At U.S. News Stan Greenberg, CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, co-founder of Democracy Corps and author of “America Ascendant,” reports on “The Trans-Partisan Trade Revolt: Voters of both parties are pressuring politicians to oppose corporate influence over trade.” Noting that “A stunning 62 percent of white working class men oppose the [TPP] deal, a third strongly,” Greenberg argues that Hillary Clinton’s critique of the proposed deal resonates well with two significant groups of voters: “We should avoid some of the provisions sought by business interests, including our own, like giving them or their investors the power to sue foreign governments to weaken their environmental and public health rules.” Greebeerg adds, “That is the kind of message that moves the most pro “free trade” Democrats to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership but also engages the Republican base voters activated by Trump.”

In his nationally-syndicated column, “What have you got to lose with Trump? For working class, a lot,”  E. J. Dionne, Jr. quotes from President Obama’s recent speech in Philadelphia that “across every age, every race in America, incomes rose and the poverty rate fell,” that “the typical household income of Americans rose by $2,800, which is the single biggest one-year increase on record” and that 3.5 million people were lifted out of poverty, “the largest one-year drop in poverty since 1968”? Dionne adds, “He wasn’t exaggerating. The median household income hit $56,516 in 2015, an increase in real terms of 5.2 percent from 2014, and the gains of Americans with lower incomes were bigger than those of the well-to-do. We have a long way to go to ease our inequality problems, but we haven’t seen broadly shared income growth like this since the late 1990s when, as Clinton would point out, her husband was president.” Dionne continues, “Should blue-collar voters risk blowing the gains by taking a chance on Trump? Obama had something useful to say about this Tuesday: “He spent most of his life trying to stay as far away from working people as he could. And now this guy is going to be the champion of working people? Huh?”

Paul Krugman addresses a question of growing concern in his “The Conscience of a Liberal” blog at The New York Times, “Why Are The Media Objectively Pro-Trump?” Krugman explains, “…It’s not even false equivalence: compare the amount of attention given to the Clinton Foundation despite absence of any evidence of wrongdoing, and attention given to Trump Foundation, which engaged in more or less open bribery — but barely made a dent in news coverage. Clinton was harassed endlessly over failure to give press conferences, even though she was doing lots of interviews; Trump violated decades of tradition by refusing to release his taxes, amid strong suspicion that he is hiding something; the press simply dropped the subject.”

At slate.com Jim Newell’s “Gary Johnson Is Not Worth Any Liberal’s Protest Vote: He’s a free-market ideologue who would work to undermine large pieces of the left’s program” notes: “…in Thursday’s fresh new New York Times/CBS News national poll…Clinton and Trump are tied at 42 percent apiece in a four-way race. “The third-party candidates draw their strongest support from younger voters,” the Times writes. “Twenty-six percent of voters ages 18 to 29 say they plan to vote for Mr. Johnson, and another 10 percent back Ms. Stein,” about the same as in the just-released Quinnipiac poll.

Kevin Drum’s Mother Jones post “Why Are There Any Liberals Supporting Gary Johnson?” shows that the Libertarian presidential candidate’s economic policies are more right-wing than those of Trump on some major issues. At Rolling Stone Tessa Stuart has Johnson quotes on many of these issues.

“The share of religiously “unaffiliated” people in the country — atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” — increased from about 16 percent in 2007 to about 23 percent in 2014, according to a Pew Research study last year…A Pew poll this year found that religious “nones” make up one-fifth of all registered voters in the country — about in line with the percentage of white evangelical Protestants, who comprise a crucial piece of the Republican coalition…In the Pew poll this year, more than a quarter of Democratic and Democrat-leaning voters were religiously unaffiliated. Overall, about two-thirds of the unaffiliated said they supported Mrs. Clinton over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump — about in line with the percentage who supported President Obama at the same point in 2012 over Republican nominee Mitt Romney.” — from David Sherfinski’s “Candidates face rising ‘nontheist’ voting bloc” at the Washtington Times.

NYT reporter Michael Wines has unearthed a host of videos and quotes by Republican officials bragging about and acknowledging their efforts to suppress voting and voting rights of groups who tend to vote Democratic. Among those quoted, Todd Allbaugh, 46, a staff aide to a Wisconsin Republican state legislator, explains why he quit his job and party: “I was in the closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP Senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters. Think about that for a minute. Elected officials planning and happy to help deny a fellow American’s constitutional right to vote in order to increase their own chances to hang onto power.”

