Ron Brownstein has a mastery of election and public opinion numbers second to none, and his latest column provided a key insight into the upcoming midterms, which I wrote about at New York.

[S]ometimes the breakdowns on this or that very large demographic group are so large and dramatic that paying attention to anything else may be a waste of time. And as Ron Brownstein explains in his latest number-crunching exercise, it’s not just the Year of the Democratic Woman in terms of candidates running for office: Women are the key to a Democratic win this year, and to its magnitude.

“Trump is exposing the GOP this fall to the danger of unusually high mobilization and margins among African American women. Trump also risks consolidating a historic realignment toward the Democrats among college-educated white women, many of whom have viscerally recoiled from his behavior and language — such as his tweet Monday about Manigault-Newman.

“[P]olling continues to send mixed signals on whether Democrats can expect substantial inroads among the third large group of female voters: white women without a college degree. Gains among those women could be the critical final piece to creating a secure path to a Democratic House majority — opening opportunities in districts beyond the urban and suburban areas where Republicans are most vulnerable.”

Yes, other differentiations between voters, such as education and race, remain important, but gender differences are pervasive:

“Over the past month in Gallup’s daily tracking poll, Trump drew much higher approval ratings from men than women. That was true among whites with a college degree, whites without a college degree, Hispanics, African Americans, and members of other racial groups, according to figures Gallup provided to The Atlantic. In this week’s national Quinnipiac University poll, college-educated and non–college-educated white men, as well as minority men, were considerably more likely than women in the same groups to say they like Trump’s policies.

“This isn’t just a “gender gap.” Men do not seem to be moving that much from their positions in 2016. But college-educated women are, and if white working-class women do as well, the Democratic “wave” would become much larger.”

Brownstein emphasizes the importance of non-college-educated white women because it was a pro-Trump demographic group in 2016 that seems finally to be souring on the president, but he documents the potentially seismic shift underway among their college-educated counterparts, too:

“[C]ollege-educated white women … typically lean Democratic, but usually by modest margins. Hillary Clinton carried 51 percent of them against Trump in 2016, and Democratic House candidates have not carried more than 52 percent of them in any election since 1992, according to exit polls; they only split them evenly with Republicans in 2016.

“But polling points to the possibility of unprecedented advantages for Democrats with those women this year. In Quinnipiac polling from March, about three-fourths of college-educated white women said Trump did not respect women as much as men, and in July, nearly three-fifths said he’s racist. In the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, exactly three-fourths said his behavior as president “embarrassed” them. Likewise, in this week’s Quinnipiac survey, two-thirds said they didn’t like Trump as a person, and more than three-fifths said they didn’t like his policies or approve of his job performance.

“Those attitudes suggest these women may tilt sharply toward Democrats in November; for months, many public polls have shown that about 60 percent — sometimes slightly more, sometimes slightly less — prefer Democrats for Congress. Such a movement could lastingly shift many white-collar suburban districts away from Republicans.”

White working-class women, on the other hand, could be the key to Democratic gains in those famous Rust Belt areas that won Trump the presidency in 2016. As Brownstein notes, as a group they seem torn between revulsion toward Trump’s style and behavior, and relative satisfaction with his policies and results. If, as we have every indication to believe, Trump plans to double down on his abrasive tendencies in hopes of energizing his base, he might pay a price with white working-class women, who could stay home even if they can’t bring themselves to vote for the Donkey Party.

It could matter a lot whether they turn out and also whether they are open to voting Democratic a bit more than in 2016:

“Working-class white women are so pivotal to shaping Democratic opportunities largely because blue-collar white men appear so immovably behind Trump and the GOP. To expand beyond purely urban/suburban districts, Democrats believe they must replicate the winning equation demonstrated by Conor Lamb in his March special-election victory for a House seat near Pittsburgh. His model was to max out his advantage in white-collar suburbs recoiling from Trump while narrowing his deficit in blue-collar and rural communities, almost entirely by improving among working-class white women.”

Depending on the district, a strong turnout among minority women — whose hostility to Trump is reaching record proportions — could make a big difference too.

“Exit polls showed Democrats carried 91 percent of black women in the Virginia governor’s race won by Ralph Northam, and an astounding 98 percent in the Alabama Senate race won by Doug Jones.”

The focus on health-care issues among so many Democratic candidates regardless of gender is a tribute to their salience among women voters generally. And in 2016 pro-Trump districts, reminders of the president’s many broken economic promises are well-designed to bring non-college-educated white women over the line or leave them so discouraged that they abstain.

In any event, the nomination of so many women as Democratic congressional candidates this year is exquisitely timed. Unless Republicans can find a way to regain ground among college-educated women, keep white working-class women engaged, and rev up MAGA men, their odds of hanging onto the House or increasing their margins in the Senate are limited. To put it another way, the final accounting for the grossly porcine qualities Trump displayed so graphically in the Access Hollywood videos, and that the GOP accepted so cravenly when those videos didn’t kill his candidacy, hasn’t occurred just yet. Trump and his party richly deserve a Year of the Woman that makes all their sexist slurs about Hillary Clinton (and Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters and Elizabeth Warren) turn bitter in their mouths. And they may well be steadily losing women one vote at a time.

