One of the most annoying distortions we get from lazy media coverage and political lightweights is the meme that Democrats want a sudden, all-at-once conversion to Medicare for all. No serious Democratic political leader is advocating immediate destruction of the entire private health insurance industry. Medicare for all is a goal to be achieved by measured reforms in a reasonable time frame that won’t cause a sudden disruption of America’s health care system and its millions of employees. To understand what Democrats are actually advocating for health reform, read “We read Democrats’ 8 plans for universal health care. Here’s how they work” by Sarah Kliff and Dylan Scott. For a common sense take on progressive health care reform, check out Dylan Scott’s interview of Jacob Hacker at Vox.

From the KFF Health Tracking Poll – January 2019: The Public On Next Steps For The ACA And Proposals To Expand Coverage by Ashley Kirzinger: “A majority of the public say it is either “extremely important” or “very important” that Congress work on lowering prescription drug costs for as many Americans as possible (82 percent), making sure the ACA’s protections for people with pre-existing health conditions continue (73 percent), and protecting people with health insurance from surprise high out-of-network medical bills (70 percent). Fewer – about four in ten – say repealing and replacing the ACA (43 percent) and implementing a national Medicare-for-all plan (40 percent) are an “extremely important” or “very important” priority. When forced to choose the top Congressional health care priorities, the public chooses continuing the ACA’s pre-existing condition protections (21 percent) and lowering prescription drug cost (20 percent) as the most important priorities for Congress to work on. Smaller shares choose implementing a national Medicare-for-all plan (11 percent), repealing and replacing the ACA (11 percent), or protecting people from surprise medical bills (9 percent) as a top priority. One-fourth said none of these health care issues was their top priority for Congress to work on.”

Ezra Klein explains the pivotal importance of the filibuster question to health care reform at Vox: “While it’s possible to imagine a Medicare-for-more bill making it through budget reconciliation, if Democrats want to do something as complex as reconstructing the American health care system, they’re going to need to be able to write legislation in a simple, straightforward way…That means that Democrats either need to get rid of the filibuster, which they can do with 51 votes, or they need to repeatedly overrule parliamentary challenges to their reconciliation bill, which is pretty much the same thing.

My favorite headline of the day comes from ThinkProgress, where Addy Baird explains “Here’s what single-payer advocates want to hear from 2020 Democratic primary contenders: No co-pays, no deductibles, no need for supplemental policies, no private insurance.” My one modification would be that those who want additional private insurance should be able to purchase it. Baird notes further, “a study from the conservative think tank Mercatus found last July that Medicare for All would save the United State trillions, and 70 percent of all Americans — including 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans — support Medicare for all, according to a Reuters poll from last August. Just 20 percent of Americans said they oppose the idea outright.”

“Schultz has revealed his hand with his attacks on Medicare for All proposals,” John Nichols explains in his article, “Howard Schultz Is Just Like Every Other Billionaire—Afraid of Losing His Wealth and Privilege: He calls Medicare for All “far too extreme,” but he is the real extremist.” at The Nation. “The idea that “we should get rid of …the insurance industry”—and replace it with a humane, efficient and affordable guarantee of health care as a right for all Americans—is, to his exceptionally privileged view, “far too extreme.” And don’t even get him started on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal to make the very rich pay their fair share by imposing a 70 percent marginal tax rate on billionaires…Now, billionaire Howard Schultz is labeling Democrats who would guarantee health care for all, education for all and jobs for all as “far too extreme.” In fact, Schultz is the extremist—one of the “prophets of calamity” who FDR warned will “seek special financial privilege” by denying “the necessity of reform and reconstruction.”

Eric Boehlert has some noteworthy comments on media coverage of Schultz’s launch at Daily Kos: “Schultz is clearly benefiting from our Davos-style political culture, where billionaires are automatically held up as symbols of what is right and just. And if a billionaire raises his hand and says he wants become president without facing any primary-season opponents, the media parts like the Red Sea and prepares a seat for him in front of an eager television host…Schultz is also singing out of the same “both sides” hymnbook that the Washington press loves so much. He constantly stresses the idea that both Trump and Democrats have become dangerously out of step with mainstream America—that Democrats are just as radical as Trump, and that the two parties always represent mirror opposites of each other on the political spectrum…Schultz is simply advancing a fraudulent narrative, and the press is mostly letting him get away with it. Over and over…”

Does Howard Schultz support cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits? At New York Magazine’s Intelligencer, Jonathan Chait cites Schultz’s “desire to cut social insurance programs. “We can get the 4 percent growth,” he said last year, “we can go after entitlements, and we can do the right thing — if we have the right people in place.”…In reality, there is no constituency for cutting these programs in either party. A 2017 Pew survey found 15 percent of Republicans, and 5 percent of Democrats support cuts to Medicare, while 10 percent of Republicans and 3 percent of Democrats support cuts to Social Security.”

