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

Two new articles highlight two ways in which Biden might maximize the Democrats’ chances of beating Trump. I emphasize the “might”–it is possible Biden is not the best Democratic candidate to do these two things. But it seems to me unarguable that the Democratic nominee, whoever it is, must do very well in both of these areas.

1. The White Working Class Vote. The subtitle of Ron Brownstein’s new article is “Joe Biden’s candidacy is a proxy for the larger question of how the party can best rebuild a successful presidential majority.” As, Brownstein puts it:

“No choice in 2020 divides Democratic activists more than the question of whether the party needs a nominee best suited to winning back these white voters, who have been drifting away from the party for decades, or one best positioned to mobilize the party’s new alliance of minorities, young people, and white-collar whites, especially women.”

After noting the ongoing decline of the white working class share of voters, as underscored by recently-released Census data, Brownstein makes the following indisputable observation:

“The long-term erosion of blue-collar whites as a share of the national vote is unmistakable and irreversible. That trend has ominous long-term implications for a GOP that is relying more heavily than ever on squeezing greater advantage from that shrinking group. But those white voters are disproportionately represented in the pivotal Rust Belt battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin (as well as in Ohio and Iowa, which have trended further away from Democrats). Democrats wouldn’t need to focus as obsessively on those states, and on courting their large working-class white populations, if they could tip some of the diverse and growing Sun Belt states where those whites are a smaller share of the vote, such as North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia, much less Texas. (Arizona, probably the top new Sun Belt target for Democrats in 2020, actually houses an elevated number of non-college-educated whites because it attracts so many white retirees.) But until Democrats can reliably flip some of those Sun Belt states, they can’t downplay the Rust Belt in presidential contests.”

To bring this point into focus, projections indicate the voting electorates in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2020 will probably be, respectively, 56 percent, 52 percent and 49 percent white noncollege. If turnout patterns are particularly favorable to the Democrats, you might knock another point off these levels. But that’s still a lot of voters. Biden says he can reach these voters better than Clinton did in 2016. Maybe he’s right. Maybe he’s wrong. But his Democratic rivals need to make the case that they’d be as good or better than Biden among these voters. Otherwise, they’re asking Democratic voters to draw to an inside straight.

2. The Union Vote. Nate Silver has a good item in his most recent “Silver Bulletpoints” column. Silver cites Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) data showing:

“Trump’s union support [was not] merely a matter of white men shifting en masse to Trump. While white women and nonwhite men in unions mostly voted for Clinton, her margins with those groups were considerably narrower than Barack Obama’s in 2012.

In fact, the shift among union voters was enough to swing the election to Trump. According to the CCES, Obama won union voters by 34.4 percentage points in 2012, but Clinton did so by only 16.7 points in 2016. That roughly 18-point swing was worth a net of 1.2 percentage points for Trump in Pennsylvania, 1.1 points in Wisconsin and 1.7 points in Michigan based on their rates of union membership — and those totals were larger than his margins of victory in those states.”

Again, Biden can make the case that he’s the best candidate to appeal to these voters. That doesn’t mean he’s right but it does mean that other candidates need to show how and why they’d be better than him at reaching union voters. And at the moment I’m not hearing any candidate besides Biden saying things like: “I make no apologies. I am a union man (or woman). Period.”

So Biden–love him or hate him, he’s got a real case. I’m ready to hear a better one, but so far I’m not overwhelmed.

As Democrats debate the pros and cons of impeachment, one thing is clear: It’s not like Dems are going to need more anti-Trump publicity — the negative revelations are going to keep on coming, regardless of whether or not Dems impeach him. As Mike Allen reports in “Trump’s World Faces 16 Criminal and Civil Probes” in his Axios AM e-blast: “Post-Mueller, Garrett M. Graff of WIRED reports that Trump’s world “still appears to face 16 known criminal and civil probes, from as many as a dozen different federal, state, and local prosecutors…Four cases are being pursued by federal authorities in New York. … “New York state and local authorities are also building cases, both criminal and civil…These include tax and immigration issues for Trump businesses, plus inauguration spending, the Trump Foundation and the NRA…That’s not counting the dozen cases that the special counsel’s office referred to other law enforcement agencies, cases mentioned in Mueller’s report but redacted so as to obscure any details about them…Why it matters: “At this rate, Trump’s investigations may outlast his presidency…See the list.”