Former DCCC Chair Rep. Steve Israel says it plain in his article, “Democrats Don’t Need a National Message” at The Atlantic: “A message that resonates in downtown Brooklyn, New York, could backfire in Brooklyn, Iowa—which happens to be located in a Republican district that’s now highly competitive…Democrats weaken our connection with voters when we’re presumptuous enough to speak for every voter from Trump World Tower in Manhattan to a Trump-won congressional district in Kansas…The fact is that a national message works best in presidential-election years. The party’s nominee is the “messenger in chief,” building a national brand that unifies base and swing voters, donors, activists, volunteers, canvassers, and down-ballot candidates. A midterm election cycle, by its very nature, is fragmented, with hundreds of different campaigns with hundreds of individual candidates.” Israel says a “bottom-up approach is a better solution than a message imposed by party leadership. Democratic activists would be wise not to debate nouns and verbs, and instead give candidates their freedom of speech.”

At The Hill, Megan Keller reports that “A new poll from CBS News Battleground Tracker shows Democrats winning 222 seats in the House if the midterm elections were today, in large part because of party support among women…The tracker, released Sunday, marks a three-seat increase from the tracker’s estimates earlier this summer. Women told CBS that they plan to vote for a Democratic candidate by a 12-point margin…According to the tracker, 89 percent of women voters polled said their 2018 vote is at least as important as a presidential election, while one in five respondents said it is even more important. Democratic and independent women are more than twice as likely to view the midterms with urgency than female Republicans, CBS found…The tracker polled 4,989 registered voters in 57 competitive congressional districts between Aug. 10–16. It has a margin of error of 1.8 percent.”

New York Times op-ed columnist Michelle Goldberg calls out the “pernicious double standard on politicians who owe money,” now being deployed against Democratic candidates like Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams and Randy Bryce, who is running for Paul Ryan’s seat in the House. Goldberg explains that Bryce and Abrams are being attacked for their personal debts, which are pretty modest, compared to the debts of many prominent Republicans, and she notes: “Donald Trump, by contrast, has had six business bankruptcies. There are several administration officials who, like Abrams, owed tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes when they were hired, including Justin Clark, head of the White House’s Office of Public Liaison…Then there’s Kemp, Abrams’s opponent, a multimillionaire who is being sued for allegedly failing to repay a $500,000 loan used to buy supplies for an agricultural company he invested in. It says something about the racial and class politics of owing money that Republicans nevertheless feel safe attacking Abrams for her debt, most of which she accrued putting herself through school and helping to care for family members in crisis.” A key take-away is that Democrats shouldn’t waist too much time defending their debts, when Republicans almost always provide fat attack targets with their own questionable financial practices.

“A new survey of nearly 10,000 American adults shows that the strong economy is rallying Republicans and maybe swaying some independents,” write Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley in The New York Times. “But many voters still aren’t feeling the benefits of robust growth, and the tax overhaul passed last year looks as likely to hurt Republicans at the polls as help them…The data, from a survey conducted in early August for The New York Times by the online polling firm SurveyMonkey, paints a more complex picture than strategists and pundits of either political stripe usually portray. And it helps explain why, out on the campaign trail, candidates have tended to tread lightly when it comes to talking about the economy…Asked how their finances have changed over the last year, Americans are twice as likely to say they are better off than worse off, and they are even more optimistic about the future…Americans’ confidence hasn’t risen since the start of the year. And their outlook for the next 12 months has actually slipped a bit in recent months. Other surveys, showing a similar pattern, have found that anxiety about a trade war has made some Americans less upbeat about the future.”

At PowerPost, Vanessa Williams reports that “Voting rights activists in Georgia say they will launch a petition drive in an effort to collect enough signatures of registered voters to block a proposal to close more than two-thirds of polling precincts in a predominantly black county ahead of this fall’s general election…“You don’t solve problems of accessibility for people with disabilities by reducing access for people without disabilities,” said Andrea Young, executive director of the Georgia ACLU, which wrote a letter to the board stating that the closures would be a violation of the Voting Rights Act because it would have a negative effect on African American voters. The group noted that African Americans make up more than 96 percent of the voters at one of the polling places slated for closure…Unsure whether the board will be persuaded by the arguments for keeping the polling places open, some activists will try to stop the plan by using a state law that forbids the closure of voting sites if 20 percent of the registered voters in the affected precinct object to the change. The county currently has just over 4,000 registered voters…Several groups, including the Georgia Democratic Party, Common Cause and the NAACP, have called on Kemp to step down from his position as secretary of state while he runs for governor. They says it is a conflict of interest for him to make decisions about election laws and procedures while he’s seeking the state’s top elected job. Kemp has said he will stay in the office until his term ends in January.

It’s crickets time for Republican elected officials, who are nervous about Trump’s latest binge of race-baiting, report Ashley Parker, Seung Min Kim and Robert Costa at The Washington Post. “As Trump immersed the nation in a new wave of fraught battles over race, most GOP lawmakers tried to ignore the topic altogether. The studied avoidance is a reflection of the enduring reluctance of Republicans to confront Trump’s often divisive and inflammatory rhetoric…The Washington Post reached out to all 51 Republican senators and six House Republican leaders asking them to participate in a brief interview about Trump and race. Only three senators agreed to participate: Jeff Flake of Arizona, David Perdue of Georgia and Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican in the Senate…Trump’s critics within the party fear that, in an increasingly diverse nation, the president is reopening wounds many Republicans had sought to heal.” Is it too much to hope that the media will keep the heat on Republican midterm candidates regarding Trump’s racist pandering? Maybe. But it’s up to Democrats to hold Republican midterm candidates accountable for their cowardice in refusing to speak out against Trump’s racism.

