The following article is cross-posted from an email from Democracy Corps:

On behalf of the Voter Participation Center and Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund, Democracy Corps conducted live dial-meter testing of the 2019 State of the Union among the Rising American Electorate (African Americans, Latinos, white unmarried women and white millennials), white working-class women, and white college women. Here are some of the key findings:

• Voters, including those in our dial-meter groups, watched the address with an extraordinary high level of political engagement.
• The Democratic presidential vote was not eroded and Trump’s job performance gains were unimpressive.
• The president made immigration and border security the central pitch of his address, but if the goal was to create a new context for a possible shutdown or emergency declaration, then he failed.

• The biggest gains of the night were on making healthcare more affordable, but Trump made these gains championing positions his administration does not support.
• The president saw a rise by recognizing women in the workplace and in Congress, but we suspect this were driven more by the celebrations of the Democratic women and the president playing along.
• Criminal justice reform delivered some of the highest moments in our dials, particularly among African Americans and white millennials, but he did not improve his standing with these groups.

In the end, the Rising American Electorate said that they want Democrats in Congress to be a check on Trump rather than to work with him by a two-to-one margin, marking even greater resistance to Trump and his agenda than last year (60 check to 40 work in 2018).

READ THE KEY FINDINGS REPORT & VIEW THE SLIDES

STREAM THE DIALS ON YOUTUBE & FACEBOOK LIVE

Senator Mark Warren (D-VA) has a novel proposal to end shutdowns, not just once, but forever. As Sam Stein reports at The Daily Beast: “And then there’s the “Stop Stupidity (Shutdowns Transferring Unnecessary Pain and Inflicting Damage In The Coming Years) Act.” The mangled-acronym inspired bill was introduced this week by Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA). It takes the keep-things-level-approach [via a continuing resolution] and offers a twist. In lieu of a failure by lawmakers to reach a spending deal, the current funding levels of the government would automatically continue — except for those monies meant to pay members of the legislative branch and the office of the president.” Of course, the CR should be indexed for inflation. But if we get another temporary fix, or no agreement, maybe it’s time for a nation-wide petition/citizen lobbying campaign for an automatic CR trigger that kicks in absent an agreement by a specific date.

The Green New Deal being proposed by Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) and Senator Ed Markey (MA) is being greeted with both applause and skepticism. Applause because it’s about time somebody cranked up public debate in support of an environmentally-responsible infrastructure initiative, which is really the heart of the GND. Credit Ocasio-Cortez with making good use of her popularity in advancing discussion of these two critical priorities, which deserve more serious media coverage. Skepticism because it is extremely broad and isn’t going anywhere until Dems win a Senate majority and the White House. But despite the GOP’s cheap shots directed at the GND, successful reform movements begin early and a great political party needs to stand for a big vision. At this point, it’s a resolution, not a bill. As a practical matter, the GND would be honed and broken down into more detailed specific measures to be enacted in digestible bites over a realistic period of time.

However, Jonathan Chait offers some more substantial criticism of the proposal in his post, “Democrats Need an Ambitious Climate Plan. The Green New Deal Isn’t It” at New York Magazine. An Excerpt: “The operating principle behind the Green New Deal is a no-enemies-to-the-left spirit of fostering unity among every faction of the progressive movement. Thus, at the same time, the plan avoids taking stances that are absolutely vital to reduce carbon emissions, it embraces policies that have nothing to do with climate change whatsoever. The Green New Deal includes the following non-climate provisions: –A job with family-sustaining wages, family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security…–High-quality education, including higher education and trade schools…–High-quality health care…–Safe, affordable, adequate housing…–An economic environment free of monopolies…–Economic security to all who are unable or unwilling to work.”

“Sixty-three percent of Americans believe “upper income people” pay too little in taxes, according to a new survey from Morning Consult. The poll also found that 61 percent of Americans either “strongly” or “somewhat” favor 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s tax plan, which would levy a new tax on households with a net worth of $50 million or more. The pollster found less enthusiasm for the idea that Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York floated recently to tax income that exceeds $10 million a year at a rate of 70 percent — but more on that in a moment.” —  from Geoffrey Skelley’s “Most Americans Support Warren’s ‘Ultramillionare Tax’: How they feel about hefty taxes on the rich depends on what you call them” at FiveThirtyEight.

