Even as Hillary Clinton takes what looks to be a sizable lead in the presidential contest, the impact down-ballot remains unclear. I discussed the possibilities at New York earlier this week.

[T]he idea that Republicans can save their congressional majorities, even as Trump goes down to a dreadful defeat, really does depend on a degree of ticket-splitting that has become less and less common in the 21st century. As the Washington Post’s Philip Bump notes, in 1992, 11 of the 34 states holding Senate elections produced different partisan results for the upper chamber and the presidency. In 2012, despite two Democratic Senate pickups in red states where the GOP candidate basically imploded, only six states split their results.

Reasons for this trend are well-known. In a process often called “the great sorting-out,” liberal voters have increasingly associated themselves with the donkey party, while conservatives have clustered in the shadow of the elephant. This “ideological polarization” has itself reduced ticket-splitting, as there are fewer opportunities for voters to find like-minded candidates on the other side of the partisan divide. But it has also increased “partisan polarization,” whereby voters prone to support one party (as self-identified partisans, or as independent “leaners” who almost always vote like partisans) tend to view those in the other party as enemies, or even as threats to the republic.

Democrats focused on down-ballot races this year are hoping that this pattern holds in 2016 — assuming Clinton wins, of course. But Republicans think (and certainly hope) that Trump’s exotic nature — amplified by the sheer number of GOP opinion-leaders who are keeping their distance from him — will send a signal to swing voters that the genial, glad-handing Republican pol who represents them in Congress or the statehouse has nothing to do with the rude, raging beast at the top of the ticket. There’s even a belief, more speculative than empirical, that if Trump really falls apart, it could make it easier for voters to split tickets — partly because everybody’s doing it, and partly because some will want congressional Republicans to act as a counterweight and safeguard against Hillary Clinton running wild, with her radical ideas of gender equality and access to health care and child care and so on. The last time there was any clear evidence of widespread “strategic voting” of this type, however, was all the way back in 1972: Democrats picked up Senate seats despite the debacle that George McGovern suffered at the presidential level. And back then, of course, it was very easy for voters in the South and parts of the West to vote for conservative Democrats down-ballot, along with the conservative GOP presidential candidate. In Georgia, where I lived at the time, there was even a ballot line where you could vote straight-party Democratic, right after you cast your presidential vote against the communistic McGovern.

There’s really not much clear evidence of how this is going to work out either way. Even as Clinton moves ahead at the presidential level, no one is seeing signs so far of a “wave election” which might sweep not only the Senate, but possibly even the House, into the Democratic column. Some vulnerable Republican senators (e.g., Rob Portman of Ohio and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania) seem to be running ahead of Trump in their states, but often voters make up their minds late on such contests. The best-case scenario for Democrats is probably for 2016 to be the mirror image of 1980, when a presidential-level landslide gave Republicans wins in just about every close Senate race. After the Republican victory in 2014, such an outcome would also almost certainly produce big House gains as well, if not necessarily a majority. But whatever happens, it’s clear that a lot of the talk from Republicans about Trump and Clinton is really aimed at keeping the GOP rank and file in line — for the benefit of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.

MSNBC correspondent Joy-Ann Reid shreds the Trump facade and does it better than anyone so far in her Daily Beast post, “Dear White Working Class, Your Man Trump Is Pretty Establishment After All.” An excerpt: “Far from offering something new that could rescue the white working class and restore their life chances, Trump is rolling with a bunch of Calvin Coolidge bluebloods who probably wouldn’t wipe their noses on a blue-collar worker, let alone have any interest in restoring the solid, middle-class jobs they used to count on, back when unions still had strength in the manufacturing world and the New Deal mostly helped people like them. Erect big trade barriers and resurrect the American steel industry? Who’s going to lead that initiative in the Trump administration? Cerebrus Capital Management CEO Stephen Feinberg or billionaire poker player Andy Beal? Good luck with that, Sheboygan…It’s no real surprise that Trump, the scion of a wealthy father who has stiffed so many U.S. banks none of them will do business with him anymore, leaving him to borrow money from Credit Suisse and the Russians, may have pulled the ultimate con: charming the working stiffs while the monocled Monopoly Men hid in the background, waiting to be broken out of CryoFreeze and put back in charge of the economy…So surprise, working-class white people. You thought picking Trump was your way of sticking it to the establishment? Apparently, the establishment has decided that you’ve had your fun, and now, they’re taking control of the Trump campaign.”

Former GOP congressman Chris Shays provides a good example of a Republican endorsement of Clinton:

Abby Phillip takes a peek at Clinton and Democratic longer-range strategy in her WaPo Politics post, “Is Hillary Clinton contesting Texas? Not really, but she is trying to expand Democratic influence into deep-red territory.”

