New developments on the #demsindisarray front as The New York Times ran a long story over the weekend under the dramatic headline “Democrats Brace as Storm Brews Far to Their Left… Fiercely Liberal Voices… Young Voters Urge Party to ‘Wake Up and Pay Attention.’”
“Storm”? “Far” to their left? I’d like to interview that headline writer. Also, “brace,” for that matter, because the article itself doesn’t really quote anybody doing any bracing, in the sense of preparing themselves for arduous battle. It quotes a couple people—Martin O’Malley, oddly, and the state party chairman in Michigan—reminding Times readers that the party still has moderate voices, and voters, too. But it doesn’t have anyone screaming to the heavens that this is suicide.
And it doesn’t have anyone screaming that because I don’t think many people really think that. Democrats disagree, and in some cases strongly, on how far left they believe the party ought to go, but the ones I talk to accept that this is happening and understand why it’s happening.
The Times article refers mostly to young people, and it’s mostly young people who are pulling the party left. And it’s easy to see why. If you’re 27 and not right wing or rich or both, you’ve grown up in a country that in most fundamental ways has gotten worse and worse since you were of an age to start paying attention to things. Inequality is worse. Opportunity is worse. Wage growth is worse. Benefit structures are worse. Job stability is far worse. If you live in a small town, your town is probably dying, and half the people you know are on drugs.
If you’re around that age and you call yourself a socialist, well, who can blame you? The capitalism that we’ve been practicing in this country for certainly the last 18 years has failed everyone except the top 10 or so percent. Barack Obama softened some of this around the edges, and with Obamacare, he did more than that. But for most people—for eight or nine out of 10 Americans—our right-wing version of capitalism has narrowed their opportunities instead of expanding them. It’s been a criminal failure (in some cases literally, even though Obama chose not to prosecute anybody).
So I think everybody understands why this is happening. And I don’t think I know a single Democrat who believes ’90s-style centrism is the answer. It’s not. Even the centrists are moving left.
Zawn Villines’s post, “Authoritarianism Thrives on Demoralization: How to Fight Trump and Stay Psychologically Healthy” at Daily Kos (via the San Diego Free Press) suggests 15 ways to avoid activist burnout, including: “It’s time to stop pointing fingers at those who didn’t vote. Unless, of course, you want them to get even angrier and not vote again. It’s time to sway them, court them, welcome them into the party, give them a seat at the table, and when they’re ready, encourage them to run. We need everyone, and we especially need those who see what’s wrong with party business as usual.” Also, “Don’t waste your energy arguing with Nazis on Facebook. Don’t let your conservative family “devil’s advocate” you into a state of rage and panic. Don’t allow people to burn through energy you could spend on something useful” and “Stop Wasting Time Talking About How Bad Things Are or Will Be… spinning our wheels in panic about a future we can’t control only wastes energy. Do what you can to protect yourself, yes. But after you’ve done that, stop reading about how bad things are, stop trying to convince people how hopeless it all is, and get back to work.” To this last I would add, ‘Let go of political instant gratification – real social change can take years, even generations. Fight for the kids, their kids and coming generations. Be a happy, long-haul warrior.’
Here’s another great ad for Democratic congressional campaigns to learn from:
Eric Bradner has an update on “Democratic governors set to take on the bigger names in 2020 race” at CNN Politics. Bradner writes, “A handful of Democratic governors are wading into the early stages of the 2020 presidential contest…Three governors — Montana’s Steve Bullock, Colorado’s John Hickenlooper and Washington state’s Jay Inslee — each said in interviews at the National Governors Association summer meeting in New Mexico this week that they are considering 2020 runs.” Noting that all three governors have visited Iowa already, Bradner adds, “Two Democratic former governors — Massachusetts’ Deval Patrick and Virginia’s Terry McAuliffe — are also considering 2020 runs…the governors think they have a compelling case to make: While other Democratic leaders were in Washington criticizing President Donald Trump, they’ve enacted agendas designed to forcefully counter him on issues like climate change and health care.” All five governors have impressive track records and solid approval ratings in their respective states. Given the plummeting approval rates for congress, it seems increasingly possible that one of them, or another governor to come, will win the Democratic nomination.
According to judoka Masao Takahashi, Jiu-jitsu is “manipulating the opponent’s force against themselves rather than confronting it with one’s own force.” Perhaps Dems can deploy some political jiu-jitsu with an ad message that Republican domination of America’s major political institutions has produced only one legislative “accomplishment” — a multibillion dollar tax break for the wealthy. There could also be a Democratic meme/ad reminding voters that “The GOP has control of the White House, the Congress and the Supreme Court, and the only health care “reform” they are proposing is taking away coverage for prior conditions. Pathetic.”
At The Plum Line, Paul Waldman works a version of this angle: “As much attention as we all give to the latest outrage from President Trump, polls have repeatedly shownhealth care to be at or near the top of the public’s agenda when it comes to the midterm elections. Republicans are clearly nervous: They are planning symbolic votes in the House on the same old GOP health-care ideas (health savings accounts!) as a way of dealing with Democratic attacks on the issue…Unlike many issues, with health care, Democrats can make a persuasive argument no matter to whom they are talking. To their own base, they can say, “Republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act and take away Medicaid from millions, and now they want to do even more to take away health security.” And to swing voters, they can say, “Look what Republicans have done to you. Your premiums keep going up, your out-of pocket costs keep going up, and now the Trump administration even wants to take away protections for people with preexisting conditions. They said they’d fix everything, and they failed.” For Democrats, Waldman argues, “as a piece of marketing, “Medicare for all” is dynamite. Everyone loves Medicare, and the idea of just giving it to everybody is incredibly appealing. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation pollfound that 59 percent of respondents favored “Medicare-for-all, in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan,” while 75 percent favored a Medicare for all plan that would be open to anyone but not required.”
