Some excerpts from “Biden’s New Plan for the Middle East Is More of the Same,” by Matthew Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, published February 14 of this year In Foreign Policy:

Last month [January 2024], the administration offered a preview of its new plan for the Middle East via New York Timescolumnist Tom Friedman, a longtime favorite of the president’s. “We are about to see a new Biden administration strategy unfold to address this multifront war involving Gaza, Iran, Israel, and the region,” Friedman wrote, “what I hope will be a ‘Biden Doctrine’ that meets the seriousness and complexity of this dangerous moment.”….The Biden plan he lays out offers little that’s new or promising—and threatens to keep U.S. policy stuck in the same failed rut it’s been in for decades.”

As relayed by Friedman, the plan has three parts: a revitalized push for a Palestinian state; a U.S.-backed Israel-Saudi normalization deal that would include a U.S. security alliance with Saudi Arabia but would be contingent on Israeli support for the first part; and a more aggressive response to Iran and its regional network.

First, let’s focus on the positive. One of the main problems with the U.S.-managed peace process is that it has generally imposed consequences on the weaker side, the Palestinians. For Israel, only carrots. For Palestinians, mainly sticks. There are a few signs now that the administration is prepared to change this. A recent executive order enabling sanctions to be imposed on extremist settlers in the West Bank, as well as organizations that support them, is a small but important sign that the U.S. is finally willing to impose consequences on both sides. (Anyone claiming that the order is simply window dressing should take a look at this FinCEN notice, and then find someone who can explain it to them.)

So, too, with the recent White House memorandum conditioning military aid on adherence to international law, an idea Biden previously referred to as “bizarre.” While the necessity of the memorandum is questionable, as the administration already has the tools and authorities required to condition aid (and is, in fact, legally required to do so), it’s still a step in the right direction. Provided, of course, the administration keeps stepping that way and doesn’t treat the new process as simply a method to bury credible allegations of Israeli abuses in more layers of paper.

if Duss is right, Biden should consider reformulating his plan to take a tougher stance against U. S. funding violence against Gaza and its people. He should emphasize easy-to-understand points and his campaign should sell it widely, so that, by November most voters and media commentators get it that this is the most serious and practical plan for peace in the Mideast. Many won’t like it, regardless of the content. But if it seems fair to Palestinians and Israelis and strives to stop the bloodshed, Biden and the Democrats  can experience some political benefit.

For their part, the leaders of the student demonstrations should carefully consider the political dangers to America if the protests become violent. That would provoke a backlash, turn public opinion in favor of Trump and the Republicans and give Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a blank check to do his worst. The protest strategy of blocking traffic is already generating negative buzz, even in normally liberal media. It could backfire further and hurt the Palestinians and their student supporters.

It’s a presidential election year. Biden, Democratic candidates and pro-Palestinian protesters should all park the high horses and get politically strategic.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

It’s been widely noted that Biden has been running poorly among Hispanics compared to 2020 when he carried this demographic by 23 points (which itself was a 16-point drop from Clinton’s 39-point margin over Trump among these voters in 2016). In the most recent New York Times/Siena poll, Biden’s margin over Trump among Latinos is a slim 9 points. That is close to Biden’s average Hispanic lead in polls since the beginning of the year.

I’ve been curious about the role of Hispanic working-class (noncollege) voters in driving this trend. An underreported aspect of the Hispanic shift toward Trump in 2020 was how heavily it was concentrated among working-class voters. In the Catalist data, there was a 19-point margin shift toward Trump among working-class voters but just 9 points among college-educated Hispanics. For the first time, Democrats did better overall among college Hispanics than among working-class Hispanics—a reverse class gap. Are these trends continuing in this campaign cycle?

It’s hard to get detailed data comparing working-class and college-educated Hispanics—that’s rarely reported and most polls don’t have adequate sample sizes. But a new poll of 4,038 registered voters conducted by YouGov for The Liberal Patriot and Blueprint allows for a detailed comparison of these groups not just on Biden-Trump voting intentions but also on policy views and priorities. There are some big, big differences:

1. In terms of voting intentions, Biden leads by just one point among working-class Hispanics but by 39 points among their college-educated counterparts. Interestingly, this 38-point reverse class gap is actually larger than the class gap in this poll among whites (30 points).

2. Two-thirds (67 percent) of working-class Hispanics feel that “inflation is still a very serious problem that is not improving” compared to less than half (49 percent) of college Hispanics. The class gap is about the same on whether the economy is doing poorly or not, with working-class Hispanics way more pessimistic.

3. By 5 points working-class Hispanics think Trump did a better job on the economy than Biden is now doing, while college Hispanics give Biden the nod by a thumping 30 points. Working-class Hispanics give Biden an overall approval rating of 42 percent, less than the 45 percent they give Trump. College Hispanics are starkly different, giving Biden 63 percent approval and Trump just 26 percent.

4. These differences in views of Trump and Biden come out strongly in a series of questions on which presidential candidate is closer to voters’ views in various areas. Among working-class Hispanics, support for Trump runs around even and sometimes better in areas like building up America’s manufacturing capacity, ensuring America’s energy independence, being patriotic, fighting crime and ensuring public safety, and protecting American interests around the world. But in these areas college Hispanics uniformly prefer Biden over Trump by margins of 30-40 points. These assessments are remarkably different but they are consistent with the reverse class gap in voting intentions.

5. There are also stark differences in underlying ideology and partisanship. Working-class Hispanics are about 30 percent liberal in this poll and 70 percent moderate-to-conservative. But more than half of college-educated Hispanics say they’re liberal in orientation. And they skew dramatically Democratic in partisanship, identifying with or leaning toward the Democrats by 50 points over the Republicans. Working-class Hispanics, however, only favor the Democrats by a modest 8 points.

6. The poll also asked about a wide range of specific policy ideas—40 in all. Here the differences between working-class and college-educated Hispanics tend to be smaller, perhaps indicating an opening for the Democrats. Indeed, for the most popular items tested in the poll, working-class and college Hispanics are united in supporting these proposals by wide margins. These include:

• “Ban businesses from charging consumers hidden or misleading fees for live event tickets, hotels, apartment rentals, and other services.”
• “Increase the number of prescription drugs that Medicare can negotiate the price of for seniors.”
• “Require pharmaceutical companies to charge American consumers the lowest price they charge consumers in foreign countries.”
• “Cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every American who needs it.”
• “Protect Medicare and Social Security from funding cuts or increases in the age of eligibility.”
• “Permanently extend the Affordable Care Act (ACA) protections for those with pre-existing conditions.”

