A noisy dog has stopped barking with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to withdraw from the Democratic nominating contest and run as an independent. I took a look at this development at New York:

Much of the limited buzz about nuisance candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropping out of the Democratic presidential contest and launching an attempted general-election independent run has focused on the question of whom the conspiracy theorist might help or hurt in a general election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. That’s understandable, in part because of the likelihood of another extremely close two-major-party race in November 2024 and in part because of Kennedy’s combination of high name ID and a potentially bipartisan well of support (or, as he likes to put it, a “horseshoe” coalition of left and right “populists” whose distrust of pretty much every institution makes them credulous customers for the cranky stuff he’s peddling). There’s also a rush of donations to RFK Jr. now that he’s rid himself of the light yoke of party loyalty.

The truth is we don’t have a good way of assessing a Kennedy independent candidacy until we see if he has the money and moxie to get on the ballot in competitive states. It won’t be easy, now that the adulatory treatment he has been getting from conservative media as a burr under Biden’s saddle may come to an abrupt end.

But we do know the absence of the Kennedy name on Democratic primary ballots next year is an unambiguous boon to the incumbent. With only the lightly regarded Marianne Williamson (polling at under 4 percent nationally in the RealClearPolitics averages) facing Biden (unless you take pundit Cenk Uygur’s newly announced candidacy seriously, which I don’t), he can run as the all but unanimous Democratic favorite who need not campaign for the nomination or even look or sound defensive about refusing to debate intraparty opponents. Even though his Democratic support has dropped since he was polling at around 20 percent in the spring and has been stagnant since the summer, he was still regularly hitting double digits in the polls and couldn’t be entirely ignored (he was, after all, doing about as well as the much-ballyhooed Republican Ron DeSantis). By contrast, Williamson is an asterisk, comparable less to the incumbent than to “Some Dude” perennial candidates.

Gone with RFK Jr.’s Democratic candidacy, moreover, is any fear of an embarrassingly poor showing in New Hampshire, whose rogue primary he could not enter and that media folk might find themselves unable to ignore (particularly with conservative media inflating every Kennedy vote into a repudiation of the incumbent). The Biden write-in effort that New Hampshire Democratic leaders have been quietly undertaking to overwhelm RFK Jr. in the Granite State should have even less trouble swamping Williamson.

Kennedy also takes with him, via his departure from his ancestral party, any lingering affection of Democrats for him in tribute to his famous relatives (I speak as someone who idolized his father and is pained to see his name profaned so vividly). What’s left is a veteran scandalmonger and misinformation peddler who belongs to no party because no party really wants him. Biden and Democrats are well rid of him.

As Democrats ponder the political consequences of RFK, Jr.’s decision to run for President as an Independent, Amanda Marcotte riffs on the topic at Salon, and writes: “Could Kennedy pull votes away from Trump? Trump’s campaign team certainly seems to think so, at least according to Shelby Talcott at Semafor. She reports that “internal campaign polling suggests his expected third party bid could draw more votes from Trump than President Joe Biden in a general election.” In their typical self-aggrandizing style, a Trump campaign member told Semafor they plan on “dropping napalm after napalm on his head reminding the public of his very liberal views.”….They may find that this is a more difficult task than their belligerent rhetoric suggests. Because the slice of voters Trump and Kennedy could be competing over aren’t defined by political beliefs that map neatly onto concepts like “liberal” or “conservative.”….Right now, polling data is all over the place on whether Kennedy would be a spoiler for Trump or Biden….As voters learn more, Kennedy’s almost certainly going to lose his already weak Democratic support while turning a few heads among Republican voters, especially the 25% who are QAnoners. The party leadership on both sides seems to get this. It’s why Democrats are shrugging Kennedy off, while the RNC sent out a panicked email titled, “23 Reasons to Oppose RFK Jr.” It’s possible that Kennedy’s campaign will offset whatever damage Cornell West’s Independent run may do to Democratic prospects. But it’s also possible that RFK could end up hurting Democrats more than helping them. Harry Enten reports a CNN Politics that “A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this past week among likely voters finds former President Donald Trump at 40%, Biden at 38% and Kennedy at 14% in a hypothetical November 2024 matchup. The 2-point difference between Biden and Trump looks a lot like other surveys we’ve seen and is well within the margin of error.”

Ali Swenson shares some similar observations at apnews.com: “Republicans attacked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday as the longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist launched an independent bid for the White House, reflecting growing concerns on the right that the former Democrat now threatens to take votes from former President Donald Trump in 2024….“Voters should not be deceived by anyone who pretends to have conservative values,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung in a statement. He labeled Kennedy’s campaign “nothing more than a vanity project for a liberal Kennedy looking to cash in on his family’s name.”….Kennedy, a member of one of the most famous families in Democratic politics, was running a long-shot primary bid and holds better favorability ratings among Republicans than Democrats. Even Trump just two weeks ago said of Kennedy, “I like him a lot. I’ve known him for a long time.”….Aware of the risk that Kennedy could pull votes away from Republicans, Trump allies have begun circulating opposition research against Kennedy designed to damage his standing among would-be conservative supporters….The Republican National Committee published a fact sheet before Kennedy’s speech titled “Radical DEMOCRAT RFK Jr.” that lists times he supported liberal politicians or ideas. The document also listed times he supported conspiracy theories about COVID-19 or “stolen-election claims” related to the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections that Democrats lost to President George W. Bush….Polls show far more Republicans than Democrats have a favorable opinion of Kennedy. He also has gained support from some far-right conservatives for his fringe views, including his vocal distrust of COVID-19 vaccines, which studies have shown are safe and effective against severe disease and death.”