When we talk about “checks and balances,” it’s usually in the context of our political institutions. This includes the three branches of government being designed to limit one another or other provisions of the constitution, such as ratification of amendments by the states. Could the GOP’s majorities also provide Democrats with a ‘checks and balances’ messaging opportunity? To restore healthy balance to our government, voting Democratic is the most effective thing a citizen can do in 2018. As Lee Drutman observed at vox.com, “There is no separation of powers without divided government.” It may seem a self-evident point, but it can’t hurt to encourage voters to think about it a little more. Dems could have a jiu-jitsu ad about one-party rule, and the responsibility of citizens who value balance and bipartisanship to vote accordingly: “The ulitimate force for ‘checks and balances’ is the voter” is a message that may resonate in the fall.
Despite gridlock in congress, Democrats have reason for hope in the state legislatures: “Since the Parkland, Fla., high school massacre in February,” writes Amber Phillips in her article “After Parkland, gun-control advocates see a turning point for new state laws” at The Fix, “gun-control advocates have said there is something different about the debate this year, an energy on the issue that is driving gun safety to the top of minds of suburban moms and younger, traditionally less engaged voters. How, or if, that affects the November midterm elections is to be determined. But there is an early manifestation of this newfound political energy: Gun-control advocates had their best year in state legislatures in recent history…Since the Florida shooting, the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence counts 55 new gun-control laws passing in 26 states. That is far more success than they normally see, any way you measure it: in the number of laws, the variety of the laws passed and the bipartisan support a number of them had. Republican governors in 15 states signed bills gun-control advocates supported…It is hard to overstate what a shift this is from last year, where gun-control groups were focused on trying to stop states from allowing guns in universities in churches. But after Americans lived through three of the deadliest mass shootings in its history, it was the pro-gun rights side that was on the defense in state legislatures in a way it has not been before.”
Democrats had better be on high alert for voter “caging” projects by Republicans, particularly in swing districts. Li Zhou reports that “Voter purges are on the rise in states with a history of racial discrimination” at Vox. Zhou notes that “States are kicking a growing number of voters off their rolls in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act…The spike is notable. Between 2006 and 2008, 12 million voters were purged from voter rolls. Between 2014 and 2016, that number rose to 16 million — a roughly 33 percent increase…Voter purge rates in preclearance jurisdictions between 2012 to 2016 far outpaced those in jurisdictions that were not previously subject to federal preclearance. The report — which analyzed 6,600 jurisdictions and calculated purge rates for 49 states — concludes that as many as 2 million more voters were removed from voter rolls due to the higher purge rates in the preclearance states.”
James Downie explains “What really disturbs voters about Russia’s election interference” at Post Partisan.” Citing the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, Downie writes, “the poll also suggests that, in talking about the “Russia scandal,” Trump opponents should focus less on Russia and more on the election interference itself…Partisans support or oppose Trump depending on their political party, and independents are less concerned about the president’s performance than furor in Washington and the media would suggest. Clear majorities of Republicans approved of how Trump handled the summit and believe American leadership has “gotten stronger.” Democrats said the opposite. And for independents, only 38 percent thought the president went “too far” in supporting Putin, compared with 52 percent who answered “not far enough” or “about right.”…Trump opponents can be slightly relieved that independents didn’t side with Republicans. Overall, though, as The Post’s Scott Clement and Dan Balz note, “The findings indicate that while Trump was judged critically for his summit performance, the event has not at this time proved to be a significant turning point in his presidency.” If you wondered why even after Helsinki most Republicans avoided criticizing the president, this poll is your answer…But on one question — whether voters approve of Trump expressing doubt about whether Russia tried to influence the 2016 election — the numbers look different. On that query, 60 percent of independents disapprove — a clear majority. Furthermore, only 51 percent of Republicans approve of Trump impugning the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusions and 31 percent disapprove. Yes, that’s still a majority in favor, but by Republican standards, 51 percent support for the president is astonishingly low. Remember, at the 500-day mark of his presidency, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans was nearly 90 percent. Other than George W. Bush post-Sept. 11, that’s the highest support for a president within his own party since World War II. Any issue where only half of Republicans support the president and nearly a third oppose is an opportunity to erode enthusiasm among his base…for everyone who understands that protecting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe is vital, this poll is a reminder to keep election interference itself front and center when making that case.”
The following article by Stan Greenberg, Greenberg Research, Page Gardner, Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund and Nancy Zdunkewicz, Democracy Corps, is cross-posted from democracycorps.com
Pundits built a new conventional wisdom that included higher job approval ratings for President Donald Trump due to the tax cuts and strong economy that could shrink the enthusiasm ad- vantage and midterm vote for Democrats. But they are wrong about the political trends, the econ- omy, and what motivates Democrats. They miss how the GOP strategy branded Trump and the GOP as only out for themselves and the rich.
This is according to the second of three waves of WVWVAF’s battleground research program conducted by Democracy Corps. This program consists of phone polling among registered voters and an on-going web-panel of 1,813 target voters – the Rising American Electorate of minorities, millennials, and unmarried women, plus white working class women – in 12 states with competi- tive races for governor, Senate, and Congress, including 42 Cook competitive seats.1 The same web-panel respondents were interviewed in April and late June, so these reported trends we know to be true.
Here are the key findings:
The off-year trends that favor Democrats have solidified and grown. In fact, Trump’s base strategy is pushing up Democrats and anti-Trump voters’ intention to vote in this off-year and is widening the enthusiasm gap.