From Julian Zelizer’s “Nancy Pelosi is under fire, but ousting her isn’t the answer” at cnn.com: “…If the goal is to eliminate the bogeyman whom the GOP uses to motivate its base, then some Democrats have a badly mistaken idea of what the modern Republican Party is all about and how contemporary politics works. The truth is that regardless of who leads the Democratic Party, Republicans will demonize and characterize them as socialists who want to import radical policies to the United States…If House Democrats decided to pressure Pelosi into stepping down and replaced her with someone from the center of the party, the Republican attacks would not change one iota and they would probably still be pretty effective. The new Democratic leader would be characterized as being just as much of a liberal extremist who threatened the nation, and Republicans would capitalize on their vast media echo chamber to support their point of view. Even if the new speaker were a moderate legislator, like US Rep. Conor Lamb, Republicans would be decrying the nonexistent dominance of the far left…The question for Democrats should not really be if Pelosi offers Republicans too easy a target but rather how their party can be tougher in convincing voters why continued Republican control of Congress threatens vital public policies and the institutions of democracy.” Another argument would be that American democracy is under unprecedented attack by a foreign power, with the aid and support of the Republican President, and Dems need an experienced Speaker to organize the only institution which can prevent it — if the Democrats win a House majority in November.

A pro-Democratic strategic voting campaign is bubbling up in Arizona, where a group called  “Red and Gold” has invested nearly $1.7 million attacking front-runner, U.S. Rep. Martha McSally in the Republican U.S. Senate primary. Even more interesting, the group is directing much of its pitch to senior voters. “The ads center on McSally’s support of a Republican bill that would have allowed insurers to charge older adults more through a so-called “age tax,” notes Yvonne Wingett Sanchez at The Arizona Republic. ‘Red and Gold’ believes that McSally would be the strongest opponent for Democratic front-runner U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema. But also, McSally has blundered badly in supporting the ‘age tax,’ given thee importance of Arizona’s senior voters, who turn out at a higher rate in Midterm elections than do younger voters. Arizona has a higher percentage of seniors, 15.9 percent, than 40 other states.

Timothy Egan has a New York Times column on “The Coming Green Wave,” which offers an optimistic outlook for rising environmental awareness, which is good news, particularly for Democrats. As Egan writes,

Egan notes, further, that “if just one unorganized voting segment, the 60 million bird-watchers of America, sent a unified political message this fall, you’d have a political block with more than 10 times the membership of the National Rifle Association.” Egan faults Trump for “drafting rules to make it easier for major polluters to drive up the earth’s temperature,” weakne rules protecting endangered species and “while lovers of the outdoors break visitation records at national parks and forests, Trump is removing land from protection.”

Egan believes that “144 million Americans who participated in an outdoor activity last year” and the 344 million visitors to national parks are getting ready to “flex some muscle in the upcoming midterm elections.” He notes also that,

Only one in 10 voters think Americans should use more coal. And more than 80 percent of millennials, soon to be the largest cohort of voters (if they ever turn out), believe there’s solid evidence behind these freakish manifestations of an overheated earth…hese people are now ready to “put aside our differences and stand together for the places we love,” as Tawney and Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, wrote in The Denver Post.

You will see it in Minnesota, where the 140,000 people who work in outdoor recreation are furious at Trump’s attempt to open a sulfide-ore copper mine near Boundary Waters Wilderness. You will see it in a half-dozen tossup congressional races in California, where the administration is mounting the biggest assault yet on public health, with its attack on emission rules.

Whether or not Egan’s predictions materialize in the midterm elections, there is surely a lot of room for improvement in Democratic outreach to voters who are alarmed about the environment. It may be that, with a little more effort, Democrats could win some new voters who are concerned about quickening environmental deterioration, a broad-based constituency that is bound to grow in the months and years ahead.

Egan concludes with a hopeful observation that “the silent green majority has had enough.” If there isn’t yet a “silent green majority,” Democrats should be be about the business of organizing one.

From “Elizabeth Warren has a plan to save capitalism: She’s unveiling a bill to make corporate governance great again.” by Matthew Yglesias at Vox: “Elizabeth Warren has a big idea that challenges how the Democratic Party thinks about solving the problem of inequality. Instead of advocating for expensive new social programs like free college or health care, she’s introducing a bill Wednesday, the Accountable Capitalism Act, that would redistribute trillions of dollars from rich executives and shareholders to the middle class — without costing a dime…Traditionally, she writes in a companion op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, “corporations sought to succeed in the marketplace, but they also recognized their obligations to employees, customers and the community.” In recent decades they stopped, in favor of a singular devotion to enriching shareholders. And that’s what Warren wants to change…For the biggest corporations, she’s proposing a dramatic step that would ensure workers and not just shareholders get a voice on big strategic decisions…More concretely, United States Corporations would be required to allow their workers to elect 40 percent of the membership of their board of directors.” Warren’s proposal would also “limit corporate executives’ ability to sell shares of stock that they receive as pay — requiring that such shares be held for at least five years after they were received, and at least three years after a share buyback. The aim is to disincentivize stock-based compensation in general as well as the use of share buybacks as a tactic for executives to maximize their one pay.” Yglesias calls Warren’s bill a “a revolution in American business practice to undo about a generation’s worth of shareholder supremacy” and “a revival of the midcentury stakeholder capitalism.”