Skelley notes further, “However, even though the public has long thought the rich don’t pay enough in taxes, Americans are comparably cooler toward the concept when it’s framed as income redistribution, which Warren and Ocasio-Cortez have both embraced as a way of combating wealth inequality. For example, in 2016, Gallup found that 61 percent of the public felt that wealthy people didn’t pay enough, but only 52 percent said they believed the government should redistribute wealth through “heavy taxes on the rich.” The difference gets at a common disconnect in how people think of taxation and wealth redistribution — both processes that collect a portion of residents’ income and use it to benefit others — and how different terms can produce seemingly inconsistent answers from poll respondents.”

Regarding the mess in Virginia, Amanda Sakuma writes at vox.com: “Virginia residents are at an impasse over whether they feel Gov. Ralph Northam should step down after a racist photo from his past caught up with him last week, though a majority of black voters say they have still his back, according to new polls released this week…The overall divide is an even split: 47 percent of Virginians want to see him stay; 47 percent want to see him go, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll released Saturday. But what’s significant about the poll results is the racial breakdown of Northam’s support: Even after the governor admitted to using shoe polish to wear blackface in the 1980s, black Virginians still support him more than whites…Roughly 58 percent of African Americans polled said Northam should remain in office, compared to 46 percent of whites who said the same.” There is no polling data yet on how Virginians feel about whether or not Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax should resign as a result of recent allegations of sexual assault against him.

If the Trump Administration wants to keep the Mueller report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election private, they will have to buck an overwhelming majority of Americans who want it made public. As Geoffrey Skelley reports in “other Polling Nuggets” at FiveThirtyEight “According to a CNN/SSRS survey, 87 percent of Americans want a report that includes the findings from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election to be made public. Nine percent said the report does not need to be made public. And this desire bridges the partisan divide: 92 percent of Democrats, 88 percent of independents and 80 percent of Republicans said investigators should issue a public report.”

A hopeful closing note from Bob Moser’s “A New South Rising: This Time for Real: The midterms made clear that progressive candidates can retake the region with young and minority voters” at The American Prospect: “The urban centers of the Sun Belt won’t stop growing, and becoming more diverse and more progressive, any time in the foreseeable future. The rural South is as stagnant as the rest of rural America—and increasingly, in a state like Texas, that’s all the Republicans will have. One of the most startling assessments of the new reality that I’ve seen recently came from Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “If Republicans can’t keep Democratic numbers below 60 percent in urban Texas, winning elections is going to be much more difficult going forward.” Let that sink in: Republicans in Texas, the country’s largest Republican redoubt, reduced to cooking up ways to hold the Democratic vote in Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio below 60 percent…That, my friends, is not a political shake-up. It’s an earthquake. And the reverberations will be felt for generations to come.”

One of the first developments of the 2020 congressional election cycle was a retirement from a veteran House member from Georgia. It was more significant than the end of a particular man’s career, as I discussed at New York:

One sign of Georgia’s changing political environment occurred on Tuesday night, when 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams was tapped to provide the national party’s response to Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address. Another occurred today when five-term Republican congressman Rob Woodall from the north Atlanta suburban 7th district announced he would retire in 2020, after very nearly losing last year.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Woodall’s Gwinnett County base was synonymous with the growth of the Republican Party. I distinctly recall a moment when environmentalists complained about the destruction of trees in the county, and the top local developer responded: “Gwinnett is not for trees.” It was for massive subdivision and strip mall development, and rapid middle-class (and upper-class) population growth.

Woodall was certainly a fixture in Gwinnett GOP politics, serving on the staff of hard-core conservative congressman John Linder for 16 years before succeeding the boss and winning at least 60 percent of the vote in his first four races. He clearly underestimated his 2018 Democratic opponent Carolyn Bordeaux. But he had a bigger problem, as the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman observes:

“The 7th CD is the epitome of a high-education melting pot. In 2010, when Republicans first drew the seat, it was 50 percent white and in 2012, Mitt Romney carried it by 22 points, 60 percent to 38 percent. But in 2016, President Trump carried the district by just six points, 51 percent to 45 percent. Now, Census estimates peg it at just 47 percent white, 19 percent Hispanic, 19 percent African-American and 13 percent Asian.”