Over the past three months, a nationalized Democratic advantage has emerged across the Senate, congressional and governors’ battlegrounds as Democrats have made gains in the Cook battleground districts and in the governors’ races.1
Despite perceptions of a strong macro-economy, Donald Trump’s poor job approval rat- ings barely budged from April; nor did the intense disapproval of his presidency dimin- ish, thereby fueling and sustaining the enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republi- cans.
Trump and the GOP have a strategy, but it is not working: they did not make gains on handling taxes, the economy or immigration.
Pundits are missing how frustrated ordinary citizens are with politicians who put govern- ment to work for their big donors and corporations, and don’t get how much ordinary people are struggling with wages that don’t keep up with higher costs, health care above all.
The passage of the Republicans’ tax scam for the rich has created a shared brand for Trump and the GOP as out for themselves and the rich.
Yes, voters know there are more jobs and they are feeling more financially secure, but that has nothing to do with their wages and the cost of living. Two-thirds of the base say the growing economy is not helping them and a big majority says wages aren’t keeping up with rising costs. Dominating their economic pain are health care costs.
When asked what issues are impacting their vote, Democrats and the Rising American Electorate point first to the cost of health care, followed by guns.
Democrats have powerful messages that drive higher turnout. Each begins with attacks on corrupt work for wealthy donors and corporations, highlights the corrupt tax deal for corporations and accuses Trump and the GOP of governing for the rich and themselves while voters struggle. The voters know which politicians are in charge and who they are working for, and they reward Democrats who embrace these messages.
The strongest Democratic message platform: politicians in Washington divide the country so they can cut corrupt deals for big donors, corporations, and themselves which hurt working people and the middle class. The reckless increase in the deficit means less in- vestment, less help with health care, and puts Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid at risk.
A millennial-directed message on this platform has real power and drives up turnout among Democratic voters.
(On behalf of Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund, Democracy Corps conducted the second in a series of three phone surveys with accompanying web-surveys among an on-going panel of minorities, millennials, unmarried women and white non-college educated women (the RAE+) in 12 states with Governor races (10 Senate race states): Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin. The phone survey of 1,000 registered voters with 66 percent cell-rate was conducted June 11-14, 2018. The voter-file matched web-panel of 1,813 “RAE+” registered voters was conducted June 13-28, 2018.)
Watching a political ad for Georgia GOP gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp, in which he labels himself as a “politically incorrect conservative,” made some things fall into place for me, which I wrote about at New York.
Not that long ago, “political incorrectness” (perhaps most conspicuously identified with abrasive lefty gabber Bill Maher, whose Comedy Central/ABC show Politically Incorrect was on the air from 1993 until 2002) was a politically anodyne (and bipartisan) term connoting a rebellious unwillingness to accept norms of civility in public discourse. A 2010 essay on the term in Psychology Today identified it with Maher, Larry David, and the subversive schoolyard humor of South Park.
But by 2016, “political correctness” had become the target of virtually every conservative politician in America. One pioneer was Dr. Ben Carson, who developed an elaborate conspiracy theory in which “political correctness” (an example he often used was restrictions on torturing terrorist suspects) was a weapon for suppressing free speech and disarming Americans in order to enslave them. But Donald Trump took attacks on the PC devil to a new level, in a one-two combo in which he would say something egregiously offensive and then pose as the brave rebel against political correctness. Trump branded this approach in the first GOP presidential debate in 2015:
“I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t, frankly, have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time, either.”
Again and again, Trump deployed this strategy, and by the time he won the GOP presidential nomination, most of the Republican Party had adopted the same evil habit of exulting in “brave” bigotry. By the time President Trump accused the 2017 Charlottesville counter-protesters as being as bad as the white supremacists they were protesting, anti-PC ideology had reached new heights, as I argued at the time:
“[I]n the blink of an eye, the backlash to acts of simple racial decency began. It was not confined to Donald Trump’s campaign, but in many corners of the right, hostility to ‘political correctness’ — defined as sensitivity to the fears and concerns of, well, anyone other than white men — became a hallmark of the “populist” conservatism Trump made fashionable and ultimately ascendent.”
By now being “politically incorrect” among conservative pols has become a totem of ideological orthodoxy as firm and clear as any lefty campus speech code. Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp has provided an especially clear example of its use in the ad he is running on the eve of his tight primary runoff with Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle:
The title of this ad, tellingly, is “Offends.”
Its use by Kemp is particularly interesting because his earlier ads were an orgy of over-the-top right-wing madness, culminating in the proud “politically incorrect” claim.
Indeed, his opponent Casey Cagle, a hard-core conservative by national standards, was caught on tape complaining that the whole gubernatorial nomination process had become a competition to demonstrate “who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck, and who could be the craziest” — a clear reference to Kemp’s ads. But now Kemp just uses the “politically incorrect” tagline, and everyone knows what it means.
If Kemp wins his runoff on July 24 with this strategy, it is going to reinforce the already powerful Trumpian impulse to treat conservative “base” voters as motivated above all by the desire to go back to the wonderful days when a white man could without repercussions tell a racist joke, “tease” women about their physical appearance or sexual morals, and mock people who in some way (say, a disability) differ from one’s own self. At some point we may all come to understand that it’s not (except in some scattered college campuses) the politically correct who are imposing speech norms on the rest of us, but the politically incorrect who won’t be happy until offending the less powerful is again recognized as among the principal Rights of Man.
Now Kemp has been endorsed by Donald Trump. There is a comfortable consistency in that development.