“Warren’s bill is similar to a bill introduced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (which Warren co-sponsored) called the Reward Work Act,” adds Paul Waldman in his post, “Democrats do have an agenda, and even some big ideas. Here’s one of them” at The Plum Line. “That one would require that one-third of the seats on a corporation’s board be chosen by workers. While in America this is a radical idea, it’s built on the system in Germany, where it has been successful in both fostering economic growth and keeping corporations from focusing on the ruthless pursuit of short-term profits for a tiny few at the expense of everyone and everything else. (Susan Holmberg of the Roosevelt Institute explains here.)…Late last year, the Republicans gave hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to corporations, with the promise that in their beneficence those corporations would raise workers’ standard of living. It didn’t happen; instead, the corporations put their money into an unprecedented wave of stock buybacks that enhanced the holdings of wealthy shareholders…When a liberal group put the idea of including workers on corporate boards into a poll, it turned out to be enormously popular…Republicans would recoil in horror at the idea of changing how corporations work, since their theory of the corporation is that it should have all the rights of an individual but none of the responsibilities. But this is a good example of Democrats coming up with an idea that’s ambitious, meant to address a deep and pressing problem, in line with their values, and compelling to voters.”

Syndicated Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes that “Democrats have a chance to shape politics for a decade,” and notes: “Republicans control 33 governorships to only 16 for the Democrats, with one independent in Alaska. Democrats are defending just nine governorships this year, and only four seem competitive. Cook rates Minnesota along with Connecticut as the most vulnerable Democratic-held seats, one reason the party welcomed the GOP primary results. Colorado and Oregon also look to be closely contested…On the other hand, 11 of the Republicans’ 26 governorships at stake this year appear vulnerable. Illinois and New Mexico already lean Democratic, and seven others are toss-ups. These include the powerhouse states of Florida, Michigan and Ohio. The GOP will also have to struggle to hold on to Wisconsin and Georgia.”

Kyle Kondik adds in his article, “The Governors: Ratings Changes Abound: Democrats positioned to make gains on a map featuring lots of competition” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Alaska happens to be the top Republican pickup opportunity in the country…The deadline for candidates to remove themselves from the ballot is Sept. 4. If this remains a three-way race after that date, we likely will favor the GOP going forward…Most of the states that are likeliest to flip are already held by Republicans, meaning that the Democrats could have considerably more governorships next year than they hold now (if they don’t, this year will have been a giant missed opportunity for Democrats)…We have previously pointed to five big states as a way to measure which side “wins” this November in the gubernatorial battle: Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The GOP currently holds all but Pennsylvania, a Likely Democratic hold. Democrats are also favored in Illinois. That leaves Toss-ups in Florida, Michigan, and Ohio. We figure the Democrats should win at least one — Michigan is the likeliest, in our estimation — and possibly more. So that’s a long way of saying that the gubernatorial races, on balance, seem to be going decently well for Democrats…”

In her article, “Pelosi has decided to make ethics a core pillar” at The Hill, Melanie Zanona writes that “House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) is moving full steam ahead on a Democratic strategy to paint the GOP as corrupt ahead of the midterm elections, a case that got new legs after the arrest of Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) on insider trading charges last week…Pelosi has decided to make ethics a core pillar of House Democrats’ push for the majority this fall, seizing on Collins’s arrest in a way she hasn’t done with past GOP scandals involving Trump administration officials…But with Collins, a sitting member of Congress and Trump’s earliest congressional backer, Pelosi believes that Democrats have a ripe opportunity to draw a connection between the president and House Republicans who are on the ballot this November…“The Democrats, through the Democracy Reform Task Force, have really positioned our caucus well, and our candidates in the field well, to push the anti-corruption framework to say we stand against a rigged system,” Sarbanes said. “We wanted to assemble a robust effort on that front…I think we are well equipped now to make that case to the electorate,” he added.”

Some telling stats in this “Year of the Democratic Women” by Krista Carothers at democrats.com: “According to the candidate-tracking project (a collaboration between POLITICO, the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, and the Women in Public Service Project at The Wilson Center), only 35 Republican women have won House primary races as of July 25, compared with 122 Democratic women…What’s more, there just aren’t as many women in the Republican party as there are among the pool of Democrats. Pew Research Center survey results in the spring showed that 56 percent of women identify as Democrats or lean Democratic (up four percentage points since 2015), compared with 37 percent who identify or lean toward the Republican party. A key stepping-stone to running for national office is experience on a state legislature, but according to fivethirtyeight.com, only 17 percent of Republican state legislators are women, compared with 36 percent of Democratic state legislators.”

Thomas L. Friedman’s “What if Mother Nature Is on the Ballot in 2020? Democrats could have a strong issue to run on if the extreme weather persists and President Trump continues to dismiss climate change” at The New York Times addresses a growing concern of voters. As Friedman writes, “Democrats have been casting about for a big idea to propel them in 2020. My free advice: If Democratic socialism or Democratic Trotskyism or abolishing ICE — the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — is what will get you elected as a Democrat in your district in 2018, go for it. The Democrats must take the House back. But Trump would feast on those issues in a national election…However, if in 2020 we’re in the midst of even more damaging droughts and storms than we are today, Democrats may be able to run against Trump’s make-America-polluted-again environmental strategy…or seize the incredible opportunity it offers America to become richer, healthier, more secure and more respected by leading the world in clean energy technologies…The Democratic strategy should be built around putting together the performance standards, research and carbon pricing to achieve what Energy Innovation C.E.O. Hal Harvey calls “the four zeros.” These are, Harvey explains: 1. “A zero-carbon grid. Right now, Republican states like Texas and Wyoming dominate the U.S. wind industry and are reaping most of the jobs and environmental benefits. That should go national. 2. Zero-emission vehicles. When you combine a zero-carbon grid with electric vehicles, bingo, you have zero-carbon transportation. 3. Zero-net energy buildings…4. Zero-waste manufacturing. New techniques in manufacturing, such as 3-D printing or advanced chemistry, can slash waste — and waste is a tax on both the budget and the earth.”