At Campaigns and Elections, Sean J. Miller writes in his article, “Is the Chase for Small-Dollar Donors a Problem for 2020 Democrats” that “In February, the DNC announced that for candidates to get on stage at its two presidential primary debates, they would have to meet certain fundraising criteria. Specifically, they would need to raise money from 65,000 donors in at least 20 different states…We have optimized, because of the 65,000 small-dollar donor debate prerequisite, for low-dollar acquisition right now,” said Shomik Dutta, a partner at Higher Ground Labs, which has funded a slate of political technology startups over the past two cycles. “So every presidential candidate is making a low-dollar argument to coastal activists and what we are missing is the opportunity to do some framing of our general [election] opponent in the states that matter.”

Democrats may want to keep an eye on the latest buzz about “modern monetary theory” (MMT), the big biz version of which is lightly explored in Ben Holland’s “Dalio Says Something Like MMT Is Coming, Whether We Like It Or Not” at Bloomberg.com: “Central banking as we know it is on the way out, and it’s “inevitable” that something like modern monetary theory will replace it, billionaire investor Ray Dalio said…The doctrine, known as MMT, says that governments should manage their economies through spending and taxes — instead of relying on independent central banks to do it via interest rates. It also seeks to allay fears over budget deficits and national debts by arguing that countries like the U.S., which have their own currency, can’t go broke and have more room to spend than is usually supposed — provided inflation is subdued, as it is now…Debate over MMT, which languished in obscurity for decades, has exploded in recent months. The idea has been criticized by a series of financial heavyweights, from Warren Buffett to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. But Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest hedge fund, said policy makers will have little choice but to embrace it.” Paul Krugman has a more skepical take right here.

In their poorly-titled, but otherwise informative Daily Beast post, “Joe Biden’s Union Pitch Is a Throwback Aimed at White Males,” Scott Bixby and Gideon Resnick take a peek at former Vice President Biden’s working-class outreach strategy. Their observations include this riff on a Biden comment: “I make no apologies: I am a union man, period,” Biden said at his kickoff rally at the Teamsters Local 249 in Pittsburgh on Monday afternoon, to an audience largely composed of union workers. “The country wasn’t built by Wall Street bankers, CEOs and hedge fund managers—it was built by you. It was built by the great American middle class, and the American middle class was built by you, by unions!”…But Biden’s bid to build a strong coalition of union supporters in the primary and beyond has, so far, frequently been focused on largely white, largely male career fields and labor organizations—electricians, firefighters, Teamsters—rather than the nation’s increasingly diverse unionized workforces.” It’s way early, guys. Biden just launched his campaign and he can’t be everywhere at once. He will certainly be reaching out to workers of color and the organizations that represent them.

Noting that “President Donald Trump hits a new high on his economic approval ratings in a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, reaching 56% of Americans saying he’s doing a good job on the economy,” CNN’s Grace Sparks adds that “The economy is the President’s best issue tested in the new poll, with his other approval ratings all below 50%. Even among those who disapprove of the way the president is handling his job generally, 20% say they approve of his work on the economy. That’s larger than crossover approval for any other issue by 12 points.” However, Trump usually finds ways to distract media coverage from his better talking points with some new outrage. But Democratic candidates can’t rely on Trump’s distraction du jour; they must have responses that reveal the negative effects of Republican economic policies and the benefits of Democratic alternatives.

At Brookings, Richard V. Reeves has some data-rich responses to recent economic trends Democrats can mine to good effect, including: “In the last few years, as the zombie gradually wakes up, household incomes and wages have begun to nudge upwards – but families are still having to work more hours to get the income they need. Women are working more, and earning more (though the pay gap remains). But as men work less, and earn less, many families are simply standing still in economic terms. Since 1979, the median male wage in the US has dropped by 1.4% for whites– and by 9% and 8% for black and Hispanic men, respectively. Workers at the top of the earnings and education distribution have seen their paychecks continue to fatten: not so on the middle and bottom rungs of the labor market. Wage growth remains torpid in the middle of the distribution…Most American workers are still paid by the hour, and half of them have no formal control over their schedules. Two in five hourly-paid workers aged between 26 and 32 know their schedules less than a week in advance. Hard to arrange childcare on that notice. Many American workers are fighting, like the trade unions of old, on two fronts: for money, and for time.”