Is Schultz the ‘austerity candidate’? In his article, “The phony centrism of Howard Schultz,” Damon Linker writes at The Week: “He’s a Democrat who wants Democrats to be less ambitious, to trim their sails, to stop making policy promises premised on raising taxes on people like him…That doesn’t make him a centrist. It makes him a rich Democrat who opposes his fellow Democrats taking a bigger chunk of his income or wealth…Of course he doesn’t put it that way. Instead, he talks about prudence. About the danger of budget deficits. About the importance of Americans living within their means. The country simply can’t afford universal health insurance or free college tuition — even though, somehow, such comparably wealthy countries as Canada, Denmark, France, and Germany manage to have something approaching one or both.

Is Schultz’s economic elitism basically ‘Republican Lite’? At The Guardian, Luke Savage observes, “He expresses concern that so many have so little money in the bank but doesn’t think low-earning workers deserve a raise, a union, free health insurance, or the opportunity to get an education without drowning in debt courtesy of sky-high tuition…Schultz is pledging to be a tribune for the billionaire class to which he himself belongs, over and against the growing current of popular, social democratic policies continuing to gather momentum within the Democratic party and among the wider US electorate.” Savage cites Schultz’s “vague, self-interested brand of class harmony as an alternative to meaningful reform…Instead, the grip of billionaires on the American political system – be they conscientious or not – must be broken once and for all.”

Jacob Rodriguez reports at 9news.com, Denver’s NBC affiliate, that “A bill in the Colorado Legislature that would effectively do away with the Electoral College as we know it has passed the state Senate and moves to the state House of Representatives,” where Democrats hold a 41-24 majority. Rodriguez explains further:

The bill – SB 42 – would tie Colorado’s Electoral College votes to the outcome of the national popular vote once enough states adopt similar laws. Once 270 electoral votes-worth of states join the movement, the president will be chosen by whoever receives the most votes nationally, according to the nonprofit National Popular Vote…Should Colorado approve this, 13 states representing 181 electoral votes would be in. However, the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” can’t take effect until enough states sign on to equal the 270 electoral votes needed to become president.

Rodriguez notes that “Some of the other states that have approved similar legislation include California, Illinois, New York and Washington state.”

So where might the National Popular Vote movement win over states with the the needed 89 electoral votes? In the map below, from nationalpopularvote.com, “each square represents one electoral vote (out of 538).”

The National Popular Vote movement has received some bipartisan support in different states, but the most reliable supporters across the nation have been Democrats in the state legislatures. In the wake of the 2018 elections, some of the states most likely to enact the reform in the near future include MI, NC, PA and VA, which together would bring in states with 64 additional electoral votes. Since Republicans dominate Texas politics, Florida is clearly the most winnable of the big states, although it has a Republican governor.

Polls indicate that a substantial majority of voters in nearly all states support the reform. In Florida, for example, nationalpopularvote.com notes that,

A survey of 800 Florida voters conducted on January 9-10, 2009 showed 78% overall support for a national popular vote for President. By political affiliation, support for a national popular vote was 88% among Democrats, 68% among Republicans, and 76% among others. By gender, support for a national popular vote was 88% among women and 69% among men. By age, support for a national popular vote was 79% among 18-29 year olds, 78% among 30-45 year olds, 76% among 46-65 year olds, and 80% for those older than 65. By race, support for a national popular vote was 80% among whites (representing 70% of respondents), 69% among African Americans (representing 13% of respondents), 79% among Hispanics (representing 13% of respondents), and 72% among others (representing 4% of respondents). The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 1/2%.

For a guide to citizen action to support the reform in every state, click here.

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

How Far Left Is the Democratic Party Moving?

I think the answer to this question depends on how you interpret the rise of the “young anti-capitalist left” as it’s termed in a recent, lengthy 538 report by Clare Malone. This group includes politicians like Ocasio-Cortez, organizers like Maurice Miitchell of the Working Families Party, organizations like the DSA and Justice Democrats and activist writers like Sean McElwee.

I take these folks seriously and think they perform an important role in raising the profile of some key left issues and generating energy and a sense of the possible around those issues. As Paul Krugman put it in Malone’s article on the specific issue of the Green New Deal: “If the Green New Deal means that we’re going to try to rely on public investment in technologies and renewables and things that will make it easier for people to use less fossil fuel, that’s a pretty good start.”

So all that’s great. But it’s important to keep in mind that the real left movement among the Democrats in party-wide and, for the median Democrat, that does not take them to the same place as this young anti-capitalist left.

Consensus Democratic leftism today rejects ‘business as usual’ and involves a sweeping indictment of the economic and political system for generating inequality and doing little to help ordinary people in the wake of the great financial crisis. Substantively, Democrats today – in particular aspirants for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination – are far more willing to entertain and endorse ‘big ideas’, such as going beyond the ACA, aka Obamacare (which is now vigorously defended) to ‘Medicare for all’, free college education, universal pre-kindergarten provision, vastly expanded infrastructure spending, including a Green New Deal and even a guaranteed jobs program. Taxing the rich is ‘in’ and worrying about the deficit is ‘out’.