Politico’s Steven Shepard discusses three new polls which indicate that “Democrats are cutting into the GOP’s longstanding turnout advantage in midterm elections, another encouraging sign for the minority party’s hopes of winning the House in November.”According to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released yesterday, “With public interest in the midterms increasing as autumn approaches, our polling shows Democrats and Republicans are about evenly matched in voter enthusiasm,” said Tyler Sinclair, managing director of Morning Consult…If high levels of voter excitement continue to November, it could lead to greater turnout at the ballot box. Only 41.9 percent of eligible voters turned out in the 2014 midterms, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey — less than 45.5 percent in 2010 and 47.8 percent in 2006. A CNN poll affirmed a statistical tie in “enthusiasm,” while a Quinnipiac University poll gives Dems a ten-point edge over Republicans among the “extremely motivated to vote in 2018” identifier.

Following primary returns from four states on Tuesday evening, I saw a news flash from a fifth that was a pretty big deal, which I wrote up immediately at New York:

Ending what many observers expected to be a long, long dispute over the Kansas GOP gubernatorial nomination, perhaps including a recount, incumbent Jeff Colyer abruptly conceded [Tuesday] evening to secretary of state and Trump favorite Kris Kobach.

Kobach led at the end of the regular vote count by a spare 191 votes. Some minor adjustments didn’t change a lot, and the major drama was over the conflicts of interest arising from Kobach’s role as the state’s election chief (he recused himself from the process, but only after issuing some questionable guidance to county officials).

But as provisional ballots rolled in this week, Kobach gradually increased his lead. And what seems to have convinced Colyer to throw in the towel were the final ballots from Johnson County, the state’s largest. He carried it on Election Day but the provisional ballot count there didn’t cut Kobach’s lead at all.

So with a booming 345 vote lead, Kris Kobach became the GOP nominee for governor.

We can expect a gloating tweet from President Trump, who (with some justice) can claim his late endorsement of Kobach put him over the top. But his happiness may be matched by that of Kansas Democrats, who are betting that in the end the voters of their state don’t want to return to the nightmarish fiscal policies of former governor Sam Brownback with a big side order of voter suppression and anti-immigrant histrionics.

The Democratic nominee, State Senator Laura Kelly, will remind a lot of voters of former Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius, who similarly took advantage of a bout of GOP hyperextremism to offer calm, reasonable leadership to her state. A complication in the race will be self-funding independent candidate Greg Orman, who won over 40 percent of the general-election vote in a Senate race against Pat Roberts in 2014 — after the Democratic candidate withdrew. Maybe Orman will return the favor to Democrats this time around.

In any event, a gubernatorial election involving Kobach will have high dramatics and probably a few moments of low comedy.

In his post, “Dems Must Build a Democratic Culture, Too” at The Editorial Board, John Stoehr writes about a big, but inadequately-addressed problem facing Democrats, particularly in midterm elections. Stoehr quotes Paul Glastris, editor in chief of The Washington Monthly, who has posed the problem thusly: “There are approximately 50 million Americans who are eligible to vote but aren’t registered. But there are far more “episodic voters”—citizens who are registered but often don’t show up. More than 100 million registered voters didn’t cast ballots in the 2014 midterms. About 145 million didn’t vote in the primaries.”

We can’t really blame the Russkies, or even the Republicans for that gaping void. As Stoehr continues,

We normally think of two groups worthy of our attention: registered and unregistered voters. But those might be the wrong groups to think about. Maybe we should be thinking about unregistered voters versus what Glastris calls “episodic voters.” These are Americans who are registered but do not reliably vote. Why these groups?

For one, because registration is no guarantee of voting. For another, these groups have different value systems. Unregistered voters, Glastris writes, are unregistered because “they dislike politics and don’t believe voting makes a difference.” “Episodic voters,” however, believe in voting. They just don’t know enough. As Glastris writes: “If you were designing a system to maximize the Democrats’ electoral chances, you’d want it to be primarily focused on educating and mobilizing these episodic voters.”

Glastris rightly points to mechanisms that can be put in place to educate episodic voters. But I think there’s more to it than mechanisms. At the root of this problem is that Americans who don’t vote don’t have a habit of thinking democratically*. In other words, they do not inhabit a culture in which self-determination feels real. There are many reasons for that, I’m sure, but I’m also sure liberals groups and the Democratic Party have good incentive for developing such a culture, ward by ward, block by block, even among people who don’t think voting makes a difference in their lives.

This last sentence underscores a glaring weakness of the Democratic party across America — the lack of cultural institutions which encourage participation by eligible ‘episodic’ voters who have every reason to vote for Democrats.

What might a pro-Democratic “culture, ward by ward, block by block” look like? Democratic Block “captains”? Public hearings sponsored by local Democratic parties? Democratic picnics and festivals, grocery co-ops, coffee shops, recycling centers and credit unions? Free health care fairs, financial literacy classes, free rides to the polls? Why not a Democratic community center, something like “Jimmy’s Hall“?

The idea would be to create a community sense that the local Democratic Party is involved in a range of activities that can help improve people’s lives. It could improve the Democratic brand as a more appealing identity in the community, in stark contrast to the Republicans, who don’t even think about helping people who are struggling with real-world problems. Any ideas out there?

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

I often hear laments that, despite all the other things going wrong for the GOP, Trump himself has an unshakable base of support that will ultimately save him and his party.

