Check out the new union peeps for Biden ad:

Bearing in mind that swing state polls are more relevant than national polls, your inner optimist will enjoy this report from Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles: “It’s pretty clear the race has a moved a few points towards Biden in recent weeks, and that we are now in a close, competitive election where neither candidate has a firm lead….It is wrong now to say that Trump leads, and the media needs to not replicate their 2022 red wave mistake of dismissing or ignoring data that doesn’t fit the Republicans are strong/Dems are weak narrative – particularly when we’ve been winning election after election of all kinds since Dobbs, and it’s been the Republican Party which has repeatedly struggled….when you expand your consideration of the strength of the two candidates and two parties to include other ways of evaluating political strength, I think Trump is in trouble. His party is broke, and broken. It’s an unprecedented dumpster fire, not a juggernaut. From the Washington Post this morning, Trump lags behind Biden in cash reserves while legal bills mount….There has been much discussion about whether this election will be a referendum on Biden or Trump….one of the biggest political developments in recent days has been the drying up of the GOP’s big attacks on Biden. Consider:

• The economy is remarkably strong, not weak
• Inflation has come way down, not soaring
• Crime, violent crime and murder rates are down across the US, not raging
• Domestic oil and renewable production is setting records, and US is more energy independent than in decades – there is no “war on energy” causing rising gas prices and loss of independence
• Democrats are for order at the border, they are for Trumpian chaos
• The “Biden crime family” narrative was a fake Russian info op, once again laundered by Republican useful idiots
• And now we see in the State of The Union Biden strong, smart and vigorous; and it turns out, of course, that Republican Special Counsel lied about Biden’s memory challenges

Republicans have no clear shot at him any more. There is no longer a strong case against Biden’s re-election. With that, I think what we are beginning to see is the election is increasingly becoming a referendum on Trump and not Biden. And that my friends is an election Republicans cannot possibly win.”

Trump munchkins have been charged in yet another election fraud scam, this time in Wisconsin. As Talia Jane reports at The New Republic: “Kenneth Chesebro got smacked with a felony fraud charge by Wisconsin prosecutors on Tuesday. Largely considered the architect of the fake electors plot to flip the 2020 election to Trump, Chesebro was charged alongside Michael Roman, head of Trump’s 2020 Election Day operations, and fellow Trump lawyer James Troupis. All were charged with one count of forgery in the case brought by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Paul, according to court records….The statute listed for the Trump trio’s charges, “forgery-uttering,” is a Class H felony in Wisconsin, essentially defined as touting bogus official statements or fake legal documents or public records as true while knowing they’re fraudulent….Chesebro, as part of the fake elector scheme, attempted to send fake certified elector documents—which falsely claimed Wisconsin and Michigan electors chose Trump—to Washington, D.C., ahead of 2020’s presidential electoral certification process. The plot was spoiled when the documents infamously got stuck in the mail, leading to a last-minute scramble by the schemers to get the phony paperwork into the hands of then–Vice President Mike Pence in time to certify election results on January 6, 2021….Chesebro is also named as a co-conspirator in Georgia’s fake elector charges, where he is cooperating with the state and has pleaded guilty to planning the goofily villainous scheme. Chesebro is reportedly also cooperating with prosecutors in Michigan and Wisconsin….Tuesday’s charges are a first for Troupis and Roman, who join the vaunted ranks of at least a dozen other Trump lawyers and toadies who conspired to submit fake electors to certify the 2020 election for Trump. Troupis and Chesebro are also being sued by Biden electors in Wisconsin for the plot, where 10 other Republican electors settled a lawsuit in December 2023 forcing them to admit Biden won the 2020 election.”

Some insights from “Swing-state Senate Democrats are touting Biden’s record – without mentioning him” by Arit John and David Wright at CNN Politics: “Democrats locked in competitive Senate races are leaning into their party’s legislative accomplishments in ads touting investments in infrastructure and manufacturing, as well as the lowering the cost of some prescription drugs, such as insulin….The senators, whose votes sent the bills to the White House, are front and center. But one name is often missing: President Joe Biden, who signed the bills into law….In an election in which most Democrats will be running on reproductive rights and contrasts with Republican leadership, senators such as Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania are emphasizing their roles in advancing key parts of the Biden agenda without mentioning the president….But the spots also highlight the balancing act they’ll have to perform to win crossover votes from independents and Republicans who won’t back Biden….Democrats will need to defend seven competitive seats – including five in presidential battlegrounds – and win the White House to maintain the majority in the Senate….Polls show Senate Democratic candidates running ahead of Biden, who has been plagued by low approval ratings and who trails or ties Trump in key states. For months, Democrats have argued the president’s support will grow as voters tune in closer to the election and learn more about his agenda….There are signs that voters aren’t broadly aware of Democrats’ record. A KFF poll from May found that 52% of registered voters older than 65 were aware the Inflation Reduction Act capped the cost of insulin for Medicare recipients at $35 per month. An AP-NORC poll from April found that about a third of voters didn’t know enough about the Inflation Reduction Act to say whether it had made a difference on climate change, the economy or inflation….Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, said he believes Democrats’ unified messaging on abortion, democracy and the contrast with Trump will help all party candidates on the ballot in the state. In addition to reelecting Biden and Baldwin, Wisconsin Democrats hope to gain ground in the state Legislature.” OK, 2024 is not a good year for spotlighting national  leaders for either party. But the opportunity is to encourage voters to compare the parties and their accomplishments as a whole, in which case Republicans have very few bragging points. There ought to be some swing state ads that invite the comparison.