And let no Democratic candidate fail to read Heidi Schierholz’s “More than eight million workers will be left behind by the Trump overtime proposal” at The Economic Policy Institute, which notes: “On March 22, 2019, the Department of Labor published a proposal to set the salary threshold under which almost all workers are entitled to overtime pay to $679 per week, or $35,308 for a full-year worker, in 2020.1 The adoption of this proposal would leave behind millions of workers who would have gotten new or strengthened overtime protections under regulations finalized in 2016.2 This analysis compares the economic impact of the Trump administration proposal to the 2016 rule.” Among the key findings: “…The 8.2 million workers left behind by the Trump proposal include 3.1 million workers who would have gotten new overtime protections under the 2016 rule and 5.1 million workers who would have gotten strengthened protections under the 2016 rule…The 8.2 million workers who would be left behind include 4.2 million women, 3.0 million people of color, 4.7 million workers without a college degree, and 2.7 million parents of children under the age of 18…The annual wage gains from workers who get new protections are $1.2 billion dollars less under the Trump proposal than under the 2016 rule…”

An In These Times staff post, “We Desperately Need Medicare for All. These 10 Statistics Prove It,” provides some data ammo as the health care reform debate gathers momentum. A few of their  nuggets: “79% – Increased death rate for cancer patients who filed for bankruptcy in 2016…$1,443 – U.S. per capita spending on pharmaceutical costs in 2016, the highest in the world…44% – Americans who didn’t go to a doctor when they were sick or injured because of cost…530,000 – Estimated number of families who file bankruptcy each year due to medical issues and bills…”

With Democrats now discussing the “electability” of their 2020 prospects, I thought it was worthwhile to conduct a thorough examination of Trump’s “reelectability,” and I wrote it up at New York.

As you can imagine, there’s no ironclad formula for determining these things (despite the occasional glib and inaccurate assertions that incumbents always win or that “it’s the economy, stupid”), particularly with respect to an outlandish president like Trump. But there are factors that will definitely have a bearing on the odds that he’ll have a second inaugural and can again radically exaggerate attendance.

1. The sheer power of incumbency

A statistic we’ll hear often between now and November 2020 is that four of the five presidents running for reelection after 1980 won — or alternatively, that eight of the 11 running since the end of World War II won. Some gabbers may even stack the deck a bit more by excluding Gerald Ford from the calculation, since he was never elected president or vice-president before his narrow 1976 loss. And there are those who would distinguish Ford and Jimmy Carter from any meaningful precedents because they had to overcome powerful intraparty primary challenges unlike anything Donald Trump is likely to face in 2020.

And there’s still another argument for excluding Carter, as noted by Musa al-Gharbi in predicting a Trump win in 2020:

“Had Ford won in 1976, it would have marked three consecutive terms for the GOP. If George H.W. Bush had won in 1992, it would have meant four consecutive Republican terms.

“Since 1932, only once has a party held the White House for less than eight years: the administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter from 1976 to 1980.”

In any event there are real advantages any incumbent president undoubtedly possesses:

“’Incumbents have the following advantages,’ says Allan Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University. ‘Name recognition; national attention, fundraising and campaign bases; control over the instruments of government; successful campaign experience; a presumption of success; and voters’ inertia and risk-aversion.'”

Name recognition and the ability to command attention are assets that don’t matter quite so much at the end of a high-profile presidential general election, and it’s hard to envision Trump ever being the natural choice of the risk-averse. But “control over the instruments of government” does involve the ability to throw a surprise or two into the mix (e.g., Barack Obama’s DACA directive in June 2012, which was not only quite popular but preempted a Romney move in the same direction that might have mitigated his harsh anti-immigrant image).

So Trump probably should be credited with a modest thumb on the scales simply for being in the White House already.

2. Good times for the economy

While most political scientists reject the idea that economic conditions are the only thing that matters in presidential elections involving an incumbent, virtually all predictive models do take the economy into account. And if there’s been a recent revision of expectations in Trump’s favor in recent weeks in the chattering classes generally, it’s because earlier signs of a possible near-term economic slowdown now appear to be hiccups. Initial estimates that first-quarter 2019 GDP growth came in at 3.2 percent(significantly higher than most economists’ expectations) struck fear into the hearts of many Democrats.

But economic indicators in the year before a presidential election aren’t usually a very reliable guide to how voters will feel when they head to the polls. One well-reputed model, developed by Emory University’s Alan Abramowitz, uses second-quarter GDP growth in the election year as the primary economic variable. Even economists who weren’t surprised by the early-2019 numbers (usually attributed to the effects of the 2017 tax legislation) aren’t predicting they’ll continue all the way into 2020. So what may matter more than any particular numbers right now is a general climate in which steady growth, low inflation, and perhaps a touch of partisan politics convince the Federal Reserve Board to continue expansionary monetary policies, keeping the economy in the pink as the 2020 election grows nigh (it’s frequently assumed that short of a catastrophe, very late economic developments don’t matter anymore than very early ones — hence Abramowitz’s second-quarter focus).