From “Stop calling it ‘meddling.’ It’s actually information warfare” by Brian Klaas, co-author of “How to Rig an Election” and a fellow in global politics at the London School of Economics: “I’ll admit — I, too, have used the phrase “election meddling” many times. My bad. Somehow, it became the default terminology for the deliberately destabilizing actions launched by the Kremlin to help Trump win and to sow chaos and division within the United States…But that phrase is woefully inadequate. These continuing attacks are neither meddling nor “interference,” another euphemism. They’re a part of gibridnaya voyna — Russian for “hybrid warfare.” The best term for what we’re talking about would be “information warfare…As Ofer Fridman points out in his book “Russian ‘Hybrid Warfare’: Resurgence and Politicization,” the concepts behind Russia’s digital attacks are not new. They trace their origins to long-forgotten Russian military theorists, such as Evgeny Messner, who understood that conventional military operations had limitations that could be overcome if complemented by unconventional tactics that don’t involve bullets or bombs…Contemporary scholars such as Igor Panarin have channeled Messner’s ideas, arguing that it is easier to weaken the United States by dividing Americans against themselves or by manipulating American political dynamics than it is to beat the United States on the battlefield…This isn’t “meddling.” It’s information warfare. And the sooner we change the terminology, the faster we’ll treat the threat with the seriousness it deserves.”
Findings from the University of Virginia Center for Politics/Ipsos Poll, Just Half of Americans Believe Elections Are Fair and Open: New national survey shows Americans critical of big money in politics, supportive of disclosure, but skeptical of judicial intervention” note that “Only about half of American adults believe elections are fair and open, and large majorities of Americans express skepticism about big money in politics and favor disclosure of donations…By a 51%-43% margin, those surveyed agreed with the statement that “American elections are fair and open.” However, there was a partisan gap, as 68% of Republicans but just 43% of Democrats agreed with the statement. Couched opinions — those who just “somewhat” agreed or disagreed with the statement — were more common than strong opinions from Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
President Trump’s endorsement of Brian Kemp for the Georgia GOP nomination for Governor may help Democratic nominee Stacy Abrams. Trump’s endorsement of Secretary of State Kemp over the Republican establishment’s preferred candidate, Lt. Governor Casey Cagle accentuates the state GOP’s divisions. If it ends up giving Kemp the edge he needs for winning the nomination, Abrams may gain some entre with Georgia moderates, who are embarrassed by Kemp’s widely-ridiculed shotgun ad. But Trump’s endorsement may be based less on Kemp’s extremist vews on guns than his amenability to Russian meddling in Georgia’s elections — an issue Abrams can mine for still more unexpected votes.
For those who have wondered why Republicans hate financier George Soros so much, The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s James Salzer has an instructive article, “$1 million Soros gift gives Georgia Democrats advantage over state GOP.” As Salzer writes, “Thanks to a $1 million contribution from billionaire mega-donor George Soros, the Georgia Democratic Party began the second half of 2018 with three times as much money in the bank as the state’s majority Republican Party, according to new campaign finance reports.” But don’t worry about the Georgia Republicans being underfunded, since “millions of dollars are expected to pour in from donors once the GOP selects its nominees for governor and lieutenant governor on July 24. And legislative and independent Republican political action committees have built up war chests in anticipation of the races as well.”
Eugene Scott reports at The Fix that “Black and Latino voters are way more likely than white voters to report ballot problems.” Scott writes that “White Americans are much less likely than black and Latino Americans to express concerns about being denied the right to vote. About a quarter (27 percent) of white Americans say this is a serious issue. But at least 6 in 10 Latino (60 percent) and black (62 percent) Americans say this is an issue…While 3 percent of white Americans say they or someone in their household were told they lacked the correct identification the last time they tried to vote, the number of black (9 percent) and Latino (9 percent) Americans who say they or someone they know experienced this is three times higher…Four percent of white Americans say they were harassed or bothered while trying to vote during their most recent visit to the polls. That number climbs to 7 percent for black Americans and nearly 1 in 10 (9 percent) for Latino Americans…Five percent of white Americans said they or a household member were told their name was not on the rolls despite being registered the last time they tried to vote. The percentage of black (10 percent) and Latino Americans (11 percent) who had that experience was at least double.”
Scott also shares concerns about the Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court from Ari Berman, author of “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” who tweeted that “Obama DOJ blocked South Carolina voter ID law that would’ve disenfranchised “tens of thousands” of minority voters. Then Brett Kavanaugh wrote opinion upholding it. His nomination very bad sign for voting rights.” Also, “Leslie Proll, former policy director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, tweeted that voting rights in particular could be under threat with Kavanaugh on the bench, in part based on his response to the Obama Justice Department blocking a voter identification law it found discriminatory.”
As a presidential candidate, Trump’s protectionist threats had understandable resonance with rust belt workers who felt something needed to be done to protect further erosion of jobs in their communities, a valid concern shared by America’s labor movement. Now Trump hopes to reinvigorate his fading working-class support with a whole-hog trade war. Democratic candidates in the rust belt who have to grapple with Trump’s trade policy must be able to articulate the distinction between responsible and carefully-targeted protectionist measures, on the one hand, and Trump’s reckless trade war on the other. Dems can note the “infant industries” argument that tariffs are needed to help new American businesses become competitive in the world market. In addition, Paul Krugman argues that tariffs are best deployed when unemployment is high, not at 4 percent, and can be counter-productive in times of high employment. Democrats can add that some imports can be fairly targeted because they violate principles of fair trade, such as using child labor or violating health safety standards. But all Democrats should feel comfortable in calling out Trump’s trade policies as reckless, ill-considered overkill, way too broad, and designed more to put on a big show than to help anybody. Dems should always emphasize the difference between lazer-targeted trade restrictions by experts and a sledge-hammer wielded by a clumsy ignoramous.