7. Interestingly, contradicting the image of Hispanic voters as being lenient on the illegal immigration issue, we find surprising unity between working-class and college-educated Hispanics on some pretty tough proposals for dealing with the problem. For example, on “Use existing presidential powers to stop illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border,” and “Deputize the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist with rapidly removing gang members and criminals living illegally in the United States,” margins in favor of these proposals range from 25-50 points across the two groups.

8. It is true, however, that working-class Hispanics are even tougher on some immigration proposals. They favor “Build a full wall on the U.S.-Mexico border,” by 18 points while college Hispanics oppose the idea by 19 points. And working-class Hispanics favor “Restrict the ability of migrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum,” by a whopping 39 points while college Hispanics are roughly split down the middle.

These data strongly suggest that not only are working-class Hispanics driving the Hispanic trend toward Trump and the GOP but also that working-class and college-educated Hispanics have very different political outlooks and concerns that are obscured by thinking of them as an undifferentiated mass or, worse, “people of color.” The beginning of wisdom is recognizing these class differences and adapting political appeals to take those differences into account.

The days when Democrats could get away with thinking of Hispanics as one of “their” minority groups are, or should be, over. And here’s something that should concentrate their mind when considering the working-class Hispanics problem and how seriously to take it. The simple fact of the matter is that there are far, far more working-class than college-educated Hispanics. According to States of Change data, Hispanic eligible voters nationwide are 78 percent working class. And working-class levels among Latinos are even higher in critical states like Arizona (82 percent) and Nevada (85 percent).

If that doesn’t concentrate the mind, I don’t know what will.

Alex Thompson and Hans Nichols report that “Biden’s strategy to win back progressives could be working” at Axios: “His targeted appeals to the Democratic base reveal a campaign that’s currently more focused on energizing — or reclaiming — its core supporters than on making overtures to swing voters….Polls suggest the strategy may be working as some Democrats are beginning to return to the president….From blasting former President Trump on abortion rights to forgiving student loans to pressing for new climate goals, Biden has been trying boost his popularity among progressives, young people and people of color.”Support for Biden among those voters has been consistently lower than in 2020, according to polls….Many of Biden’s paid ads also target Hispanics and working-class Black men — key parts of the Democratic coalition that he appears to be struggling to keep in his corner….The campaign has also been running an ad focused on concerns among many voters — including many Democrats — about his age. Biden speaks directly into the camera in that one….The company Biden has been keeping recently is just as telling….In April, Biden had two events with progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)….And this week, Biden invited Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Air Force One to go to a climate change event….Biden announced this week that he’ll deliver the commencement address next month at Morehouse College, the historically Black institution in the swing state of Georgia….And the Biden team recently began airing an ad called “Sharp” with Joseph “JoJo” Burgess — a middle-aged Black man who is mayor of Washington, Pa. — attesting to the president’s mental acuity.” On a more cautionary note, “A February poll by the New York Times and Siena College found 23% of Democratic primary voters said they were enthusiastic about Biden, while 48% of Republican primary voters said they were enthusiastic about Trump….A recent Wall Street Journal poll in the key swing states also found that 30% of Black men said they will definitely or probably vote for Trump.” However, “The Biden administration has also made a flurry of left-leaning policy announcements that have high support among Democratic constituencies….He has repeatedly promised Pennsylvania steelworkers that U.S. Steel will remain an American company and has threatened to triple tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum….In March, his EPA issued an ambitious rule to ensure the majority of new vehicles sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032….Then in mid-April, Biden announced he would cancel another $7.4 billion in student debt, bringing his total $153 billion in canceled loans for 4.3 million borrowers….There’s one major policy move that Biden is considering — a crackdown on the border with an executive order — that would indicate he’s willing to forsake his party’s base to let swing voters know he appreciates their concerns on immigration and crime….Trump is also pursuing a base-first strategy to reclaim the White House, revving up his most ardent supporters by pledging to “free” convicted Jan. 6 rioters, close the southern border and drill for more oil.”

At The Nation, Editorial Director and Publisher Katrina vanden Heuval’s “Here’s What a 21st-Century Rural New Deal Looks Like” describes a new “strategy for building a rural-urban working-class coalition.” As she outlines the vision, “Imagine networks of family-owned farms, powered by solar panels, plowed by workers earning a livable wage, all organized around iconic small-town courthouse squares. Imagine students at the local school taking vocational courses to pursue a trade—future carpenters, mechanics, and electricians getting free training that they can supplement with online research via universally available high-speed broadband. This is what life could look like after a Rural New Deal.” She adds that “The proposal has been put forward by an organization called the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, or RUBI. Founded by progressives raised on hay farms and in coalfields, RUBI goes beyond the typical obvious prescriptions to “engage” rural voters. Instead, they offer a strategy for building a rural-urban working-class coalition that’s equal parts sensible and ambitious….Their efforts come at a fork in the poorly maintained road for the Democratic Party. As RUBI’s founders pointed out in a midterm postmortem forThe Nation, Democrats have been hemorrhaging support among rural voters, two-thirds of whom hold them in “low esteem.” And an NBC News poll from last September showed that barely a quarter of rural voters approve of the Biden administration. Those are startling numbers in an election year when the president needs electoral votes from Maine, New Hampshire, and Nevada, and crucial Senate seats are being defended in Montana and Ohio….But by heeding RUBI’s advice and championing bold solutions to the challenges faced by rural and urban workers alike, Democrats could inaugurate a progressive renaissance in places that have been misconstrued as irretrievably lost—and bolster enthusiasm among core voters…./The comprehensive strategy advocated by RUBI asks Democrats to “think, talk, and act different”—and the organization offers a clear vision for how that can get done via their Rural New Deal. It consists of 10 pillars of fearless but practical policy proposals, ranging from universal broadband access to support for small local banks to affordable housing and universal healthcare initiatives….RUBI also counsels progressives to engage rural Americans by learning to “talk like a neighbor.” Instead of relying on a single staffer in Brooklyn for rural outreach—as the Hillary Clinton campaign literally did in 2016—they call for sincere consideration of rural livelihoods and understanding the causes of their alienation.” Read on here for the rest of vanden Heuval’s article.