This is a myth. Yes, Trump has a strong base of support, but it is not extraordinary and is subject to attrition among voters who have questions about him, his behavior and/or his policies. Trump has not invented a new form of politics where he is invulnerable to voter defection.

First point, his approval rating among Republicans. This is high but hardly unprecedented by historical standards. According to Politifact:

“The most recent publicly available data from Gallup’s weekly tracking poll at the time of Trump’s tweet showed him with 85 percent approval from Republicans.

So how does that 85 percent rating compare with his Republican predecessors? We looked at Gallup historical data for Republican presidents going back to Eisenhower. We looked for the closest polling data for July 29 of their second year in office (the day of Trump’s claim). We used the equivalent period after the inauguration of Gerald Ford, who unlike the others was not sworn in on Jan. 20.

So…not only did George W. Bush have a higher approval rating among Republicans, but so did Dwight Eisenhower and, arguably, George H.W. Bush.

Two other points of comparison make Trump’s achievement less impressive.

One is to compare Trump’s highest approval rating of his tenure so far — 90 percent as recently as mid-July — to the record-high rating for his predecessors through July 29 of their second year in office.

By this measure, Trump actually ties for the second-worst of any post-World War II Republican president, surpassing only Ford.

Another approach is to compare each president on the highest approval rating of their tenure. (Trump has only been in office for a year and a half, but he opened the door to this analysis by claiming the “highest poll numbers in the history of the Republican Party.”)

Once again, by this measure, Trump fares the second worst of any post-war Republican president, only surpassing Ford.

By historical standards, Trump has had “solid, but not extraordinary in-party approval,” said Kathleen Joyce Weldon, director of data operations and communications at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University.”

Second point: Support for Trump is relatively weak among large and important groups of Republicans. According to a study by political scientists Peter K. Enns, Jonathon P. Schuldt and Adrienne Scott:

“During the first two weeks of July, we fielded a nationally representative survey of 1,379 likely voters. Conducted online and on the phone by the National Opinion Research Center, we included only respondents who reported a high likelihood of voting in this year’s midterms. The survey was funded by Cornell’s Center for the Study of Inequality.

In our survey, Trump’s approval rating was 85 percent among Republicans. That’s consistent with other polls. On the surface, the president’s support among his fellow Republicans is overwhelming.

But the key to our analysis was to divide Republicans into three groups: those who say they identify strongly with the Republican Party; those who identify as Republicans but not strongly; and those who call themselves independents but say they lean toward the Republican Party. These distinctions, often obscured in media coverage, are important because research shows that the strength of a voter’s partisan identity has an important effect on their political attitudes.

Among strong Republicans, Trump’s overall approval rating is 93 percent, with 78 percent “strongly” approving of the president. The problem for Trump, however, is that these voters make up less than half of the Republican electorate — and 18 percent of likely voters.

Among the larger number of Republicans who identify less strongly with their party, Trump is much less popular. For example, Trump’s overall approval rating among not-so-strong Republicans is 72 percent, with 38 percent saying they strongly approve. Thirty-four percent say they only “somewhat” approve of Trump. Those numbers are similar among independent-leaning Republicans.”

Third point: Not everyone who voted for Trump is very happy with him. That matters. Nate Cohn on newly-released Pew data:

“There has been little change in President Trump’s approval rating in the last 18 months, and so it’s often assumed that nothing can erode his base of support. The Pew data suggests it’s not so simple.

Yes, nearly half of Mr. Trump’s voters have exceptionally warm views toward him: 45 percent rated their feeling toward him as a 90 or higher out of 100, a figure that is virtually unchanged since his election. But a meaningful number of his voters had reservations about him in November 2016, and even more Trump voters held a neutral or negative view of him in March.

Over all, 18 percent of Mr. Trump’s voters gave him a rating of 50 or less, on a scale of 0 (coldest) to 100 (warmest), up from 13 percent in November 2016.

It is worth noting that the November 2016 Pew survey was taken after Mr. Trump won the presidency, at the height of his post-election honeymoon. But even when you consider the slightly lower ratings voters gave him in the months before the election, the big picture is the same: A modest number of Mr. Trump’s voters didn’t like him that much then, and don’t like him much now.

Women, and especially college-educated women, are the likeliest Trump voters to have serious reservations about him in 2018: A striking 14 percent of the college-educated women who voted for him hold a very cold impression of him, up from just 1 percent in November 2016.”

So don’t believe the hype. Trump’s support is plenty shakable. And it’s being shaken.

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

Buried in the latest Pew report was an extraordinary finding from their study of validated voters in the 2016 election. As you may recall, the exit polls had Trump carrying college-educated whites by 3 points. This was puzzling to many of us since polls prior to the election had been regularly showing Clinton carrying this group by 15-20 points.

Subsequent analysis from the States of Change project strongly indicated that Clinton carried white college voters in the 2016 election, not Trump. Our estimate was that Clinton won this group by around 7 points. Now we have this Pew study based on verified voters that puts Clinton’s margin over Trump among this group at 17 points. 17 points! That’s impressive and indicates that the pre-election polls were in the right ballpark on the white college grad vote and that this group may have crossed over from being a swing group to a solid Democratic one. I might add that this is entirely consistent with the polling and other data we are seeing in the run-up to the 2018 election.