Democrats are also highly unified on core social issues such as opposing racism, defending immigrants, promoting LGBT and gender equality and criminal justice reform. In short, the center of gravity of the Democratic party has decisively shifted from trying to assure voters of fiscal and social moderation, to forthrightly promising active government in a wide range of areas.

But this hardly means the Democrats are becoming a radical, anti-capitalist party. Far from it. As leftism goes, the current Democratic iteration is of a fairly modest variety, approaching, at most, mild European social democracy.

Nor is it the case that incumbents and moderates are being thrown out wholesale and replaced with candidates much farther to their left. Across the country, only two Democratic incumbents in the House lost primaries, and none in the Senate did. A Brookings study found that self-described “progressive Democrats” did well in primaries this election season but establishment Democrats actually did somewhat better. The same pattern obtained in the general election in November.Thus, the change in the party is less a leftward surge featuring new politicians with a radical agenda (though this is happening to some extent) and more a steady party-wide movement to the left.

So the Democratic party is moving to the left, but the young anti-capitalist left is only a part of that movement, rather than defining that movement. That’s an important difference to keep in mind. The Democrats have been, and need to remain. a “big tent” party.

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

Results from the last election were remarkable for Democrats among whites under 45 and I don’t think that fact has gotten enough attention. This is a big chunk of the white population and if it is truly slipping away from the Republicans that blows quite a a hole in the GOP’s white voters-oriented strategy.

Using the Catalist data, which I believe is by far the most accurate data currently available, I find that Democrats carried the national House vote among whites under 45. Ditto for the Iowa gubernatorial election, the Minnesota Senate and gubernatorial elections, the Arizona Senate election, the Virginia Senate election, the Montana Senate election, the North Dakota Senate election and the New Hampshire gubernatorial election. Wow. That’s every statewide contest Catalist has released so far, with the exception of the Georgia gubernatorial election, where whites under 45 were nevertheless significantly less Republican than older whites. I think I detect a pattern!

Just a couple of observations about Speaker Pelosi’s double-wammy victory strategy that left Trump and his whisperers grumbling. You could almost see the glee in the eyes of Pelosi and Schumer, when Trump doubled down on how proudly he would own the shutdown. But credit the Speaker with deftly leveraging her superior understanding of the process and rules, along with an impressive sense of timing. But she also displayed the “first-class temperament” that empowered FDR’s victories amid near-hysterical opposition: it’s about having the guts to stand firm and face down a bully, and to do it cooly and methodically, while everyone else is freaking out. It didn’t hurt that she had the experience of raising four toddlers into adulthood. An understanding of child psychology is an assett in dealing with egomaniacal politicians. I like how Eleanor Clift explained it at The Daily Beast: “Eyeing her favorite dark chocolates in a bowl next to the sandwiches and salads, she told how her husband likes hard chocolate and keeps it in the freezer. “I like to put it in the palm of my hand to soften it up,” she said, an apt metaphor I thought for how she had just handled President Trump over the five-week government shutdown…Not many politicians have gone up against Trump and emerged victorious, with their dignity intact. How did she do it? “First you start with a feather,” she said, “then you move to a sledgehammer.” Well-played.

After a suitable period of mass schadenfreude, it might be good to ponder what strategy will be needed, if Trump declares a national emergency and tries to use the military to build the wall. At The Pacific Standard, Emily Moon quotes  Andrew Boyle, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty & National Security Program, who explains what would happen: “Would he be able to declare a national emergency? The answer is absolutely. There is virtually no restriction on the executive’s ability to declare a national emergency, and that is a shortcoming of the [National Emergencies Act of 1976]…What avenues are there for pushback? One possibility—a weak possibility—is congressional override of the national emergency. That would require a veto-proof majority in the House [of Representatives] and Senate, and that’s a challenge…Another option is a lawsuit of some sort. Assuming [the declaration] goes forward, then any lawsuit would also have to deal with the specific language of those various provisions—language like “military necessity.” There would be arguments about whether building the wall is of “military necessity.” In other words, the whole mess would likely be decided in court,  which is not a particularly good look for the Prez and his party heading into the 2020 elections.

Speaking of schadenfreude, Democrats can be forgiven for marinating in it for a short while, with respect to Roger Stone’s indictment. The self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” has a history of involvement in nasty political shenanigans going back to Watergate, the “Brooks Brothers Riot” and a long history as a Trump operative — and that’s just the stuff we know about. If he is held accountable for his role in Putingate, it may put a damper on the GOP’s proclivity for illegal election games, at least for a while.

So how influential is Fox News in forming political attitudes? At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum takes a look at some data and studies, and makes the case that “Without Fox News, Republicans Would Be Toast.” As Drum concludes, “I’d guess that the real effect of Fox News is more likely something in the ballpark of one or two percentage points…Which is still a lot! Even a one percentage point influence would have been enough to swing both the 2000 and 2016 elections. I think it’s safe to say that the precise quantitative effect is hard to estimate precisely, but it’s still pretty clear that without Fox News the Republican Party would be in a world of hurt. Who knows? It’s even possible that they wouldn’t have won a presidential election since 1992.”