Good news from the Sunshine State: Jacob Ogles reports that “Florida Democrats field candidate in every congressional district in the state” at Florida Politics. As Ogles explains, “The Florida Democratic Party (FDP) has successfully fielded candidates in every congressional district in the state….That achieves a goal that the party announced less than two weeks from the qualification deadline. Now, FDP Chair Nikki Fried said it’s a clear sign that the blue team has momentum….“Florida Democrats just filed to compete for every congressional seat,” Fried said. “It does not matter if we’re running in Pensacola or Key West, every part of this state is worth fighting for and we are not going to let Florida Republicans walk into office without being held accountable. Florida Democrats are fired up and ready to compete everywhere.”….Of note, grassroots activists have sought out candidates even in long shot districts, and played a significant role in finding candidates in many of Florida’s seats….“Competing matters. Elections have consequences,” posted Fergie Reid, founder of 90 For 90. That’s a group started in Virginia that pushed for a full-field strategy there that ultimately led to Democrats retaking the Legislature. Now, the group and other grassroots activists want to try the same approach in Florida. They have tried to do so in past elections like 2020. But that year, the group met resistance from the state party, which wanted to focus on battleground districts….Movement leaders have admitted that Democrats will not win every district in Florida. Democrats haven’t controlled a majority of U.S. House seats in the Sunshine State since 1988….But Democrats believe that having candidates organizing and fighting for votes everywhere will help the party long-term, and hopefully mobilize voters to support President Joe Biden in this year’s Presidential Election and unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, who is running for re-election.” It’s a good start. As Ogles points out, “Democrats have more ground to make up. In 2022, Republicans won 20 of Florida’s 28 congressional seats.” Hopefully Florida Democrats will benefit substantially from having both abortion rights and weed on the November ballot.

Annette Choi and Lauren Mascarenhas have an update, “These are the states where abortion rights will – or could – be on the ballot in November” at CNN Politics. As Choi and Mascarenhas write: “Three states, Florida, Maryland and New York, have already secured abortion measures on the 2024 ballot. All eyes are on Florida, which has served as a critical access point for people seeking services in a region of the country that is fast becoming an abortion care desert. A six-week abortion ban is set to replace the state’s already-restrictive 15-week ban on May 1….Organizers in other states across the country are working to secure funding, gather signatures and jump through the legal hoops necessary to secure abortion measures on the 2024 ballot….In most states, the process entails collecting a certain number of signatures by a designated deadline this summer, while others require the additional step of having the ballot language approved by a state court, according to campaign organizers. The abortion rights measures are largely backed by coalitions of reproductive health advocates, many of which are fundraising to secure the money to support the campaigns….Arizona, Nevada and Montana have all seen proposed measures protecting abortion access up to the point of viability, which doctors say is around 24 weeks into pregnancy. A potential measure in Arkansas would allow abortion up to 20 weeks into pregnancy or in cases of rape, incest or fatal fetal anomalies, while one in South Dakota would eliminate restrictions on abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy, with further restrictions in the second. It would also allow the state to “regulate or prohibit” abortion in the third trimester….A potential measure in Missouri seeks to broadly protect reproductive care, while a separate proposed measure would seek to enshrine the state’s near-total abortion ban into the constitution….Seven states have already seen a vote on abortion access since Roe v. Wade was overturned, and reproductive health advocates have been heartened by the overwhelming support for abortion access among voters. Every measure aimed at protecting abortion access has passed, while all measures to restrict it have failed….Proposed measures to restrict abortion access in Iowa and Pennsylvania both seek to establish that public funding can’t be used for the procedure, though both are unlikely to pass their state legislatures.”

Polls are showing a subtle but potentially important shift that I discussed at New York:

For a while there, the independent ticket of ex-Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan seemed to be taking crucial votes away from Democrat Joe Biden, at least as indicated by comparing three-way and five-way (with Cornel West and Jill Stein) polls to head-to-head matchups of the incumbent and Donald Trump. Now, even as Biden has all but erased his polling deficit against Trump, he’s getting some more good news in surveys that include other candidates.

Two recent major national polls show Biden running better in a five-way than a two-way race. According to NBC News, Biden moves from two points down to two points up when the non-major-party candidates are included. In the latest Marist poll, Biden leads Trump by three points head-to-head and by five points in a five-way race. Since left-bent candidates West and Stein are pulling 5 percent in the former poll and 4 percent in the latter (presumably taking very few votes from Trump), you have to figure Kennedy is beginning to cut into the MAGA vote to an extent that should get Team Trump’s attention. And it has, NBC News reports:

“Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he’s confident that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will pull more votes away from President Joe Biden than from him — a net win for the Republican’s candidacy.

“’He is Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, not mine,’Trump wrote on Truth Social late last month. ‘I love that he is running!’

“Behind closed doors, however, Trump is less sure. A Republican who was in the room with Trump this year as he reviewed polling said Trump was unsure how Kennedy would affect the race, asking the other people on hand whether or not Kennedy was actually good for his candidacy.”

Politico notes that Kennedy is drawing higher favorability numbers from Republican voters than from Democratic ones, which could indicate a higher ceiling for RFJ Jr. among Trump defectors. And it’s generally assumed from his past performances that there is a lower ceiling on Trump’s support than on Biden’s; he needs to be able to win with significantly less than a majority of the popular vote, as one Republican told Politico:

“’If the Trump campaign doesn’t see this as a concern, then they’re delusional,’ Republican consultant Alice Stewart said. ‘They should be looking at this from the standpoint that they can’t afford to lose any voters — and certainly not to a third-party candidate that shares some of [Trump’s] policy ideas.’”

One likely reason that Kennedy could be appealing to Republicans is the residual effect from the positive attention he received from conservative media when he was running against Biden in the Democratic primaries; his identification with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories also resonates more positively on the right side of the political spectrum than the left. So it’s in the interest of Team Trump to begin telling the former president’s sympathizers that RFK Jr. is actually a lefty, and that started happening recently, as the New York Times reported: “Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, pointed in particular to Mr. Kennedy’s views on climate change and the environment, writing on his social media site that Mr. Kennedy was more ‘radical Left’ than Mr. Biden.”

The idea, of course, is not only to discourage potential Trump voters from drifting toward the independent candidate, but to encourage potential Biden voters to consider a Kennedy vote.