Charlie Cook spotlights a mistake the Clinton campaign may be making, which he has seen in many other campaigns: “One of the biggest mis­takes that cam­paigns make is to over-sched­ule a can­did­ate…A lot of can­did­ates are over-sched­uled, something that of­ten leads to polit­ic­al mis­takes, men­tal er­rors, or health is­sues. Some­times it is the fault of cam­paign op­er­at­ives pil­ing too much in­to the sched­ule; oth­er times, it is a can­did­ate who won’t say no, adding events to an already full sched­ule. But bad things hap­pen to ex­hausted can­did­ates. Either their brains lose track of their tongues, or they break down phys­ic­ally, of­ten at in­op­por­tune times… It would be per­fectly nor­mal for someone with a back­break­ing sched­ule to dial it back and re­cu­per­ate. Be­sides, it could double as some quiet de­bate prep.”

Both Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium and Sabato’s Crystal Ball poll analysts see a very clear narrowing of the presidential race improving Trump’s chances. But their analyses probably does not reflect the disgust of swing voters in reaction to Trump’s ugly, unapologetic walkback of his birther lies. Wang does qualify his analysis of this political moment by citing the plausible scenarios in Glen Thrush’s Politico post, “5 reasons Trump might fall in autumn: The GOP nominee’s surge is real, but perishable.”

I was glad to read that the Clinton campaign is going to put some effort into reaching out to voters, especially young voters, who are considering casting their ballots for Libertarian or Green Party presidential candidates.

As Jonathan Martin and Amy Chozick report at The New York Times, “Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies, unnerved by the tightening presidential race, are making a major push to dissuade disaffected voters from backing third-party candidates, and pouring more energy into Rust Belt states, where Donald J. Trump is gaining ground.” Chozick and Martin add that “leading Democrats have been alarmed by the drift of young voters toward the third-party candidates.”

Green nominee Stein and Libertarian Johnson are together inching into double-digit territory in some recent polls. I think there is a belief that Stein voters are generally Naderite Democrat-haters and therefore not persuadable, while Johnson draws more from Republicans, which has historically been the case with the Libertarians.

But this year is a little different, as the authors note,

The New York Times-CBS survey this week showed, in a four-way race, both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton receiving 42 percent, with Mr. Johnson drawing 8 percent and Ms. Stein 4 percent.

What is striking is that Mr. Johnson, despite being a former Republican governor who supports limited government, appears to take just as many votes from Mrs. Clinton as he does from Mr. Trump. When asked to choose between the two major party nominees, 23 percent of Mr. Johnson’s supporters said they would back Mrs. Clinton while 20 percent said they would favor Mr. Trump.

Martin and Chozick report that the Clinton campaign hopes to enlist Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Al Gore to focus on reversing the drift of young voters toward the Libertarians and Greens. Sanders and Warren, in particular, are held in very high regard by young voters, and they have the credibility to get a hearing with those who are genuinely persuadable. Gore’s experience in 2000 is instructive, even if he doesn’t have the juice to excite today’s younger voters.

Pro-Democratic Super-PAC Priorities USA is also going to make a significant contribution to the project. “We’ll be launching a multimillion-dollar digital campaign that talks about what’s at stake and how a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for Donald Trump, who is against everything these voters stand for,” said Justin Barasky, a strategist for Priorities USA.”

That’s the meme all Democrats should repeat until it sticks: “A vote for the Libertarian or Green presidential candidate is, in effect, a vote for Trump.”

This is a good project the Clinton campaign should support — but not at the expense of investing in African American GOTV projects in swing states, which is certainly where they can elicit the most pivotal Clinton votes for every dollar and minute invested.

Grudgingly credit Republicans with doing an effective job of branding Clinton as “not trustworthy,” albeit with skimpy evidence. Republicans have long relied on the power of sheer repetition to implant their memes, and it is working better than ever in 2016. It’s a dark art, but it works frighteningly well, as they have refined their techniques. Sadly, too many in the traditional media have proven to be gullible accomplices.

As for the Green Party, it is disappointing that it has degenerated into a spoiler role with respect to the Presidential election. The Greens could do a lot of good if they would focus on down-ballot contests, while supporting the Democratic nominee, who is always far better than the Republican on environmental concerns. They could really improve the Democratic Party by electing savvy environmentalists who could strengthen the Democratic environmental comittment at the grass-roots level — a far more promising strategy than going down in a blaze of glory while contributing to the election of Trump.

Of the two candidates, Johnson may be more of an asset to Trump this year, since he draws less-informed liberal voters, who are hustled by the Libertarian stances on personal freedoms like same-sex marriage and smoking marijuana, while ignoring the fact that the Libertarians are like Republicans on steroids with respect to economic policies. Johnson does draw some support away from Trump in terms of the shrinking number of moderate Republicans. But some of them may also be otherwise ready to vote for Clinton, when reminded that Johnson is astoundingly clueless about foreign policy.