In the wake of Trump’s criminal conviction, a rather obvious contrast between the two parties occurred to me that Democrats ought to think about. I wrote about it at New York.

One of the most notable aspects of the 2024 presidential contest has been how often voices have been raised in the left-of-center commentariat calling on Democrats to abort Joe Biden’s reelection campaign before it’s too late. In February, the New York Times’ Ezra Klein created an enormous buzz with a podcast episode suggesting that Biden “step aside” and let his party choose a more electable (and non-octogenarian) nominee. My colleague Jonathan Chait has discussed this possibility as well. And the idea was raised again quite recently by polling-maven-turned-pundit Nate Silver.

I’m on record as raining on this particular parade for multiple reasons, including the overreaction to marginally adverse polls it represents, the extremely unlikely Biden self-defenestration it would require, and the lack of any Democratic consensus on a “replacement” nominee. But if it’s odd how many Democrats have proved ready to panic and consider previously unimaginable survival strategies after a few bad polls, it’s downright weird that there is no such talk in Republican ranks after that party’s presumptive presidential nominee was found guilty of 34 felony criminal charges. Might that prove to be a problem in November? And if so, might Republicans, who frequently complain that the nation cannot survive another four years of Joe Biden as president, do well to choose someone from their own “bench” who has somehow managed never to be indicted for and convicted of a crime?

The very idea of Trump “stepping aside” or being pushed aside is laughable, of course. Whatever else he is, the 45th president is convinced he’s the most indispensable man in American — and perhaps world — history. After a hostile takeover in 2016 he has imposed an iron grip on the Republican Party that has clearly tightened after Trump demolished a large field of rivals this year. Nonetheless, the fact that these rivals even ran for president betrays the existence, however weak and attenuated, of an undercurrent of doubt about the wisdom of a third straight Trump nomination. But no one in GOP circles — absolutely no one — is articulating it now that there is a major objective reason for worry. Indeed, Team Trump’s savage reaction to prize Senate candidate Larry Hogan’s mild re-verdict suggestion of respect for the legal process that led to it shows how little grumbling will be tolerated. The two major parties couldn’t be much farther apart in this respect.

It is true there is one legitimate reason Republicans might not consider reconsidering Trump even if he and his supporters would allow it: Unlike Democratic delegates who are loosely bound to the candidate under whose banner they were chosen, Republican Trump delegates are formally and in some states legally bound to back the former president unless he explicitly releases them. A convention revolt against Trump (again, a laughable proposition) would require an overwhelming consensus of the party leaders Trump himself has chosen. So there’s not much point in talking about it, particularly since that would call down upon the doubters thunderbolts from Mar-a-Lago.

But in the end, the difference between Democrats and Republican in dealing with the problems facing their flawed 2024 presidential nominees is that unlike Trump himself, Republicans don’t seem to value winning above all else. Yes, he is a formidable politician with great strengths harnessed to great weaknesses, and yes, there’s no evidence yet the verdict in Manhattan is significantly eroding his consistent lead over Biden in most polls. But Republicans should rightly fear that day after day and week after week of Team Biden branding Trump as a convicted felon will eventually have an effect. Without question, years and years of data show Trump is as unpopular a politician as Biden, and if he did somehow “step aside,” Republicans could easily find a nominee better able to dispatch the unpopular incumbent. Republicans do not, moreover, have the kind of succession problem facing Democrats in the form of a sitting vice-president who is as unpopular as her boss.