If Kennedy continues to draw votes from both Biden and Trump, each of their campaigns will need to make a strategic decision about how to deal with him: Do you ignore him and count on the usual fade in support afflicting non-major-party presidential candidates as Election Day nears, or do you attack him as too far left (if you’re Trump) or too far right (if you’re Biden) and try to make him a handicap to your major-party opponent? The more aggressive approach has become common among Democrats seeking to intervene in Republican primaries (or in the recent case of the California Senate race, a nonpartisan top-two primary) by loudly attacking candidates they’d prefer to face in the general election, encouraging Republicans to flock to the supposed menace to progressivism. This kind of tactic — if deployed with some serious dollars — could have an effect on Kennedy’s base of support.

Certainly Trump seems to be considering it. With his usual practice of saying the quiet part out loud, Trump opined: “If I were a Democrat, I’d vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden, because he’s frankly more in line with Democrats.”

Trying to minimize losses to Kennedy and maximize opposite-party votes for Kennedy could become a routine practice down the stretch. Where and by whom this strategy is pursued will depend in part on where RFK Jr. is ultimately on the ballot. Right now he has nailed down ballot access in just two states, Utah and Michigan. CBS News reports the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket is close to securing a spot on the November ballot in a number of other states:

“Kennedy’s campaign says it has completed signature gathering in seven other states in addition to Utah and Michigan — Nevada, Idaho, Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nebraska and Iowa.

“The super PAC supporting Kennedy, American Values 2024, says it has collected enough signatures in Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina.”

Coping with Kennedy could become a game of three-dimensional chess between the Biden and Trump campaigns. But if it begins to look like RFK Jr. has become an existential threat to Democrats or to Republicans, you can bet they’ll go medieval on him without even a moment’s hesitation.

 

Some nuggets from “The states to watch on the 2024 electoral map” by Domenico Montanaro at npr.org:

“Trump holds slight advantages in most of the swing states right now, according to averages of the polls. Strictly going by the polls, Trump would have a 283-255 lead (if you give Biden Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which are currently statistical ties)….But the toss up states are expected to be close, within just a few points, in either candidate’s direction. Biden currently has a massive war chest and ad-spending advantage. In addition to personnel, ads are the largest expenditure of a presidential campaign.”

“In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Biden has caught up, pulled even or taken a lead in some recent surveys. And Pennsylvania happens to be where Biden and allies are spending the second-most on ads right now — almost $4 million in the past month and a half since Super Tuesday, the unofficial start to the general election….That’s only slightly behind what they’re spending in Michigan. Biden is trying to make up ground there with younger voters and Black voters, groups he’s lagging with. Trump and groups supporting him have spent only about $700,000 in Pennsylvania in that same time frame….Team Biden has also spent $2 million in Wisconsin. Trump and groups supporting him have spent nothing there so far….Most of the money in this election is going to be poured into seven states, and they fall into two familiar buckets — the so-called “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada.”

“The Blue Wall states are home to significant shares of white, working-class voters, but Biden has retained strong support with unions. Democrats are also putting in significant efforts, especially in Wisconsin, to reach Black voters and be on college campuses. All three states have significant Black populations and multiple colleges and universities.”

“While North Carolina was also close in 2020 — within 2 points — given its history of voting Republican, it begins the cycle in the Lean Republican category. Democrats feel the gubernatorial race in the state could help them, as Republicans nominated a highly controversial candidate, who could turn off swing voters….The increasing population of white, college-educated voters in the state’s Research Triangle continues to make the state competitive. But Republicans have won it in all but one presidential election since 1976.”

“The industrial Midwest has moved more toward Republicans because of the shift toward the GOP among white voters without college degrees. That’s why states like Ohio and Iowa, which were competitive for decades until the Trump era, are no longer Democratic targets….It’s the key group Trump is targeting. But they are declining as a share of the population and of the electorate. That’s a big reason Trump lost despite whites without degrees voting at a higher rate in 2020 (64%) compared to 2016 (55%), according to data from Michael McDonald, the preeminent turnout expert in the country and professor at the University of Florida….It’s also because of the continued shift with college-educated white voters toward Democrats. In 2020, Trump won college-educated white men by 3 points in 2020, according to exit polls, but the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll showed Biden winning the group by more than 20 points.”

“In addition to the Latino population increase in the Southwest, McDonald pointed to the uptick in Asian Americans, and a remigration of Black voters to Georgia as to why those states continue to trend toward Democrats.”

“This year’s election is also going to be different from 2020 in a very big way. Because of the pandemic, mail-in voting was used widely and that contributed heavily to increased turnout. In 2020, 66% of registered voters cast ballots, the highest since 1900. That’s unlikely to be the case again, McDonald noted….”I would be very surprised if we have a turnout rate like we saw in 2020,” McDonald said. “And the people who would most likely then not participate … are going to be these lower-education voters. And so it’s going to pose a real challenge to the Trump campaign, to energize these folks yet again to vote in 2020.”

Montanaro also provides some revealing graphics. Read the entire article to get a clearer sense of his take on the ‘state of the race.’

A relatively new term is popping up in articles on 2024 strategy for Democrats that I explained and explored at New York:

When you have a presidential candidate who is struggling to generate enthusiasm in the party base, it’s natural to look for some external stimulation. In the case of Joe Biden, the most obvious source of a 2024 boost is the deep antipathy that nearly all Democrats, many independents, and even a sizable sliver of Republicans feel toward Donald Trump. But in case that’s not enough, Team Biden is looking at another avenue of opportunity, albeit a risky one: the possibility of “reverse coattails” taking him past Trump on a wave of turnout that incidentally benefits the president of the United States.

That’s not the conventional wisdom, as the term reverse coattails makes clear: Normally, it’s the head of the ticket from whom all blessings flow, which makes sense insofar as presidential-election turnout dwarfs that of off-year and midterm contests in no small part because people who don’t necessarily care about the identity of their senator or governor are galvanized by the battle for the White House. But as Russell Berman of The Atlantic explains, this year is different:

“Faith in the reverse-coattails effect is fueling Democratic investments in down-ballot races and referenda. In North Carolina, for example, party officials hope that a favorable matchup in the governor’s race — Democratic attorney general Josh Stein is facing Republican lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, who has referred to homosexuality as ‘filth’ and compared abortion to slavery — could help Biden carry a state that Trump narrowly won twice. Democrats are also trying to break a Republican supermajority in the legislature, where they are contesting nearly all 170 districts. ‘The bottom of the ticket is absolutely driving engagement and will for all levels of the ballot,’ Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, told me.”