Among other things, this slice of Gwinnett County is home to Koreatown (or K-Town), an enclave of economically rising Korean-Americans who are very active politically. Woodall and other local Republicans just couldn’t keep up; he won by 419 votes, and only after a recount.

With Woodall retiring and Bordeaux preparing to run again, Wasserman says of GA-07 that it “may be [Democrats’] best pickup opportunity in the country.” And the whole state of Georgia may represent a serious pickup opportunity in the Senate–and for the presidency, too.

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

Do the Democrats Have to Choose a Geographic Focus in 2020?

This is the premise of a lengthy report by Bill Galston and Clara Hendrickson recently published on the Brookings site. I recommend the report; it’s well-written and has a great deal of useful data in it, summarized in a series of helpful tables. The tables generally compare a set of states they call the “northern tier” (IA, MI, OH, PA and WI) to another set they call the “southern tier” (AZ, FL, GA and TX). They are compared on 2018 results, including House, Senate and governor, as well as on time trend for these various offices. There is also a nice table on Obama-Trump counties in the northern tier and how many flipped D in the various races in 2018.

Galston’s and Hendrickson’s general argument is that these data–especially the 2018 data–suggest Democrats will likely have an easier time in 2020 expanding their electoral college coalition in the northern tier than the southern tier. That seems reasonable to me and their data do support that claim. I am less sure about the further implication they draw that Democrats need to decide on their geographic focus between the tiers and choose their candidate accordingly. This presupposes that the Democrats are going to go after one of these state clusters and not the other.

I don’t believe this would be wise. Democrats need to put as many plausible states in play as possible to give them a variety of different paths to 270+. Putting all their eggs in one basket, such as the northern tier states, a strategy that Galston and Hendrickson appear to favor, would be a mistake on the Democrats’ part.

Therefore the candidate that Democrats choose should be able to appeal to voters in both sets of states because that is how a Democratic candidate can maximize their chances of winning. And, it cannot be stressed enough, this is not just a matter of choosing the right candidate but of how that candidate chooses to run.

Words of wisdom from David Axelrod in a recent interview on the New Yorker site:

“I think that what is most important [for Democrats] is to not send the signals that were sent in 2016, which is, “We’ve got young people, we’ve got minorities, we’ve got women, so, you white working-class guys, we don’t really need you.” They believed it. They voted for Trump. And that is something that you can affect at the margins by addressing your message broadly, and I think Democrats should do that.

I think the country as a whole is restless on the issue of health care, whether it’s Medicare-for-all or some other prescription, as it were. I think people are eager for another round of health-care reform. I do think people think that there’s something wrong with our system right now, with this tremendous aggregation of wealth at the top while the majority of people are pedalling faster and faster to keep up. So I don’t think those issues are particularly radical. How you address them is another question.”

And that is what we should really be worrying about.

Amidst all the fatuous talk of bipartisanship in anticipation of the State of the Union Address, I had an idea that I explained at New York:

Anyone who expects bipartisanship somehow to break out between now and the 2020 election has clearly been asleep for the past two years.

That is not to say, however, that we should give up on promoting ideas that might have appeal in both parties, particularly if they don’t depend on the approbation of the president. One such idea could be of urgent relevance before you know it: getting Republican as well as Democratic leaders to denounce right now any prospective challenge to the legitimacy of the 2020 election based on vague and unsubstantiated claims and theories of “voter fraud.”

As Phillip Bump noted today, not only Trump but other Republicans are getting into the comfortable habit of making up or massively embellishing illegal-voting claims:

“It took just over a day for an announcement from the office of the Texas secretary of state hinting that thousands of noncitizens might have voted to make it into President Trump’s Twitter feed.

“’58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote,’ Trump wrote, apparently lifting the data from an episode of Fox & Friends. ‘These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. Must be stopped. Strong voter ID!’

“A bit later, he retweeted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who hyped the same numbers with an all-caps intro: ‘VOTER FRAUD ALERT.'”