As a separate matter, however, strong economic indicators in 2019 could complicate Democratic messaging in the early phases of the presidential election cycle. Democrats and their presidential candidates may, accordingly, focus less on macroeconomic conditions than on arguments about growing wealth being poorly distributed, which is what a majority of Americans appear to believe even as they perceive economic conditions as relatively rosy.

3. Presidential approval ratings

It’s generally agreed that presidential job-approval ratings are the single most reliable indicator of any POTUS’s reelection prospects, if only because it reflects so many other factors, such as economic conditions, international developments, and the net effect of partisan pressures. Trump’s approval ratings 18 months out are not that different from those of a number of predecessors. The most recent monthly Gallup rating (from early April) has Trump at 45 percent, identical to Ronald Reagan’s number at this juncture in 1983; one point above Barack Obama’s 44 percent in 2011; and one point below Gerald Ford’s 46 percent in 1975. Reagan eventually won 49 states in 1984, Obama won by just under four points in 2012, and Ford lost very narrowly in 1976.

What separates Trump from all of these presidents, and indeed from all presidents, is the remarkable stability of his job-approval numbers; he’s had the least variation of any post–World War II president. His current Gallup rating is at his absolute peak, which he briefly achieved two other times in his presidency but could never sustain. Reagan’s Gallup approval rating rosefrom 45 percent 18 months out to 53 percent six months later, then 55 percent eight months later. Obama’s rose from 44 percent 18 months out to 52 percent on Election Eve. While anything’s possible, there’s no particular reason to think Trump is capable of a similar ascent. And for that matter, Gallup’s latest relatively high job-approval number for Trump could be an outlier on the high side: His average approval rating at Real Clear Politics is 43.1 percent, and at FiveThirtyEight, 41.3 percent. The GOP’s hope that the “exoneration” of Trump they falsely attributed to the Mueller report would finally get POTUS over the hump into something like positive job-approval territory did not turn out to be realistic at all.

Whether it’s a product of Trump’s singular personality or partisan polarization, his inflexible approval ratings do not bode well for an election-year surge, barring some very large external event or a very poor decision by Democrats in nominating an opponent.

4. Comparative popularity with opponents

Midterm elections are for the most part referenda on the party controlling the White House. Presidential elections involving an incumbent are partially that as well, but there is a significant comparative element, too, that is not as important in midterms.

The possibility that Trump could be reelected despite bad job-approval ratings is best illustrated by the still-shocking fact that he won in 2016 despite a horrendous Election Eve Gallup favorability ratio of 36/61. His opponent’s ratio of 47/52 was bad enough to enable him to win with an inside straight in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote by more than two points. Since his entire 2020 strategy is again to drive down his opponent’s popularity with savagely negative attacks while solidifying his own base, Trump’s own popularity could again be less crucial than might otherwise be the case.

Despite an ever-increasing Democratic preoccupation with the “electability” of their 2020 prospects, it’s very difficult at this juncture to predict whether 2016 could repeat itself. Early trial heats show Trump mostly trailing the best-known Democrats, Biden and Sanders, and mostly leading the lesser-known aspirants. But early presidential trial heat polls do not have a very good record of predictive value. After a Democratic nominee is chosen such polls really will begin to be worth following; despite all the postelection caterwauling about inaccurate polls, they weren’t at all far off in 2016, as Nate Silver observed in a postmortem:

“[The] myth is that Trump’s victory represented some sort of catastrophic failure for the polls. Trump outperformed his national polls by only 1 to 2 percentage points in losing the popular vote to Clinton, making them slightly closer to the mark than they were in 2012. Meanwhile, he beat his polls by only 2 to 3 percentage points in the average swing state.”

After what happened in 2016, however, it’s a good guess that more extensive polling will be conducted in states that are competitive but not assumed to be battlegrounds, like the Rust Belt states that fell to Trump with very little warning.

A big imponderable is the question of whether the various Democratic candidates truly vary in electability, or if instead partisanship will drive the election — i.e., in the end, any Democrat will be a “generic” Democrat. Surely the specific identity of the nominee, and for that matter campaign developments like debates, will matter at least at the margins, where close elections are often won and lost. And it may also matter whether the nominee is or isn’t especially vulnerable to GOP campaign attack lines aimed at painting the Democrat as an “extremist,” or to put it another way, as risky a proposition as a second term for Trump.

5. Other factors

Reporters will pay a lot of attention to fundraising numbers heading toward 2020. But while these may matter in primaries, barring massive advantages by one side or the other, money isn’t usually a decisive factor in presidential general elections, in part because name identification isn’t an issue and in part because there’s so much unpaid media available. How the money is spent could be important, but it’s a bit too early to make comparative conclusions about any of that.