In other states, high-profile ballot measures, particularly those aimed at restoring the abortion rights denied by conservative courts and Republican lawmakers, may generate bottoms-up enthusiasm benefiting Biden and embattled Democratic Senate candidates as well:

“In key states across the country, Democrats and their allies are planting ballot initiatives both to protect reproductive rights where they are under threat and to turn out voters in presidential and congressional battlegrounds. They’ve already placed an abortion measure on the ballot in Florida, where the state supreme court upheld one of the nation’s most restrictive bans on the procedure, and they plan to in Arizona, whose highest court recently ruled that the state could enforce an abortion ban first enacted during the Civil War. Democrats are also collecting signatures for abortion-rights measures in Montana, home to a marquee Senate race, and in Nevada, a presidential swing state that has a competitive Senate matchup this year.”

Berman notes that the reverse-coattails strategy is unproven. Voters, for example, who attracted to the polls by abortion ballot measures don’t always follow the partisan implications of their votes when it comes to candidate preferences. Red-hot down-ballot races are probably more reliable in attracting voters who can be expected to follow the party line to the top of the ticket. A positive precedent can be found in Georgia’s coordinated effort of 2020, when a powerful campaign infrastructure built by Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock clearly helped maximize Biden’s vote; the 46th president won the state by less than 12,000. Perhaps a strong Senate candidate like Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey could help Biden survive as well. As for the possible effect of ballot measures, it was once generally accepted that in 2004 a GOP strategy of encouraging anti-same-sex-marriage ballot measures helped boost conservative turnout in battleground states like Ohio, enabling George W. Bush’s narrow victory (though there are analysts who argue against that hypothesis). One reason it may work better today is the increasing prevalence of straight-ticket voting and the heavy emphasis of Democratic campaigns up and down the ballot on the kind of support for abortion rights that should help them take advantage of ballot-measure-generated turnout.

We won’t get a good idea of how either reverse-coattails strategy is working until late in the 2024 campaign when it becomes possible to measure new voter registrations, screen registered voters for their likelihood to participate in the election, and assess states where down-ballot contests are turning into a Democratic blowout. Team Biden would be wise to do everything in its power to lift the president’s popularity and build a favorability advantage over Trump that can reduce the number of “double haters” likely to stay home or vote for a change in the party management of Washington.

So how does a Democratic U.S. Senator in a very red state run to keep his seat? Sen. Jon Tester provides the emblematic example in his bid to hold his senate seat in Montana. Stephen Neukam shares some observations at Axios: “Tester’s campaign in deep-red Montana could be the difference between Democrats keeping control of the Senate or relinquishing it to the GOP….Some of the earliest advertising from the Tester camp have elevated his splits with Biden, including an ad that said the Democrat “fought to stop President Biden from letting migrants stay in America instead of remain in Mexico.”….But Republicans are pouring money into the race and are painting Tester as a lawmaker who says one thing to Montanans and then acts differently in Washington….Another ad from early in the cycle highlights how Tester joined with Republicans to protect funding for gun safety and hunter education classes….He has also made recent moves on Capitol Hill to differ from Biden, including pushing the president to take action at the southern border and opposing new energy regulations.…National Republican Senatorial Committee communications director Mike Berg told Axios that Tester’s distance from Trump would be “at the center” of the campaign against the Democrat….Tester also notably voted to convict Trump in both of his impeachments….Tester, along with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), are two of the only Democrats running for Senate this year who have been so openly critical of the White House on the campaign trail…The Tester campaign told Axios the lawmaker has “worked with President Trump and Republicans to help veterans, crack down on government waste and abuse, and support our first responders.”….”He stood up to President Biden by demanding action be taken to secure our border and protect Montana’s way of life,” Monica Robinson, a Tester campaign spokesperson, said.” It is one of the many ironies of American politics that Tester, who is fighting to keep his Senate seat, might make a strong presidential candidate, who could pull from moderates and conservatives, as well as liberals.

Almost every political observer will tell you that Pennsylvania is a top swing state in the 2024 presidential and U.S. Senate elections. Some of the results of Tuesday’s PA primary elections may shed a bit of light on how Democratic campaigns are doing: 538’s stable of writers offer some clues at ABC News: Geoffrey Skelley, Kaleigh Rogers and Monica Potts write that “In the solidly blue 12th District, ABC News reports progressive Democratic Rep. Summer Lee is projected to defeat Edgewood Borough Council member Bhavini Patel by about 20 percentage points, with 99 percent of the expected vote reporting. Lee’s win is an early indication that The Squad’s criticisms of Israel won’t necessarily weigh members down in the primaries to come this summer….Meanwhile, in the 10th District, former news anchor Janelle Stelson is projected to win the Democratic primary with 44 percent against a field of five other candidates and 99 percent of the expected vote, ABC News reports. She’ll face Republican Rep. Scott Perry, a former chair of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, in a slightly GOP-leaning seat that may be competitive….In the 1st District, another seat that could be in play, Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick held off a challenge from the right in anti-abortion activist Mark Houck, leading by 26 points at this point with 91 percent of the expected vote. ABC News reports that Fitzpatrick is projected to win that race. Fitzpatrick will now face off against Democrat Ashley Ehasz, whom he defeated by 10 points in 2022, but it may very well be a closer race in this swingy district this time around….And over in Eastern Pennsylvania, three Republicans squared off tonight for the opportunity to run against — and potentially unseat — three-term Democratic Rep. Susan Wild in the 7th District. But it was state Rep. Brian Mackenzie who came out on top and is projected to win according to reporting by ABC News. He’s currently leading with 42 percent of the vote, and 85 percent of the expected vote reporting, perhaps in part thanks to the nearly half a million dollars spent on his behalf by the Koch Brothers’ PAC. Mackenzie and Wild will now be gearing up for a tight race that is set to be one of the most competitive House races in the nation, so expect a lot of attention — and money — to be paid to Lehigh Valley….Neither candidate faced primary opposition in the U.S. Senate contest today, meaning that Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr. and former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick will face off in November.”