The ever-quotable Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has a few choice words about the G.O.P.’s growing inability to govern, cross-posted here from “‘What Is Broken in American Politics Is the Republican Party” at Politico: “It has been clear for some years that what is broken in American politics is the Republican Party. The roots go back for decades — starting with Newt Gingrich’s arrival in the House in 1979. But the current chaos was triggered, ironically, by the self-proclaimed “Young Guns” — Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy — when they went around the country in 2009 recruiting tea party radicals, exploiting their anger after the financial collapse and the backlash against Barack Obama, promising to blow up the establishment in Washington with the hopes that they could use that anger to catapult themselves into the majority. Their expectation was that once these tea party radicals were in the House, they could co-opt them. Instead, of course, they were co-opted. John Boehner was the first victim of the Young Guns, but now all three of the Guns have been shot down by their own gang. Cantor lost his seat to a tea party radical; Ryan suffered the same fate as speaker as John Boehner, forced to leave by the radical right. And now McCarthy, the last one standing, has been taken out by the same forces in an even more dramatic manner….Donald Trump was in some ways a logical extension of the nihilistic, radical politics that emerged in the two decades before his emergence as a presidential candidate and president. But he was an accelerant, not the cause. The GOP transformation into a radical cult was there before he became its leader, and was itself shaped and incited by the rise of tribal media and social media, and advanced by gerrymandering and other political tools that insulated a minority in the country from the consequences of their radical statements and actions. McCarthy paid the price — but we will all pay a heavier price with an ungovernable House dominated by a lunatic fringe that is now at the center of the GOP.”

Substack star and Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson offers some insights about President Biden that Democrats may find encouraging, amid all the handwringing about his age and competency, quoted here from “‘An end of American democracy’: Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s historic threat” by David Smith at The Guardian: “I was not a Biden supporter, to be honest. I thought we needed somebody new and much more aggressive, and yet I completely admit I was wrong because he has, first of all, a very deep understanding of foreign affairs, which I tended to denigrate….“I thought in 2020 that was not going to matter and could I have been more wrong? I think not. That really mattered and continues to matter in that one of the reasons Republicans are backing off of Ukraine right now is that they recognise, for all that it’s not hitting the United States newspapers, Ukraine is actually making important gains. A win from the Ukrainians would really boost Biden’s re-election and the Republicans recognise that and are willing to scuttle that so long as it means they can regain power here. His foreign affairs understanding has been been key….“The other thing about Biden is his extraordinary skill at dealmaking has made this domestic administration the most effective since at least the Great Society and probably the New Deal. You think about the fact that Trump could never get infrastructure through Congress, even though everybody wanted it….“The question going into 2024 is: will people understand that Biden has created a government that does work for the people? Whether or not you like its policies personally, he is trying to use that government to meet the needs of the people in a way that the Republicans haven’t done since 1981. He is a transformative president….”

At The New Republic’s Soapbox, TNR Editor Michael Tomasky interviews Navin Nayak, president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Here’s a cross-post of Tomasky’s introduction, followed by the video of the interview:

It’s one of the most frequent and familiar complaints of rank-and-file liberals: Democratic messaging, especially on the economy, stinks. A new poll from NBC News will surely only add fuel to the fire, as it shows the Republicans with the largest lead on the question of which party can better handle the economy since 1991—at 49 percent to 28 percent. Everybody has ideas and suspicions about why Democrats struggle to break through. Navin Nayak, the president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, has studied the question intensely with his staff. And the situation is … not good.

Nayak has put together a PowerPoint presentation that is a hot commodity in progressive Washington. He’s been showing it to groups of insiders and elected officials, and here, in this edition of Tomaskycast,you’ll get to see some of the slides yourself. Nayak and his team looked at every press release, Facebook post, and tweet put out in 2022 by Democratic candidates for federal office—some 570,000 pieces of communication. And they found that, “to our surprise, only 5 percent mentioned the words ‘economy’ or ‘economics.’” Even including words like “workers,” “wages,” and “jobs” only raised the number to 11 percent. Small wonder the Republicans come out ahead in those polls.

There’s a feast of useful information in this interview for anyone who really wants to understand the details on the hole in which Democrats find themselves. The news isn’t all bad: By 68 percent to 32 percent, people say they do support the core Joe Biden message of investing in the middle class over the Republican message of investing in businesses and letting them spread the bounty. But as Nayak says, among Democrats there is “a real recognition that there isn’t message clarity, and there isn’t a simple thing that Democrats from across the country and from top to bottom repeat.”

The following article by Gannon University History professor Jefff Bloodworth is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Riffraff. The Masses. Hoi Polloi. Working Class. The Silent Majority. The Great Unwashed.