Stein’s suporters are more in the vein of inflexible hard-core lefties. The Greens have morphed into more of an all-purpose Naderite/Democrat-bashing party. The environmental movement deserves a political organization that focuses more on an anti-pollution reform agenda.

In the recent past, third parties have helped the Democratic presidential candidate by dividing conservative voters and drawing them away from the Republicans. Indications are that it could be different this year, with Johnson drawing slightly more from Clinton, owing to the success of GOP parroting the “untrustworthy” meme. When addressing young voters, especially, Democrats should repeat their own meme with equal fervor and dedication, “A vote for the Libertarian or Green presidential candidate is, in effect, a vote for Trump.”

“If you see the poll averages and models settle into a steady Clinton lead of 2 points or less, or have the race tied or Trump ahead, then Clinton backers can break out their worry beads,” observes Charlie Cook in his post “The Race Tightens, But It’s Still Clinton’s to Lose” at the Cook Political Report. “Trump supporters can take heart at the recent tightening, but I don’t think we are anywhere near a tossup race yet.”

Simon Maloy nails Trump and the false equivalency lapdogs masquerading as journalists in his Salon.com post, “Trump’s successful tax dodge: Months of lying and stonewalling somehow aren’t a major scandal: Donald Trump Jr. confirmed that his dad’s tax info will remain hidden and that transparency hurts Trump politically”

At Roll Call Jason Dick explains why “Democrats Believe Long Shots Can Deliver a House Majority.”

But Maddowblog’s Steve Benen reports “The New York Times’ Upshot…maintains a frequently updated forecasting model showing which party is favored to control the Senate in the next Congress. A month ago, by a roughly two-to-one margin, Democrats were favored to be in the majority. As of this morning, however, according to this model, there’s a 51% chance Republicans will be in charge…Daily Kos has its own projections, and it too shows the GOP favored to keep its Senate majority. The Huffington Post’s forecasting model tilts even more heavily in the Republicans’ favor.”

Meanwhile Susan Page, focusing on Chester County, PA, argues at USA Today that “A suburban tide against Trump could sink his election bid.” Seh quotes Ruy Teixeira: “In Donald Trump, you have a perfect storm of a candidate in terms of pressing buttons to sending white, college-educated voters, particularly women, in the other direction,” says Ruy Teixeira, co-director of “States of Change,” a nonpartisan project that studies the impact of demographic trends on elections. “These are not voters who are protectionist or anti-immigrant. He represents a type of Republicanism or strand of the Republican Party that they probably like the least.”

Here come the Koch Brothers big money to rescue Republicans down-ballot. “Of its roughly $250 million budget for the election, Freedom Partners said it would spend $42 million on TV and digital advertising, all told. The rest will now be focused on its ground game in addition to voter contact by phone and mail, and events.”

Apropos of my post on health care yesterday, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee reports on a new push for a “Senate resolution calling for every American to have the choice of a public health insurance option.” According to the announcement, “With Hillary Clinton actively campaigning on big ideas like a public option, debt-free college, and expanding Social Security benefits, Democrats will earn a mandate in 2016 to govern boldly and progressively in 2017. Bernie Sanders’ partnership with Senate leaders and grassroots groups on this push shows increasing Democratic unity around big progressive ideas…Hillary Clinton called for a public option on May 9 and reaffirmed this support in a big economic speech on August 11.”

“Is Arizona A Swing State This Year?” Jude Joffe-Block reports on the latest developments at npr.org.

Reporting on the possibilities for women office holders in this year’s election, at The American Prospect  Peter Dreier offers some statistics to ponder: “Since the 1970s, the number of women in Congress and in other levels of government has steadily grown. Women now comprise 20 percent of the Senate, 19.3 percent of House members, 24.6 percent of state legislators, 12 percent (six) of the nation’s 50 governors, and 19 percent of the mayors of the nation’s 100 largest cities. Even so, American women still are still far less represented in government than their international peers…There are currently 20 women in the Senate—14 Democrats and six Republicans—according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University…Twelve women—including three incumbents—are currently running for ten Senate seats. (There are 34 Senate races this year)…If things break well for the Democrats, the next Senate could have 24 women—19 Democrats and five Republicans. This would be a record number of women in the Senate.”