Skelley, Rogers and Potts explain further: “Finally, in notable races for the state House and Senate, we watched Democratic primaries in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas — which will set up key contests this fall, as Democrats fight to hold onto their narrow, one-vote majority in the state House and flip the Senate to secure a state government trifecta. Incumbents mostly fended off challenges from more progressive candidates in these races, notably Rep. Amen Brown in West Philadelphia, and Rep. Abigail Salisbury, who won against a Summer Lee-backed candidate, Ashley Comans.” ….Monica Potts shares this addendum: “As Meredith said, I think the big takeaway for the night is that Republicans did not nominate some of their more extreme candidates. That was a losing strategy in 2022, and we may see more competitive statewide races as a result this fall….The 1st District race I noted earlier is a good example: Anti-abortion Republicans suffered a notable loss with Houck’s decisive defeat in favor of incumbent Fitzpatrick, one of the most moderate Republicans in the U.S. House. So far, abortion has been a winning issue for Democrats, and it’s likely to be a defining issue in the race this fall — so Republicans are likely glad Fitzpatrick prevailed in this purple district.” Potts is surely right that abortion politics is the big story in Pennsylvania, which is one of the most heavily Catholic states. And if Tuesday’s primary election results indicate anything significant for the fall presidential election, it is that reproductive freedom still looks like a potent issue favoring Democrats — in what may be the largest electoral vote swing state on the map in 2024.

The United Auto Workers historic victory in organizing the Chattanooga, TN Volkswagen auto plant is not only an earthquake for labor news; it bodes well for Democrats, who could benefit immeasurably from a significant uptick in union membership. Unions not only contribute significant funds to Democratic campaigns; they also provide needed manpower when it comes to GOTV and they help build political solidarity between workers of different races and cultures. At The American Prospect, Editor at Large Harold Meyerson offers some insights on the importance of the UAW victory: “History—good history, if conditional history—was made last Friday in Chattanooga, as workers at Volkswagen’s factory there voted to join the United Auto Workers by an overwhelming margin of 2,628 to 985, a 73 percent to 27 percent landslide….The vote was historic on any number of counts. It marks the UAW’s first successful unionization of a foreign-owned auto factory after a number of failed attempts; it marks the first unionization in many decades of a major group of workers in the non-union South; it may even mark the rebirth of a powerful union movement, something the nation has lacked over the past 40 years….It also marks, alongside the provisional victory of the Starbucks baristas, a breakthrough in the type of occupation that’s been able to unionize. In recent years, there’s been a wave of unionizations among university teaching assistants, interns and residents, museum docents, and other workers who can’t readily be replaced should management fire them for their pro-union proclivities. But it’s been standard practice for management to fire assembly-line workers, retail clerks, drywall installers, and the myriad of other workers for whom replacements can indeed be found if and when they threaten to unionize. It’s illegal for employers to do that, but the penalties are so negligible (restoring those workers to their jobs after months or years of litigation, giving them their back pay, and posting a notice of this settlement somewhere in the workplace) that it’s long been standard practice in American business. The VW and Starbucks workers had that sword hanging over their heads, yet managed to prevail nonetheless. Should their example inspire the millions of workers who’d like to unionize but fear employers’ retaliation, that would mark a sea change in America’s political economy….The historic status of the victory at Volkswagen, however, is still as yet conditional. To really mark a historic break with nearly 60 years of union decline—a decline that is at the root of the erosion of the New Deal’s egalitarian economics and, correspondingly, the rise of record levels of economic inequality—it can’t be a one-off. The UAW has to roll this on to other Southern foreign-transplant factories; the first test of its ability to do that will come the week of May 13, when workers at the Mercedes factory in Vance, Alabama, will also vote on whether to join the UAW….As Mike Elk noted in a report from Chattanooga that we ran on Friday, the workers at the VW plant are a younger and more racially diverse group than those who voted down previous attempts to go union. The teaching assistants, baristas, and now autoworkers who’ve voted to go union in the past couple of years come disproportionately from, by the evidence of multiple polls, the most pro-union generation that this country may have ever seen.”

Some excerpts from “Democrats Aren’t Campaigning to Win the Working Class” by Jared Abbott and Fred Deveaux at Jacobin:

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

“Be realistic—demand the impossible!” So went the slogan of the young revolutionaries who thronged the streets of Paris in May, 1968. At the time, the slogan was viewed by mass working-class parties as profoundly misguided, regardless of the high idealism that lay behind it. But over half a century later, it could well be the slogan of today’s left parties—which are now more Brahminthan working class—as they have rushed to embrace “net zero” emissions by 2050 and the elimination of fossil fuels.

This net zero commitment stems from the extremely high priority placed on this goal by the educated elites and activists who now dominate these parties. They believe that nothing is more important than stopping global warming since it is not just a problem, but an “existential crisis” that must be confronted as rapidly as possible to prevent a global apocalypse. Portuguese Socialist politician, Antonio Guterres, now Secretary-General of the United Nations, has claimed “the era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived” and that “humanity has opened the gates to hell”. President Biden said last September:

The only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening than a nuclear war is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next 20—10 years. That’d be real trouble. There’s no way back from that.

More frightening than nuclear war, eh, from which there is presumably a way back? Up and down the Democratic Party, rhetoric is more similar than not to the president’s histrionic take. Whatever else one might say about these statements, it is easy to see how they are not conducive to clear thinking on this issue. The first instinct is to do something—anything!—and do it as fast as possible to forestall this apocalypse.

Hence the commitment to net zero by 2050 to limit global warming to 1.5ºC. Hence the commitment to an extremely rapid elimination of fossil fuel usage. Hence the commitment to an equally rapid build up of wind and solar in energy production.

But how possible is any of this? Is it really possible to hit net zero by 2050? Is it really possible to eliminate fossil fuels that fast? The answer is that, for both technical and political reasons, it is not possible (outside of edge “solutions” like crashing industrial civilization or world authoritarian government to ration energy usage).

The insistence on trying to do so anyway is why “be realistic—demand the impossible!” is, astonishingly, not so far from the guiding philosophy of much of today’s mainstream left, including dominant sectors of the Democratic Party.

Consider the technical feasibility of this program. As the polymath, Vaclav Smil, universally acknowledged to be one the world’s premier energy experts, has observed:

[W]e are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years. Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat…

And as he tartly observes re the 2050 deadline:

People toss out these deadlines without any reflection on the scale and the complexity of the problem…What’s the point of setting goals which cannot be achieved? People call it aspirational. I call it delusional.