“The People” have many synonyms. But “Middle American” best describes the demographic upon which every national election swings. Legendary Columbia University sociologist Herbert Gans defines Middle Americans as lower middle and working-class families between the thirty-first and seventy-first income percentiles. They are the working stiffs who are average in jobs, income, and schooling; a high school educated clerk or truck driver, of any race—that’s a Middle American. And Democrats have steadily lost them.

A broader grouping than working class, income alone does not define a Middle American. In his 1989 classic, Middle American Individualism, Gans outlined how income and a “popular individualism” renders them a distinct class. Reared in environments of economic insecurity, Middle Americans prize personal economic security more than anything. Their pursuit of economic autonomy is defined by self-reliance and an individualist ethos. These values and sensibilities are key to understanding Middle America’s political behavior.

Politically, Middle Americans support a version of “moral capitalism.” Moral capitalism is not socialism; Middle Americans think free enterprise and rugged individualism are just fine so long as labor receives a fair share. But any system that shortchanges labor loses legitimacy in Middle America and risks populist uprisings.

Moral capitalism was born on the nineteenth century populist frontier, and it subsequently evolved into the organizing principle that held rural and urban Democrats together. Moral capitalism was the philosophical basis of the Populist movement in the 1890s. Rejecting small government orthodoxy, populists looked to the state to make the urban, industrial economic order into a moral political economy. When markets failed, moral capitalists sought state interventions—but ones that reflected their individualist code. Social Security exemplifies this attitude: funded by dedicated payroll taxes, to Middle Americans the program is an earned benefit and not welfare.

Harry S. Truman’s GI Bill and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Medicare program followed the script Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote with Social Security. “Earned benefits,” recipients served in the military or labored a lifetime to merit eligibility. Not coincidentally, these programs are politically sacrosanct with most Middle Americans.

Oxford University historian Gareth Davies calls this underlying bargain “opportunity liberalism.” The state provides citizens equality of opportunity. Individuals offer grit and labor. And Middle Americans rewarded Democrats with votes.

By founding federal activism and social insurance programs on Middle American individualism, opportunity liberals defeated laissez-faire conservatism and created a liberal political consensus. In the late 1960s and 1970s, however, entitlement liberals gained the political upper hand inside Democratic politics and policy circles. Seeking equality of results, they pushed a guaranteed income and single-payer healthcare as well as an array of unearned benefits. Moral capitalism, however, cuts both ways: Middle Americans revolt against economic systems andpolitical ideologies that ignore the bond between labor and economic security. Middle Americans came to distrust a liberalism that, in their eyes, dispensed unearned benefits. To them, it was not a moral capitalism, and many turned right as result.

Middle American was once rightfully synonymous with working-class whites. In 1975, nearly nine of ten Middle Americans were white, and in 1980 and 1984 Ronald Reagan won an average 61 percent of the white working-class vote. Because Middle America comprised two-thirds of the entire electorate, Reagan won in landslides. Post-1965 immigration, however, has remade American and Middle American demography. In 1980, whites were 80 percent of the overall population; today, that number has fallen to 60 percent. Indeed, almost half of today’s Middle Americans are non-white. These demographic changes have transformed American politics.

Bill Clinton combined a rising non-white population with the educated middle class, women, and enough white Middle Americans to win the presidency twice. He did so by emphasizing work and opportunity. In effect, he pushed opportunity liberalism back to the party’s rhetorical center.

Read more…

In his article, “What this year’s labor strikes mean for America’s working class” at The Hill, Andy Levin, distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, adds clarity to current reporting about the dramatic increase in labor union strikes and other organized worker actions. As Levin writes, “It wasn’t too long ago that a working-class job, meant a middle-class life….  I grew up in Michigan in the 1970s, when some of us went off to college but many more went straight into factories, construction and other industries. My friends’ working-class jobs provided a type of stability and security that feels elusive in 2023….Even if there was only one parent working outside the home, families owned their houses. There was plenty of food. Health insurance covered illness or injury without the threat of bankruptcy. Our parents could buy us a bike and maybe even take us “Up North” on a little vacation. … But now, in Michigan and throughout the country, the type of working-class prosperity that surrounded me as a kid exists mostly in the memories of people my age or older….In the 20^th century world I was born into, the American labor movement showed we could build a relatively inclusive economy in which work really paid by giving voice and power to workers in construction, manufacturing, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, transit, trucking and more. And while that world has eroded, now, in 2023, workers across the economy are showing us that this can be our future again.” Levin notes the impressive gains UPS Teamsters made as “the largest group of working people under one contract” and adds ‘Simply put, the UPS employees’ win for themselves provides a boost to the whole working class….Now, the UAW is building on this momentum….Poll after poll shows that despite potential disruptions in auto production, Americans are siding with the UAW rank and file….Whether you are a member of an established union at GM or fighting to create a new one at REI, you are amplifying the same question: Can we have livable jobs in America in the 2020s?….Until we update our laws to guarantee that workers who form a union can get a fair contract within a half year or so, we will not be able to rebuild the middle class in this country.” And therein lies a great unmet and almost unarticulated challenge for Democrats in congress and state legislatures — to become increasingly visible advocates for worker rights and better living standards, and to promote labor unions as the most effective vehicle for improving the living standards of America’s working-class.