The following article by managing editor of the blog Working-Class Perspectives John Russo, former co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies and coordinator of the Labor Studies Program at Youngstown State University and visiting scholar at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and Working Poor at Georgetown University and Georgetown University Professor Sherry Linkon, faculty affiliate of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, and editor of Working-Class Perspectives, is cross-posted from Moyers & Company:

When Mitt Romney dismissed the 47 percent of voters who, he predicted, would support Barack Obama “no matter what” as “victims” who depend on government assistance, liberal critics called foul. The quote, caught on video by a bartender at a Florida fundraiser in September 2012, reinforced Romney’s image as an elitist whose interests were firmly aligned with the wealthy. Not surprisingly, Democrats repeatedly used the line against Romney, and while we can’t blame his defeat in that year’s election on that one line, it sure didn’t help, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio.

Last Friday, Hillary Clinton said the following:

You know, just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of these folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket – and I know this because I see friends from all over America here – I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas – as well as, you know, New York and California–but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

Read more…

As Donald Trump began to climb in polls last week, there were reports of panic among GOP Beltway types. I explain the phenomenon at New York:

Non-Republicans may be forgiven for feeling confused by a report from BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins that many Republican insiders are privately freaked out by the renewed possibility that Donald Trump could actually be elected president. Wasn’t their horror toward Trump mostly a matter of fearing he’d be a disastrous loser who’d drag the whole ticket down with him? If he’s doing well enough to be a threat to win, won’t that make it infinitely easier to hang on to a Republican-controlled Congress?

These are good questions, but the truth is GOP-insider fear of Trump was never just about his 2016 general-election prospects. Some Never Trump conservatives sincerely fear the man on some of the same grounds many liberals feel. Others are worried about what Trump is doing to conservatism itself.

But there is an underexamined reason for a secret GOP desire to see the mogul lose in November: The immediate future of the Republican Party could actually be pretty rosy under a President Hillary Clinton. Unless the GOP loses the House along with the Senate, it should have the power to pretty much stymy anything the 45th president tries to do. If they hang on to the Senate, their obstructionist power might extend to Supreme Court and other appointments. Either way, 2018 would be set up as a boffo year for the “out party” up and down the ballot. The Senate landscape that year is already astoundingly positive for Republicans, and there’s no reason to think the GOP will immediately lose the midterm-turnout advantage that proved so useful in 2010 and 2014. Indeed, a President Trump is about the only thing that could screw up 2018 for Republicans.

A third straight Democratic term in the White House, moreover, would greatly improve Republican odds to finally break their presidential losing streak in 2020. That’s an even bigger deal than you might immediately imagine, since that’s the election year that will determine control of the state legislatures that will conduct congressional and state redistricting for the next decade. By contrast, a 2020 reelection campaign for President Trump would be a dicey affair, particularly since he’s pretty likely to draw a primary opponent.

And then, of course, there’s the big X factor for those Republicans who don’t care for Trump: If he loses, he could quite possibly be disposed of quickly as a factor in Republican politics. Yes, Republicans would have to figure out some way to keep the white ethno-nationalist passions he aroused at bay or better yet channeled in a more constructive direction. But there’s a good chance Republicans could treat the near disaster of 2016 as a cautionary tale and go back to fighting among “movement conservatives” and “reformocons” and pragmatists over control of the party, perhaps even finding ways to detoxify the party for Latino and millennial voters.

If Trump wins, of course, you can add to his prestige as the Republican who broke the Democrats’ grip on the White House the vast patronage powers of the executive branch and the even greater power of presidents to define their party in the public’s eye.

Yikes!

Democrats everywhere have work to do in order to make the most of the unprecedented opportunity presented by the 2016 election. But there is nonetheless a need for thinking longer-term, beyond 2016, to reconnect with core Democratic party values as we chart a better future for America.

So take a mini-break with Matt Grossman and David A. Hopkins, authors of Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats, who have an interesting post up at Vox, “Health reform: trying to achieve Democratic goals through Republican means: American policy compromises Democrats’ pragmatic goals with Republicans’ ideological objections.”

Grossman and Hopkins explain,

During the congressional debate over the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Republicans successfully undermined overall popular support for the law by characterizing it as a “government takeover” of the American health care system — even though most of its specific provisions remained quite popular with the public.

As many frustrated Democrats pointed out, the ACA was far from the exercise in single-payer socialized medicine implied by Republican critics. In fact, the law’s structure is striking for the many ways in which it attempts to avoid conservative accusations of “big government” liberalism.

Republicans favor federalism over nationalization. The ACA creates state-based insurance exchanges and uses state Medicaid partnerships to deliver services.

Republicans favor private sector implementation over increasing government bureaucracy. The ACA delivers benefits mainly through private insurance companies.

