a majority.”

Don’t be surprised of you start hearing more ‘Warren-Booker’ than ‘Biden-Harris’ buzz, since the Massachusetts Senator had the best night of the 20 candidates, followed by Booker’s impressive performance and that of Sen. Sanders, who has moved the political fulcrum to the left. I will be surprised if they don’t get a substantial lift in the polls over the next couple of weeks. My final take on both nights is that the Democratic presidential field has an embarrasment of riches, a lot of very impressive candidates — Time Magazine called it “the most diverse presidential debate in American history.” I was expecting a let-down after the energetic first debate, but came away from night two with an even better feeling about being a Democrat. This party has a bright future.

“Warren had a strong performance. For instance, she may have had the line of the night by shooting down a Delaney attack by asking why someone would run for president if they don’t have big ideas and plans. Warren has been firm and aggressive in defense of her progressive views, continuing to use the word “fight” over and over again when describing how she’ll take on Trump and change the country. I don’t think she’s going to necessarily rocket up further in the polls, but she’s positioned herself to be a strong contender for the nomination heading into the fall.” – Geoffrey Skelley at FiveThirtyEight.

“Steve Bullock: The Montana governor, to his immense credit, understood that this debate was his one big chance to make an impression with voters — and move from the third tier upward. I’m not sure if his numbers will move in a major way, but Bullock went for it — from his opening statement on. He made clear, time and time again, that he did not believe that the liberal views of Warren and Sanders were grounded in reality and did believe that those views would cost Democrats the election…If moderates were looking for someone other than former Vice President Joe Biden to support in this primary, Bullock offered himself as a viable alternative.” – Chris Cillizza at CNN Politics.

“…While Sanders and Warren correctly pointed out the problems with “good” private insurance ― namely that it’s at the whim of employers and frequently leaves very sick people with huge bills ― they never acknowledged the core political reality that polls have shown repeatedly and as recently as this week: Support for Medicare for All drops dramatically when people hear that enrollment in a new government plan would be mandatory.” – Jonathan Cohn at HuffPo.

“My bottom line–I’m not sure whether any of these five will surge in the polls or be on the debate stage in September. But I think both Bullock and Delaney have succeeded in pushing the Democratic 2020 debate to the center. And I think there’s an outside chance that Bullock actually gets a look from the party.” – Perry Bacon, Jr. at FiveThirtyEight.

“The “moderates,” desperate for a big moment and probably (as my colleague Jonathan Chait suggests) looking to become a back-up option to Joe Biden if he fades, obliged — some through substantive criticisms and others alluding to their fear of public opinion and Republican attacks. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, whose views were generally being challenged by moderators and rivals alike, fired back lustily, too, with Warren emulating and sometimes exceeding Bernie’s customary tone of righteous indignation.” – Ed Kilgore at New York Magazine.

“Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), a candidate who has gained no traction, summed up the critique about an hour into the debate. “In this discussion already tonight, we’ve talked about taking private health insurance away from union members in the industrial Midwest, we’ve talked about decriminalizing the border, and we’ve talked about giving free health care to undocumented workers when so many Americans are struggling to pay for their health care,” Ryan said. “I quite frankly don’t think that is an agenda that we can move forward on and win.” – Andrew Prokop at Vox.

“Ten Democratic candidates struggled to overcome an abysmal debate format and moderators bent on forcing them to address right-wing talking points and attack each other. Some managed to rise nonetheless. Others continued to spur only questions about why, exactly, they were on stage to begin with. Once again, the winners were the progressive policies shaping the race and, by extension, the two candidates who have championed and driven those policies into the national debate…” – Laura Clawson at Daily Kos.

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

Josh Marshall has a great piece up on Talking Points Memo about the politics off Medicare for All. It is eminently sensible and covers well both the facts of the situation and the standard objections Medicare for All advocates raise when it is pointed out just how electorally difficult this program would make things for the Democrats. Point #6 of the Common Sense Democrat creed is: Don’t advocate clearly unpopular policies (if you want to win of course). Josh Marshall agrees!