Levin concludes, “Labor economists can tell you that many jobs will continue to require high school plus an apprenticeship, short-term credential or on-the-job training. We must help students and workers get the training and credentials they need to do the work of advanced manufacturing, information technology and more. But we must also organize society so that work really pays, including for the huge number of people who will devote themselves skillfully to jobs across multiple sectors that don’t require college degrees…. This is what the UAW strike is really about. Through unions, workers can create an America that more closely resembles the shared prosperity of my childhood than the “trickle down” world my children have inherited. All the rank and file are asking for is solidly middle-class wages, good benefits, dignified retirement and the sanity of regular and predictable hours like the people I grew up with had. Union workers built the middle class in the 20^th century, and they are the best people to rebuild it in the 21^st.” Democrats should also remember that their fate is much  intertwined with the survival and growth of a more organized labor force. Unions not only provide Democratic candidates with needed funds for their campaigns; they also provide an enormous pool of campaign volunteers, who help promote Democratic candidates and get out the vote. That’s why Republicans have put so much energy into weakening and destroying unions, in addition to their donors’ desire to keep wages low. Also, labor unions create community among working people, places and occasions to gather, to affirm their solidarity and visibility as creative and effective advocates for a better society.

But here and there, local Democratic groups have done an exceptionally-good job of spotlighting worker rights.  As Erik Gunn reports in “Democrats push an agenda to restore worker rights” at the Wisconsin Examiner, “Flanked by a phalanx of union members in trades ranging from carpentry to teaching, Democrats in the Legislature rolled out a 10-bill collection Thursday to enshrine workers’ rights in state law after a decade and a half of measures rolling back those rights….“The people of our country are rising up and standing together to demand better wages, benefits, treatment and a higher quality of life,” said Rep. Katrina Shankland (D-Stevens Point) at a news conference to announce the initiative….She pointed to union organizing, activism and contract fights at Colectivo and Starbucks coffee shops, Leinenkugel brewery and UPS as well as the prospect of a looming job action by the UAW in the auto industry….“Right now, union popularity is soaring, with seven out of 10 Americans having a positive view of labor unions, because labor unions are getting real results that improve both the economic and safety conditions for the workers they represent,” Shankland said….“As our state continues to grapple with a historic worker shortage, putting forward pro-worker policies is not only the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do. We know that pro-worker legislation will help us recruit and retain the skilled workforce needed for our workers, businesses, economies and communities to thrive.”….With Republicans holding a supermajority in the Senate and just a few seats shy of that number in the Assembly, Shankland acknowledged the difficulty of advancing the measures, but said she wasn’t giving up on getting bipartisan support for at least some of the agenda….In an interview, she asserted that data shows the Walker-era laws harming workers’ rights have also harmed the economy….“We know we have a demographic issue in Wisconsin — our workforce is aging,” Shankland said.  “And we believe that the key to the workforce shortage is treating workers with the dignity and respect they deserve and have earned through their loyalty and hard work and productivity.”

Democrats should also champion worker rights as a top priority for endorsing Supreme Court and appeals court nominees.  The way it is now, the public hears very little about the views of court nominees regarding worker and union rights, even though adults spend half their waking lives, five days a week, on the job. We hear plenty about potential high court nominees and judge appointee records and views regarding abortion, affirmative action, LGBTQ rights, the environment and a broad range of social issues. Think of all the media coverage in recent years about whether or not a baker had to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple vs. how little media attention was provided to any worker rights cases. A lot of this falls on the failure of the press to provide adequate coverage of worker rights cases. But it’s nonetheless up to Democrats and Democratic office-holders to help raise awareness of worker rights issues to the point where big media can no longer ignore job-related issues. As Eve Tahmincioglu, Celine McNicholas, and Daniel Costa report at The Economic Policy Institute, “The Supreme Court has played an important role in the decades-long campaign to erode workers’ rights in this country. In particular, the Supreme Court has issued rulings that have undermined everything from workers’ rights to form unions, the ability to build strong unions, and health and safety on the job. This term, the Supreme Court once again sided with corporations in Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters to make it easier for employers to sue unions over their decision to strike.” Compare the media coverage of this case with the aforementioned cake case. The E.P.I. article provides details about important worker rights rulings that got very little big media coverage. With disapproval of the Supreme Court at an historic high, wouldn’t now be a good time for Democrats to make a loud case for a more worker-friendly Supreme Court?

The deal went down on this some time ago, but it’s still worth noting the official demise of the First-in-the-Nation Iowa Democratic Caucuses, as I did at New York:

The death rattle of the hallowed First-in-the-Nation Iowa Democratic Caucuses took a while to subside. But now it’s done. Yes, Iowa Democrats will still get together in precinct gatherings on January 15, the same day when Iowa Republicans caucus to formally launch the 2024 Republican nominating contest. But thanks to a national party mandate insisted upon by President Joe Biden, there will be no presidential preference balloting at the Democratic caucuses. A separate, mail-in ballot process will culminate in the announcement of the results on March 5, Super Tuesday, safely outside the “early state” window Iowa once dominated, and in the midst of a cascade of votes that will confirm Biden’s nomination.