Comparative turnout will matter a lot, and both parties are expected to focus more than ever on driving base voters to the polls, both via mechanical outreach efforts and inflammatory rhetoric. Generally speaking, presidential elections bring out pro-Democratic elements of the electorate more than midterms, though high 2018 turnout from those very elements could mean Democrats shouldn’t count on that much of a boost in 2020. Long-term demographic trends universally assumed to favor Democrats will have marginally affected the shape of the electorate since 2016, which is one of those things that could make a difference in another razor-close Electoral College contest.

There is one factor that is difficult to measure but undoubtedly real that could help get Democrats across the line in 2020: Trump will not ambush them again. It’s unclear how many should-have-been Clinton voters in 2016 didn’t bother to vote, went third-party, or even cast a protest vote for Trump on the assumption that HRC was certain to win. But anecdotally at least, they existed, and that very likely won’t happen again. Similarly, the 2020 Democratic candidate, whoever it is, will almost certainly avoid the underinvestment in what turned out to be crucial battlegrounds that the Clinton campaign mistakenly made.

Last but not least, there’s the little matter of some election-altering set of external events. There’s no way to know if some sudden international development involving military conflict, or some domestic terrorist incident, will happen between now and November 2020 and, in that event, whether Trump will handle it in a way that helps or hurts him politically. Right now, Democrats and neutral observers alike are engaged in an intense argumentabout whether moving toward impeachment of Trump would help crystallize public understanding of his corrupt and even criminal character, or would distract voters from more compelling anti-Trump arguments. How that argument is resolved could be one of the greatest wild cards for 2020.

So adding all this up, how do Trump’s reelection prospects look? I still think he’s an underdog — albeit a menacing, loudly growling underdog — for reelection given his perpetually poor approval ratings; the likelihood that Democrats’ larger base will be exceptionally motivated to turn him out of office lest the existential threat of a second Trump term materialize; and his inability to control some of his worst impulses, even when it’s politically imperative.

But a Trump defeat won’t happen automatically, and we already know that precedent-shattering bad behavior by the incumbent is so fundamental to his identity that it probably won’t matter at all, unless a critical mass of voters just get weary of the whole circus — in which case, he’s toast.

President Trump’s racist immigration policies have kept him popular with a disturbingly-large segment of G.O.P. rank and file and elected officials. But he has failed to sway a majority of Americans, who now view immigrants as a positive force in our society. The latter trend provides Democrats with an edge in upcomming elections — if they promote policies that line up well with public opinion on immigration issues.

In his FiveThirtyEight post, “Can Democrats Win On Immigration Policy In 2020?,” Geoffrey Skelley defines the challenge Democrats face:

Immigration is likely going to be a major topic in the 2020 election. From issuing a travel ban on many majority-Muslim countries to shutting down the government while seeking funding for a border wall, President Trump has made immigration perhaps the central defining issue of his presidency. And Democrats have so far successfully punted on tackling the issue head-on, opting to try to block Trump’s policies rather than propose a full-fledged alternative agenda.

However, survey data suggests that public attitudes toward immigration may be somewhat more in line with Democrats’ positions than Republicans’, so Democrats might do well in 2020 if they campaign on their vision for overhauling the immigration system. Yet this move still carries risks…

Skelley notes further, that “Some views held by members in the left wing of the party — like abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — don’t poll well with voters and could be particularly alienating among Americans who are worried about border security…This January, 62 percent of Americans said that immigrants strengthen the country, while just 28 percent said they felt that immigrants were a burden, according to the Pew Research Center. But as you can see in the chart below, this is pretty much a complete reversal from where the public stood when Pew first asked this question in 1994.”

Skelley adds that a 2018 Gallup Poll indicated that “a record share of Americans — 75 percent — thought immigration was a good thing for the country.” However, cautions Skelley, “just because more Americans have a positive attitude toward immigration doesn’t mean they want to see more immigration. In early 2019, 30 percent of Americans told Gallup they wanted immigration levels to increase while 31 percent said they wanted levels to decrease and 37 percent said they should be kept the same.”

Skelley goes on to cite several polls which show that most Americans believe border security is a major concern. But most Americans don’t see Trump’s wall as the overarching priority: “Gallup found that 75 percent of Americans favored hiring significantly more border patrol agents, while Fox News found that 68 percent of Americans favored spending more on border security measures other than building a wall.” In addition, “most Americans oppose more barrier construction on the U.S.-Mexico border, and so Democrats have fought to limit the amount of funding available for that project.”