As Bump goes on to explain, the “reports” from Texas, like those from other jurisdictions in recent years, melt away into near-nothingness once they are are scrutinized. And that’s again the backdrop of years of mostly Republican-inspired investigations of alleged in-person voter fraud that never, ever, ever turn up more than a handful of violations. As recently as the month before last, first House Speaker Paul Ryan and then his successor as House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy bought into a conspiracy theory blaming GOP losses in California on voting “irregularities” such as the sinister-sounding procedure called “ballot harvesting,” which really just means letting third-parties deliver signed-and-sealed-under-oath mail ballots.

As you may recall, Trump repeatedly claimed, with zero evidence, that he was robbed of a 2016 popular vote plurality by “millions” of illegal votes cast by non-citizens. This was the basis for his so-called Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, led by voter-fraud fabulist and anti-immigration zealot Kris Kobach, which was dissolved after a few months mostly consumed with fights with Republican and Democratic election officials who refused to turn over sensitive personal data to this bunch of yahoos. That largely put an end to the 2016 “controversy,” but no one at the time much thought through what would have happened had Trump lost the electoral college, making the illegal voting claims far from academic.

It’s likely that responsible Republican office-holders, many of whom didn’t take Donald Trump seriously until they had to, wouldn’t have let him create a disputed election and a constitutional crisis absent clear and compelling evidence that he wasn’t just pulling these allegations out of his prejudices and the files of his sketchy white-nationalist backers. We’ll never really know. But now, after two years of falling into line with Trump and adopting his passions and fevers as their own, is it clear at all that Republican opinion-leaders, from Fox & Friends to the Capitol, would tell Trump to leave office quietly if he lost decisively in 2020 and still claimed he was robbed by swarthy rape-loving “criminal illegals” pouring across the southern border? With the Supreme Court, the U.S. Tax Code and a long-desired rollback of regulatory restrictions on corporate misbehavior in the balance? I don’t know.

This is a possibility that needs to be taken right off the table right now. That means Democrats should waste less time trying to convince Republicans to help them get Trump on a one-way ticket to Palookaville before the 2020 election and more time getting them to agree he should get on the train to retirement immediately afterward if he loses. Yes, maybe he’ll go quietly on his own, but anyone who doubts he’s capable of calling the military in to defend his continued occupation of the White House needs to read his tweets for a few days and reconsider.

Kelsey Snell notes that “House Democrats Divided On Strategy To Force Release Of Trump’s Tax Returns” at npr.org: “Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee face a dilemma that is already familiar in the first weeks of their majority. Members generally agree that the public has a right to see the tax entanglements of a president. Things get trickier when it comes to who should be demanding those returns and how quickly they should force what is likely to be a confrontation with the administration over the issue…There is a mechanism, known as the “committee access” provision, that allows the tax writing committee to request tax records of any taxpayer from the secretary of the Treasury. It is unclear how the agency will respond to that request and whether it will stall or resist efforts to turn over Trump’s personal returns to the panel.” As House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. said. “That said, we’re not going to overreach, we’re not going to overinvestigate, we’re not going to overpoliticize our constitutional responsibilities.” Meanwhile Snell quote Rep Ron Kind D-WI: First of all, there’s no rush…I gotta believe that the Mueller team already has their hands on the president’s tax returns. If they’re looking for a possible connection between Russia and his family, there is a danger in trying to go too far too fast.”

“A new poll is finding broad support for an annual wealth tax on people with assets of at least $50 million, underlining support for taxing the rich,” reports Matthew Sheffield at The Hill. “The Hill-HarrisX survey released Wednesday found that 74 percent of registered voters back an annual 2 percent tax on people with assets over $50 million, and a 3 percent tax on people with assets in excess of $1 billion…The poll showed support for the idea among people of all ages and races and from both political parties…Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed the wealth tax last month. She is one of several high-profile Democrats calling for higher taxes on the wealthy…Just 26 percent of respondents said they were opposed to the wealth tax…Strong majorities of both sexes said they favored the tax, as did a majority of Republicans. Sixty-five percent of GOP voters supported it while only 35 percent opposed it. Independents backed the tax 69 to 31 percent, as did 86 percent of Democratic voters.”

Sheffield cites similar findings from other polls: “A Jan. 22-23 Business Insider-SurveyMonkey poll found that 54 percent of adults favored Warren’s proposal while only 19 percent disagreed with it. Another 15 percent said they were unsure…The policy idea attracted majority support in a Feb. 1-2 Morning Consult-Politico survey of registered voters. Sixty-one percent of respondents backed a wealth tax while only 20 percent were opposed. Nineteen percent were unsure.