Republicans are in unshakable solidarity with Donald Trump despite his criminal record because they truly don’t see an alternative path. And that’s true even if they privately fear he will lead them to defeat, and after that, to another denial of defeat that could end in another attempted insurrection or at a minimum in horrific civil discord. For all their famed irresolution, proneness to panic, and “bed-wetting” tendencies, Democrats still belong to a party where free speech is possible. If their nominee was convicted of multiple felonies, at least some Democrats would be looking actively and publicly for a replacement. But Republicans belong to a cult of personality where any hint of rebellion is punished ruthlessly. And that’s the party that will take power with Trump if he manages to get back into the White House.

Gabe Gutierrez and Monica Alba report at nbcnews.com:

“Facing mounting political pressure over the migrant influx at the southern border, President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed an executive order that will temporarily shut down asylum requests once the average number of daily encounters tops 2,500 between official ports of entry, according to a senior administration official….“The border is not a political issue to be weaponized,” Biden said in a White House speech announcing the order.

The shutdown would go into effect immediately since that threshold has already been met, a senior administration official said. The border would reopen only once that number falls to 1,500. The president’s order would come under the Immigration and Nationality Act sections 212(f) and 215(a) suspending entry of noncitizens who cross the southern border into the United States unlawfully.

Senior administration officials said Tuesday in a call with reporters that “individuals who cross the southern border unlawfully or without authorization will generally be ineligible for asylum, absent exceptionally compelling circumstances, unless they are accepted by the proclamation.”

The officials said that migrants who don’t meet the requirement of having a “credible fear” when they apply for asylum will be immediately removable, and they “anticipate that we will be removing those individuals in a matter of days, if not hours,”

Gutierrez and Alba note further that “the White House has repeatedly argued that it was congressional Republicans who have failed to act on immigration. Earlier this year, Trump urged House GOP members to kill a bipartisan border funding bill that had been negotiated in the Senate. At the time, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans said that the Senate bill didn’t go far enough and they argued that a more hard-line immigration bill in the House was preferable.”

At Politico Jennifer Haberkorn and Myah Ward add, “It also is designed to give Biden’s campaign, as well as Democratic candidates in key House and Senate races, the ammo they believe they need to push back on relentless Republican attacks. Shortly after the president made his announcement, the Democratic National Committee sent surrogates talking points pointing to the February defeat of a bipartisan border bill by congressional Republicans and laying out its preferred framing for the debate: “President Biden took action after Donald Trump and his MAGA friends said ‘no’ to border security.” Further,

Polling shows immigration has risen among the main concerns for voters in both parties, and is the top concern of Republicans. A February NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll found that 41 percent of Americans believe the GOP will do a better job of handling the issue.

Hoping to turn around those numbers, the White House on Tuesday booked interviews for administration officials and allied lawmakers on national broadcast, Spanish language media and regional press across the country, according to an White House official. That effort is expected to go through the week.

Also,

Biden’s new executive action carries some risk within his own party. Progressives and immigration advocates are deeply frustrated at what they see as a return to Trump-era policies and worry about the long-term implications of Democrats embracing the new measures. The American Civil Liberties Union quickly said it would sue the administration over the action, threatening to stall it right at the point of implementation.

Immigration advocates and progressives are still holding out hope that the administration would follow Tuesday’s tough action with relief for long-term, undocumented residents like caregivers, farmworkers and spouses of U.S. citizens later this year. White House officials have not taken these policy moves off the table, according to three people familiar with the administration’s thinking, who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. But a final decision could ultimately depend on how much political pressure is facing the president in the months ahead.

….The Biden campaign, for now, appears comfortable with its positioning. The president on Tuesday stood next to mayors from border cities and fellow Democratic lawmakers supportive of his new approach. In attendance was Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) — whose February special election race was seen among Biden campaign officials as proof that going aggressive on border security could appeal to a swath of independent voters; and, perhaps as importantly, defang Republican attacks on the issue.

Democratic Senate candidates have already posted ads on Republican opposition to the Senate border bill — particularly in the face of Democrats’ support for anti-fentanyl policies — and have talked about the local effect in non-border states like Ohio. Many of the Democratic candidates in battleground states are expected to maintain that drumbeat following Tuesday’s announcement.

Haberkorn and Ward conclude, “on Tuesday, there were also indications that Biden saw a need to ensure that progressives didn’t feel like he was giving away too much in search of a modest political gain….“I will never demonize immigrants. I will never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of a country. And further, I will never separate children from their families at the border,” Biden said, making a clear contrast with his predecessor and current opponent.”

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

David Leonhardt made a bit of a stir recently with an article arguing that a “new centrism” is rising in Washington. He cites numerous examples of bipartisan cooperation in the last several years:

During the Covid pandemic, Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together to pass emergency responses. Under President Biden, bipartisan majorities have passed major laws on infrastructure and semiconductor chips, as well as laws on veterans’ health, gun violence, the Postal Service, the aviation system, same-sex marriage, anti-Asian hate crimes and the electoral process. On trade, the Biden administration has kept some of the Trump administration’s signature policies and even expanded them.