“National attention has focused on a handful of young, left-wing first-time members of Congress elected to safe seats. But realistically, the future of the House lies with a larger group of Democrats who eked out narrow wins in newly purple districts,” write Ella Nilsen and Dylan Scott at Vox. “Most of the freshmen come from swing districts,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), who beat four-term incumbent Republican Leonard Lance by 5 points in 2018. “We come from places where voters want us to focus on getting things done that can actually be achieved.”…Whatever you call it, these members are less interested in a 70 percent top tax rate or a Green New Deal than they are in passing targeted fixes to protect the Affordable Care Act and lower the cost of health care, promoting renewable energy, and maybe looking for an infrastructure deal to fix crumbling roads and boost rural broadband to speed up slow internet in their districts. They’re happy to discuss the more ambitious policy ideas animating the left, like Medicare-for-all, but they still have serious reservations.” However, “One unifying front among Democratic first-term House members, from the centrists in swing districts to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is cleaning up Washington. Many of them campaigned on that promise. House Democratic leadership is pushing a sweeping anti-corruption and voting rights plan, and first-term Democrats across the political spectrum want to see it passed.”

Dick Polman explains why “Democrats Are Newly Emboldened on Gun Control” at The Atlantic. Polman explains, “it appears that the ever-mounting national casualties—from Sandy Hook to Parkland to the Pittsburgh synagogue, with 116,000 shooting victims annually, 35,000 deaths annually, and historically high gun violence in schools—have undercut the NRA’s power and its purist defense of the Second Amendment…And Democratic confidence is abetted by the recent rise of the well-funded gun-reform movement helmed by Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, and Gabby Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman who was seriously wounded in a mass shooting. Democrats are clearly more comfortable talking reform, knowing that the NRA is getting pushback at the grassroots level. Indeed, the NRA (which has its own problems right now, reportedly with Special Counsel Robert Mueller) and other gun-rights groups were actually outspent by gun-reform groups during the 2018 campaign, by roughly $2.4 million—a heretofore unthinkable development.”

Sen. Kamala Harris had the most impressive announcement roll-out of all the  presidential candidates thus far. Her charismatic gifts and skill set were displayed at the well-staged announcement event in Oakland, and the media coverage was broad and positive. Her “America, we are better than this” message recalls Jimmy Carter’s call for a government “as competent, as compassionate, as good” as the American people,” which resonated well in the wake of the Ford Administration and seems even more appropriate for our times. Some are skeptical about her rep as being a little too ‘tough on crime’  for many Dems. But that may prove to be an asset in the general election. One question mark is how well she learned the lessons of the 2016 Clinton campaign’s failures regarding the Electoral College and the Rust Belt. Even if she fails to capture the Democratic presidential nomination, however, she will likely be high on the winner’s short list for a running mate.

Besides Kamala Harris, California may soon have other credible presidential candidates, including Governor Gavin Newsome and L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti. In his article, “California: The State of Resistance” in The New York Review of Books, Michael Greenberg chonicles the rise of the Golden State as locus of progressive reforms and the political transformation that made it possible. Greenberg says “The California legislature’s rebellion against President Trump’s polices may be the most serious one that an individual state has mounted against the federal government since South Carolina threatened to secede over cotton tariffs in the 1830s…Democrats now hold every congressional seat, some of them in districts a Democrat had never won. Only seven of the state’s fifty-three congressional seats are now held by Republicans. (It’s worth noting that Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, and Devin Nunes, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee—both Californians and two of the most fanatical Trumpists in Congress—were reelected.) Today only 25.3 percent of registered voters in California are Republicans, a new low.” Greenberg notes that California also has the highest poverty rate of the 50 states, and a host of difficult social problems related to housing, immigration.

In “Why Are Democrats Freaking Out About “Electability?”, Alex Shepard shares good news at The New Republic: “While Democrats are understandably scarred by 2016, the party has learned its lesson: There will be no coronation this time around, no stark contrast between two candidates representing their respective wings of the party. And while the 2020 primary thus will be crowded, it will be a marked contrast to the “clown car” Republican primary of 2016. For the next year, the Democrats will showcase a party that looks and sounds very different not only from the GOP, but from the Democratic Party of just a few years ago. Rather than a moment of anxiety, this should be a moment of hope and pride—and Republicans should be the ones feeling queasy…There’s no reason to believe that a lengthy debate about ideological differences in the party will be harmful. Democrats have been engaged in exactly that for the past two years, and they have paid little to no political price. They won 40 House seats in a historic midterm election, and every well-known Democrat currently leads Trump in early 2020 polling.”

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

One of the points I made in my book, The Optimistic Leftist, was that “the political dynamic unleashed by right populism will actually contribute to its own demise”. No one paid much attention at this time, since everyone was busy panicking about Trump. But perhaps I wasn’t so crazy, given the way things have been unfolding lately.