Oliver Roeder takes a stab at explaining “Why It’s Unlikely We’ll Get A Deal On The Wall Anytime Soon: That’s what the game theorists think, anyway” at FiveThirtyEight, and notes “Since economist John Nash revolutionized economics, bargaining has been the stuff of game theorists. What makes a deal more likely to happen? And what makes it more likely to fall apart? The fruits of that study hold a couple of lessons for reading the news, and the tea leaves, coming out of the White House and the Capitol over the next few days…Why are we playing this particular game? Why, specifically, is a partial shutdown the outcome that arises in the absence of an agreement? This seems, as an economist would say, inefficient — a little bit of miscoordination can lead to a big consequence. Perhaps, as is the case elsewhere, the previous budget should remain in force if no deal is reached. Or perhaps the parties should be forced into mediation, as is sometimes the case in the private sector. To an economist, these ideas to remake the system sound like attractive efficiency boosters.”

If you want to get a little wonky about analysing border walls, check out “What the research says about border walls” by Denise-Marie Ordway at Journalists Resource, which reviews seven scholarly articles on the topic. Among the findings reported by Ordway: “Scholars from Dartmouth College and Stanford University examine how expanding the U.S.-Mexico border fence has affected migration and the U.S. economy…The key takeaway: The $2.3 billion project curbed migration and benefited low-skill U.S. workers but hurt high-skill U.S. workers. “In total, we estimate the Secure Fence Act reduced the aggregate Mexican population living in the United States by 0.64 percent, equivalent to a reduction of 82,647 people,” the authors write…According to the analysis, another fence expansion “would have larger impacts on migration from Mexico to the United States, they would also result in greater reallocation of economic activity to Mexico; for example, a wall expansion that builds along half the remaining uncovered border would result in 144,256 fewer Mexican workers residing in the United States, causing the United States real GDP to decline by $4.3 billion, or approximately $29,800 in lost economic output for each migrant prevented.”

From “Targeted internet ads may improve millennial voter turnout,” also by Denise-Marie Ordway at Journalist’s Resource: “If you want to get more millennials to vote in municipal races, targeted internet ads may help, according to a new study published in Political Communication…The study, done in partnership with The Dallas Morning News, finds that Dallas voters between the ages of 23 and 35 were more likely to participate in certain local races if they had been targeted by internet ads promoting election news coverage and election reminders…The effect was small — turnout was less than 1 percentage point higher among these millennials compared with those in the control group, which did not receive any ads. But the ads were shown to be more effective than direct mail and automated phone calls, the study’s lead author, Katherine Haenschen, told Journalist’s Resource.”

Further, notes Ordway, “Reaching millennials is of particular interest to community leaders, political party officials and campaign organizers because people born between 1981 and 1996 are projected to become America’s largest voting bloc. Millennials made up 27 percent of the voting-age population in the United States in November 2016, just under Baby Boomers, who comprised 31 percent, a 2018 report from the Pew Research Center shows. Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964…While the number of millennials continues to grow – largely through immigration and naturalization, according to Pew – millennials are much less likely to vote than earlier generations. For example, 51 percent of eligible millennials nationwide voted in the 2016 presidential election, compared with 69 percent of Boomers…This study claims to present the first evidence that online ads can boost voter participation. Haenschen, a communication professor at Virginia Tech, said they can be especially useful in reaching millennials and other hard-to-reach voters, including those who live in remote locations or do not have landline telephones.”

Tara Golshan has a succinct description of “The dumpster fire that is Virginia politics, explained in 500 words” at vox.com. An excerpt: “If all three Democrats resign — which looks unlikely at this point, but isn’t out of the realm of possibility — the governorship would be passed to Republican Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Kirk Cox, whose district, a court determined, was drawn in a way that discriminated against African-American voters…To top it all off, Cox got his speakership only after the state settled a tied election — that determined which party would control the chamber — by drawing a name out of a bowl.”

At Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik explain that “Looming over all of this is the upcoming state legislative elections in Virginia this November. Republicans are hanging on to very slim majorities in the state House of Delegates (51-49) and state Senate (21-19). Democrats made a net 15-seat gain in the House of Delegates in November 2017 as Northam, Fairfax, and Herring won statewide. Democrats seemed like favorites to win both chambers — we’ll analyze these races later in the year — particularly because a new state House of Delegates map imposed by judicial order will improve Democratic odds in that chamber. Some Virginia Democratic operatives, even before the current mess, were concerned that the white hot intensity that fueled Democrats in 2017 and 2018 might cool in 2019, particularly without any statewide elections on the ballot. Lower turnout might help Republicans, whose voter base in Virginia (and elsewhere) can be more reliable in off-year elections. Still, the growing nationalization of American politics could help the Democrats by pushing them to maximize turnout in Virginia by focusing again on the unpopular President Trump. But one could imagine the opposite happening, particularly if Northam hangs around and depresses Democrats, or the Fairfax allegations continue to churn. Perhaps a statewide election for lieutenant governor, if it happens, will increase turnout in Democrats’ favor. Or if Northam stays, could we see Democratic state legislative candidates running on impeaching their own party’s governor? It’s not impossible, and it would be just the latest crazy development in a state rocked by them over the last week.”

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

You can’t swing a dead cat these days without running into another of the Medicare for All plans offered by various Democratic presidential candidates and liberal think tanks. What should we think about all this?

First, I think we should differentiate between Medicare for All as a campaign slogan and these various plans. As a slogan I think it’s got a great deal of power. But it is important that the plan to which such a slogan is linked be perceived by voters as a clear advance and not as a threat to their current situation.

Fundamentally, I think this comes down to whether the plan is Medicare for All Who Want It or Medicare for All, Whether You Want It or Not. This, in turn, comes down to whether the plan is a vast expansion of Medicare-like availability or simply replaces the existing system, including private health insurance, with a government-run system based on Medicare.

There is a strong case that the political sweet spot–what the public is really ready for–lies in the former not the latter. Ron Brownstein in his latest Atlantic article explains:

“After the ACA’s passage, Obama—who had famously promised that those who like their insurance plan could keep it—faced a huge backlash after only a few hundred thousand people in the individual insurance market were forced to give up coverage that did not meet the law’s standards. Ending private insurance would affect the 181 million Americans who today receive health insurance through their employers, according to census figures.

The share of Americans who receive coverage through work is significant: about two-thirds of adults with a high-school diploma, three-fourths of those with a two-year college degree, 87 percent of those with a four-year degree, and 90 percent of those with graduate education. Not surprisingly, that means extremely large percentages of adults receive health coverage through their employers in many of the affluent suburban districts that powered the Democratic takeover of the House last November.

More than four-fifths of the population receives employer-provided coverage in a wide range of districts that Democrats flipped from the GOP in 2018, including suburban seats in Northern Virginia and New Jersey, and seats in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Detroit, according to census results. And roughly three-fourths receive health insurance through their employers in districts that Democrats won elsewhere: in northeast Iowa; Irvine, California; Salt Lake City; Virginia Beach, Virginia; and the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia; Atlanta; Des Moines; Kansas City, Kansas; and San Diego. By contrast, in the much more working-class New York City district won by the liberal champion Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, just 56 percent of the residents have employer-provided insurance…..

In the latest monthly health-care tracking poll by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, four-fifths of Democrats (and 56 percent of all adults) said they supported “a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare-for-All, in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan.”

But the same survey found much more hesitation, even among Democrats, when respondents were told that such a plan could mean higher taxes, longer waits for treatment, and the elimination of private insurance companies. Support among the general public in the Kaiser poll plummeted to just 37 percent when respondents were told it could eliminate private insurance companies.”

This implies we should not let the best be the enemy of the good. It is quite possible to have a Medicare for All Who Want It-type plan that really does provide universal coverage, would contain costs and all the rest, but does not immediately wipe out private insurance. These probably make more sense to push at this stage of the game.

Two good ones to look at are Reps. Rosa De Lauro’s and Jan Schakowsky’s Medicare for America plan (explained by Jacob Hacker, who helped devise the plan, in a good interview on Vox and the Center for American Progress’ (if I may be allowed a moment of institutional chauvinism) Medicare Extra for All plan.