That does seem impressive. Much of Leonhardt’s essay is devoted to an explanation of how this new centrism has, counterintuitively, arisen in a time of intense polarization. There is much to his explanation but the most fundamental point is this: a relatively laissez-faire economic model, typically shorthanded as “neoliberalism,” which was supported in different ways for decades by both parties, ultimately failed to deliver the steadily rising prosperity most Americans desire. This has led to widespread voter dissatisfaction and an openness to alternatives across the electorate.

Both parties, Leonhardt argues, have been forced to respond to this shifting public mood, albeit in different ways reflecting their differing philosophies and political bases. But the potential for overlap has emerged as both parties chase the median voter. Hence the counterintuitive level of bipartisan cooperation and commonality of goals.

That commonality of goals builds on a shared sense that the shortfall in living standards must be addressed and that America now faces a dangerous new world where the emergence of rivals like China threatens the country on multiple levels. Should Democrats lean into that and seek to, in a sense, “own” this new centrism?

I’d say yes. The new centrism, as it has developed so far, provides clear indicators of the current policy sweet spot among American voters: they want to live better and feel safer and are pragmatically open to policies that could directly address these needs. They do not have an ideological litmus test for these policies, nor a definite view of how large or small government should be. Given the dysfunction and incoherence of today’s Trumpified Republican Party would this not be an opportunity to steal a march on their rivals and (dare I say it?) give the people what they actually want?

Of course, pursuing such a course would not be without its obstacles. As Leonhardt notes:

Americans lean left on economic policy. Polls show that they support restrictions on trade, higher taxes on the wealthy and a strong safety net. Most Americans are not socialists, but they do favor policies to hold down the cost of living and create good-paying jobs….The story is different on social and cultural issues. Americans lean right on many of those issues, polls show (albeit not as far right as the Republican Party has moved on abortion).

If you aim to promote and dominate a new centrism, it makes sense to target that fat center of American public opinion. But progressive Democrats would balk at this second part and would chafe at the limited nature of the first part; support for government action in the areas enumerated does not equate to support for restructuring American capitalism around a rapid clean energy transition. The new center of American politics is oriented instead toward concrete improvements in living standards and the safeguarding of America’s place in the world.

The importance of the latter is should not be underestimated. From the Leonhardt article:

“China is a unifying force, absolutely,” Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, told me. Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, compared the rise of artificial intelligence to the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, which led to bipartisan legislation on education and scientific research. Anxiety about A.I., Fetterman added, made possible the passage of the semiconductor-chips bill. “We are most able to come together when we acknowledge the risks we have to the American way of life,” Fetterman said. “Whose side are you on—democracy or Putin, Hamas and China?”

That muscular, “whose side are you on?” approach resonates well with the new center but less so with the progressive left in the Democratic Party. They are far more interested in a quixotic quest to rapidly replace fossil fuels with renewables and get everyone to drive an electric car, whether they are interested or not. That’s nuts, both as policy and politics.

More broadly, it seems clear that building out the new center of American politics from the Democratic side depends on weighting down progressive left priorities and weighting up moderate priorities consistent with the views of most voters. It’s frustrating that when the Biden administration takes actions consistent with this approach, they are bizarrely reluctant to talk about them, presumably because they’re afraid to annoy the activist-industrial complex. Here’s a pertinent example from a recent Wall Street Journal article, “While Biden Worries About the Left, the Voters He Needs Are in the Center”:

Under Biden, American energy production has reached historic highs—a popular accomplishment that voters overwhelmingly support. But you would never know it from listening to him. The achievement went unmentioned in the president’s recent State of the Union address and his recent campaign speeches, where he has preferred to talk about climate investments and “environmental justice.” Perhaps as a result, most Americans disapprove of his handling of energy, and many blame him for high gas prices.

The president’s failure to tout this aspect of his record has frustrated moderate allies. Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) recently wrote a Washington Post op-ed sarcastically “congratulating” Biden for his energy record and urging him to tout it more vigorously. “This is the all-of-the-above strategy in action, showing results. But it seems some of the president’s radical advisers in the White House are so worried about angering climate activists that they refuse to speak up about these accomplishments,” Manchin wrote.

This seems like political malpractice, which has only been compounded by the administration’s decision to cave to pressure from climate activists and halt permitting on liquified natural gas (LNG) exports—a decision that makes no policy sense and is guaranteed to alienate working-class voters.