Marshall’s piece is behind a paywall but it’s well worth seeking out if you are interested in this issue. But a few telling excerpts;

“In Democratic policy debates since 2016 there’s been a widespread and sometimes near dominant narrative that Medicare for All is the way forward and actually surprisingly popular…The problem is, the whole premise is false. A raft of public surveys show that Medicare for All has anything ranging from public support in the low 40s to dismal support down into the 20s. How is that reconcilable with all the polls showing that clear majorities support it? Like most political labels it’s not clear, beyond in an aspirational sense, what “Medicare for All” actually means. Survey after survey shows that when most people hear “Medicare for All” they assume something like a right for anyone who wanted it, regardless of age, to be able to get or buy into Medicare. Critically, most believe they and others would be able to keep their current private coverage if they chose to.

A new Marist poll illustrates the point, but it’s far from the only example. The poll asked Americans whether they supported “Medicare for all that want it, that is allow all Americans to choose between a national health insurance program or their own private health insurance.” 70% of adults thought that was a “good idea”.

When asked about “Medicare for all, that is a national health insurance program for all Americans that replaces private health insurance” the number fell to 41%. This isn’t an outlier. Numerous polls have shown roughly the same thing. A 2018 Reuters/Ipsos poll found 70.1% support and 51.9% support among self-identified Republicans. The numbers are actually remarkable consistent across many polls. Roughly 70% say they support Medicare for All, assuming that it means people can keep private policies. The numbers hover around 40% if they’re told that’s not true.

But just as consistently polls show that people assume Medicare for All means the option to opt into Medicare or keep their own private insurance. Much like the new Marist poll, a January 2019 Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 55% of adults believed Medicare for All would allow people to retain their private coverage if they chose. When told it would “eliminate private health insurance companies” that support collapses, going from slightly more than 70% to just 37%….

The reaction to these stark numbers from Medicare for All advocates has been telling and instructive. Of course, if you focus on perceived negatives or scare tactics, support falls! But this makes no sense. You can’t understand the popularity or political viability of a policy without figuring in counter-arguments that will certainly be used in the political arena. This is especially the case with counter-arguments which are actually true!

The secondary response has settled down to daring people to find anyone who likes their insurance company. Nobody likes their insurance company ergo these numbers can’t be true or don’t mean anything or don’t matter. It’s a pretty effective dare. Who raises their hand at a town hall meeting to give a big thumbs up to their health insurance company? Unfortunately that doesn’t really prove anything or at least what advocates what it to prove.

Here we have the kernel of magical thinking inspiring this whole debate: advocates belief that if something doesn’t make sense, it actually can’t be true. It’s certainly true that more or less everyone has complaints about their insurance company. And it’s hard to find people who affirmatively like or have some devotion to their insurance company since the whole system is a mess. But it simply doesn’t flow from that that people support doing away with private insurance or being forced to give up their current insurance. To pretend otherwise ignores basically everything we know about public risk aversion, especially tied to health care, and people’s perception that while what they currently may not be ideal something else might be worse. Call it relative privilege or advantage and people’s resistance to losing it….

He concludes:

“Of course, none of this means that people shouldn’t support Medicare for All or other comparable single player plans on the merits. A substantial minority of Americans do support it. Indeed, more practically, without a vibrant left supporting such a model the public debate is inevitably skewed to the right. A decade ago the legislative debate on Capitol Hill largely focused on whether or not what we now call Obamacare would include a “public option.” It failed because of stiff opposition from insurers and opposition from centrist Senate Democrats. Now that’s basically the centrist fallback position and Republicans running for office, as opposed to working the courts, have basically given up on gutting Obamacare. Indeed, ‘Medicare for America’, one of the major Medicare buy-in style plans proposed by wonks at the Center for American Progress, is as the name implies in large measure a reaction to the Medicare for All push. But that’s not what the proposal entitled “Medicare for All” actually does. It’s a single payer plan in which private health care plans would be prohibited except for supplemental plans which covers services or deductibles not covered by the standard plan.

There is every reason to believe that Medicare for All would be a major electoral liability for a Democratic presidential candidate in a general election – just on the basis of what the plan actually does, let alone the way the GOP and the health care industry writ large would pile on to that with a campaign of lies, horror stories and propaganda. It could well mean the difference between Trump’s defeat or reelection by effectively nullifying the Democrats big advantage on health care and giving the GOP a cudgel to sour a significant amount of the electorate on the Democratic candidate.”

Like Marshall, I get why people would be attracted to the Medicare for All idea. But I continue to be surprised at people’s willingness to ignore or try to explain away the clear evidence that the program would be a serious electoral liability. Sure it would be nice if that weren’t so. But it is.