Trump’s family separation policies are highly unpopular, according to polls, and his national emergency declaration was opposed by 64 percent of respondents in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll. Also, “just 30 percent of Americans said they wanted it to be harder for undocumented immigrants to request asylum” while 61 percent said they wanted assylum policies to be “left as is,” or made “easier.”

Recent polls idicate that Democrats would be wise not to advocate abolishing ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement), which political analyst Ruy Teixeira includes among “The Four Don’ts of the 2020 Democratic Campaign.” Dems should instead urge reforming the agency and support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

As for the best policy mix for Democrats, the overall challenge is “to craft an immigration strategy that’s both humane and “also takes border enforcement seriously,” according to Simon Rosenberg, president of the liberal think tank NDN. Instead of just blasting away at Trump’s immigration policies, Dems must pass comprehensive immigration legislation of their own in the House — even though it will be killed in the senate — so they can make a credible claim to be the only party that has a serious plan for both border security and sound immigration policies.

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

Joe-Mentum?

Morning Consult just released their weekly tracking poll of likely Democratic primary voters and the results for Joe Biden are very good. The rollout of his formal candidacy has widened his first choice lead over Bernie Sanders from 6 to 14 points (now 36 to 22 percent).

Interestingly, despite all the brouhaha about the Anita Hill hearings and Biden’s overly-familiar physical style, he is doing quite well among women (38 percent support) and, especially, black women (47 percent).

How can this be? I would refer you to the very interesting article by Trip Gabriel of the Times on Biden’s appeal in Pennsylvania. Gabriel notes that Biden “has the potential to attract suburban moderates defecting from the Republican Party under President Trump, to invigorate black voters who were underwhelmed by Hillary Clinton and to reverse at least some losses among working-class white voters.”

The material on black voters in this article is the most interesting. Most white liberals fail to understand that Ta-Nehisi Coates and like commentators do not represent the median black voter, who comes from a more pragmatic and, in important ways, more conservative place. Indeed, recent public opinion data show clearly that white liberals themselves are now to the left of blacks on many issues concerning race and racism.

Gabriel interviewed black voters in Philadelphia. He found that:

“patrons [of a black-oriented coffee and book shop] universally said Mr. Biden was at or near the top of their list, in no small part because of his eight-year partnership with President Barack Obama….

Kerry Chester, 53, a network engineer working at his laptop, said he voted for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the 2016 Pennsylvania primary. But for 2020 he thinks it is so important to defeat Mr. Trump that Mr. Biden is preferable, even compared to the two top African-American candidates, Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California….

Neither Mr. Chester nor other black voters interviewed said Mr. Biden’s record of championing anti-crime bills — as a Delaware senator in the 1980s and ’90s — that led to mass incarceration were impediments to their support.

“That was 20 years ago,” Mr. Chester said. “I can’t hold everything against him.” He added that compared with other candidates, “I trust him a lot more.”

Nasya Jenkins, 21, who works at a Boys and Girls Club and is an aspiring influencer on Instagram, said she did not penalize Mr. Biden for his treatment of Anita Hill in her 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee testimony. Mr. Biden called Ms. Hill recently to address some of her concerns, a conversation she said left her dissatisfied.

“I’m not really so caught up on what happened in the past,” Ms. Jenkins said. “We’re here now, with all the problems we have. What do you plan on doing to change that — period?”

Sure, this is anecdotal stuff but it seems consistent with preference patterns we’re now seeing in the data. It may be the case that Biden could not only do a better job reaching white working class voters than Clinton but also do a better job mobilizing black voters, including women. That’s pretty important.

Look, I don’t want to go overboard on Biden. He has lots of problems, including possible lack of appeal to young voters. And if I was backing someone strictly on the basis of policy and who would do the best job as President, I’d pick Warren. But the data as they come in do suggest that Biden has a case as the candidate best-suited to Job #1: taking out Trump.

At The Washington Monthly, TDS contributing editor Andrew Levison proposes “A New Approach for Democrats: Instead of trying to be a single ‘big tent,’ what if the party took a page out of the parliamentarian playbook?” Levison, author of The White Working Class Today, writes, “While Democrats frequently pay lip service to the idea that their party is a “big tent” or a “broad coalition,” they do not seriously grapple with the implications of that view. If you accept the notion that, to win majorities, the Democratic Party must be a “big tent,” then the fundamental challenge facing the party is not one side or another winning a “battle for the soul of the party.” It’s overcoming the obstacles to creating and maintaining the broadest possible Democratic coalition…Consider how coalition management problems tend to be handled in parliamentary systems. Since World War II, there have been a variety of left-of-center coalitions in Europe and Scandinavia. These were composed of several distinct political parties rather than a single “umbrella” or “big tent” organization. Each party had its own distinct identity, including a formal, detailed platform and agenda, as well as a robust and structured system of internal debate and discussion. These distinct parties offered the larger coalition several advantages over an American style “big-tent” approach…Imagine what might happen if the Democratic Party abandoned its identity as an amorphous “big tent,” and instead became a more formal political coalition between two groups.” Read Levison’s article for an in-depth analysis.