John Fetterman and Bob Casey, Pennsylvania’s two Democratic Senators had some stern words for administration’s peculiar decision:

Pennsylvania is an energy state. As the second largest natural gas-producing state, this industry has created good-paying energy jobs in towns and communities across the Commonwealth and has played a critical role in promoting U.S. energy independence…

While the immediate impacts on Pennsylvania remain to be seen, we have concerns about the long-term impacts that this pause will have on the thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry. If this decision puts Pennsylvania energy jobs at risk, we will push the Biden Administration to reverse this decision.

Fetterman, in particular, has made no attempt to hide his lack of interest in doing the progressive left’s bidding. He has said, “I’m not a progressive,” and “I don’t feel like I’ve left the label; it’s just more that it’s left me.” An amusing anecdote in a recent New York Times article makes it abundantly clear where he’s coming from:

Senator John Fetterman was hard to miss, lumbering down an empty hallway in a Senate office building dressed in his signature baggy gym shorts and a black hoodie. So when Stevie O’Hanlon, an environmentalist and organizer from Chester County, Pa., spotted him recently, she took the opportunity to question her home-state senator about a pipeline in her community.

Mr. Fetterman’s reaction was surprisingly hostile. Raising his phone to capture the confrontation on video, the senator began ridiculing her.

“I didn’t expect this!” Mr. Fetterman said, feigning excitement. “Oh my gosh!”

As Ms. O’Hanlon politely pressed him on what she called his “change of heart” on the issue of the local pipeline, which he had previously opposed, Mr. Fetterman pulled faces of faux concern until he stepped onto an elevator and let the closing door end the interaction.

Ms. O’Hanlon, a co-founder of the progressive Sunrise Movement, was stunned.

A Democratic Party that wants to build out the new center needs a lot more stunning of Sunrise Movement activists and a lot less genuflecting to their concerns. I’ve called this The Way of the Fetterman; it models how Democrats should declare independence from an activist-driven agenda at variance with the emerging center of American politics.

The dividends from embracing that new center could be not just desirable but critical for the Democrats moving forward. The Split Ticket November-April average of cross-tabular results from public polls finds Biden with an average 4 point deficit to Trump among independents, compared to Biden’s 10 point advantage in 2020 (a 14 point pro-Trump swing). And among moderates, Biden is leading Trump by an average of 14 points, way down from his 27 point advantage in the 2020 election (a 13 point pro-Trump swing).

That should make the idea of embracing the new center of American politics pretty darn attractive. In truth, it’s a golden opportunity for a Democratic Party that, right now, needs all the help it can get.

For what it’s worth, “One in 10 Republicans less likely to vote for Trump after guilty verdict, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds,” Jason Lange writes at Reuters. Lange explains, “Ten percent of Republican registered voters say they are less likely to vote for Donald Trump following his felony conviction for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Friday….The two-day poll, conducted in the hours after the Republican presidential candidate’s conviction by a Manhattan jury on Thursday, also found that 56% of Republican registered voters said the case would have no effect on their vote and 35% said they were more likely to support Trump, who has claimed the charges against him are politically motivated and has vowed to appeal….The potential loss of a tenth of his party’s voters is more significant for Trump than the stronger backing of more than a third of Republicans, since many of the latter would be likely to vote for him regardless of the conviction….Among independent registered voters, 25% said Trump’s conviction made them less likely to support him in November, compared to 18% who said they were more likely and 56% who said the conviction would have no impact on their decision….The verdict could shake up the race between Trump, who was U.S. president from 2017-2021, and Democratic President Joe Biden ahead of the Nov. 5 election. U.S. presidential elections are typically decided by thin margins in a handful of competitive swing states, meaning that even small numbers of voters defecting from their candidates can have a big impact….Biden and Trump remain locked in a tight race, with 41% of voters saying they would vote for Biden if the election were held today and 39% saying they would pick Trump, according to the poll, which surveyed 2,556 U.S. adults nationwide.” Plug in all of the usual caveats, especially the one about swing state polls being more meaningful in 2024 than national polls, and we still have a bunch of “what if?” scenarios and no safe bets. At The Hill, Nick Robertson writes, “Trump leads Biden by about 1 percentage point in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ average of polls, though Biden has gained on Trump since the conviction, leading Trump in most polls since Thursday.”