Along these lines, I was very interested to see this piece on Bloomberg from columnist Karl W. Smith. Smith is not a conventional leftist; he is rather a “liberaltarian” who is a fellow at the Niskanen Center, the split-off from hard-libertarian Cato Institute. Here’s some of what Smith had to say:

“Trump’s election was supposed to have heralded a political realignment in America. The Republican Party, long associated with the interests of business and more affluent Americans, would now be fueled by the white working class and a powerful nativist sentiment. In the Democratic Party, the interests of organized labor and the working class were giving way to those of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the cosmopolitan elite. The new partisan divisions would be based not on class but on openness to globalism.

To be blunt about it: This didn’t happen. (To be fair, some were skeptical at the time.) Instead, the entire country is shifting in a more populist direction, and Democrats are dominating the policy debate.

Exhibit A is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her off-the-cuff mention of a 70 percent tax rate, which has sparked a national discussion. Polls show that it’s popular not only with Democrats but with a plurality of Republicans. Celebrated left-wing economists argue that high tax rates are necessary to prevent the U.S. from slipping into an oligarchy, a message that is likely to resonate strongly among anti-globalist Trump supporters.

Likewise, Ocasio-Cortez has forced elites on both sides to at least grapple with the economic tenets of modern monetary theory. MMT, as it is known, suggests that a government with its own currency does not need to raise taxes in order to increase spending. So far MMT has faced strong pushback from elites of the left and right. But its basic contention, that deficit spending isn’t as bad as you have been led to believe, is gaining support.

These two propositions — that the government should check the power of private-sector billionaires and should spend freely to alleviate social ills — form the core of the classic leftist platform. And these positions are becoming more influential, not less, in the Democratic Party….

If their nominee in 2020 is someone like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Sherrod Brown, then I predict a rapid shift. Democrats would win back many of the white working class voters they lost and cruise to victory. Centrist pro-business Democrats would be sidelined, and the only resistance to the president’s tax and spending priorities would be from Senate Republicans. That would just drive more populists out of the Republican Party and into the Democratic Party, which would enter a period of almost complete electoral dominance.

If, on the other hand, Democrats nominate a more centrist candidate, such as Kamala Harris or Cory Booker, then the uneasy status quo would remain…..

In the long run, however, the end result in both cases would be largely the same. America is moving leftward. And that shift infuses the left of the Democratic Party with an energy that is unmatched anywhere else along the political spectrum.”

Interesting times!

In his post, “How AI-Assisted messaging Can Help Democrats in Shutdown Fight,” At Campaigns & Elections, Michiah Prull, co-founder and CEO of Avalanche Strategy, reports on the findings of a new study of attitudes about immigration conducted by his firm: “Even among first and second generation immigrants—a segment of the American electorate we might expect to skew sympathetic to immigration—there’s a significant portion of voters who express a belief that they followed the rules in order to be a part of this country, and others should too…Americans who relate to immigration through a Fairness lens are very concerned about people getting what they deserve based on their actions. This “reap what you sow” version of fairness is a significant aspect of the moral reasoning that drives support for stricter enforcement of immigration laws…In our research, this value was very clearly tied to a belief that immigrants are receiving a great amount of taxpayer support, while ordinary Americans are left to struggle on their own. We saw this in particular among union members and soft conservative suburban woman, who may express high levels of care and concern for the struggles of immigrants, but feel a strong sense of unfairness about their perception that immigrants receive greater benefits, support and opportunity than their own families receive…Whether we agree with them or not, viewing the current standoff through the lens of these values and narratives explains why the border wall is such a powerful symbol for Trump’s base. For many of them, the wall is a physical manifestation of a deep and emotional attachment to the need to respect authority and to feel fairly treated compared to other groups…By understanding the deep why behind the border wall, Democrats can frame their communications to ameliorate and even attract elements of that base.”

Aaron Rupar shares the results of some new polls at vox.com on Trump’s tanking approval numbers as a result of his shutdown, including: A “Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that a majority of voters — 54 percent — blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown, compared to 35 percent who blame Democrats…A CBS News poll “finds that 71 percent of Americans “don’t think the issue of a border wall is worth a government shutdown, which they say is now having a negative impact on the country.”…The poll “also finds that Americans think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is doing a better job than Trump at handling the shutdown.”…CNN’s latest poll of polls also shows Trump’s approval rating dramatically underwater” with 57 percent disapproval, while a Marist/NPR/PBS poll indicates  “a majority of registered voters — 57 percent — say they will definitely vote against him in 2020” and “two-thirds of Americans want him to agree to a budget without wall funding as a way to end the shutdown.” In addition, an Emerson College poll finds that “57% said it was time to give someone else a chance while 43% said President Trump deserves to be re-elected.”

“At their core, congressional investigations are a form of political theater, which means their success won’t just depend on what Democrats find but how they present it,” notes Amelia Thomson Deveaux in her post, “Could A Slew Of New Congressional Investigations Erode Trump’s Approval Rating?” at FiveThirtyEight. “There is evidence that congressional investigations can erode presidential support, especially when the government is divided like it is now, but if hearings are unfocused, too technical or appear petty, they can either be ignored by the media or dismissed by the president and his supporters as partisan “harassment.” Congressional investigations can be an extremely powerful tool in a divided government — but only if the investigations make a clear, coherent case for executive branch wrongdoing…It is, of course, impossible to predict exactly what Democrats will uncover in a hearing like Cohen’s or in their potentially numerous other investigations, but we do know two things from studies on previous congressional investigations. First, House investigations have tended to be concentrated during periods of divided government. And second, this increased activity or “weaponization” of the congressional investigation process can weaken the president significantly in the public’s eye.”