In “These governors are showing what happens when you campaign on climate action and win:  There’s a flurry of green political news at the state level” at Vox, David Roberts writes that “Since climate change was first introduced to US politics, most attention and debate have focused on a federal solution, but most actual policy progress has taken place at the state level. States are where everything from cap-and-trade systems to renewable energy mandates have actually become law…And so it remains today. Most of the buzz in current climate politics, especially with the presidential race beginning to take shape, is around a Green New Deal, a grand, comprehensive set of federal investments and regulations…But a GND is a long way off, even if everything goes well. Meanwhile, once again, US states are stepping up. The 2018 midterms saw several green-minded governors either elected for the first time or reelected, and they are wasting no time pushing forward.” Roberts provides details of reforms om Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, FLorida and Idaho and adds that “The call for 100 percent clean energy is practically Democratic orthodoxy at this point. And Trump’s wan attempts to save coal look sillier and sillier.”

Ronald Brownstein previews “The Coming Democratic Drama Over Medicare for All: The policy’s supporters could run up against the same problems that Republicans faced in trying to repeal Obamacare” at The Atlantic, and observes, “Ending private insurance would affect the 181 million Americans who today receive health insurance through their employers, according to census figures...The share of Americans who receive coverage through work is significant: about two-thirds of adults with a high-school diploma, three-fourths of those with a two-year college degree, 87 percent of those with a four-year degree, and 90 percent of those with graduate education. Not surprisingly, that means extremely large percentages of adults receive health coverage through their employers in many of the affluent suburban districts that powered the Democratic takeover of the House last November.”

Brownstein adds that “More than four-fifths of the population receives employer-provided coverage in a wide range of districts that Democrats flipped from the GOP in 2018, including suburban seats in Northern Virginia and New Jersey, and seats in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Detroit, according to census results. And roughly three-fourths receive health insurance through their employers in districts that Democrats won elsewhere: in northeast Iowa; Irvine, California; Salt Lake City; Virginia Beach, Virginia; and the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia; Atlanta; Des Moines; Kansas City, Kansas; and San Diego. By contrast, in the much more working-class New York City district won by the liberal champion Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, just 56 percent of the residents have employer-provided insurance.”…In [Democratic pollster Geoff] Garin’s survey for Protect Our Care, Democrats split exactly in half on whether they want the party to pursue reforms that build on the existing employer-based system or replace it entirely with a single-payer structure.

Geoffrey Skelley reports that “Almost Half Of Voters Are Dead Set Against Voting For Trump” at FiveThirtyEight: “With the 2020 election cycle revving into full gear, pollsters are asking voters whether they plan to vote for President Trump. In a Washington Post/ABC News survey, respondents were asked if they would definitely vote for the president, consider voting for him or definitely not vote for him — and 56 percent said they would definitely not vote for him. Morning Consult poseda slightly different form of this question, asking voters if they’d definitely or probably vote for Trump, or if they’d definitely or probably vote for someone else. Eight percent said they would probably vote for someone else, but 47 percent said they would definitely vote for someone else. In total, that’s 55 percent of respondents who seemed unlikely to vote for Trump…The share of voters who said they would “definitely” oppose Trump is much higher than it ever was for Obama. In fact, the average share of voters who said they would “definitely” oppose Trump is roughly 10 points higher than it was for Obama more than 600 days out from the election, which is where we are now.”

In “Other Polling Nuggets,” Skelley writes, “If Trump and congressional Democrats fail to come to a border security agreement in the next couple of weeks, 48 percent of Americans said in a Monmouth University poll that the parties should agree to fund the government through the end of the year without a deal. Twenty percent said they should shut down the government until a deal is reached, and 26 percent said they should extend the temporary funding and keep negotiating. Asked about the idea of Trump’s declaring a national emergency to build the wall, 64 percent of respondents said they disapproved, while 34 percent said they approved.”

“Every extremist murder in the U.S. in 2018 was linked to right-wing extremism, according to an alarming new report from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism,” notes Caroline Orr at Shareblue Media. “The annual report found that at least 50 people were killed by extremists in 2018, marking a 35 percent increase from 2017. This makes 2018 the fourth-deadliest year on record for domestic extremist-related killings since 1970…All 50 murders were committed by people with ties to at least one right-wing extremist movement, making right-wing extremists responsible for more killings in 2018 than any year since 1995, when Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City…According to a November 2018 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the number of terrorist attacks in the U.S. committed by far-right perpetrators more than quadrupled between 2016 and 2017.”