In “Donald Trump Gets More Bad News From Fourth Post-Verdict Poll” at Newsweek, Mandy Taheri adds, “Meanwhile, three separate polls conducted since Trump’s guilty verdict also show similar findings with the ABC News/Ipsos poll….A YouGov snap poll of 3,040 Americans conducted just hours after the verdict was announced revealed that 50 percent believe Trump was guilty, while 30 percent thought he was not. Another 19 percent were unsure. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points….Broken down into party lines, 15 percent of Republicans think Trump is guilty while 64 percent do not, 48 percent of independents think Trump is guilty while 25 percent do not, and 86 percent of Democratsbelieve he is guilty while 5 percent do not. A total of 831 Republicans, 1,114 independents, and 1,113 Democrats were surveyed. The margin of error of the subgroups are unclear….Morning Consult’s poll of 2,220 registered voters found 54 percent approve of the jury’s verdict while 39 percent disapprove. Across party lines, 18 percent of Republicans approve of the verdict while 74 percent disapprove, 52 percent of independents approve while 33 disapprove and 88 percent of Democrats approve while 8 percent disapprove. The poll, which was conducted on Friday, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.” Nonetheless, “Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign communications director, told Newsweek via email on Saturday, “President Trump has seen an outpouring support, which has led to polling increases and record-shattering fundraising numbers that include close to $53 million in just 24 hours, 30% of those who are new donors.”….He also mentioned a snap Daily Mail/J.L. Partners poll taken after Thursday’s verdict, which found that Trump’s approval rating was up by 6 percentage points compared to those who disapproved….A total of 22 percent of likely voters had a more positive view of Trump after his guilty verdict while 16 percent had a more negative view. Meanwhile, 32 percent of likely voters who already had a negative view of Trump had no change of opinion while 27 percent of likely voters who already had a positive view of Trump had no change. The poll surveyed 403 likely voters from Thursday to Friday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent.” Perhaps all of the polls taken thus far can be likened to knee-jerk reactions so soon after the verdict.

“A Bit of Trump Trial Campaign Advice” by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo: “Trump’s play is always dominance. The weapon of choice against that puffed-up pro-wrestling-like dominance spectacle that is at the heart of Trumpism is mockery. And this provides such a wonderful opening….Trump was convicted of a felony. So the trial was rigged. Just like when Donald Trump lost a whole presidential election. Remember that? And he said that was rigged. He couldn’t just take it like a man (or woman) like the other … what, 44 guys who lost, and just admit he lost? And remember back in 2016 when it looked like he was going to lose, well … that election was rigged too. And then he won so it wasn’t rigged anymore. And the lawsuit that dissolved his company for decades of serial fraud. Also rigged, surprisingly!….Don’t we all know that guy? From our own lives? It’s not his fault? Someone always set him up? It was rigged!….And why stop there? Remember the convictions of Bannon and Flynn and Manafort and Stone and good lord almost every one who’s ever worked for him? All rigged. And what about the time he pulled up a U-Haul on the White House lawn and made off with a few hundred boxes of classified records and kept them in random rooms at his beach resort. Also rigged? Yes, would you believe that prosecution was also rigged! We know this guy….The way to constantly inject Trump’s felony conviction into the campaign, other than remembering that “convicted felon” is now his first name, is to simply make his pathetic whining, excuses and demands for never-ending life mulligans the center of the campaign against him. He’s a disgrace but more than that an embarrassment. It won’t be hard because he’ll be making this claim non-stop through November, just a constant cue up for the same lethal mockery. It is the heart of his politics to always be jacking the conversation up to higher and higher levels of drama, even when the drama is his own menace, indeed especially when the drama is his own menace. That’s his power. What cuts him down is to zero in on the pathetic excuse-making and whining, a trait all of us associate with the most odious and pitiful people we’ve ever known. And let that pull the disgrace of his many crimes and prosecutions along with it.”

Sofia Benavides explains “Why Mexico’s election is more important than ever for the United States” at CNN Politics: “With more than 98 million eligible voters, some 70,000 candidates and over 20,000 public offices being contested, Mexico’s general election on June 2 will be the largest in the country’s history….But it’s not just the massive scale of the event that makes it so important in the eyes of observers across the border in the United States….For the first time in history, the country looks set to elect its first female president. The two front-runners are both women – Claudia Sheinbaum, of the Morena party, who is backed by the governing coalition Sigamos Haciendo Historia, and Xóchitl Gálvez, who is backed by an coalition of opposition parties….The vote is also important because it falls in the same year as the US presidential election – something that happens only once every 12 years – and comes at a time of transition in the relationship between the two countries….Mexico became the United States’ top trading partner last year, surpassing China and Canada….Experts say this is largely because geopolitical issues such as the pandemic, the legacy of Trump’s trade war against China, and the war in Ukraine all encouraged near-shoring – the relocation of supply chains nearer to home – which boosted US imports from Mexico and its investment in the country….Key to facilitating this shift was the creation of the USMCA trade agreement, which came into effect in 2020 between Mexico, the United States and Canada….Many analysts believe the US is currently playing down disputes over the USMCA in the hope that this can ease differences in other areas, both in domestic Mexican issues – such as alleged human rights violations, the government’s treatment of journalists, and the increase in political assassinations – and bilateral concerns such as immigration and the drug trade….“It’s very transactional. Mexico agreed to partially manage the immigration crisis in the US, keeping immigrants in Mexican territory and taking care of their deportation, in exchange for the United States not activating these lawsuits,” said Raquel López Portillo Maltos, executive secretary of the youth group of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (Comexi) think tank….While migration across the countries’ 1,933 miles long border is a shared concern, the issue is much lower on Mexican politicians’ agenda than in the US — where it could be a decisive factor in the November vote, according to Carin Zissis, editor-in-chief of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas website….The rub for US politicians is that they need buy-in from their Mexican counterparts if their own immigration policies are to succeed.”