Republicans favor free market incentives. The ACA uses internet-based shopping marketplaces, which allows consumers to compare prices and requires insurers to compete for their business.

In an earlier era, back when Republicans would actually negotiate in good faith, the ACA would have been considered a moderate Republican bill, grudgingly suported by Democrats. Many Democrats would still describe it that way, even though nearly all of today’s Republicans bash the ACA at every opportunity.

Hopkins and Grossman go on to argue that Democrats are trapped in a frame of Republican making. “Political leaders typically pursue the goals of Democratic constituencies using tools and approaches that respond to conservative critiques of big government…the Republican Party characterizes each set of new initiatives as expanding the role of government in violation of constitutional values.”

To pass the ACA, Democrats had to adjust, not only to their constituent group concerns, but also to conservative criticism, to get anything passed. “Democrats have even internalized conservative criticisms of federal agencies and programs,” say the authors, “As a result, public policy responds to conservative critiques.”

Grossman and Hopkins present some startling charts, showing that “big government” in the sense of a dominant federal sector, is largely a myth. The actual increase federal employees since 1946 has been miniscule in both real and percentage terms. Most of the growth in the government workforce has been at the state and local level, which Republicans certaimly prefer to a growing federal sector. Worse, they show that, despite the perception of ‘big government’ domination, a lot of what should be in the public sector has been privatized

Public policy increasingly relies on private sector government contractors and recipients of competitive grants (usually nonprofits) to deliver services. Although it is difficult to measure the size of this “shadow government” with precision, it now eclipses that of the direct federal workforce.

While federal government and goveernment grantee employment and the military personnel, has been fairly stable since 1990, there has been an enormous uptick in spending on federal contractors. More gravy for the private sector.

The authors present data showing that, “American social welfare spending nearly matches that of large European nations — but a large fraction of our welfare spending passes indirectly through private companies, usually employers.” America’s “subsidized private welfare expenditure” share of gross domestic product is enormous compared to that of other nations, which opens up irresistible turf for private sector corruption. We get the knee-jerk parroting of the “big government is wasteful/corrupt” meme in the media, while the private sector often loots taxpayers, with very little in the way of media accountability.

To provide an example of wasteful spending in health care, I recently had an asthma attack which required about 3 hours of routine hospital treatment and monitoring, nothing all that extraordinary. The bill was over $8K, with the profits being gobbled up by various private sector health contractors. Three months later, my out-of-pocket share remains unclear. Shortly afterwards, my nationally-respected health insurer dumped me because of my new zip code.

A few years before that, I cut my hand on a broken glass and had to get some stitiches at a different hospital. When the bill came, I noticed a $60 charge for “tray removal.” I asked the billing office what that meant, and the staff responded, “That’s when they took off the first bandages and put them in a tray and emptied it.” No doubt, millions of Americans have similar stories.

Grossman and Hopkins write, “Democrats have collectively expanded the scope of government authority but have been forced to implement their initiatives in cooperation with the private sector, by relying upon market competition and tax incentives, and by decentralizing services to states, localities, contractors, and grantees.”

On balance, the Affordable Care Act has been a step forward in terms of providing health security for additional millions of Americans who had been denied decent coverage, although a number of Republican governors and state legislatures have weakened the ACA by refusing to accept Medicaid Expansion.

Democrats must create a consensus that quality health care for all Americans should be the top national security priority. All evidence suggests that the private sector can’t meet this challenge. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton favors reforms that strengthen the ACA’s coverage to include every citizen and every illness and condition. After electing Clinton and a working Democratic majority of congress, Democrats and progressives should urge Clinton to press the case for a single-payer health care system.

This weekend Christian Right leaders held their most important election-year clambake, and the dynamics were fascinating, as I noted at New York.

As a couple of thousand Christian Right activists gathered in Washington for the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit this weekend, it was more obvious than ever that the GOP is straining the loyalties of the faithful. The star attraction, Donald Trump, was, after all, the fifth-place finisher in the presidential straw poll at last September’s VVS.

But like a long-suffering spouse, the Christian Right is sticking with Donald Trump as we head toward Election Day because he is convincingly the enemy of its enemies and is willing to make a few key gestures in the direction of the righteous, albeit in a clumsy and offhand way.

None of the Christian conservative leaders who have made opposition to Trump (e.g., Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention) a matter of conscience were allowed near the podium of the VVS. Still, much anxious rhetoric was aimed at those who are thinking about voting third or fifth party or staying home. Former representative Michele Bachmann characteristically used the most extreme words possible to condemn that temptation, comparing the election to the choice God gave the Hebrews in presenting his covenant with them: “I have set before you life and death. Which will you choose?”