Michael Wines explores what it means that “Voting Rights Advocates Used to Have an Ally in the Government. That’s Changing” in The New York Times. In his lead graphs, Wines writes: “A new voter ID law could shut out many Native Americans from the polls in North Dakota. A strict rule on the collection of absentee ballots in Arizona is being challenged as a form of voter suppression. And officials in Georgia are scrubbing voters from registration rolls if their details do not exactly match other records, a practice that voting rights groups say unfairly targets minority voters….During the Obama administration, the Justice Department would often go to court to stop states from taking steps like those. But 18 months into President Trump’s term, there are signs of change: The department has launched no new efforts to roll back state restrictions on the ability to vote, and instead often sides with them…Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the department has filed legal briefs in support of states that are resisting court orders to rein in voter ID requirements, stop aggressive purges of voter rolls and redraw political boundaries that have unfairly diluted minority voting power — all practices that were opposed under President Obama’s attorneys general.” The rest of the article provides an instructive update on the GOP’s voter suppression tactics, leaving leading to the inescapable conclusion that Democrats must win majorities in congress and state legislators and more governorships to effectively address the threat.

“The money and the machinery is there. It’s just that not enough of it is directed at Latinos. With total spending on the midterm elections expected to reach $4 billion, outside groups and super PACs have almost unlimited funds. Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer has pledged $30 million to take back the House. Liberal philanthropist George Soros has already spent $15 million. And Michael Bloomberg has promised $80 million. Yet none of the cash they have allocated has been earmarked exclusively for a major new initiative to reach Latinos. Bloomberg has been focused on gun control and Steyer on climate change—as well as impeachment. He has spent another $40 million on billboards in Times Square, town hall meetings, and TV ads urging the House to oust the president. “If he’d given Mi Familia Vota [a Latino group that works to register and mobilize Hispanic voters] that money, they would have registered enough Latino voters by now to turn Texas blue,” said Andres Ramirez, a veteran Democratic strategist. Yet most of these liberal megadonors “would scoff at Latino groups making this request,” he added. “They wouldn’t even entertain it.”” — From Adrian Carrasquilo’s “Democrats Are Taking Latino Voters for Granted: The party has the money and machinery. Why is so little of it going toward Hispanic outreach?” at The New Republic.

Dems are going to like the title of Ronald Brownstein’s latest article at The Atlantic, “The Ohio Results Point to Democratic Strength in 2018—And a Showdown in 2020: The party has a clear formula for victory in November: sweep America’s suburbs, and pick off a few other Republicans for good measure.” Says Brownstein: “Democrats will be operating with very little margin for error if they must win back the House almost solely by capturing white-collar suburban seats. Their path would be much easier if they could also win a respectable number of the Republican seats they are targeting outside of the major metro areas, including districts in upstate New York, northeastern and southwestern Iowa, downstate Illinois, California’s Central Valley, and Washington State, where Republican Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Jaime Herrera Beutler both showed weakness in Tuesday night’s primary…Democrats, and outside election handicappers, like their odds in several of those races (especially given the agricultural community’s unease over Trump’s ongoing trade wars). But Balderson’s big margins in such blue-collar and small-town counties as Marion, Morrow, and Muskingum are reminders of how strong a headwind Democrats must overcome in those places.”

Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson makes the case that “The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it” in his Washington Post column: “In November, many Republican leaners and independents will face a difficult decision. The national Democratic Party under Nancy Pelosi and Charles E. Schumer doesn’t share their views or values. But President Trump is a rolling disaster of mendacity, corruption and prejudice. What should they do?…They should vote Democratic in their House race, no matter who the Democrats put forward…Under Republican control, important committees — such as Chairman Devin Nunes’s House Intelligence Committee — have become scraping, sniveling, panting and pathetic tools of the executive branch. Only Democratic control can drain this particular swamp…The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it in the House. In this case, a Republican vote for a Democratic representative will be an act of conscience.”

According to the NYT update, “Tracking the House Races to Watch in the 2018 Midterm Elections” by Alexander Burns, which presents data from the Cook Political Report, “There are currently 62 highly competitive seats — those considered a tossup between the two parties or leaning slightly toward one,” and “Right now, 10 seats currently held by Republicans are either likely to be won by Democrats or lean slightly toward them, while another two dozen Republican-held seats are designated as tossups — political coin flips that could just as easily break in either direction.” Further, “There are also more than 50 other Republican-held seats that are contested enough to make Democratic victory at least a plausible possibility. Many of those are in conservative-leaning suburbs and rural areas in the Midwest and West.”

At New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore draws from Andrew Levison’s Washington Monthly article “What Democrats Still Don’t Get About Winning Back the White Working Class,” and observes: “The most important thing right now for Democrats may be abandoning the idea there is any ideological template — progressive or centrist — for dealing with white working-class voters. Telling them to chow down on government benefits while abandoning their cultural viewpoints, as progressives sometimes advocate, is arguably condescending, and the common “centrist” approach of refusing to talk about hot-button issues is disingenuous. Connecting with these voters simply and authentically is also superior to a heavy-handed triangulating message that alienates “base” Democratic voters or college-educated suburban swing voters.”

“Campaign finance was once famously dismissed by Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, as being of no greater concern to American voters than “static cling,” notes Farah Stockman in “For Voters Sick of Money in Politics, a New Pitch: No PAC Money Accepted” at The New York Times. “But since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 opened the floodgates for unrestricted political spending, polls have shown that voters are growing increasingly bitter about the role of money in politics…The issue is now emerging in midterm races around the country, with dozens of Democrats rejecting donations from political action committees, or PACs, that are sponsored by corporations or industry groups. A handful of candidates, including Mr. Phillips, are going a step further and refusing to take any PAC money at all, even if it comes from labor unions or fellow Democrats.” It is proving to be a popular approach for Demopcrats, because “A recent Pew report found that 75 percent of the public said “there should be limits on the amount of money individuals and organizations” can spend on political campaigns.”