Iowa’s defenestration from the early-state window was caused by three interrelated factors that came together to overcome the first-in-the-nation tradition. First, Democrats have moved decisively to outlaw caucuses as a method for awarding national-convention delegates, compared to more open and inclusive primaries. Second, Iowa was deemed far too unrepresentative of the country demographically to maintain such a highly influential position on the nominating calendar. And third, the last Democratic Caucuses in 2020 were a huge mess with the state party unable to report the results on Caucus Night (though arguably national party mandates helped make that happen). You could add as a fourth, decisive factor: Biden’s poor performance in Iowa en route to his nomination and election; certainly the White House owed the state no favors.

As Politico reports, Iowa Democrats hope their cooperation in what is after all an uncontested nomination contest in 2024 will give them a chance at reentering the early-state window in the future, albeit not likely in its old premier position. And as the Des Moines Register notes, the state party’s surrender eliminates a collateral threat to Iowa Republicans who might have faced a calendar challenge from New Hampshire if Iowa Democrats conducted something that looked like a primary before the Granite State’s event (which by state law must occur first).

Now the only apparent troublemakers left in the presidential nominating arena are New Hampshire’s Democrats, who have no choice but to follow state law and conduct a presidential primary on January 23; the DNC has demanded New Hampshire give way to the vastly more diverse South Carolina as the first primary state and vote instead on February 6, the same day as Nevada’s primary. The Republicans who control New Hampshire’s legislature have refused to play ball, leaving their Democratic counterparts to hold a rogue event that will cost New Hampshire at least half its delegation to the Democratic convention in Chicago next year, while creating the possibility of an embarrassing upset of President Biden, who won’t participate in a primary that defies his own calendar rules.

Most recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has significantly reduced the risk of that happening by indicating he plans to withdraw from an allegedly “rigged” Democratic nominating contest to run as an independent, leaving Marianne Williamson as Biden’s only foe with any significant support. To be safe, New Hampshire’s Democratic leaders are planning a Biden write-in effort.

No matter what happens in New Hampshire, the whole show will begin in Iowa on January 15 strictly on the GOP side of the partisan divide. Republicans, after all, aren’t that hung up on diversity and are still okay with caucuses and highly unrepresentative delegate award systems. Meanwhile, sad Iowa Democrats may well feel their caucus traditions on January 15 like a missing limb.

The best election campaigns do a good job of both turning out supporters and winning over a healthy share of “persuadable” voters.

Turnout is more of a science – good campaigns know where most of their supporters are and take tried and true steps to get them to the polls. It’s not an exact science, since people keep moving and changing their minds, and sometimes it’s not enough. But you can’t win an election without a solid turnout effort, unless your candidate is a really good one.

Persuasion, on the other hand, is more of an art. there are some tried and true rules for winning hearts and minds. But they don’t always work as planned, either, and these voters can be found in many demographic groups. Yet no campaigns win important elections without persuading a significant number of previously uncommitted voters to support their candidates.

America is so polarized now, that even identifying persuadable voting groups is increasingly difficult.  At The Wall St. Journal, Aaron Zitner and Kara Dapena share some interesting statistics about persuadable voters in their graph-rich article, “A Quarter of Americans Can’t Decide Whom to Vote For. What Do We Know About Them?” including:

….most voters say their choice for president is already settled, if their options are Biden and Trump. That leaves a small but meaningful share of voters, 26%, as “up for grabs,” or persuadable. And these voters are conflicted: They don’t think Biden is doing a good job but dislike some of Trump’s personal qualities. They have a sour view of the economy but favor abortion rights. The findings give clues to how each party will try to reach these voters in the coming months.

Watching the latest GOP madness from the House, I wondered why Republicans weren’t smart enough to stay narrowly focused on economic issues where they currently hold a big advantage. I thought about it and posted this explanation at New York:

Even as the horrendous dysfunction afflicting House Republicans dominates the headlines, polls continue to show the GOP in a good position to maintain and extend its power in 2024. In the RealClearPolitics polling averages, Republicans lead in the generic congressional ballot (basically a measure of which party voters want to control the U.S. House) by a point (44.4 percent to 43.4 percent). And their wildly erratic and indictment-prone presidential front-runner, Donald Trump, similarly leads Joe Biden in 2024 general-election trial heats by an average of 45.5 percent to 44.4 percent.

There are multiple reasons offered for this anomaly of the crazy-person party holding a lead, ranging from the president’s age to some sort of national malaise. But the most obvious reason from the data we have is that solid majorities of Americans are unhappy about the economy and blame Biden for it. A new Marquette Law School national poll shows Trump being preferred to Biden on handling the economy by an astonishing 52 percent to 28 percent margin. It’s hardly an unusual finding. Here’s what ABC’s Gary Langer said after the latest ABC/Washington Post survey came out:

“Forty-four percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they’ve gotten worse off financially under Biden’s presidency, the most for any president in ABC/Post polls since 1986. Just 37% approve of his job performance, while 56% disapprove. Still fewer approve of Biden’s performance on the economy, 30%.”