Now that Trump has been convicted of multiple crimes, the 2024 presidential campaign could change. I thought about how the former president would handle things, and wrote about it at New York:

Donald Trump’s most important consolation after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 criminal counts is that he has anticipated this moment for a long time. He was indicted 14 months ago with subsequent criminal indictments following in Florida, in Atlanta, and in Washington. Ever since, he has been running for president as a man under criminal indictment, and coping with that fact has been central to his strategy and message. Indeed, it became clear a long time ago that Trump’s endless preoccupation with his failed 2020 stolen-election fables, a backward-facing stance that initially baffled political observers, was actually a way of conditioning voters to view his future treatment by the justice system skeptically, if not with great hostility.

During this year’s Republican nominating contest, this strategy worked brilliantly, not only insulating Trump from criticism from his rivals about his misconduct in the cases that led to his serial indictments but actually making his alleged criminality a badge of honor. His increasingly shrill attacks on the prosecutors he faced helped boost him to an easy win in the primaries as the hero of conservatives angry at the Democrats and liberal elites seeking to hold him accountable. Now that he has been found guilty in a case brought by a Democratic prosecutor in a dark-blue constituency, to the delight of those liberal elites, Trump can be expected to keep on with the same chest-thumping professions of innocence and victimization (and promises of vengeance) with the Republican Party that has already nominated him dragooned willingly into joining his crusade for vindication.

There’s no particular reason to doubt that Trump’s ongoing call for loyalty will continue to work with a Republican base that very badly wants to respond to it favorably. Pre-verdict polls have consistently shown that a significant share of Republicans would “reconsider” their support for Trump if he were convicted of any crime. But “reconsidering” isn’t the same as “abandoning.” As a May 5 AP-Ipsos poll showed, most of these voters will likely wind up right back in his camp with any encouragement at all (only 4 percent of Trump supporters said they’d drop their allegiance to him after a conviction, and that may be overstating the reaction given past experience with moments when Republicans seemed to be jettisoning the 45th president — but didn’t).

But even if Trump can confidently count on his base of supporters to stay loyal — indeed, perhaps even cling to him more fiercely than ever as the victim of a “witch hunt” — he must still deal with possible fallout among the small but potentially decisive sliver of swing voters that is open to voting for him but might seriously reconsider voting for a felon. He will need something different from tribal loyalty fed by conspiracy theories to seal the deal in November. For these voters, the key may be to double down on every line of attack on Joe Biden as a feckless incompetent and an active danger to the peace and prosperity of America. Conservative Christian activist Rod Dreher may have identified precisely the right precedent for what the Trump campaign will try to do to assuage concerns over his conviction, in tweeting a copy of an old Louisiana bumper sticker that read, “Vote for the Crook: It’s Important,” and commenting: “I had this bumper sticker on my Louisiana car in 1991, urging my fellow voters to vote for sleazy Edwin Edwards over ex-KKK leader David Duke. After Trump’s felony convictions, I say it’s time to bring it back for the fall election.”

Yes, supporters of the ethically challenged Edwin Edwards frontally attacked concerns he was corrupt by minimizing the significance of his corner-cutting as compared to the dire consequences of letting David Duke become chief executive of Louisiana, and what had been a close “race from hell” turned into an Edwards landslide. Nobody will ever mistake Joe Biden for David Duke, but the basic idea of suggesting that a little criminality is better than bad leadership could be fruitfully adapted by the Trump campaign. Trump’s sentencing (scheduled for mid-July) by Judge Merchan could create some serious logistical problems for him, restricting his movements while reminding voters he’s on the wrong side of the law. But he is just lucky that the clock has probably run out for any further criminal convictions prior to Election Day that might make the verdict in Manhattan harder to overlook.