But while there may be some questions about turnout rates on the margins, you did not get the sense listening to Trump address the gathering that he is especially worried about this particular slice of the electorate. He did not bother to mention abortion or same-sex marriage (though his promises to appoint “Federalist Society” Supreme Court justices in the mode of Antonin Scalia was a well-understood dog whistle on those subjects), which may be a first for a Republican nominee talking to this kind of gathering.

As has been his habit when in Christian Right company of late, Trump placed greatest emphasis on promising something of interest almost exclusively to evangelical clergy: repealing the “Johnson Amendment” that prevents candidate endorsements and other electioneering from the pulpit for tax-exempt religious (and for that matter nonreligious) organizations.

As Amy Sullivan has pointed out, the evangelical rank and file don’t appear to support this idea — yet it always gets big applause from the leadership, and also illustrates the purely transactional nature of Trump’s appeal to politically active Christian Right elites. They really have nowhere else to go now that Trump has conquered the GOP, yet he’s willing to promise them a tasty policy snack that makes it easier for them to swallow their misgivings about supporting this crude philistine.

For the benefit of the more credulous, Trump’s running-mate Mike Pence, the designated conservative whisperer of the ticket, came along and told the VVS attendees on Saturday that “at the very core, the very heart, of this good man is … a faith in God and a faith in the American people.” This is about as convincing as James Dobson’s unsupported claim that Trump is a “baby Christian,” like one of those ancient barbarians who converted to Christianity but needed a while to figure out the new faith was incompatible with slaughtering prisoners or keeping concubines.

Trump mostly has faith in himself and in the golden calf of worldly success. But he’s the presidential nominee of the Republican Party, and thus leader of that mess of pottage for which Christian Right leaders have exchanged their birthright. So what are they to do?

They cheer.

Selah.

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:

Yeah, okay, this hasn’t been the Clinton campaign’s best weekend ever. The media and the Trump campaign both have reasons to play the ‘basket of deplorables’ quote and the health issue up, so of course we will hear a lot of overheated talk about how horrible all this is for Hillary. The simple fact, though, is that neither a quote that needed a little tweaking (if she had said “some” of Trump supporters rather than “half,” the quote would not have been news), nor the news about walking pneumonia is going to change the fundamental dynamics of this race.

When Hillary performs well in the first debate on September 26th, all the health talk goes away — just ask the veterans of the Mondale and Reagan campaigns about good debate performances putting such questions to bed. If Trump wants to get into a discussion about the quote in that debate, it will just give Hillary a chance to pivot and talk about all the nasty racists who are part of his campaign. I guarantee she will not be playing defense on that topic.

So I’m not worried about this irritating weekend. What I am worried about is that Democrats will take off their eyes off the ball and forget the fundamentals of this election, which just aren’t that complicated and aren’t about the gaffe du jour. The 2016 election is about whether Democrats seize the day and get Democratic voters excited about this election. The Rising American Electorate (RAE), a term coined by pollster Stan Greenberg, consists of growing demographic segments within the American voting population: people of color, unmarried women, and young people. All of these groups will strongly support Hillary and other Democrats at the polls. The RAE is now over 55% of eligible voters. If we get them motivated and inspired to vote with a strongly progressive populist message, we will not only win big percentages of their votes, but win more than enough white working class voters as well.

The numbers are clear on this point. As just one example, the Washington Post‘s most recent poll gives Hillary Clinton a modest five point lead over Trump, but if Democratic voters turn out in equal numbers to Republican voters, the lead rises to 10%. Greenberg, who also coined the term ‘Reagan Democrats’ in the 1980s and has studied white working class voters for most of his career, points out, the white working class that is Donald Trump’s base is only 18% of the likely electorate this year. That’s half of what it was in the Reagan years. And we can get some of those voters with the same message that appeals to the RAE.

If Hillary and other Democrats focus the election on the economic narrative of leveling the playing field — the same economic narrative Hillary and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have all focused on over this election — we will win this election, and win it big. If we talk about creating good, new jobs through rebuilding roads and highways and investing in solar and wind power; if we talk about paid family leave and affordable child care; if we talk about raising the minimum wage; if we talk about holding Wall Street accountable; if we talk about free college for low- and middle-income students; if we talk about getting the drug companies to lower their outrageous price increases; if we talk about not letting big money control our politics anymore; in other words, if we talk about the Democratic platform Hillary and the entire party have already endorsed and campaigned on, we will win this election.