Relying on small donations from individuals is more commendable than being financed by corporate interests. But Eleanor Clift reports at The Daily Beast that unrelenting pitches for money from small donors can get pretty obnoxious, as well. Clift quotes extensively from retired liberal journalist Roger Williams:  “He applauds Democratic efforts to go after small donations, but adds that “it’s the way they’re doing it is very aggravating. They lead with absolute panic time, panic time all the time. This election, whether it’s the most important one, I don’t know, but yes, I think it’s terribly important or I would not have given any money—but it’s NOT all about money and these people make it sound like it’s all about money…Further, you guys are supposed to be political pros. Your job is to win elections, which includes figuring out how to do so in races that are difficult. Whining about being outspent and groveling before people like me for a few bucks is not the way to accomplish that.  Do your G.D. jobs!”

If you were wondering why The Republicans stopped bragging so much about their tax cut, a NYT editorial explains that “The idea that the tax cuts were going to line workers’ pockets was always a mirage. Most people will enjoy only a modest and temporary tax cut — families earning $25,00 or less will save on average just $60 on their federal tax this year, and those making between $48,600 and $86,100 will save $930, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Families in the top 1 percent, on the other hand, will save an average of $51,140.”

Reading and watching coverage of the August 7 primaries led me to a meditation on how confusing and unhelpful intra-party labels have become this year, which I wrote up at New York:

It is reasonably clear that Bernie Sanders and his distinct movement (joined on the campaign trail by the new Democratic Socialist megastar from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), had a rough night on Tuesday, when candidates they had backed in person, Michigan gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Kansas congressional aspirant Brent Welder, both lost races many expected them to win, against (respectively) Gretchen Whitmer and Sharice Davids. But were those defeats for “progressivism” or victories for “centrism”? That depends on whom you ask.

The Third Way organization, an influential think tank that doesn’t do actual campaigns, was quick to get on speed-dial with political reporters and pundits and claim victory, as reflected in this quote from a piece by the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel:

“‘This is a fantastic night for centrist Democrats,’ said Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy at the center-left Third Way think tank. ‘We nominated the right candidates who can win House seats and governor’s mansions for the Democratic Party. There’s a quiet enthusiasm in the middle. There’s a quiet voice that people are not hearing in the media, but it’s loud at the ballot box.'”

A piece on the Democratic primaries by influential New York Times columnist Tom Edsall similarly described the primaries as pitting “Sanders-style policies” against the “centrist” advice of Third Way.

But The Nation’s Joan Walsh — a self-conscious “progressive” who is not, however, exactly enamored of the Bernie Sanders movement — pushed back on the whole narrative with gusto:

“I’m not aware of Third Way, a centrist think tank, actually lifting a finger for any of Tuesday’s candidates, by the way. I’m not sure either Whitmer or Davids would label themselves Third Way centrists.

“The real story is that progressives won big on Tuesday might, because by only the most cramped and divisive standards would Davids and Whitmer be considered ‘centrist.’ Both are open to Medicare for All as an end goal but favor Medicaid expansion in the meantime. Both are staunchly pro-choice and pro–Planned Parenthood funding, favor gun-safety reforms and protections for DACA youth as well as comprehensive immigration reform. Whitmer supports a $15 minimum wage.”

So how do you define Democratic candidates like Whitmer and Davids? They aren’t from Bernieland, and would actually fail some lefty litmus tests (like immediate and unqualified support for single-payer). But nor are they out there objecting to “class warfare” or criticizing teachers unions or separating themselves from their party on controversial positions.

Part of the definitional problem is the long war over ownership of the word “progressive.” During the 1990s, when after decades of demonization by the right the term “liberal” fell into disrepute, “progressive” more or less became a default term of self-identification for nearly all left-of-dead-center folk. It’s no accident that the think tank of the quintessential (if now defunct) “centrist” organization the Democratic Leadership Council named itself the Progressive Policy Institute (which is not at all defunct). And very term Third Way, in both the U.S. and U.K., originally connoted an effort to “modernize the progressive tradition,” not just to move the traditional left parties “to the center” (hence the names New Democrats and New Labour).

That all seems to be ancient history at this point, but the idea that “progressive” means following Bernie Sanders or espousing democratic socialism is most definitely disputed, as Joan Walsh’s argument shows.

Some prefer distinctions like “Establishment Democrats” versus “Insurgent Democrats.” That may be useful temporarily in primaries where one can track where official party and elected official money and endorsements are and are not going. Trouble is, though, that once primaries are over, the “Establishment” almost invariably backs Democratic nominees regardless of any prior “insurgent” labels. And in this particular election year, that sort of dichotomy (and for that matter, the “progressives versus centrists” framing) collides with the reality that a large number of “Establishment-backed” women are winning primaries with substantial help from EMILY’s List, a cause-oriented pro-choice group. Some critics claim that this powerful organization doesn’t like risk-taking progressivism these days, or is too beholden to rich donors, or is too close to the Democratic Party itself. But it has its own criteria for picking candidates (early, as its name suggests), and only someone who thinks “progressive” means “Bernie Sanders supporters” would call EMILY’s List “centrist.” It has supported all sorts of pro-choice Democratic women, including, as it happens, Gretchen Whitmer and Sharice Davids.

The bottom line is that left-of-center folk probably need a new vocabulary, or at the very least a clear and thorough debate over what the terms they actually use–actually mean. It would probably be wise to undertake that debate after the November midterms. At that point they may be in a better position to determine whether voters even care about all these labels.