In his New York Times op-ed, “Why Real Wages Still Aren’t Rising,” Jared Bernstein makes some sobering points that Democrats should take into account in their messaging. Bernstein notes that “stagnant wages for factory workers and non-managers in the service sector — together they represent 82 percent of the labor force — is mainly the outcome of a long power struggle that workers are losing. Even at a time of low unemployment, their bargaining power is feeble, the weakest I’ve seen in decades. Hostile institutions — the Trump administration, the courts, the corporate sector — are limiting their avenues for demanding higher pay…The next recession is lurking out there, and when it hits, whatever gains American workers were able to wring out of the economic expansion will be lost to the long-term weakness of their bargaining clout. Workers’ paychecks reflect workers’ power, and they are both much too weak.”
So how much negative freight does the term “socialist” carry nowadays? The question has particular relevance for Sen. Bernie Sanders and his followers who are often hassled by the media and conservatives about it. Sanders just shruggs it off, secure in the knowledge that polls indicate the term just doesn’t have as much stigma as in the past. At The New York Times Magazine, Yale professor Beverly Gage describes an amusing scene in which a Sanders supporter puts it in down-home perspective: “In a notorious 2018 interview, an Infowars reporter cornered a woman outside a Sanders appearance to ask, “Why is socialism good?” Soon the reporter was warning that in Venezuela, “a majority of the country is currently eating rats,” while the perplexed interviewee maintained that “I just want people to have health care, honey” — not a bad response.
Swing Left and 22 other progressive organizations announced a joint effort Tuesday aimed at mobilizing volunteers to get out the vote for Democratic candidates in the days leading up to the Nov. 6 elections.
The Last Weekend, as the groups are calling the initiative, would serve as a national call to action from Saturday, Nov. 3 until Election Day ― a period when get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts are most effective. Swing Left, a post-2016 upstart that aims to help Democrats retake control of the U.S. House, believes the campaign is unprecedented in its scope and scale.
The goal of The Last Weekend is not only to maximize Democratic turnout in a midterm year, when Democratic turnout has historically been lower, but also to provide a central coordinating arm for veteran party activists and political newcomers who want to take action but are not always sure how.
This comes as welcome news to Democrats, who may be wondering why it took this excellent idea so long. “The weekend blitz’s organizers hope to create a veritable army of volunteers with formal commitments of over 1 million hours from the Saturday before the election until the election itself,” notes Marans. “Volunteers will be able to sign up for shifts at thelastweekend.org, or by texting WEEKEND to 50409.” Marans adds,
The groups behind The Last Weekend vary considerably in terms of their ideology, relationship to the official Democratic Party and area of electoral focus. The participating organizations are Swing Left, March On, MoveOn, Indivisible, Organizing for Action, the Democratic Attorneys General Association, Flippable, the Arena, Center for Popular Democracy Action, National Domestic Workers Alliance, the Latino Victory Fund, the Progressive Turnout Project, NewFounders, Mobilize America, Sister District, Wall of US, Working Families Party, Resist Bot, Stand Up America, Democrats.com, #VoteProChoice, United We Dream and the Collective PAC.
The coalition has “no single message, policy focus or script,” and the component groups have both overlapping and separate agendas. But they are all focused on working together to increase voter turnout for Democatic candidates. “What is uniting a pretty broad swath of America right now is the existential urgency of stopping the Trump agenda and ending the Republican control of Congress and state legislatures,” notes Joe Dinkin of the Working Families Party.
And not a minute too soon, given the critical importance of the 2018 midterm elections for America’s future. It would be even better if the coalition sinks long-term roots — as a permanent force for Democratic success.
Here is the first of an upcomming series of promotional videos for ‘The Last Weekend’:
There were actually a few important places in 2016 where Democrats did better than they did in 2012. Arizona was one such place. Obama lost the state by 9 points, Hillary Clinton by only 3.5 points. Democrats improved their margins among Latinos, Asians/others, white noncollege voters and especially white college graduates (the latter group split almost evenly between Trump and Clinton).
Could these trends continue and, combined with the ongoing shift toward a more Latino electorate, finally tip Arizona into blue territory? It is certainly possible. If so, we may the first manifestations of this shift in 2018 election results. Politico magazine has a lengthy article by Ethan Epstein out about this year’s races in Arizona, accompanied by a revealing poll of the state’s voters.
“President Donald Trump’s unpopularity, coupled with an electorate that has…grown more Latino….has put two crucial races in play. One is the governor’s contest, where incumbent Republican Doug Ducey faces a likely challenge from David Garcia, a Hispanic-American professor and education expert at Arizona State University. A number of House seats are up for grabs in the state. Then there’s the race to fill Flake’s seat that pits Democratic Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema against, depending on how the primary shakes out, establishment-backed Republican Congresswoman Martha McSally. The last time a Democrat won that seat was in 1982.
A new POLITICO/AARP poll shows Democrats ahead by 7 points in generic ballots in both the governor’s and Senate races. But to actually win statewide elections in this highly ethnically polarized state, Democrats will need to juice turnout among younger and especially older Latinos, who have tended to vote at lower rates than other voters in their age group — who also are trending ever more Republican….
The new POLITICO/AARP poll shows that among Arizona Hispanics only 26 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” approve of the job the president is doing; 72 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” disapprove. The congressional and gubernatorial polls tell a similar tale, with only 22 percent of Latinos supporting the generic Republican candidate for Congress and the same percentage backing Ducey’s reelection bid.”
Disapproval of Trump is nearly as strong among young voters in general who disapprove of Trump by at 65-30 margin. These same young voters massively back Democrats in the elections for governor and Senator.
Get these voters to the polls and a blue dawn could break over Arizona in 2018.