Marc Caputo notes at Politico that “Democratic U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy is catching up to Sen. Marco Rubio and is nearly tied with him in a new Quinnipiac University poll that suggests Donald Trump is a drag on the incumbent Republican.”

In addition to the growing exodus of GOP elected officials now denouncing their party’s presidential candidate, Brain Trust Republicans are also deserting at an accelerating rate, as post columnist David Ignatius reports: “Fifteen prominent Republicans who had served in past GOP administrations met Sunday for a private soul-searching session that one attendee described as “painful and empathetic.” The next day, eight of them joined in signing the public declaration by 50 top GOP former national security officials warning thatTrump would be “the most reckless President” in U.S. history.”

Nate Silver has a sobering FiveThirtyEight post explaining why Dems should not get too overconfident, despite Trump’s meltdown.

You may have noticed that TDS is not in the business of advising the Repubican Party. But, looking at the big, longer-range picture, a better GOP would be good for America and good for the Democratic Party, encouraging Dems to step up their game, which is also good for the US of A. In that spirit, here’s a worthy suggestion from Vicente Feliciano’s post, “If Trump loses, does GOP establishment lose its working-class base?” at The Hill: “…Two generations ago, the Republican leadership accepted that President Franklin Roosevelt’s Social Security program and unemployment insurance, which were initially fiercely resisted, were here to stay. Some years later something similar occurred with President Lyndon Johnson’s Medicare initiative. Now ObamaCare should be, however grudgingly, accepted…And the Republican business establishment should accept that it is time to climb down from their high horse of unfettered free-market policies and get on with the dirty task of advocating market-friendly government interventions that advance the interests of the working class. Otherwise, the “blue wall” of 18 states and the District of Columbia — which provides Democrats with 242 of the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency, and which Democrats have won in each of the last six presidential elections — will reach the 270 mark. And rightly so.”

Also at Politico, Burgess Everett has some insights about Democratic strategy to stop Trump in the Rust Belt: “…Trump is threatening a serious play for voters in this part of the country with visits to Wisconsin Friday and Michigan on Monday — including this city in conservative Western Michigan where the state may be lost and won, top officials in both parties say…If Kaine and Clinton can help take these two states off the map now, it gives Democrats more resources to spend in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania and even traditionally GOP states like Arizona and North Carolina as the general election draws near. That will not only help Clinton but Democrats in competitive Senate races in all five battlegrounds.”

Alas, in the state that hatched Priebus, Ryan and Walker, the hydra-headed voter suppression snake refuses to die. Ian Milhiser has the bad news at ThinkProgress.

Donald Trump’s latest outrage involved a statement–originally called a “joke” by his supporters but now being spun as an innocent call for high turnout by gun owners–that “second amendment people” might have the only solution to a President Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court nominations. Trump is actually drawing on an old extremist meme that’s a familiar dog whistle to second amendment ultras, as I explained at New York.

[E]ven as they condemn the shocking utterance, a lot of observers seem to be missing the fact that Trump is adapting a dangerously common right-wing claim. It’s that the most important purpose of the Second Amendment is not to allow people to defend themselves from robbers and muggers and would-be murderers and rapists if the police cannot get the job done, but rather to create a heavily armed populace prepared to undertake revolutionary violence if the government tries to impose “tyranny.” Let’s be clear about this doctrine: It lets the gun-wielders decide for themselves whether high taxes or government surveillance or Obamacare is a sufficient threat to liberty to justify getting out the shooting irons and killing the police officers and armed-services members assigned the responsibility of enforcing the “tyrannical” laws in question. And conservative politicians have often made it clear they understand and are okay with that incredible risk, as when Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle referred cheerfully to “Second-Amendment remedies” for the liberal policies supported by her opponent, Harry Reid. Angle was hardly alone: During the Republican presidential primaries this cycle, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz both endorsed the idea of gun rights being a safeguard against too much Big Government liberalism. During her successful Senate campaign in 2014, rising GOP star Joni Ernst of Iowa used to happily talk about the “beautiful little Smith & Wesson” she carried with every intention of using it to defend herself and her family from “government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.”

The most common use of this “right to revolution” argument, however, is to threaten anyone who doesn’t bend the knee to the Second Amendment itself. So it makes even the blandest support for gun-safety legislation self-evident proof of “tyranny” justifying even more stockpiling of lethal weapons to be used against “government.”

In Hillary Clinton’s case, the “tyrannical” threat is apparently that she doesn’t approve of a 5–4 decision reached by the Supreme Court in 2008 (D.C. v. Heller) that first made the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” a personal instead of collective (i.e., in the sense of authorizing a “well-regulated militia”) constitutional right. I guess that means the four dissenting Justices were tyrants, too, and that Ronald Reagan presided over an era of government tyranny since Heller had not at that point been handed down.