Gabriela Resto-Montero reports at vox.com that “Overall, a majority of Americans oppose impeachment with only 37 percent saying they favor starting the process and 56 percent saying they oppose the idea,” according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Unsurprisingly, support for impeaching President Trump is divided along partisan lines…Most Democrats — 62 percent — support starting impeachment proceedings, and 53 percent of Democrats said they strongly believe the House should begin impeaching Trump. Almost every Republican respondent was against impeachment; 87 percent said they were opposed, with 78 percent saying they were strongly opposed. Independents weren’t largely in favor either, with only 36 percent saying they feel impeachment should begin.”

Sure, the Democrats must proceed with their investigations of Trump’s Russia collusion and justice obstruction. But Matt Ford makes a good argument that “Trump Is Building His Own Case For Impeachment” at The New Republic, arguing “Democrats are debating whether Trump’s actions over the past two years are enough to justify his impeachment. If they decide in the affirmative, they would need to convince America that his threat to the nation’s constitutional order is so great and immediate that the 2020 election is too distant to wait for the nation’s verdict. But Trump might beat them to it…The president doesn’t seem interested in disputing the Democrats’ portrayal of him beyond soundbites like “No obstruction!” If anything, he seems almost eager to prove them right.”

While the WaPo-ABC poll also shows a majority of the public expressing confidence that the Mueller report was fair, many progressives feel that Mueller caved in his conclusions. Bill Maher gives a blistering voice to this view in his latest ‘Real Time’ rant:

Also at Vox, Sean Illing interviews Duke political scientist Ashley Jardina about her new book,  White Identity Politics,   which mines data from a decade of American National Election Studies surveys. Illing notes that “Jardina claims that white Americans — roughly 30 to 40 percent of them — now identify with their whiteness in a politically meaningful way. Importantly, this racial solidarity doesn’t alwaysoverlap with racism, but it does mean that racial identity is becoming a more salient force in American politics.” Illing says “she believes America’s diversification has triggered a host of anxieties about who holds power and who does not, and what she thinks we can do to deal with the problems this anxiety has created.” At one pointy, Jardina notes, “Deep down it’s about this fear that America isn’t going to look like them anymore, that they’ll lose their majority and with it their cultural and political power. It’s also tied up in the belief that whites are experiencing discrimination now.”

In yet another Vox article, P. R. Lockhart warns that “GOP-led states move the war on voting to a new front: voter registration.” Lockhart writes, “Republican lawmakers in a handful of states have introduced measures that would impose stricter rules on voters and voter registration groups, a policy shift that voting rights groups and advocates say could have a chilling effect on upcoming elections and introduce a new wave of voting restrictions in the US…On April 25, the Tennessee state Senate voted to pass a measure that would impose fines and penalties on voter registration groups that submit incomplete forms to the state. And in Texas, legislators are considering a law that would punish people for errors on their voter registration forms or for voting if they are ineligible…The proposals have been strongly condemned by activists and civil rights groups, who argue that the measures are unnecessary and could hamper efforts to mobilize some voters.”

In their Politico article, “Democrats see Biden as wobbly 2020 front-runner: The former veep’s entry into the race opens a more confrontational phase of the campaign,” David Siders and Christopher Cadelago round up his assets and liabilities as a presidential candidate. Among his more important assets: “Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said that “if the polls mean anything, there is a great reservoir of goodwill for him…I think Biden, by who he is and what he represents and what he has fought for his entire life, makes a very important contrast to Donald Trump,” Weingarten said.” But Elizabeth Warren, quoted in the article sees Biden as vulnerable on key issues of concern to working-class families, noting “Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies…How did Joe Biden raise so much money in one day? Well, it helps that he hosted a swanky private fundraiser for wealthy donors at the home of the guy who runs Comcast’s lobbying shop.”