At pbs.org, Meg Dalton reports on President Trump’s full pardon of Dwight and Steven Hammond, “father-and-son ranchers from Oregon who were convicted of intentionally setting fire to federal land two years ago…The Hammonds became central to the debate over public lands in the West when their imprisonment inspired the now-infamous ranching family, the Bundys, and a cadre of anti-federal government militants to occupy the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January 2016.” Trump’s pardon says in essence “no crime ever happened, according to Peter Walker, a professor at the University of Oregon. Whereas a commutation would have meant their release from prison, a pardon brushes off the Hammonds’ conviction entirely and legitimizes the Bundys’ far-right movement…Trump’s pardon could encourage those who want to confront and harass federal employees, according to Walker. “It puts a target on the back on federal employees,” he said. “This declares open season [on them].” It also may signal a new raid on public lands, in which big timber and other extractive industries exploit federal land for corporate and personal gain, later to be punctuated by their increased contributions to the GOP.
Here’s one antidote to the GOP’s environmental destruction agenda: “Nathaniel Stinnett knows he’s preaching to the choir. The problem is, even believers don’t always show up for church. Dismayed by how low environmental concerns like climate change, pollution and pipelines rank on surveys of voter priorities, Stinnett founded the nonpartisan Environmental Voter Project three years ago on the hunch that a substantial number of people care about environmental issues and are registered to vote, but don’t show up on Election Day…The veteran Boston-based campaign strategist developed a formula for identifying these voters. He builds profiles based on consumer, demographic and behavioral data, then runs a series of polls to verify the data and find out how likely voters are to list environmental causes among their top two political priorities. Stinnett and his team of three sift through the survey responses to identify patterns…After that, they run those profiles through a model that scores voters based on how likely they are to be so-called “super environmentalists.” Finally, they cut out people whose public voting records show they turn out for most elections. What’s left is a group of registered voters who don’t need to be sold on the reality of climate change or the dangers of air pollution – they just need to be convinced to get to the polls.” – from “This Man Is Building an ‘Army’ of Environmental Super Voters to Rival the NRA in Turnout” by Alexander C. Kaufman at HuffPo, via The Environmental Voter Project.
A worthy health care talking point for today, from Austin Frakt’s “Hidden From View: The Astonishingly High Administrative Costs of U.S. Health Care” at The Upshot: “A widely cited study published in The New England Journal of Medicine used data from 1999 to estimate that about 30 percent of American health care expenditures were the result of administration, about twice what it is in Canada. If the figures hold today, they mean that out of the average of about $19,000 that U.S. workers and their employers pay for family coverage each year, $5,700 goes toward administrative costs…That New England Journal of Medicine study is still the only one on administrative costs that encompasses the entire health system. Many other more recent studies examine important portions of it, however. The story remains the same: Like the overall cost of the U.S. health system, its administrative cost alone is No. 1 in the world.”
Michael Tomasky has a New York Times op-ed urging Democrats to fight hard against the Kavanaugh nomination. Fight to win, but have a sound strategy ready if you lose. Tomasky argues that Dems should make the nomination fight “a referendum on Judge Kavanaugh’s past actions and on President Trump’s character…Polls usually show that on most issues, in the abstract, majorities support the Democratic position, from preserving Social Security to comprehensive immigration reform. That seems great for Democrats, but in fact it often lulls them into an uncreative passivity: They’re with us on the issues, Democrats think, so all we have to do is discuss the issues and we’re home free.” But issues are not the only, or even, the primary, factor in every campaign.
Democrats, Tomasky adds, “must discuss character — both the president’s and Judge Kavanaugh’s. The nominee worked for Ken Starr in 1998 as Mr. Starr pursued President Bill Clinton. What exactly did he do for Mr. Starr?…Did he leak secret grand jury proceedings, violating Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure?” Tomasky cites the possibility of Trump naming his own future jurors. “The Democrats’ job here is to get Judge Kavanaugh on the record” about whether or not Trump can be prosecuted…The Democrats will probably lose the Kavanaugh battle” writes Tomasky, “But there are two ways to do it. They can lose by appearing to be timid, calculating, fretting too much about the consequences of being aggressive…Or they can lose by showing they understand that millions of Americans are counting on them to protect their rights and, the stakes being what they are, the Constitution itself. If Democrats do the latter, they will manage to have laid the groundwork for some optimism about November and 2020.”
In his article, “Study: Campaigns Falling short on Latino Outreach,” Sean J. Miller writes, “A new report released Monday focused attention on some 25 competitive House districts where Latino voters could make a sizable difference this fall and underscored the need for campaigns and political parties to invest in outreach now as the Latino voting population surges…The report, a collaboration between UnidosUS and the California Civic Engagement Project at the University of Southern California, charts demographic shifts that forecast the Latino population will grow more than 50 percent in the next two decades to 87.5 million — representing nearly a quarter of all Americans…their turnout when they’re on the voter rolls — at least in presidential cycles — “is close to that of registered voters in other groups, or upwards of 80 [percent.]…“Latino share of total votes cast nationwide was very close to the Latino share of the U.S. registered voter population — 9.2 [percent] and 9.7 [percent], respectively.” In addition, “There are congressional districts where Latino youth actually outperform older Latino voters,” including in Wyoming, Iowa and the Carolinas.