And that’s with most major economic metrics looking relatively sunny. If the economy takes the negative turn next year many forecasters expect, what then? How much Trump craziness might swing voters tolerate to get back that sensational Trump economy they remember (or imagine)?

Looking at the situation from a different angle, how much are Republicans unnecessarily hurting themselves by both tolerating Trump’s high jinks and displaying their own in the U.S. House? Why don’t they exhibit some self-discipline by getting onto the obvious winning message and chirping like cicadas: Economy! Economy! Economy! I’m quite certain there are Republicans in boardrooms and country clubs all over America wondering just that.

Before getting to the heart of the matter, it’s important to acknowledge a couple of factors that lead Republicans to be less than entirely mono-vocal, aside from their varying ideological and geographical backgrounds. There are some issues, notably the situation along the southern border, and — in some parts of the country — violent-crime rates, that benefit them so much that ignoring them would represent political malpractice. The Marquette Law School poll cited above showed Trump leading Biden on “border security” by exactly the same margin as his advantage on the economy. Plus, of course, it’s a signature issue for Trump and the MAGA movement he created. There are other issues, notably abortion, that are more important to key Republican activists than all the economic indicators past, present, or future. Trump is probably straining their patience by urging the GOP to downplay its unpopular views on abortion policy.

But the key thing to understand in processing wild Republican rhetoric on issues like congressional appropriations is that they and their supporters deeply believe the country’s economic problems are almost exclusively caused by excessive public spending and government overreach. Risking a debt default to rein in deficit spending strikes most Democrats and nonpartisan observers as playing an insanely dangerous game with the economy. Plenty of Republicans can’t imagine anything more dangerous and irresponsible than trillion-dollar budget deficits and unlimited public borrowing. For people who think that way, forcing a government shutdown is an absolute no-brainer. It has to be done again and again until the spending and borrowing stops.

To be sure, the wild extremism of so much Republican rhetoric on government spending is fed by non-economic concerns about objects of all that spending. According to some conservatives, Democrats are bankrupting the country and tanking the economy in order to finance radical assaults on freedom like COVID shutdowns, vicious assaults on Christians and their institutions, a vendetta against fossil fuels and those who use them or depend on them for jobs, and the partisan weaponization of law enforcement to prosecute conservatives and liberate looters and killers. Many of them also seem to think Biden is determined to spend the U.S. to death in order to save Ukraine as payback for bribes. Donald Trump seems to regard government spending as strictly designed to keep him from returning to the White House. But it’s also telling that complicity in deficit spending is one of the rare issues on which otherwise craven Republicans like Nikki Haley are willing to criticize the 45th president.

While it’s impossible to sort out all the different evils with which Republicans associate “big government” and “runaway spending,” there’s no question that when they rage about these things they believe they are addressing the same economic concerns that their voters, as well as swing voters, want them to deal with urgently. Keep that in mind as you watch House Republicans choose a new Speaker against a backdrop of fresh promises to radically pare back federal spending.

 

 

At The Washingtonian, Hunter Spears interviews Ron Elving, American University professor and a Senior Editor and Correspondent on the Washington Desk for NPR News, who explains “Don’t Worry, Trump Isn’t Going to Become the Next Speaker of the House. Probably!“: “Article 1 [of the Constitution] says, “the House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” That’s the only guidance we get. It doesn’t say [the Speaker] has to be a member, but I think it’s just a presumption that it would be. But, in all the rules that Congress has adopted in 200 and some years, they’ve never specified that the speaker had to be a member of the House….It’s like the pope being a Catholic—I’m not sure that there’s anything in the Vatican’s protocols that says “oh and by the way, the pope should be a Catholic.” It’s not like they’re just going to pick Taylor Swift, it has to be a cardinal!….Trump would have to get virtually all the Republicans on board for that, and I could see getting half or two-thirds if some of them hold their nose—but not all. Some may not want to anger the Trump supporters in their districts, but there are 20-some Republicans from districts that actually voted for Biden….I don’t think the average Republican wants to play a hand in giving Trump the power to shut down the government. Even if all of them did back him, their majority is so slim it’s almost a non-majority. If an elevator door didn’t open or a taxi driver got lost, they might not get the votes….At the end of our conversation, Elving suggested we take a look at clause 10 (b) of rule XXIII in the official Rules of the House of Representatives. The clause reads:

a member … who has been indicted for or otherwise formally charged with criminal conduct in any Federal, State, or local court punishable as a felony for which a sentence of two or more years’ imprisonment may be imposed should … step aside from any conference leadership position until judicial or executive proceedings result in an acquittal or the charges are dismissed or reduced.

So if Republicans did want Trump as speaker, they might have to address the above first.” So, probably not gonna happen. And that’s actually a little good news for Republicans, who would have an even tougher time of being taken seriously as adults going into 2024 with the Trump follies running the House.