There just aren’t that many swing voters in the presidential election left in an America where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are people and brands people have known a whole lot about for a very long time. But there are two kinds of voters Democrats need to be worried about: people who would be voting for us yet might not vote due to a lack of enthusiasm, and people who would never vote for Trump and thus are Hillary voters. These likely Hillary voters are not necessarily sold on other Democrats down ballot in races they may not be paying much attention to yet. There are millions of voters in both categories, and rather than worrying about voters who might suddenly decide to vote for Trump because Hillary has a touch of walking pneumonia, we need to focus on making our case to those two crucial sets of voters.

Because of Trump’s historic weakness as a presidential candidate, but even more because of demographics and because this kind of economic agenda and narrative produces a strong majority in the polling, this can be a Democratic wave year of historic proportions. But we can still blow this huge opportunity. Democrats are spending way too much time worrying about Reagan Democrats when the guy who coined the term thinks we need to be focused on messaging to and turning out people of color, unmarried women, and young people. We need to stop worrying about voters we will never get, and we need to stop fretting about the little day-to-day stories that will take care of themselves.

It’s unclear as of this writing how long Hillary Clinton’s pneumonia diagnosis will prevent her from campaigning and we can expect Republicans will try to amp up doubts about her health. Gabrielle Debenedetti writes at Politico that she is in high demand by Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate, and “Democrats’ fight for Senate control is dicey enough that both Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and his expected successor, Chuck Schumer, have been directly urging the nominee’s campaign to start piling more resources into the battle for control of the chamber. She will, after all, need a Democratic Senate to get anything done come January, Reid has insisted…The senators have been making the case that the candidate’s cash-rich political operation — the hub for party money and resources in 2016 — should start playing a greater role to ensure she has at least two years to move legislation through the Senate before Democrats face a brutal 2018 map, according to people familiar with the discussions…Democrats need to win four seats to take control of the Senate, and they are currently in a good position to do so: They seem likely to win Republican-held seats in Illinois and Wisconsin and are favored in Indiana, too. Up to eight other Republican seats are in play, with only one Democratic seat — Reid’s — currently looking like a toss-up.”

At The Plum Line Greg Sargent reports on a focus group of suburban Philadelphia white women, “a mix of mostly “soft” Democrats and a few Republicans and independents” organized by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg on behalf of Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund. Sargent was most struck by the low regard they had for GOP nominee Donald Trump, noting “these voters appeared entirely closed off to reconsidering Trump, describing him and his public statements in the harshest of terms: Liar. Narcissist. Egotist. Racist.” The women were selected because they were possible ‘ticket-splitters,’ to determine whether their feelings about Trump would affect their votes down-ballot. Sargent observes that PA’s Republican Senator Pat Toomey thus far seems to have escaped becoming collaterall damage of the Trump campaign. “They were reluctant to blame the GOP for Trump’s rise or to see Toomey through a Trumpian prism,” writes Sargent. “Others noted specifically that Toomey has not backed him, either, and that seemed to mean a lot to them. Indeed, one sentiment I heard expressed was that as long as GOP officials didn’t endorse Trump, they deserved to be evaluated as independent of him.”

Will Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s “What is Aleppo?” comment brand him as a lightweight, not a serious alternative for voters who want a president who is up to speed on international affairs? Before the comment Johnson was receiving some favorable reviews from a few Republicans, like Romney. Johnson may lose some of them, while other of his supporters will simply not vote for President and some may now vote for Clinton. It’s hard to imagine many Johnson supporters switching back to Trump. Johnson’s “What is Aleppo?” moment was not a ‘gotcha’ set-up. MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle was clearly anticipating a substantive answer to his question about the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis when he asked it. Before the incident some polls indicated Johnson drew slightly more from Clinton than Trump. Whatever ‘spoiler’ potential he had before the gaffe is probably gone:

What about Clinton’s “deplorables” gaffe? Republicans will try to leverage the hell out of it as an example of class elitism. But those who would get hustled by that meme are likely already supporting Trump. I doubt it will drive many swing/undecided voters to Trump. In the long run, notes Phillip Bump at The Washington Post, it may even call more attention to the fact that he welcomes racists. Clinton has said what she needs to say about it, and, when asked for further comment, she could use the opportunity to publicize Trump’s anti-worker record.

Florida’s Democratic Senate candidate Parick Murphy, who has comparatively low name-recognition, is  now campaigning as a “scrappy underdog” moderate against Republican Senator Marco Rubio. Calling Rubio “Senator No-Show“ is one way to remind Florida voters that Rubio has the U.S. Senate’s worst attendance record and is ripping off taxpayers by not showing up for work. Murphy could also pound away at Rubio’s brother-in-law mess, the way Rubio waffled on his decision to run again, and use video footage of Rubio’s deer-caught-in-the headlights, water-jar moment in ads. Florida likes moderate Democrats, and, with good ads, Murphy can win.