Also at C & E, Sean J. Miller reports that a new “study backs the effectiveness of digital advertising to increase turnout among Millennial voters in competitive local elections.” As Miller notes, “Researchers Jay Jennings and Katherine Haenschen said their study, published this month in the academic journal Political Communication, is “the first evidence that online ads can positively impact turnout…this is the first study that shows with scientific rigor that exposure to internet ads increases turnout,” Haenschen, a practitioner-turned-researcher at Virginia Tech, told C&E…The research centered on a $50,000 digital ad campaign during a non-partisan May 2017 Dallas municipal election where the mayoral seat wasn’t up…The study was conducted in Dallas at the request of the publisher of the Dallas Morning News “due to the city’ s historically low levels of municipal participation particularly among Millennials.”. Miller adds, “After the Saturday Election Day, turnout was measured using public voting records. Haenschen said they increased voter turnout by 0.9 percent among people exposed to the ads.” She notes, however, that “digital spots are “not the most cost-effective method” for voter turnout. That would be social pressure mailers, which can increase turnout by up to 3 percent. But digital ads, she said, are great for targeting voters for turnout in hard-to-reach areas — apartment dwellers or people in gated communities.“This is a tool that should be used in compliment with broader campaign strategy,” she said.”

If you want to get up to speed on democratic reforms in the states, read Amy Hanauer’s “States of Change” at The American Prospect, which notes a number of encouraging developments, including: “While not perfectly correlated, higher minimum wages, more per-pupil education spending, more health-care access, lower incarceration, and more progressive taxes tend to cluster in states where Democrats have had more power. There are surprises—Massachusetts, Illinois, and Colorado have flat income taxes that fall more heavily on poor people; Washington, despite the litany of pro-worker policies, still has no income tax. But places led by progressives do more progressive things. And it pays off—education, income, life expectancy, and other measures of well-being are generally higher in places with liberal policies.” Also, “Naomi Walker, who directs the Economic Analysis and Research Network out of the Economic Policy Institute, sees more opportunities for state-level worker justice than Americans have had since 2010, when Republicans gained control in many states. “We have a chance not just to get back to where we were but to make advances,” she says.”

“States with a smaller population than Los Angeles County” — a compelling graphic that shows why the ‘two senators for every state’ thing needs to be corrected:

In “Midterms Showed That Midwestern Economic PerformanceCould Decide 2020 Race,” John C. Austin writes at Brookings: “Of course, economic evolution in many of the Midwest’s small and medium-sized industrial cities—which can be viewed as both an economic andpolitical priority—won’t happen overnight. But until then, experts suggest, the winning political path for Democrats in key Midwest states appears to be one of “both-and.” As political observer Ruy Texeira observed in the Washington Post: “Carry white college graduates, strongly mobilize nonwhite voters, particularly blacks, and hold deficits among white non-college-educated voters in the range of 10 to 15 points. Unlike Hillary Clinton in 2016…Democrats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota got all three parts of the formula right in the midterms.”

It’s only January, but If they gave awards for the lamest op-ed of 2019, WaPo columnist Marc A. Thiessen’s, “Trump is being the adult in the room on the shutdown” would be a safe bet for the category. Yes, Thiessen’s cheesey message du jour for the GOP echo chamber was in The Washington Post, not The New York Post. And no, it was not just a rogue head-line writer’s descent into drugged dementia; Thiessen actually went there, as in “Trump is being the adult in the room” a few graphs into the redolent rant.

For those who prefer less unhinged conservative analysis, David Bier’s “Senate GOP Bill Doesn’t Extend DACA. It Guts It” at The Cato Institute offers the following observation: “This weekend, President Trump promised to an “extension” of DACA for the “700,000 DACA recipients brought here unlawfully by their parents at a young age many years ago.” But the Senate bill that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced to implement his deal does not extend DACA but rather replaces it with a totally different program that will exclude untold thousands of Dreamers who would have been eligible under DACA.” Also, the bill provides “less than 3 years of relief from deportation and work authorization, not a pathway to citizenship.” Bier concludes, “Commentators should not describe this bill as “extending DACA” or even extending that status of DACA recipients.”

Donald Trump’s blatant and vicious appeal to pure prejudice regarding immigrants and immigration has led many progressives and Democrats to respond in an equally categorical way, describing all objections to immigration as simply a smokescreen for racism.

Since opinion polls have consistently shown that most Americans are not bitterly anti-immigrant and do not support draconian measures like mass deportation, this reaction does not immediately seem to present a major problem for Democrats in 2020.