Some ‘key points’ from Rhodes Cook’s data-rich article, “Registering by Party: Where the Democrats and Republicans Are Ahead” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Altogether, there are 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) with party registration; in the others, such as Virginia, voters register without reference to party. In 19 states and the District, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans. In 12 states, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats. In aggregate, 40% of all voters in party registration states are Democrats, 29% are Republicans, and 28% are independents. Nationally, the Democratic advantage in the party registration states approaches 12 million.” Cooks adds that “the Democrats approach this fall’s midterm elections with an advantage in one key aspect of the political process — their strength in states where voters register by party.” However, “Altogether, there are 10 states with more registered independents than either Democrats or Republicans. These states are mainly in the Northeast, with a cluster also in the West. By comparison, there are Democratic pluralities of registered voters in 13 states plus the District of Columbia and eight other states with Republicans ahead of both Democrats and independents. In addition, there are six states where there is an independent plurality but Democrats outnumber Republicans, and four states where independents are on top of the registration totals but Republicans outnumber Democrats. That produces the 19 to 12 state registration advantage for the Democrats mentioned earlier.”
In “Optimizing Your Efforts in 2018: Part I, the House,” Sam Wang writes at The Princeton Election Consortium: “The odds moderately favor a switch in control of the House of Representatives in 2018. But make no mistake, things could go either way. This November will be a battle of inches…For many of you, the battle’s coming to a district near you. We’re renewing a tool that made its debuttwo years ago. Sharon Machlis has very kindly updated her Congressional District finder to display swing districts for 2018. It’s awesome – check it out!..Many of the closest races will be run in the suburbs of America. Here are some high-value areas: Six swing districts are within 100 miles of New York City; Five are within 50 miles of Los Angeles; and Five are within 50 miles of Chicago.”
A check-in on polling numbers led me to the following cautiously optimistic observations at New York:
[T]oday represented a bit of a landmark in the RealClearPolitics polling averages. The Democratic lead in the generic congressional ballot (asking respondents which party that want to control the U.S. House of Representatives) hit 8 percent for the first time in nearly four months.
Last time RCP showed Democrats up by eight or more points was in mid-March. Since then the lead slowly trended downward, hitting a low of 3.2 percent on the last day of May. But the rebound has been quick. At FiveThirtyEight, where a slightly different mix of polls are weighted for reliability and adjusted for partisan bias, the Democratic lead is up to a similar 8.5 percent. These are numbers considered consistent with pretty sizable net gains in House seats, and according to many analysts, probably enough to flip control, particularly since history usually shows the party not controlling the White House making gains late in the cycle during midterms.
Similarly, what looked earlier in the year like a steadily climbing Trump job-approval rating seems to have leveled off. According to RealClearPolitics averages, Trump’s job-approval percentage is at 42.8 percent. That’s precisely where he was three months ago, on April 12. At FiveThirtyEight, Trump’s average approval rating is at 42.3 percent, down more than a couple of points from his 44.8 percent posting four months ago on March 12. Instead of looking at an outlier 45 percent job-approval rating from Gallup in mid-June — a historic high — it seems more realistic to look at his current 46 percent rating from Rasmussen, the very pro-Republican survey where he hasn’t hit 50 percent since May.
So how does one explain the most recent trends? It’s hard to say, but for the most part it appears that both the generic congressional- and Trump-approval numbers are reverting to the mean after a brief period of pro-GOP and pro-Trump trends, perhaps because of a combination of less unambiguously robust economic news, abatement of high expectations from the North Korea summit, and all those distressing images from the southern border. Perhaps the numbers will turn around again, but at this point the commonly discussed (among Republicans, anyway) idea that 2018 would turn out to be a good GOP year after all seems implausible.
At the level of individual districts, projections unsurprisingly get cloudier. One trend worth watching was identified earlier this week by the Cook Political Report’s House race wizard David Wasserman:
“In the June NBC/WSJ poll, 65 percent of Democratic women and 61 percent of whites with college degrees expressed the highest possible levels of interest in the midterm elections. However, only 43 percent of Latinos and 30 percent of young voters (18 to 29) did.
“This explains why so far, the “blue wave” is gathering more strength in professional, upscale suburban districts where women are mobilized against Trump than in young, diverse districts where Democratic base turnout is less reliable.”
Since Democrats need gains in both kinds of districts, the national averages could be misleading. But on the other hand, the odds are still in the donkey’s favor:
“If the 24 Toss Ups were to split evenly between the parties, Democrats would gain 18 seats, five short of a majority. But that doesn’t take into account that there are 26 GOP-held seats in Lean Republican with strong potential to become Toss Ups, and an additional 28 GOP-held seats in Likely Republican with the potential to become more competitive. In other words, there’s still a lot of upside for Democrats.”
After some anxious weeks for Democrats in the spring and early summer, that’s not a bad characterization of the overall landscape in the House with under four months left to go.
Even some workers directly helped by globalization have focused on loss. Consider, for example, a worker in a B.M.W. factory in South Carolina who told The Wall Street Journal in 2016 that she was skeptical of international trade because her uncles had lost their jobs at a cotton mill 30 years earlier.
Now, with his willingness to upend trade relationships that have been decades in the making, Mr. Trump faces the risk that he has spun things around. Suddenly, loss aversion may work in a pro-trade direction.
In a trade war, it is the companies, and workers, that benefit the most from globalization that find their incomes at risk. As China, Canada and the European Union retaliate against American tariffs, the winners from trade are the ones at risk of becoming the losers.
The ‘loss aversion’ takeaway effect apparently overshadows benefits of a given policy. As Irwin notes,
If loss aversion holds, the winners of a trade war — domestic producers of steel and aluminum, for example — could turn out to be as complacent about those gains as globalization’s winners have been for decades.
“The evidence says that a loss hurts about twice as much as a gain of the same size, so there is a large asymmetry,” said Patricia Tovar Rodriguez, author of the 2009 paper on loss aversion and trade and now a professor at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. “Losers may therefore have a much larger incentive to lobby, and to lobby harder, for the removal of those trade barriers.”