I agree with the conclusion of authors Matt Grossman and David A. Hopkins in their Monkey Cage post that “no single theory of party organization can accurately define both U.S. parties. They’re organized differently; they appeal to voters differently; they nominate candidates and seek policies differently.” Credit Democrats with at least trying to represent the interests of a majority of Americans, while the GOP exists primarilly as an instrument of obstruction in service to the rich. For Democrats to become a full-fledged progressive party like some in other countries, however, they will need much stronger local structure, party-building and candidate recruitment.

Theo Anderson’s In These Times post “The Stories We Live By: Why the White Working Class Votes Conservative” reviews Arlie Russell Hochschild’s “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right” explores the roots of discontent among white workers, primarilly in the south. Anderson observes that “government is perceived as the greater evil, coddling and giving breaks to the people who get ahead without putting in the hard work—the “line cutters,” in the shorthand that Hochschild uses, or the “takers” in the epithet favored by the Tea Party. This makes conservatives’ sense of loss double-barreled: Industry destroys their land and their health, while government and progressivism shatter, they believe, the old moral frameworks and rules of fair play. The result is a vicious cycle of dysfunction. Anti-government anger leads to deregulation of industry, which is then free to inflict more havoc, which intensifies the sense of loss and anger, which is then directed primarily at the government.”

From Matt Fuller’s HuffPo post, “Are Democrats Blowing Their Chance To Take Back The House?“: “There are just over 50 congressional districts held by Republicans with a PVI of R+4 or better, and seven seats even have a Democratic rating. In a year when Trump is the nominee, many of those R+4 districts could go for Clinton. And that’s before considering that districts with even more favorable PVIs could go for her too…the DCCC notes that PVI isn’t always the best indicator of a seat’s vulnerability. The DCCC has its own rating system, the Democratic Performance Index, which better takes into account the demographics of a district and voter willingness to break with the top of the ticket…Split-ticket voters have been disappearing in politics. The number of districts that went for one party for president and the other for the House reached a 92-year low in 2012 ― 5.7 percent…But a national average isn’t really the best way to look at the race for the majority. Clinton could severely run up the score in some areas, and still, with so many of these districts neatly carved out in the GOP’s favor, Republicans could hold on to the House.”

As part of the effort to “normalize” the abnormal candidacy of Donald Trump, his running-mate Mike Pence went to the Ronald Reagan library and delivered a speech comparing his boss to the 40th president. It was a good try, but didn’t pass the smell test, as I noted at New York this week:

In Pence’s account, 2016 became 1980 redux. Now as then, a rough-hewn former entertainer mocked by the “smart set” came forward with “blunt” talk and attracted a huge movement of Republicans, independents, and particularly Democrats, determined to pare back government, rebuild the military, unleash businesses, get the oil wells pumping and the coal mines humming, and Make America Great Again.

Listening to Pence, you could almost buy the parallels, putting aside little problems like Reagan’s devotion to free trade, Trump’s odd infatuation with Russia’s dictator, Reagan’s preparation for the presidency in two terms as governor of the nation’s largest state, and most of all, the massive contrast between Trump’s dark and dystopian outlook and Reagan’s sunny optimism.

But then the Hoosier governor went too far, describing the “fundamental similarity of the two men” as being rooted in their common “honesty and toughness.” That was the first of six references to Trump’s honesty or truthfulness. Coming the morning after the mogul lied through his teeth about his original positions on the Iraq War and the military intervention in Libya, it’s amazing Pence was not struck by lightning — if not during his paeans to Trump’s honesty then during his claim that the great narcissist is a man of deep humility.

Pence follows a familiar approach in labeling Trump’s frequently hate-filled utterances as “straight talk.” This rebranding was skewered by the exasperated folks at PolitiFact, as they named his collective campaign statements the “Lie of the Year” for 2015:

“It’s the trope on Trump: He’s authentic, a straight-talker, less scripted than traditional politicians. That’s because Donald Trump doesn’t let facts slow him down. Bending the truth or being unhampered by accuracy is a strategy he has followed for years.”

If, as Pence said today, “honesty is the axis on which leadership spins,” Trump is the unlikeliest national leader you could imagine.

You don’t have to be a fan or Ronald Reagan’s legacy as president–and I am most decidedly not–to feel an impulse to defend him from this imposter.