So, “Who Takes A Hit Now That Biden’s In The Race?” the FiveThirtyEight stable of commentators shares some thoughts: “natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Maybe almost everyone is negatively impacted in some way, or maybe almost everyone except Elizabeth Warren…For the more moderate white Democrats, like Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, Biden is sort of running adjacent to their lane, if not actually in their lane…He also has a lot of the black vote, so Biden’s candidacy complicates the ability of Kamala Harris and Cory Booker to win South Carolina…If you’re Bernie, now you can’t really call yourself the front-runner. perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): For all the candidates who are making electability an implicit (O’Rourke, Jay Inslee) or explicit (Klobuchar, Tim Ryan) part of their campaigns, Biden is a very big threat…”

President Obama provided a moving tribute to one of his mentors, former Republican Senator Richard Lugar, who died on Sunday: “In Dick, I saw someone who wasn’t a Republican or Democrat first, but a problem-solver,” Obama said in a statement, “an example of the impact a public servant can make by eschewing partisan divisiveness to instead focus on common ground…For thirty-six years, Richard Lugar proved that pragmatism and decency work—not only in Washington but all over the world.” Though he could often be a tough conservative, Lugar displayed a striking spirit of civility that no other Repubican could match. His 2012 loss of his senate seat may have presaged the transformation of the GOP into the party of the ‘White Walkers’ we see today. We can’t really liken Trump to ‘The Night King,’ who doesn’t run his mouth all day and half the night. But Mitch McConnell’s offer to serve as “the grim reaper” for needed legislative reforms is close enough.

Listening to some of the “opening arguments” for various 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, it struck me that many campaigns use the same words but mean different things. One of the most important of these is “electability,” so I thought it would be useful to sort out the varying assumptions at play, and wrote it up at New York:

As a perpetual advocate for avoiding what Barack Obama calls “a circular firing squad” among Democrats, I was pleased to see a new effort emerge to encourage 2020 candidates to remember the wolf at the door (or in the White House), so I wrote about it at New York:

I’m interested to see that there is at least one organized effort underway to get presidential candidates to pledge to observe certain rules in an effort to bolster the party’s general-election standing, as Ruby Cramer reports:

“A national progressive group, Indivisible, is asking the 20 candidates in the Democratic presidential race to sign a pledge promising a positive, ‘constructive’ primary that ends with all participants coming together to support the eventual nominee — ‘whoever it is — period….’

“The Indivisible document asks candidates to agree to three terms: ‘make the primary constructive’ and ‘respect the other candidates’; ‘rally behind the winner’; and ‘do the work to beat’ President Donald Trump. ‘Immediately after there’s a nominee, I’ll endorse,’ the pledge reads.”

It sounds relatively uncontroversial, but it’s hard to get political candidates, who are, by and large, desperate to win, and their staff, whose lives will take a turn for the worse if they lose, to look kindly on a pledge to hold anything back. And there’s always the suspicion that talk of civility represents a sneaky effort to encourage unilateral disarmament by opponents who won’t return the favor….

The problematic underlying reality is that more than a few Democrats believe that only their faction is capable of beating Trump; different Democrats have very different theories as to “electability.” And then there are those for whom winning the “struggle for the soul of the party” trumps any general-election win.

If the “unity pledge” is to catch on, the majority of Democrats, who do value civility and seek common ground, must impose their will on the party’s candidates and their hard-core supporters. That means supporting the unity pledge, of course, but also perhaps going further: How about a pledge not to vote in the caucuses or primaries for candidates refusing to take the pledge? That might get their attention.

A day later, I was happy to report Indivisible’s progress in getting candidates on board:

[T]he pledge campaign is off to a good start, with five candidates having already signed it (in alphabetical order): Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Jay Inslee and Bernie Sanders.

It’s significant that Sanders was the first to sign the pledge….

It’s no secret that the pledge was in part motivated by bad memories of discord during and after the 2016 primary fight between Sanders and Hillary Clinton–less between the candidates than between their fiercest supporters….

Perhaps Sanders’ leadership here will help inspire the rest of the field to sign onto the pledge quickly, the first and essential step towards making it stick.

Sign up right here to get exclusive early access to Suppressed: The True Story of Georgia’s 2018 Election this summer. Here is the trailer:

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

I liked this piece by Paul Krugman. It’s a commonplace among what you might call the hard environmental community that high carbon taxes are the way to go and that everything else is second best and beside the point. Eat your damn spinach!

Krugman says that one thing he likes about the Green New Deal is that it seems to understand that this sort of approach is doomed politically and that if a clean energy transition program is ever going to be passed, it’s going to have to be a Christmas tree bill with lots of goodies for lots of people. Suffer now to avoid the apocalypse later is just not going to work. The Green New Deal, as currently discussed, may not be the right Christmas tree but we still are going to need a Christmas tree.