As we go to press, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam says he plans to stay on as Virginia’s governor, in the wake of revelations of his racist behavior as a medical student. But his real-world choices are  whether or not he will resign soon, or prolong the agony for his constituents, his state and his fellow Democrats, and resign later. Northam may be in denial that he can somehow survive and finish his term without tearing up Virginia’s body politic, but that delusion will soon evaporate in the growing chorus of nearly all Virginia’s leaders clamoring for his resignation. Fortunately for Virginia, the state has an impressive young Lieutenant Governor waiting in the wings in Justin Fairfax. Stephanie Mencimer notes in her Mother Jones profile of Fairfax, that “Virginia governors serve only a single term of four years. But Fairfax could end up serving for seven. As an appointed governor, he would fill the three years remaining in Northam’s term and then would still be eligible run again in 2021 as an incumbent.” We understand why that prospect aggravates Republicans, who are also in denial about Virginia’s transformation into a Blue state. But Northam can do his state and his legacy a service by resigning sooner than later, and help empower Fairfax to heal the state they both love. Any other alternative can only do the opposite.

Meanwhile, Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, who has called for his friend Northam to resign, is reportedly mulling over a possible run for the Democratic nomination for President. McAuliffe has said he will make his decision by the end of March, but it could come sooner. Either way, McAuliffe, who has an extraordinary track record of accomplishments as Governor, also deserves a shout-out for his outstanding leadership in guiding Virginia from red to purple to blue statehood. It would be a shame if Northam endangers that legacy by putting careerist priorities before interracial unity and goodwill in Virginia, which can no longer thrive under his leadership. In an NPR interview with Michel Martin, McAuliffe credited Northam with doing a “very good job getting Medicaid expansion done last year,” but also said, “we’ve got to move forward. Our state is in a very good position…But he’s just going to have an impossible task now when everybody in the state has called for him to resign. We’re in the middle of legislative session…This is the time that the governor has to be leaning in. You have the Black Caucus who is adamant that he step down…the point is he knows what’s in the best interests of Virginia.”

Sam Wang discusses how “A Redistricting “Reform” Bill in Virginia Would Entrench Politicians Further” at The Princeton Election Consortium: “In 2011, Virginia was gerrymandered, both racially to hurt black voters, and on a partisan basis to benefit Republicans. We estimate that black voters (and therefore Democrats) lost three seats by being packed into a dozen districts in southeastern Virginia. And in 2017, Democrats just barely failed to take control of the House of Delegates despite winning 54% of the statewide vote. But that artificial dominance is about to fall. In a lawsuit concerning the House of Delegates map, Bethune-Hill v. Va. State Board of Elections, a federal court selected one of several maps offered by a Special Master (which we had analyzed). If the U.S. Supreme Court allows this new map, Democrats would be likely to take the chamber in 2019. If Democrats also take the Senate, they would control the legislative process – and redistricting…In the face of such a potential flip, Republican leadership in the Virginia House has proposed a new redistricting process, HJ615. It is sold as nonpartisan reform. But Ben Williams and I find that it is more likely to entrench whatever party is already in control.”

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

As the Pew piece cited below notes, Latinos’ weight in the eligible electorate, which will be the largest among minorities in 2020, could well be significantly less than that among actual voters due to their chronically low turnout.

But is that starting to change? Daily Kos Elections had an article today by Stephen Wolf covering a new report on 2018 voters in California districts that flipped Democratic. The somewhat remarkable story, illustrated by a table in the article, is that the Latino share of voters in 2018 in these districts about matched the share of voters in 2016. This is highly unusual given the usual dropoff you see among these voters if off-year elections–and that is clear by the comparison to 2014, also included in the article’s table. A good sign. Let’s hope they can keep the party going in 2020.

Pew has a nice short piece out about the topic that’s worth a look. Some nice charts, two of which are reproduced below, one on racial composition and the other on generational composition The big takeaways there are Hispanics becoming the largest group among eligible voters in 2020 and the sudden emergence of Gen Z as a significant group among eligibles.