The other Fantasy Island scenario I’ve heard being bandied about is the Democrats, plus a very small handful of Republican House members electing Liz Cheney as the next Speaker. It’s a lovely thought, which would call attention to the GOP’s embarrassing character problem, which is one reason why it probably won’t happen. Being sane and having some integrity, Cheney likely wouldn’t want the job. Would you want to spend the next couple of years herding bellowing and whiny Republicans into a working majority? Plus, there is a high probability that the next speaker will also get canned in short order, given the belligerent nihilism of the MAGA crowd. And there is close to a zero chance that the House will pass any legislation that gives the Republicans any bragging rights. Not a lot of upside for Ms. Cheney, who currently enjoys the respect of millions of Americans across the political spectrum. Why trade that to front for the worst shite show in U.S. political history? Worry more about her running for president than speaker. At NBC News, Scott Wong and Sahil Kapur have a little roundup of some more realistic possibilities for the next Speaker, including: Majority Leader Steve Scalise; Majority whip Tom Emmer; Garret Graves; Patrick Henry; Elise Stefanik; Jim Jordan; Tom Cole and a few wild cards. Most of them are Trump grovelers and it’s hard to envision the Republicans emerging from this debacle with a modicum of dignity that will earn the respect of swing voters. Still, Democrats would be wise to plan strategy around one of them getting the Speaker’s gavel. And dare we hope that this sorry affair may help Dems win a House majority next year?

J. Miles Coleman of Sabato’s Crystal Ball offers some astute observation of the GOP House meltdown, including: “We doubt there is much actual political fallout here, but one thing to monitor going forward is how much more dysfunctional the House becomes. The chances of a shutdown, which McCarthy narrowly avoided thanks to Democratic votes over the weekend, just shot up, as we are going to be doing the shutdown dance again in November and the new GOP speaker (assuming there is one) may need to take a harder line in an attempt to satiate his most insatiable members. It may be that this speaker gets a reprieve from some of the hardliners simply because he or she is not McCarthy. Democrats, meanwhile, declined to throw McCarthy a lifeline during the motion to vacate, opting en masse to vote with the Republican rebels. The Democrats seemed legitimately angry at McCarthy for offering them less than nothing for their support, which he clearly needed (or he just needed some Democrats to vote present on the motion to vacate, allowing loyal Republicans to deliver a majority of those voting)….Democrats also will likely relish the continued turbulence on the Republican side. That said, there are risks to them, too. Yes, it would probably be easy to blame Republicans for a future shutdown, but an extended one that has an impact on the economy could have repercussions for the president, too….One final point: Despite his rocky rise to the top and short tenure as Speaker, McCarthy had been a prodigious fundraiser for House Republicans. Over the last several cycles, Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC he was aligned with, emerged as one of the most formidable outside spending groups in House races. With McCarthy out, there may be some negative effects on GOP fundraising.”

Meanwhile, Cooper Burton reports that “The Supreme Court starts its new term with dismal approval ratings” at FiveThirtyEight: “Numbers from a new average we built (similar to our presidential approval tracker) to track approval of the Supreme Court over time show that the court remains extremely unpopular with the American public: At the time of publication, an average of 38 percent of Americans approved of the job the Supreme Court is doing while 54 percent disapproved, for an average net approval rating of -16 percentage points. (Be on the lookout for a full launch of the tracker soon.)….The court’s net approval rating at the beginning of September was the lowest since our tracker began in December 2020. Other metrics besides approval, like favorability and confidence, have also registered record lows. In a Pew Research survey from July, the court’s favorability was the lowest since they began asking the question back in 1987. And 62 percent of adults in an April Marist/NPR/PBS NewsHour poll said that they had not very much or no confidence at all in the Supreme Court….some of the justices themselves have expressed concern over both the perception and reality of the court’s ideological divides. Add that to the steady stream of ethics scandals that have continued to trickle out since April, and you get the recipe for an unhappy public — in our average, the court’s net approval rating has fallen 17 points since it began releasing the biggest opinions of the term in May, despite the data showing public agreement with most of those decisions.” Democrats should keep pointing out that this is a Republican-dominated Supreme Court, and Republicans violated long-standing Senate agreements so they could pack the Court. The most realistic way to change it is to elect a landslide Democratic majority next year – one which can implement reforms to restore the Supreme Court’s credibility.

The following article,  “The key to messaging is repetition. These are the messages Democrats should repeat relentlessly” by Matthew Smith, is cross-posted from Daily Kos:

Mass-market messaging is all about repetition and consistency—telling the same story over and over till it finally sinks in with a media-deluged public. It’s the principle behind the famous “Rule of 7” in advertising (your audience has to hear your message at least seven times before they’ll consider buying your product). It’s why ads are repeated so often on TV or YouTube that we get sick of seeing them. And, of course, it’s the basis of Goebbels’s Big Lie (If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it).

Conservatives have learned this lesson too well. We all know the Republican Party’s brand, because every Republican, from Congress to city councils, sounds exactly the same: “freedom,” “liberty,” the Constitution, “family values,” blah, blah, till we’re sick of hearing it. When they find a meme that works for them (“woke,” trans hate, Hunter Biden), they seize on it with a groupthink that’s honestly a little creepy. They know that simply by endless repetition they can create their own reality, persuading millions of Americans to believe even stone-cold lies—for example:

• Republicans are the party of freedom, Christian values, and fiscal restraint.
• The Second Amendment is about owning a gun for your own personal use.
• The election was rigged.
• Democrats are radical socialists who hate America.