Smil backs his argument with a mountain of empirical evidence in a new and hugely important paper, “Halfway Between Kyoto and 2050: Zero Carbon Is a Highly Unlikely Outcome.” The paper is a gold mine of relevant and highly compelling data. Smil outlines the realities of the net zero 2050 challenge:

The goal of reaching net zero global anthropogenic CO2 emissions is to be achieved by an energy transition whose speed, scale, and modalities (technical, economic, social, and political) would be historically unprecedented…[T]he accomplishment of such a transformation, no matter how desirable it might be, is highly unlikely during the prescribed period….In terms of final energy uses and specific energy converters, the unfolding transition would have to replace more than 4 terawatts (TW) of electricity-generating capacity now installed in large coal- and gas-fired stations by converting to non-carbon sources; to substitute nearly 1.5 billion combustion (gasoline and diesel) engines in road and off-road vehicles; to convert all agricultural and crop processing machinery (including about 50 million tractors and more than 100 million irrigation pumps) to electric drive or to non-fossil fuels; to find new sources of heat, hot air, and hot water used in a wide variety of industrial processes (from iron smelting and cement and glass making to chemical syntheses and food preservation) that now consume close to 30 percent of all final uses of fossil fuels; to replace more than half a billion natural gas furnaces now heating houses and industrial, institutional, and commercial places with heat pumps or other sources of heat; and to find new ways to power nearly 120,000 merchant fleet vessels (bulk carriers of ores, cement, fertilizers, wood and grain, and container ships, the largest one with capacities of some 24,000 units, now running mostly on heavy fuel oil and diesel fuel) and nearly 25,000 active jetliners that form the foundation of global long-distance transportation (fueled by kerosene).

On the face of it, and even without performing any informed technical and economic analyses, this seems to be an impossible task given that:

• we have only a single generation (about 25 years) to do it;

• we have not even reached the peak of global consumption of fossil carbon;

• the peak will not be followed by precipitous declines;

• we still have not deployed any zero-carbon large-scale commercial processes to produce essential materials; and

• the electrification has, at the end of 2022, converted only about 2 percent of passenger vehicles (more than 26 million) to different varieties of battery-powered cars and that decarbonization is yet to affect heavy road transport, shipping, and flying.

The slogan of “be realistic—demand the impossible!” does indeed seem to fit.

And how are we doing so far on this incredibly daunting task?

We are now halfway between 1997 (27 years ago) when delegates of nearly 200 nations met in Kyoto to agree on commitments to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases, and 2050; the world has 27 years left to achieve the goal of decarbonizing the global energy system, a momentous divide judging by the progress so far, or the lack of it.

The numbers are clear. All we have managed to do halfway through the intended grand global energy transition is a small relative decline in the share of fossil fuel in the world’s primary energy consumption—from nearly 86 percent in 1997 to about 82 percent in 2022. But this marginal relative retreat has been accompanied by a massive absolute increase in fossil fuel combustion: in 2022 the world consumed nearly 55 percent more energy locked in fossil carbon than it did in 1997.

And what would it take in the future to reach the cherished net zero by 2050 goal? Smil estimates that

…the cost of global decarbonization [would be] $440 trillion, or nearly $15 trillion a year for three decades, requiring affluent economies to spend 20 to 25 percent of their annual GDP on the transition. Only once in history did the US (and Russia) spent higher shares of their annual economic product, and they did so for less than five years when they needed to win World War II. Is any country seriously contemplating similar, but now decades-long, commitments?…

Even though we are technically far better equipped than we were 150 to 200 years ago, the task presented by the second energy transition appears to be no less challenging. Just before the end of 2023 the International Energy Agency published its estimate of global investment in “clean energy,”—in other words, essentially the recent annual cost of the energy transition. In 2023 it was close to $2.2 trillion…[W]e should be investing about six times more, or about $13 trillion a year, to reach zero carbon by 2050. Making it $15-17 trillion a year (to account for expected cost over-runs) seems hardly excessive, and it takes us, once again, to a grand total of $400-460 trillion by the year 2050, good confirmation of [the] previously derived value. This is not a forecast, just a plausible estimate intended to indicate the commonly underestimated cost of this global endeavor.

No natural laws bar us from making the enormous investments needed to sustain such massive annual shifts: we could resort to an unprecedented, decades-long, and civilization-wide existential mobilization of constructive and transformative efforts or, conversely, we could deliberately reduce our energy use by lowering our standard of living and keeping it low to make it easier to displace all fossil carbon.

In the absence of these two radical choices, we should not ignore the experience of the past grand energy transition (from traditional biomass energies to fossil fuels) and we should not underestimate the concatenation of challenges presented by practical engineering, material, organizational, social, political, and environmental requirements of the unfolding transition to a fossil carbon-free world that have been partially reviewed in this essay. When we do assess these challenges realistically, we must conclude that the world free of fossil carbon by 2050 is highly unlikely.

By any reasonable standard of feasibility, I’d make that flat-out impossible. That’s one reason why Democrats, and left parties generally, will eventually have to become energy realists. However much they wish it not to be so, grand energy transitions take time—many, many decades. Absent drastically lowered living standards and/or radical social disruption, this transition will be no different. Fossil fuels, and the support they provide to the high living standards enjoyed by the advanced world and aspired to by everyone else, will be with us for a loooong time.

But hey, “be realistic—demand the impossible!” right?

Read more…

Read “Yes, Joe Biden Can Win the Working-Class Vote: Since 2020, Joe Biden’s support among working-class voters of all races has fallen alarmingly. Here are seven ways he and his party can reverse the slide” by Timothy Noah at The New Republic. Among bis observations: “Only half of the Democratic-candidate websites surveyed by the Center for Working-Class Politics bothered to mention Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Only about one-quarter mentioned Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which is spending another half-trillion on technologies to reduce climate change. And only 15 percent mentioned the CHIPS Act, signed into law three months before the election, which will spend another $53 billion to boost domestic manufacture of semiconductors. The combined effect of these three bills has been to nearly triple the construction of manufacturing facilities since Biden took office….however unpopular Biden was (and remains), Biden’s policies are very popular, especially among working-class voters—on those rare occasions when they hear about it. The IRA, for example, was favored in a March 2023 poll by 68 percent of people earning between $50,000 and $99,999. But these working-class people needed the pollsters (from Yale and George Mason) to first explain what the Inflation Reduction Act was. A 61 percent majority had no idea….To prevail in 2024, Biden will need to win the working-class vote. Over the past century, no Democrat—with one exception—has ever won the presidency without winning a majority of working-class voters. The single exception was Joe Biden in 2020; Biden lost noncollege voters that year to President Donald Trump, 47 to 51. That was slightly worse than Hillary Clinton did with noncollege voters in 2016. Biden performed better than Clinton among noncollege whites, but 8 percentage points worse among noncollege Latinos and 3 percentage points worse among noncollege African Americans. Biden became president anyway, but under a unique set of circumstances—a deadly and economically costly pandemic that the incumbent mishandled badly. It’s doubtful the president can remain an exception in 2024 and win reelection….electoral math compels the Democrats to pick up two college graduates for every noncollege voter who leaves….The electoral math gets even worse when you consider this year’s battleground states. Battleground swing voters will likely determine who becomes president (not to mention whether the Senate remains Democratic), and they skew more heavily toward noncollege voters (72 percent) than the nation as a whole (63 percent). Democrats in those crucial states, according to Jared Abbott and Fred DeVeaux of the Center for Working-Class Politics, will need to pick up not two but three college grads for every noncollege voter they lose. Rather than obsess about further expanding its share of college voters, the party would do better to think hard about how it can shore up a working-class constituency that, even at this late date, remains essential to winning the White House.”