Credit Donald Trump for doing us the service of taking a dubious dog-whistle argument for violence, always discussed abstractly (it’s the “government,” not cops and soldiers, much less presidents, who will become bullet-riddled when “patriots” revolt), and with his characteristic crudeness making it a joke about rubbing out his opponent. Maybe next time some conservative pol makes a similar argument for turning to the gun if politics fails, we’ll all recognize it for the thinly veiled sedition it is.

And we’ll scorn the “super-patriots” who only love the America of the distant past–or their imaginations.

Now that Sen. Bernie Sanders has enthusiastically endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, his campaign has begun the transformation into a social change movement that has the potential to achieve significant reforms, as well as electing progressive Democrats down-ballot. In her Washington Post column, “The Sanders movement is only just beginning,”  Katrina vanden Heuval explains:

Last week, Pramila Jayapal, one of the rising stars of the Bernie Sanders movement, won a decisive victory in the primary race for Washington’s 7th Congressional District. She will advance to the November general election, where she is favored to win. She is not alone. Jamie Raskin, a progressive state legislator and leading constitutional authority on civil rights and voting rights, won his primary to fill an open Democratic seat in Maryland. Zephyr Teachout, who literally wrote the book on political corruption and challenged New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) in the gubernatorial race two years ago, is running a brilliant campaign in an uphill battle for a Republican-held seat in New York.

These are not corporate or Blue Dog Democrats. These are “small d” democrats running movement campaigns. They aren’t running for power’s sake; they are running to change America.

“The vision has to be to fundamentally change the system,” Jayapal says, carrying the Sanders message that “corporations and special interests have their voice in Congress, and they have too many members scared of their power. What Congress needs is a progressive voice who is unafraid to take on these powerful interests — who is willing to fight for all Americans, not just the wealthiest 1 percent.”

Added Sanders: “When you think of the political revolution, I want you to think about Pramila.”

Sanders supporters are also forging the organizational infrastructure needed to elect progressive candidates for years to come, reports vanden Heuval,

Sanders and his supporters are intent on giving these efforts institutional backing. The Vermont senator has announced the formation of Our Revolution, which will support progressive candidates up and down the ticket. Organizers from the Sanders campaign have launched Brand New Congress, an ambitious effort to run 400-plus populist candidates for Congress — including independents and Republicans as well as Democrats — in 2018, with “a single, unified campaign with a single plan,” and centralized crowd-sourced financing — small donors contributing to a national pool in a historic effort to transform a Congress that is corrupt and dysfunctional. These new efforts will augment progressive groups like the Working Families Party, MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and People’s Action, all of whom are growing in energy and ambition in the wake of the Sanders campaign.

Berniecrats.net, a website listing all active candidates at every level who endorsed Sanders in the primary, already has some 480 entries. Most of these are long shots running shoestring campaigns. But if the more than 2 million individual Sanders campaign supporters do move in large numbers to support Our Revolution and other offshoots in 2016, these challenges will get more serious in 2018 and 2020.

Vanden Heuval observes that “the Sanders revolution is only beginning…Now he and his supporters are moving to build the political revolution that too many in the media mocked at the beginning of this year.”

As a long-haul progressive warrior, Sanders understands better than most that empowering his movement to compel progressive change is going to take time. But, as vanden Heuval reveals, the Sanders movement has already created some impressive organizational vehicles. With adequate suppport, they will become a force for needed social reforms, as well as an enduring Democratic majority.

GOP nominee Donald Trump has built his presidential campaign around his image as an advocate of curbing trade to keep jobs in America. In reality, however, he has called for policies that do something quite different.

Dave Johnson’s post, “Trump Trade Position Is Opposite Of What People Think It Is” at Campaign for America’s Future clarifies Trump’s actual trade polcies:

One of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s stronger economic appeals to working-class voters is his position on trade. Trump understands that people are upset that “trade” deals have moved so many jobs out of the country and he offers solutions that sound like he is saying he will bring the jobs back so wages can start going up again.

But a deeper look at what he is really saying might not be so appealing to voters.

Trump says the U.S. is not “competitive” with other countries. He has said repeatedly we need to lower American wages, taxes and regulations to the point where we can be “competitive” with Mexico and China. In other words, he is saying that business won’t send jobs out of the country if we can make wages low enough here.