Clearly, repetition in political messaging is a powerful tool.

Now ask yourself: What messages do Democrats repeat so often you’re sick of hearing them?

If an answer doesn’t immediately spring to mind (and it won’t), that’s an issue. It means, for one thing, that persuadable voters may not have a clear idea of who Democrats are and what we stand for. For another, if we’re not constantly, relentlessly telling Americans who we are, then we allow conservatives to define our party for us. And they are.

Democrats have inspiring, powerful messages to tell, and plenty of time to make our case. But it has to be a coordinated effort at message domination. From now till Election Day, we need to tell those messages so often that voters beg us to stop. They should be short, simple, values-based messages that solidify our party’s brand and define our core beliefs.

What should those messages be? What reality do we want to create? One would hope Democratic leaders are answering those questions now, but if not, here are a few suggestions (If you have other or better ideas, please post them in the comments):

PRIMARY MESSAGES

DEMOCRATS MAKE PEOPLE’S LIVES BETTER.

This strikes me as the party’s most powerful and appealing message. But it can’t just be implied by our policies. It needs to be stated explicitly, and it needs to come from everyone, always.

Talking points:

• By all means tout the many, many accomplishments of President Biden and the Democrats, BUT tie those policies explicitly to our brand: The Democratic Party’s mission is making people’s lives better. It’s what Democrats do and what we stand for.
• We don’t just talk about making people’s lives better—we’ve been doing it for nearly a hundred years. Virtually every major improvement in our country’s quality of life has come from Democrats, including:
  • Social Security and Medicare
  • Affordable health care
  • The very idea of a minimum wage and getting paid for overtime
  • Unemployment insurance
  • Civil rights and workplace rights for women, people of color, and LGBTQ
  • Credit card reforms and consumer protections
  • And so much more
• We’re the party of compassion and caring. Our primary goals are to alleviate hardship and suffering and to improve the basic quality of life for all Americans.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS UNFIT TO GOVERN. VOTE THEM OUT. ALL OF THEM.

Because negative messages work too. President Biden has very effectively made speeches about the conservative threat to democracy. But an occasional speech won’t get the job done. Every Democratic politician needs to repeat the message at every media opportunity, campaign stop, and debate.

Talking points:

• This election is truly a battle for the soul of America. Ultraconservatism and its slavish devotion to Donald Trump has become an actual destructive force in America. It is a toxic ideology that poses a real and immediate danger to American democracy and the principles we have stood for for almost 250 years. Republicans have proven it by:
  • Trying to overturn a free and fair election, fomenting a riot at the Capitol, and preventing the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history
  • Passing laws making it harder to vote
  • Fomenting pointless culture wars that pit Americans against one another
  • Spreading outrageous conspiracy theories
  • Refusing to do anything about gun violence
  • Undermining people’s faith in elections, a free press, science, law enforcement, the rule of law, and government itself
  • Praising the authoritarian regime in Hungary as an example for America and threatening to withdraw support for Ukraine
  • Banning books
  • Threatening financial default and government shutdowns
• Nothing gets better without change. And nothing will change until every last Republican is out of office.
• Conservative policies toward the poor are immoral, cruel, un-American, un-Christian, irreligious, and inhumane.
• Conservatism is a timid ideology based on fear. Republicans are afraid of new ideas and anyone who isn’t just like them. Don’t live in fear, and stop electing politicians who tell you that you should.
• Conservatives have stopped listening to Americans. Polls show strong majorities of Americans agree with Democrats on virtually every important issue.

SECONDARY MESSAGES

OUR POSITION ON [X] IS BASED ON DEEPLY HELD AMERICAN VALUES.

Whenever Democrats do talk about policies, they should always, always relate them to traditional American principles. Don’t just make intellectual arguments; appeal to voters’ emotions—their patriotism and national pride.

Talking points:

• Democrats passionately believe in the values established in America’s founding documents:
  • All of us are created equal.
  • All of us have an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
  • Liberty includes, as Roosevelt said, the freedom from want and the freedom from fear.
• Explicitly relate every policy to the core values behind it. For example:
  • Gun safety: The unalienable right to life, freedom from fear
  • Civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights: Equality, personal liberty, the right to pursue happiness
  • Poverty and income inequality: Equality, fairness, freedom from want, the right to pursue happiness and the American Dream

DEMOCRATS FIGHT FOR THE UNDERDOG.

Talking points:

• We fight for everyone who needs a voice in America—workers and their families, the poor, people of color, LGBTQ people, voters having their rights taken away.
• It’s not about “identity politics” or “class warfare,” it’s about living up to the American ideals of equal opportunity, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

DEMOCRATS BELIEVE IN AMERICA’S FUTURE.

Talking points:

• America is doing well. We are the greatest, richest, most powerful nation on earth, respected and admired around the world. We believe America can do anything we set our minds to. We can create the society we want.

• We are the party of optimism and progress—the only party with a vision for the future and a better way of life for America. Republicans have no vision for the future and nothing to offer but divisive culture wars and a dark, apocalyptic view of our country.

  Reasonable Democrats may have disagreements about the specifics of message content. But Smith is surely right that Democrats can profit from better message discipline, repetition and, especially coordination.