But, in fact, it does. While most Americans do not share Trump’s visceral loathing of Latin Americans and actually support a range of positive measures such as providing a path to citizenship for long time, law-abiding undocumented immigrants, a very substantial group also supports the demand that America regain control of the southern border and prevent further “illegal” immigration.

Simply dismissing all these voters as racists who do not deserve any response other than condemnation is a profound mistake–one that will endanger Democratic hopes of winning the presidency in 2020 and almost certainly place the Senate entirely out of reach. Democrats need to provide a reasonable response to the concerns that do exist, particularly among working class Americans.

To meet this challenge, the Democratic Strategist presents the following TDS Strategy Memo:Democrats need to understand how to talk to working class voters about immigration–and not just dismiss them as racists.

Democratic candidates, campaigns and office-holders would do well to read “What Democrats Can Learn From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Her communication style is worth emulating, not dismissing” by Aaron Huertas at medium.com. Some insights from Huertas:

Attention is a limited resource in politics, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., commands a lot of it. She has almost 2.4 million Twitter followers, and media outlets breathlessly cover her statements and policy proposals as well as feckless attempts by Republicans to throw her off her game.

For a lot of Democrats in Washington, this is disruptive. Normally, a freshman member of Congress would command little if any public attention and would quietly sit in the back benches, slowly building seniority over time with the hopes of one day running a powerful committee.

Huertas notes AOC ‘s unique appeal to millennials, who “grew up with a political system that has proven incapable of addressing student debt, income inequality, or climate change. We aren’t waiting for change; we don’t have the time. And there are more of us voting every single year.” Further,

That’s why it’s a mistake for Democrats to try to “rein in” the party’s biggest rising star, as this Politico article put it. Instead, the party should be looking to Ocasio-Cortez for guidance on how to effectively speak to working people, collaborate with activists, and beat Republicans soundly in 2020 and beyond.

Huertas cites  an article on Politico, dissing NY-14’s new congresswoman for being popular on Twitter, and argues that “This idea is so backward. Twitter stars can be great legislators, and having nearly 2.4 million Twitter followers is a very effective way to get out the message about legislation.”

Activists, like Ocasio-Cortez and John Lewis, who have a genuine grass-roots connection to their constituents, have an advantage in educating them and mobilizing volunteers. Huertas adds, for example,

Ocasio-Cortez’s advocacy for a Green New Deal is a great example of combing inside and outside influence from activists to advance an agenda. Several progressive House candidates campaigned on a Green New Deal last year, but the topic received little interest during the campaign. It only grabbed public attention after Ocasio-Cortez joined Sunrise Movement protesters in Nancy Pelosi’s office who were demanding a special committee create a Green New Deal…Did the Sunrise Movement and other Green New Deal advocates get exactly what they wanted right away? No, definitely not. But now the Green New Deal is a new standard for what serious climate policy looks like, and presidential candidates are starting to line up behind them.

AOC’s experience knocking on doors as a Bernie Sanders campaigner and her participation in the Standing Rock protests also served her well. It’s not a bad thing for elected officials to have had significant face time with grass-roots activists. “The simple truth,” says Huertas, “is that there is nothing preventing a lawmaker from actively working with protesters, dissidents, and activists to achieve serious political change. In fact, doing so is smart politics.”

Huertas argues that some of Ocasio-Cortez’s critics are more judgemental about women of color than they are about male office-holders, ignoring the reality that “A big reason Ocasio-Cortez resonates is that millennials actually have members of Congress who represent our generational interests now: eliminating student loan debt, income inequality, gun violence, and climate change…pundits and columnists should be asking themselves how they can market their own ideas more effectively. Because there is a zero-percent chance any leftist politician is going to take their free advice and hand the spotlight back to them.”

In addition, “In many midterm races, the youth vote was decisive as young people broke two-to-one for Democrats. Splits like that are a once in a generation opportunity to build lasting power,” as this chart illustrates:

Ocasio-Cortez “dunks on right-wingers who make stupid arguments with abandon,” notes Huertas. “While other Democrats ignore them or respond in somber, serious tones, Ocasio-Cortez rejects the premise that bad faith arguments should be taken seriously” — and boldly discredited.

This has created an incredible attention cycle online. Every time a prominent Republican takes the bait and attacks Ocasio-Cortez, they simply empower her more by giving her the opportunity to spend a few minutes composing a trenchant tweet, which then gets covered with short posts on dozens of media outlets.

When Republicans tried to bash Ocasio-Cortez for advocating higher taxes for the wealthy, “Instead of taking this argument seriously or posting charts and graphs, Ocasio-Cortez responded by debunking a powerful GOP legislator, questioning his knowledge about policy, and then pointing out why the GOP routinely lies about tax rates.”