Trump even has a plan to accomplish this. He has said the way to make U.S. wages “competitive” is to pit states against each other instead of using China and Mexico to do that. He has said, for example, that auto companies should close factories in Michigan and move the jobs to low-wage, anti-union states. After enough people are laid off in one state, he has said, “those guys are going to want their jobs back even if it is less.” Then companies will be able to “make good deals” to cut wages. He says that companies should continue this in a “rotation” of wage cuts, state to state, until you go “full-circle,” getting wages low enough across the entire country. Then the U.S. will be “competitive” with China and Mexico.

Put another way, all of Trump’s bluster about bringing jobs back to America is a smokescreen to mask his   support of hammering wages down to Mexican and Chinese levels. Under his plan, workers in America’s pivotal auto industry, for example, would no longer make a living wage. They would be reduced to subsistence wages. Their unions would be crushed and the effects would reverberate throughout the economy.

Johnson quotes from a Detroit News interview with Trump, in which the GOP nominee “said U.S. automakers could shift production away from Michigan to communities where autoworkers would make less”: “You can go to different parts of the United States and then ultimately you’d do full-circle — you’ll come back to Michigan because those guys are going to want their jobs back even if it is less,” Trump said. “We can do the rotation in the United States — it doesn’t have to be in Mexico.”…He said that after Michigan “loses a couple of plants — all of sudden you’ll make good deals in your own area.”

Like most Republican leaders, Trump urges tax cuts for the rich, fewer regulations and lower wages. Johnson notes that Trump has recently learned to stop talking so much about his belief that wages are too high. Yet lower wages remain a cornerstone of his economic policy agenda, and a vote for Trump is a vote for gutting middle class jobs, cutting wages and swelling the ranks of the working poor — a message point Dems ought to emphasize between now and election day.

Now might be a good time for Democrats engaged in the interminable globalist vs. nationaists trade argument to give it a rest and think about a reasonable compromise that can unify Dems and advance our trade policy to a more beneficial level. At In These Times, Leon Fink, editor of the journal Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, has a timely post on the topic, “On Trade, Our Choices Aren’t Only Xenophobic Nationalism Or Neoliberal Globalization.” As Fink frames the argument,

Few issues are receiving a more insipid—and thus more harmful—treatment in our public discourse than world trade. Along with immigration, “free trade” is now the foremost symbol of a supposed either/or choice between globalism and nationalism.

“Globalists” generally hail the liberal marketplace as the engine of economic prosperity and assail its critics as uneducated and irrational isolationists, while “nationalists” instinctively identify trade with economic decline (or at least the loss of good working-class jobs), rising inequality and a general loss of control over the future.

…Absent a move towards what we might call progressive internationalism, we are forced to choose between “globalists,” heedless of the consequences of development for those outside the professional and financial classes, or “nationalists,” suspicious of and hostile towards the world beyond our borders. Neither posture holds out much prospect for economic renewal, either at home or abroad.

…This framework risks closing off our best possibilities for building a progressive economic future. We need a new paradigm.

Fink reviews the effects of trade agrrements, from Breton Woods, to Smoot-Hawley and NAFTA agreements, leading up to the current conflict over TPP. He pegs the still-central argument as “how best to tackle the negative effects of globalization without upsetting the entire applecart of world trade?” and notes, “Oddly, most other problems of world economic integration have found solutions through compromise, whereas trade has remained the province of extreme either/or.”

Perhaps the “extreme either/or” character of the TPP debate is symptomatic of the hyper-polarization of the 2016 political environment. Fink reminds his readers that it wasn’t so long ago that international economic policy conflicts were resolved through well-reasoned compromises, like mining and fishing territorial agreements, or IMF/World Bank protection of vulnerable currencies. However, explains Fink,

…There is no such movement towards an adoption of mutually-agreed international principles on matters of trade. In a politically suffocating manner, one is either pro-free trade (most big business and most Clinton-Bush-Obama policies), anti-free trade (Donald Trump with a proposed 45% tariff on China) or stumbling in the middle (pro-then-anti-TPP Hillary Clinton). The Trans-Pacific Partnership, in particular, attempts to overcome First World skepticism with side agreements on labor, affecting workers in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei, but the record of enforcement for such guarantees is spotty at best.

The options here present a silly, self-defeating set of choices and one that both workers and consumers in the United States and Europe need quickly to transcend.

Fink calls for a new world framework which establishes “Not just financial stability, but the regulation of trade and debt” and “Global exchanges” that “yield equitable employment as well as enhanced bottom lines.” He urges that “NAFTA or TPP-type agreements” should provide “a step ladder of wage increases in the cheaper-labor countries as well as plans for displaced workers in the higher-wage countries before approving massive shake ups. In return, poor countries could count on significant debt relief.”