At nbcnews.com, Mark Murray reports that “RFK Jr. candidacy hurts Trump more than Biden, NBC News poll finds: The finding contrasts with a number of other national polls, and it comes amid concerted Democratic efforts to prevent Kennedy from harming Biden’s campaign” and writes: “The latest national NBC News poll shows the third-party vote — and especially independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — cutting deeper into former President Donald Trump’s support than President Joe Biden’s, though the movement the other candidates create is within the poll’s margin of error….Trump leads Biden by 2 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup, 46% to 44%, in the new NBC News poll….Yet when the ballot is expanded to five named candidates, Biden is the one with a 2-point advantage: Biden 39%, Trump 37%, Kennedy 13%, Jill Stein 3% and Cornel West 2%….The big reason why is that the poll finds a greater share of Trump voters in the head-to-head matchup backing Kennedy in the expanded ballot. Fifteen percent of respondents who picked Trump the first time pick Kennedy in the five-way ballot, compared with 7% of those who initially picked Biden….Also, Republican voters view Kennedy much more favorably (40% positive, 15% negative) than Democratic voters do (16% positive, 53% negative).” Plug in all the caveats: It’s only one poll; it’s too early to take polls seriously. We’re only talking about a couple of points, anyway. And perhaps more important, it’s a national, instead of swing states polls, which would be more significant. Dems must guard against wishful thinking. As Murray writes, “The NBC News poll results on Kennedy’s impact are “different than other surveys,” said McInturff, the GOP pollster. “So there’s always two possibilities: One, it’s an outlier. … Or two, we’re going to be seeing more of this, and our survey is a harbinger of what’s to come….The Biden campaign has actively tried to peel support away from Kennedy. Most recently, Biden held an event Thursday with members of the Kennedy family who are endorsing the president over their relative.” One could also hope that Trump’s infantile behavior in his trials has finally become embarrassing for a few more of his supporters.

The Boston Review has a forum entitled “The New Blue Divide,” in which Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson probe  the possibilities for a “bold economic agenda” in the Democratic Party, despite relying on “affluent suburbanites” for support. As Hacker and Pierson write, “The place to begin is the changing geography of American politics. The partisan divide is now a “density divide.” Over the past few election cycles, Republicans have registered particularly big gains among white voters in lower-density regions of the country battered by the shift to a postindustrial knowledge economy. The consequences of the GOP’s retreat from dense metro areas are now well understood. It has powered the party’s embrace of Christian nationalism and right-wing populism as well as its growing attack on American democracy, leading to a base that is older, whiter, more heavily Evangelical, and less highly educated….Less well understood is the other half of the story—the transformation of the Democratic Party. Democrats are now firmly established as the political voice of multiracial, cross-class, metro America. Democrats have always done well in urban cores; what has changed over the past several decades is the party’s performance in the suburbs, which have grown more Democratic even as they have grown more affluent. Some of these gains have occurred because the suburbs have diversified racially and economically. Yet the most striking change in recent cycles is growing Democratic margins in the richest suburban communities—the biggest beneficiaries of U.S. economic growth over the last two decades. Most of these areas remain disproportionately white, and many leaned Republican not long ago….Because of these shifts, Democrats are now much less clearly the party of the “have nots.” In 2021–22, they represented twenty-four of the twenty-five congressional districts with the highest median household income—a striking change from the past. (Documentation for most of the statistics in this piece can be found in a recent academic article we wrote with Amelia Malpas and Sam Zacher.) At the presidential level, Democrats now win counties that produce the lion’s share of the nation’s economic output; some 71 percent of GDP came from the 1 in 6 counties that backed Biden in 2020. Indeed Biden won every one of the twenty-four most economically productive metro areas, and forty-three of the top fifty.”

“In remaking their coalition to bring in affluent college-educated voters,” Hacker and Pierson add, “Democrats are hardly alone. Left-of-center parties in most other rich democracies have evolved along broadly similar lines as the knowledge economy has built up steam—gaining highly educated professionals while losing white working-class voters, who increasingly embrace the populist right. In economist Thomas Piketty’s evocative depiction, parties that were once oriented toward the working class—the British Labor Party, the French Socialists, the German Social Democrats, as well as the U.S. Democratic Party—now represent the “Brahmin left.” In their efforts to court the affluent and educated, Piketty maintains, these left parties have retreated from their historical commitment to redistribution….This argument echoes the claims of many American observers, including prominent journalists and analysts such as David Leonhardt, Thomas Frank, Thomas Edsall, John Judis, and Ruy Teixeira. In their recent book Where Have All the Democrats Gone? (2023), for example, Judis and Teixeira lament that the party has “steadily lost the allegiance of ‘everyday Americans’” and that the “main problem” is its “cultural insularity and arrogance.” Democrats, these critics insist, have embraced the social liberalism of their affluent, college-educated white voters at the expense of the working class….Perhaps change will only come with greater direct investments in building a stronger network of supportive organizations, including labor unions. Or perhaps polarization is now so deeply entrenched—and the media landscape is now so noisy—that the ability of a party to build electoral support through economic governance is severely limited. Indeed, the changing media landscape is probably a major reason why sharply negative perceptions of Democrats are so hard to shake. Both GOP leaders and right-wing commentators relentlessly pillory the Democrats as obsessed with identity and culture. These narratives, amplified through mainstream as well as conservative media, make it extremely difficult for the party to reshape its image, especially when its policy initiatives so often fall victim to congressional gridlock….With a slightly stronger Democratic hand in Congress, the agenda of 2021 could be revived. The money will certainly be there—the only benefit of the spectacular transfer of financial resources to corporations and the wealthy over the past generation—and if the electoral shifts we have charted endure, there is a real chance that the political momentum could be as well.”