It’s about getting engaged with adversaries, being confident and unafraid to confront them with well-informed refutations of their flawed defenses. She understands that “Politicians hate talking about their most unpopular policy positions, such as low taxes for wealthy people,” and denies them any wiggle room. Also, notes Huertas,

Calling out bad faith arguments has also extended to what Republicans call “working the refs.” In Ocasio-Cortez’s case, that means taking on fact-checkers who have rewarded her with four Pinocchios/Pants on Fire ratings for relatively mild errors. For instance, what’s worse: denying the scientific reality of climate change or not precisely representing budget figures from a media story about Pentagon accounting? How about scapegoating immigrants with hateful, dishonest rhetoric or talking about people who aren’t unemployed but are working multiple jobs to keep ahead of the cost of living?

tenIf you’re a fact-checker, it’s perhaps not something you’ve thought about because that’s a value-laden, moral question. But in challenging fact-checkers over what they choose to scrutinize, Ocasio-Cortez has exposed how an overly precise focus on facts can obscure the deeper moral questions at the heart of politics…When debates are broken, challenge the premise of the debate. Don’t obscure the real-world impact policy has. Confront it.

In addition, AOC “has helped foster more debate about the ways “how do you pay for it” rhetoric is selectively deployed for health, education, and environmental protection but not military spending, tax cuts, and other deficit drivers” — a good, and often overlooked point that adds needed perspective on spending debates that can help Democrats.

Huertas highlights the difference in communication styles between traditional liberal Democrats and Ocasio Cortez:

…Prominent Democratic Twitter users like Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Ted Lieu, both D-Cal., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, tend to strike a more serious tone and often point out their political opponents’ hypocrisy. These arguments have a lot of reach, but Donald Trump and other Republicans can’t really be hypocrisy shamed any more, so these messages don’t quite have the same reach or impact they had a few years ago.

They’ll also dabble in memes, leetspeak, and slang, but playing along with internet culture is distinct from being born into it, and as a younger person, Ocasio-Cortez’s use of these tropes resonates, is consistent with her bio, and is stickier for audiences.

Finding one’s online voice is different for every politician, but emulating Ocasio-Cortez in this regard means finding novel, deeply personal ways to talk about the news of the day and a progressive policy agenda. That means effective communicators don’t just play along with how social media works. They embody it. Finding ways to be authentic online is incredibly hard, especially for politicians, but that’s the difference between being good on social media and being great.

Huertas distills her debate strategy as, “When debates are broken, challenge the premise of the debate. Don’t obscure the real world impact policy has. Confront it. And speak to people’s moral values and the type of world we want to live in.”

No doubt the nit-pickers will continue to needle Ocasio-Cortez at every opportunity. But there is zero chance that they are going to distract the new Rep from NY-14. Democrats would do well to study and emulate her energetic engagement and refusal to give them the last word.

In his conclusion, Huertas advises Dems to “Embrace that change, including change from the outside, and don’t be afraid to compromise with the next generation.” Good advice, right on time.

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

That would perhaps be a better headline than the Post headline on the web which says: “Trump voters now blame him for the government shutdown“. That sounds like all of them and of course that’s not true. But the fact that outlets like the Post are starting to run stories not about how Trump voters are still rock solid for their man but rather about how some of them are getting fed up is a good thing.

The article while anecdotal is still worth reading, especially since it’s written from Macomb County in Michigan, a storied locus of white working class discontent with the Democrats going back decades. As the article notes, while Trump carried the county by 12 points in 2016, Democratic Senate and governor candidates carried the county in 2018. Perhaps something is going on there and, by extension, in other similar areas in the Midwest.

The article also correctly points out that Democrats would be unwise to simply count on fed up-ness with Trump to close the deal with wavering Trump voters, especially when it comes to the immigration issue.

“The 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest is expected to include a heavy dose of debate over how to balance attempts to win back white working-class voters — those who live here as well as in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which Trump also won — with the energy around ascendant women and minorities.

Those attempts will also draw into question whether Democrats can find a way to articulate an immigration plan in areas like this, where the issue resonates. Trump’s insistence on building a border wall has hardened Democrats, whose most prominent policy now is to stop the wall. They rarely tout their own views on border security, but that issue remains important to many voters in industrial states….

“People do want immigration managed,” said Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who has been studying Macomb County voters since the 1980s. “Trump makes it hard because he’s so outrageous. You don’t want to give him an inch. But immigration is still an important issue, and Democrats will have to speak to it.”

A similar point is made by Francis Wilkinson in a recent Bloomberg piece. You might summarize his article as saying “Democrats won’t always have the Wall to kick around” Wilkinson points out:

“[W]hen the shutdown, and the symbolic skirmish behind it, ends, the immigration debate will not. And it’s unclear how much progress Democrats will have made persuading distracted voters to embrace a realistic and humane alternative to Trump’s fantasy and aggression….

[W]ill Americans who have been encouraged to imagine an impregnable curtain of steel be better able to imagine the legal and topographical fiascos that would ensue from trying to build it? Or the handmade wooden ladder that would be used to vault over it? What about a comprehensive alternative that includes a path to citizenship for the undocumented and tighter controls on borders and employment?

There’s no way to make progress on such arguments if the Democratic line is simply that the wall is, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, ‘immoral.'”

Exactly. Time for the Democrats to get to it if they really want to win back wavering Trump voters in 2020.