Instead of drifting into hyper-partisan camps bellowing against the evils of globalism or protectionism, Democrats should light a path forward to a new era of mutually-beneficial trade agreements that protect workers and transcend ideological extremes. Republicans are ideologically incapable of providing the needed leadership. For Democrats, it could be the pivotal compromise that wins the support of millions of working-class families and ensures a stable majority well into the future.

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:

The problem for a campaign and political party where you seem to be way ahead is the tendency to get cocky and begin to coast. There is great danger in such a moment, especially for a party in need for a historically big victory, as Democrats are right now. Now is the time to work with even greater urgency and aggressiveness to win this campaign, and hopefully win it by a big enough margin that we crush Trumpism and throw it into the dustbin of history. But right now we are at a particularly dangerous moment. Democrats should take nothing for granted and work our hearts out to make damn sure this moment and this potentially historic victory does not slip away from us.

Before talking more about 2016, let me go back in time and remind everyone of some presidential elections in past years. In 1976, Jimmy Carter came out of the two conventions with a huge lead, more than 20 points in many polls. Jerry Ford was burdened with the residue of Watergate, his pardon of Nixon, and an especially nasty recession over the previous couple of years. Had Carter won that race by a big margin, building on the Republican wipeout in 1974, Democrats would have had enough votes and momentum to easily pass sweeping legislation on health care and labor law, and change the political dynamics in the country for a long time to come. Instead the Carter campaign played it safe and coasted, and the lead kept shrinking. In the end, Carter won by only two percentage points. Had a very close Ohio result gone the other way, he would have lost the race entirely. There were no coat tails, no political momentum, and Carter’s early mistakes led to a very weak presidency. In 1988, Dukakis led by 18 points after his convention, with voters tired of a lack of pay raises and massive deficits over the last 8 years. Dukakis took a long August vacation, didn’t respond to the infamous Willie Horton attacks, was awful in the debates, and ended up losing by six points. And in 2000, Gore came out of the conventions up by five points, and I remember Democrats in D.C. being surprised when I said it would be a close race coming down to a few votes in a few states. But Gore was weak in the debates, Karl Rove ran a very effective campaign, and we end up with the Supreme Court giving the election to Bush.

Presidential races can change in a heartbeat or alternatively go slip sliding away. An over-confident campaign can lose its edge, become too cautious and be reluctant to aggressively answer attacks, all of which combine to gradually cause the campaign to lose momentum. In the 1992 Clinton campaign (which, full disclosure, I was a part of), there was never any chance of us losing our edge because we had all just lived through the horror of watching an over-confident and slow to respond Dukakis let his big August lead be reversed. And I have a feeling that Hillary Clinton, being the steely competitor that she is, won’t let her team get over-confident. But the entire Democratic party, from elected officials to grassroots activists, are going to need to, in the old Obama campaign’s signature phrase, stay fired up and ready to go. Never forget that in politics, it is the aggressor who usually wins. Especially in an unpredictable, anti-establishment year, where the pundits and the polls have been proven wrong repeatedly, we must make sure we don’t let Trump, the ultimate unpredictable anti-establishment guy, get a second life.

At the same time we need to fight with the same urgency as if we were in a dead heat or even a little behind, Democrats should be working hard to create the biggest, most sweeping wave election possible. This might seem like a contradiction but it isn’t. Both scenarios demand that we keep our edge and stay aggressive; both scenarios require that we leave no stone unturned to get out every vote possible and persuade every swing voter we can. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that the two most likely scenarios in this election are a Democratic wave and a narrow Trump victory — the latter coming if Hillary’s campaign loses their edge and aggressiveness, and if Democrats in general don’t put enough resources and passion into turning out the Democratic base vote.

Here’s the other thing: Democrats should work toward a wave election with a great deal of urgency, because we are in big need of one. Two of the last three elections have been massive Republican wave elections up and down the line, giving them the biggest margin in the House since the 1920s and most of the governorships and state legislative chambers. We desperately need to build a counter-wave to make up at least some of those numbers, especially considering that off-year turnout in 2018 isn’t going to be demographically as favorable as in a presidential year. And think about how much more Hillary and Democrats can get done if we get a big enough wave to retake the House as well as the Senate, which is a lot more possible in a wave election than conventional wisdom would allow. To actually have at least two years where we could try to pass some good legislation and a decent budget rather than constantly dealing with Republican threats to shut down the government would be a pretty phenomenal thing. One more note: if this turns into a close race, Trump is going to stoke up the “we were robbed” theme and we could have ugliness and violence in this country not seen since the Civil War. If we win big, on the other hand, Trump is humiliated, and Trumpism goes into history’s dustbin.