And it applies to all kinds of policies, not just trade:
President Obama’s health care law experienced miserable polling numbers in the initial years after its 2010 passage, with more people disapproving of the Affordable Care Act than approving of it, according to the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll. But those lines crossed in late 2016 as Republicans gained more power to repeal the law, and now the A.C.A. is favored by a six-percentage-point margin.
There are many ways to interpret that, but one of them is through the prism of loss avoidance. Perhaps in the rollout of Obamacare, the people who had something to lose — either through higher taxes or the risk of losing a health plan they were happy with — were most engaged.
Then, once the law was fully enacted and there was a president seeking to undermine it, the politics of loss aversion shifted, with people who had gained insurance more likely to be energized. That certainly lines up with the ferocity of the protests against legislative efforts to repeal the A.C.A. in early 2017 — and with the comparison to the energy of anti-Obamacare forces in earlier years.
Ditto, even, for tax policy, argues Irwin, noting the failure of the GOP to get much of a bump from their loudly-trumpeted tax cut, which provided very little for anyone but the wealthy. “The logic of loss aversion would imply that those who are paying more in tax — largely people in high-tax jurisdictions losing out on some deductions they previously enjoyed — might have stronger (negative) opinions about the legislation than the many who benefit.”
Democratic candidates generally do a good job of noting the take-aways of Republican policies. But Irwin’s article and the findings he cites indicate that an even sharper focus on the losses incurred by the middle class as a result of Republican trade policies and undermining the Affordable Care Act could win additional votes for Democratic candidates. Perhaps characterizing the relentless GOP push for deregulation as taking away health and safety protections for American families and children could help Democrats take away some Republican seats in the House, Senate and state legislatures.
In all the talk about whether Joe Biden should “step aside,” there hasn’t been enough discussion of the rationale he should present if he does so. So I offered one at New York:
The Democratic Party’s semi-public bickering over what to do with Joe Biden needs to come to an end very soon, lest it turn into a horrific party-rending conflict or a de facto surrender to Donald Trump. While he can technically be pushed out of the nomination, it would be nightmarishly difficult to do so given his virtually unopposed performance in the primaries and the lack of precedent for anything like a forced defenestration of a sitting president. It would also express disloyalty to a brave and dedicated leader. But Biden has already lost the united, confident party he needed to make a comeback. He’s trailing in the polls right now. And even more importantly, his own conduct and fitness for office will command center stage for the rest of the general-election campaign, which is precisely what he cannot afford given his poor job-approval ratings and the sour mood of the electorate.
So Joe needs to go of his own accord, and it needs to happen quickly before Republican and Biden-loyalist claims of a “coup” become all too credible. But it’s obviously a humiliating exercise. So if Biden comes to realize the futility of going forward, what can this proud and stubborn man say that will make him something other than an object of derision or pity?
I have a simple answer: He can tell the truth.
The truth is that Biden’s firm commitment to the pursuit of a second term, despite his advanced age and increased frailty, hardened into inflexible determination when Trump made his own decision to launch an initially unlikely comeback. When Biden took office, Trump was a disgraced insurrectionist whose very defenders in his second impeachment trial mostly denounced his conduct, even as they urged acquittal on technical grounds. The 46th president was in a position to serve one distinguished “transitional” term and retire with a wary eye on his fellow retiree festering in anger and self-righteousness in Mar-a-Lago. But as Trump slowly recovered and eventually reemerged as a more dominant figure than ever in a MAGA-fied Republican Party, Biden became convinced that as the only politician ever to defeat Donald Trump, he had the responsibility to do it again and the ability to remind voters why they rejected the 45th president in 2020.
As this strange election year ripened, Biden had a perfectly plausible strategy for victory based on keeping a steady public focus on Trump’s lawless conduct (including actual crimes), his erratic record, and extremist intentions for a perilous second term. The polls were close and Biden wasn’t very popular, but these surveys also showed a durable majority of the electorate that really didn’t want to return Trump to power, particularly as economic conditions improved and the consequences of Trump’s Supreme Court appointments grew more shockingly apparent each day.
Then came the June 27 debate, and suddenly Biden lost the ability to make the election about Trump. He needs to look into a camera and say just that, and conclude that just as the threat posed by Trump motivated him to run for a second term, the threat posed by Trump now requires that he withdraw so that a successor can make the case he can’t make as he’s become the object of endless speculation about his age and cognitive abilities. Biden does not need to resign the presidency, since his grounds for withdrawing his candidacy are about perceptions and politics rather than any underlying incapacity. Biden would be withdrawing as a weakened candidate, not as a failed president.
For this withdrawal to represent a stabilizing event for his administration and his party, it’s critical that Biden not equivocate or complain, and that he show his mastery of the situation by clearly passing the torch to the vice-president he chose four years ago. For all the talk of an “open convention” being exciting (for pundits) and energizing (for the winner), the last thing Democrats need right now is uncertainty. No matter what the polls show and how badly his old friends want him to succeed, it’s the prospect of 100 days of terror every time Biden makes unscripted remarks that is feeding both elite and rank-and-file sentiment that a change at the top of the ticket is necessary. The fear and confusion needs to end now, and Biden effectively made his choice of a successor when he made Kamala Harris his governing partner. The president needs to reassert his agency now, not look like he is abandoning his party and his country to the winds of fate.
A straightforward and honest admission of why Biden 2024 is coming to an end could go a very long way toward enabling Harris and other Democrats to shift the nation’s gaze back to the ranting old man whose acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention showed that he has not mellowed or moderated at all. Of course Biden wants to solidify and extend his legacy over the next four years. But right now, the clear and present danger is that it will be extinguished altogether. He alone can address that threat, not as a candidate, but as a president and a patriot who recognizes his duty.