Such a big year up and down the ticket is in fact made possible by this year’s unique Trump dynamic. It is important to understand the recent history of wave elections: Republicans have been able to keep from losing as many seats in a wave election against them as Democrats have because they have maintained party unity and focused on turning out their base vote. In the 1994 election, Republicans won 52 House seats; in 2010, they won 63. In the 2014 blowout, the only reason they didn’t pick up those kinds of numbers in the House was because they had already won so many two cycles before, and hadn’t lost all that many in 2012, but in statewide races and races further down the ballot they dominated us. By contrast, Democrats only picked up 31 seats in 2006 and 20 more in 2008, both very good years up and down the ballot for Dems. The reason that Democrats tend to get blown out in down years is because they have historically shown much more disunity in bad years, running from their president and their party’s historic message and platform. The result is the Democratic base turnout tends to be abysmal in those kinds of years. Republicans in Democratic leaning years, on the other hand, have doubled down on the historic anti-government, anti-tax, traditional values rhetoric of their party in order to keep their base from deserting them, and thus been able to cut their losses — in 2006, for example, we actually lost more House close races than we won, missing our chance at a much bigger wave.

This year, the Trump factor turns this traditional GOP unity on its head. As Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster working on many of this year’s races asked in an important NYT article,

Do we run the risk of depressing our base by repudiating the guy, or do we run the risk of being tarred and feathered by independents for not repudiating him?… We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

This dynamic gives Democrats a huge opportunity if we only keep our edge and press our advantage. So what does this mean in practical terms? For local progressive activists and Democratic Party people, we shouldn’t only be focused on beating up on Trump. We have a genuine opportunity to win a lot of elections — congressional, state legislative, local offices — that we might not win in another kind of year. We should be doubling down on getting out the vote and energizing the Rising American Electorate (RAE): young people, unmarried women, and people of color around those local races while we keep reminding them of how important it is to beat Trump.

For national party people and the Clinton campaign, an election like this where we are running ahead means a couple of big things:

First, double and triple down on voter registration and getting out the vote. We don’t need ever more TV ads in this environment; we just need to stay on the air at respectable levels in the target states to make sure Trump isn’t coming back. What we do need is the biggest investment ever in making sure every Democratic leaning voter and constituency makes it in to vote, especially in the face of all the voter suppression the Republicans have done and will continue to do. We could still lose this election if voter turnout is weak among the RAE in key states, but if we can expand the RAE vote to 2008 levels, we could deliver a serious sweep for Democrats.

Second, expand the map. When you are leading nationwide by several points, you have the opportunity to force the other side to play defense in all kinds of states they don’t normally have to worry about, and we should press our advantage in states that are suddenly in play. In 1992, I was on the Clinton campaign’s targeting committee, and we forced the Bush campaign to spend tons of money holding us off in states like Texas and Arizona that we were unlikely to win. One example: in Texas, we spent $400,000 on advertising, a few hundred thousand more on Latino and African-American voter registration and GOTV, and that modest amount made the numbers close enough that the Bush people ended up spending $27 million holding us off. More importantly, we helped down ballot Democrats win crucial contests they wouldn’t have otherwise won.

Right now, Hillary Clinton leads Trump or is very close in traditionally Republican states like Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri, even Utah. Spending a modest amount of money right now in those states on voter registration and digital media to keep them in play for at least a while will force the Republicans to scramble, dilute their resources, and pay dividends down the road in terms of potential down ballot pick-ups.

We need a big win in 2016. We can’t afford to take this election for granted, and we can’t afford to let the opportunity for a sweeping victory to pass us by — we need to do everything in our power to keep aggressively pushing for every possible Democratic vote in every race.

In his Wall St. Journal op-ed, Ruy Teixeira explains “Why the Democrats Have Turned Left.” In addition to the demographic transformation that is profoundly changing American politics, public skepticism is growing about our economic system’s failure to deliver economic progress. Teixeira adds, “Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly said that during her first 100 days she would call upon Congress to dramatically increase spending on roads, bridges and other public works, including to provide universal broadband and build a clean energy grid. Her $275 billion program, if implemented, would represent the greatest investment in American infrastructure since the development of the interstate highway system in the 1950s.”

Ed Kilgore observes in his New York Magazine post, “Trump No Longer Kicking Ass With the White Working Class,”: “As the New York Times’ Nate Cohn noted on July 25, Trump was winning white working-class voters at a better than a two-to-one clip in some surveys (66-29 in a July CNN poll, 65-29 in a July ABC/Washington Post poll) …That could be changing. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal survey showed his lead among non-college-educated white voters drooping to 49-36. Similarly, McClatchy/Marist pegs it at 46-31. These are not world-beating numbers. And you have to wonder: If Trump is losing his special appeal to the voting category that has long been his campaign’s signature “base,” where is he supposed to make that up?”

A downer convention of historic proportions for the GOP: “Gallup has been tracking the response from voters to conventions since 1984, and the Republican National Convention of 2016 was the first for which more people said it made them less likely to back the candidate.” – from Philip Bump’s post “The new Post-ABC poll shows just how badly Donald Trump blew his convention” at The Fix.

According to a new poll by Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, conducted July 9-20 for the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago, “Twenty-four percent of young blacks, 23 percent of young Latinos, and 19 percent of young Asian-Americans live in gun owning households, though just 10 percent of Latinos and Asian-Americans and 11 percent of African-Americans say they own one personally…Yet more than half of Americans age 18 to 30 say it’s more important to control gun ownership than to protect gun rights. That includes 76 percent of young Asian-Americans, 63 percent of African-Americans, and 60 percent of Latinos. Young whites are divided, with 53 percent saying it’s more important to protect gun rights and 46 percent saying it’s more important to control gun ownership.” (M.O.E. 3.8 percent).

The legality of a major Illinois voter suppression law is on deck, reports Rich Miller at Crain’s Chicago Business.

Adam Eichen and Bob Vallier report at billmoyers.com, via salon.com: “The approximately 8 million American expats make up a voting bloc nearly double that of Washington state, the 13th most populous state in the nation. Were they to constitute a state, they would have about 14 electoral votes. Americans abroad are students and retirees, military and diplomatic personnel, people on short- and long-term job assignments, Americans with foreign spouses and their children…This year, DA’s[Democrats Abroad’s] global primary had record turnout. The 34,570 voters who cast ballots exceeded the number of Democrats who showed up for state party presidential caucuses this year in Nebraska, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii and Wyoming, according to votes compiled by University of Florida turnout expert Michael McDonald’s United States Election Project...Expat votes often make the critical difference in close contests across the country…Just ask Sens. Al Franken (D-MN) and Jon Tester (D-MT) — both of whom were elected by slim margins in 2008 and 2012, respectively. The number of votes they received from abroad exceeded their margins of victory in their first Senate races.”

From Bill Weissert’s AP report, “Divided America: Texas Hispanic Voting Bloc Largely Untapped“: “Texas is home to 10.2 million Hispanics, 19 percent of the country’s Latino population. Excluding noncitizens and those under 18, about 5 million Texas Hispanics will be eligible to vote in the 2016 presidential election, but less than half may register and fewer still are likely to cast ballots…No Democrat has won statewide office here since 1994, the country’s longest political losing streak…A 2014 Gallup poll found that Texas Hispanics prefer Democrats to Republicans by a 19 percentage-point margin. Nationwide, Democrats enjoy a more comfortable 30 percentage-point advantage.”

The latest Sabato’s Crystal Ball electoral college forecast: 347 D to 191 R, basically unchanged from March 31. Sabato adds, “We’ve made modest changes since: Pennsylvania has morphed from Likely Democratic to Leans Democratic, while Virginia — after Tim Kaine was added to the Democratic ticket — went the other way from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic. Arizona and Georgia went from Likely Republican to Leans Republican, and usually reliable Utah from Safe Republican to Likely Republican…Today we add one further alteration: We are moving Colorado from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic. This also does not affect the Electoral College total, though it does push a competitive state further toward Clinton.”

ACORN founder Wade Rathke has a messaging suggestion that taps the positive “invest in America” flip side of whatever traction Trump gets with the working-class as a result of his anti-trade posture: “T-shirts saying “Build Infrastructure, Vote Hillary” may not seem like a catchy slogan, but it might wrong foot the Republicans and catch them in the bind of their own base, including the angry and entitled white voters, who want to see this kind of economic interference that delivers growth and visible progress.” Might make a good fall campaign slogan and bumper sticker as well.

In the wake of Trump’s meltdown in the polls, buzz is building across the trad media, as well as the internets, that Trump may bail. The argument boils down to ‘Trump will quit because his ego is too big to cope with a huge rout’ vs. ‘Trump won’t quit because his ego is too big.’  At Politico Steven Shepard posts on an “insider poll” of GOP activists in 11 swing states, which found that “70 percent, said they want Trump to drop out of the race and be replaced by another Republican candidate — with many citing Trump’s drag on Republicans in down-ballot races. But those insiders still think it’s a long-shot Trump would actually end his campaign and be replaced by another GOP candidate.”

But Michael Tomasky warns that “It’s Too Early for Liberals to Gloat About Trump” at The Daily Beast, and observes “It’s a good week to gloat if you’re a liberal, but gloat weeks are exactly the weeks that make me a little nervous.” Tomasky advises, “that that’s how to beat Trump: get under his skin. Tick him off. Unnerve him. Bait him, goad him, see what he’ll say…He has grudges and resentments and a constant need to be seen as dominating…feed his grudges in the hope that he’ll say something offensive”

NYT columnist Paul Krugman warns of the perils of the Clinton campaign tilting too far to the right to accommodate Republican refugees:”There’s absolutely no evidence that tax cuts for the rich and radical deregulation, which is what right-wingers mean when they talk about pro-growth policies, actually work, or that strengthening the social safety net does any harm…Trumpism is basically a creation of the modern conservative movement, which used coded appeals to prejudice to make political gains, then found itself unable to rein in a candidate who skipped the coding…If some conservatives find this too much and bolt the party, good for them, and they should be welcomed into the coalition of the sane. But they can’t expect policy concessions in return. When Dr. Frankenstein finally realizes that he has created a monster, he doesn’t get a reward. Mrs. Clinton and her party should stay the course.”

Well, this is disappointing — when the largest organization representing senior citizens makes deals with an organization which develops state-level legislation that screws consumers and suppresses voting.

At ThinkProgress Bryce Covert spotlights “The States That Do Nothing To Help Working Parents” according to a new report from the National Partnership for Women & Families. The 12 states that earned an “F” grade are depicted in black.

At The New York Times Leah Wright Regueur, author of “The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power,” drills down on the question, “Why Can’t the GOP Get Real with Black Voters?,” and notes of the Republican convention “Of the 2,472 delegates, only 18 were black. It is the lowest percentage on record, lower even than 1964, the year the party selected Barry Goldwater as its presidential nominee.”

“Clinton showed up in small factories in places the new American economy has all but forgotten: Johnstown, Pa.; Pittsburgh; Youngstown, Ohio; places where a guy straight out of high school used to be able to support his wife with a mining or manufacturing job and even give his kids a shot to move up in the world. And these white voters have even been the focus in the diverse swing states of Colorado and Nevada, where Clinton has been fundraising and making public appearances late this week.” – from Kasie  Hunt’s “Hillary Clinton Looks to Win Over White Working-Class Male Voters” at nbc.com.

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who will be on the ballot in every state, jockeys for a place in the upcomming debates. “The eligibility requirements, set by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, state that a candidate has to hit 15 percent in five national surveys a few weeks before the debate to earn a place on the stage,” according to Josh Katz at The Upshot.

And yet another opportunity squandered?

There’s been a lot of argument since the Democratic convention as to whether in her acceptance speech Hillary Clinton “pivoted to the center” and potentially abandoned the progressive voters she appealed to earlier. I don’t think so, and I discussed this issue at New York:

Between the first and last days of the Democratic National Convention last week, there was a much-discussed change of tone. Monday was all about progressivism and unity between Clinton and Sanders supporters. Thursday was about the flag, and national security, and chants of USA! USA!

Now, it’s not surprising that folks with Bern marks on their psyches — who weren’t totally convinced by Monday’s unity display — got the willies from Thursday’s rhetoric. OMG, some doubtless thought. Here’s the Clintons triangulating again, and “pivoting to the center.” Progressives could be abandoned entirely by Labor Day!

Was there actually a contradiction between Clinton’s progressive gestures and outreach to Republicans in Philly? Is it possible to energize the base while persuading swing voters at the same time, without betraying somebody’s trust?

To answer that question, it’s important first to take a look at the nature of Clinton’s “outreach to Republicans.” Andrew Prokop put it well at Vox:

“If you look closer, it turns out that Clinton and the Democrats are indeed embracing the symbolism and tropes that the right has loved — but they really aren’t making policy concessions to win them over … Indeed, all of this imagery and rhetoric was deployed in service of an agenda that is remarkably liberal — at least when it comes to domestic and economic policy.”

Even on national-security policy, notes Prokop, Clinton didn’t really “pivot to the center”; she stayed pretty much where she has always been. But the heart of her persuasion technique was not about convincing swing voters she was something they did not think she was; it was about convincing them — and most definitely including Republicans — that Donald Trump was exactly what they feared he was.

In this respect, Clinton deployed a technique I used to call “Barbara Boxer centrism” (named after the famously combative liberal senator from California), wherein a politician “seizes the center” not by occupying it with any surprising or “moderate” policy proposals, but by pushing their opponents out of the center by constantly labeling them as extremist. It just so happens that Clinton’s opponent is an exceptionally good foil for this kind of attack. And so she does not really have to choose between “left” and “center,” or between base mobilization and swing-voter persuasion. He’s dangerously crazy is a message that serves both purposes equally.

You cannot get much better than that.