Even if this strategy does not work for Trump and he loses in November, the consequences of the guilty verdict will continue, and not just for the convict. If there was any doubt that Trump will deny and reject an election loss even more vociferously than he did in 2020, it should vanish now. Not only is he deeply invested in the claim that his legal peril represents “election interference” by Democrats, but he also needs the kind of get-out-of-jail card a return to the White House might offer.

No. There is no way to fully prepare for such an unprecedented political event. Never before has a Democratic presidential campaign had to run against a convicted felon.

“Americans reacted Thursday to the historic conviction of former President Donald Trump on 34 felony charges with a mixture of surprise, joy, anger, indifference and expletives,” a team of reporters note in “‘Speechless’: Swing state voters react to Donald Trump’s guilty verdict“ at USA Today. Politico has five “takeaways” from the verdict. NPR has four. But nobody really knows how it will play out.

Can Democrats safely assume that Trump will still be the Republican nominee? Probably, although the prospects for chaos in the Republican Party have just increased significantly, and the chaos factor was already a big problem for them. Nearly all Republican “leaders,” notably including Nikki Haley, have signed up for the Trump grovelfest. Watch them now squirm as they try to justify their continued support for a convicted felon, while still trying to project an image of conservative public servants who are tough on crime. That sell just got a lot harder.

Some worry that the verdict will somehow help Trump. But I suspect he has already maxxed out with the “evil Democrats are out to destroy Trump” voters. There are only so many of them, and they would have to believe that Democrats somehow politicized the jury, which is quite a stretch.

Some Republicans will say that the trial was conducted in a kangaroo court, even though Trump’s attorneys had plenty of opportunities to ditch jurors they deemed to be prejudiced against him. More than 500 potential jurors were scrutinized for this trial. The Trump grovelers will argue that it ain’t over until the appeal process is completed. That looks a bit weak in light of the speed of the jury’s verdict, which is a slam dunk of a message.

If Trump starts to tank badly in poll averages, the GOP grovelfest could quickly come to an end, and they will dump him at their convention. In that event, expect amusingly dodgy comments, something like “my support was always contingent on Mr. Trump being found innocent.” Not a great look.

Republicans now have an even shorter list of credible replacement presidential candidates. Edge to Democrats in that possibility.

But that doesn’t mean that Biden will have a lock on re-election. Americans have short memories. And there is also the possibility that voters will shrug off the conviction, believing that it’s just more of the crazy polarization of our times. After all the “if-then” scenarios are parsed, nobody knows what is going to happen. Democrats should have measured responses, don’t gloat so much and play it cool.

Ronald Brownstein shares some insights in his article “The unusual turnout dynamic that could decide the 2024 election” at CNN Politics: “For decades, Democrats have built their electoral strategies on a common assumption: the higher the turnout, the better their chances of winning. But that familiar equation may no longer apply for President Joe Biden in 2024….A wide array of polls this year shows Biden running best among Americans with the most consistent history of voting, while former President Donald Trump often displays the most strength among people who have been the least likely to vote….These new patterns are creating challenges for each party. Trump’s potential appeal to more irregular voters, particularly younger Black and Latino men, is compelling Democrats to rethink longstanding strategies that focused on mobilizing as many younger and non-White voters as possible without worrying about their partisan allegiance….“What all this means is this election has volatility,” says Daniel Hopkins, a University of Pennsylvania political scientist who has studied the widening partisan divergence between voters with and without a consistent history of turning out. “We used to expect that the marginal non-voter, the next voter who turned out if an election was very engaging, didn’t look different from people who did vote. In this case, the crowd that hasn’t gotten engaged looks very, very different.”

Brownstein explains further, “Merged results from the three most recent national NBC polls, conducted by a bipartisan team of prominent Democratic and Republican pollsters, for instance, found that Biden leads Trump by 4 percentage points among people who voted in both 2020 and 2022. But among those who voted in 2020 but not 2022, Trump led Biden by 12 percentage points. Trump’s lead swelled to 20 percentage points among those who did not vote in either 2020 or 2022. Fully 65% of those who did not vote in either of the past two elections said they disapproved of Biden’s performance in office….Combined results from recent national New York Times/Siena College polls likewise have found Biden narrowly leading among potential 2024 voters who turned out in 2020 while trailing Trump by double digits among those who did not vote in their previous contest….Hopkins has conducted perhaps the most ambitious attempt to quantify the divergence between Americans with and without a history of voting. Earlier this year, he and a colleague worked with NORC at the University of Chicago to survey over 2,400 adults about their preferences in the 2024 race. The poll only surveyed people who were old enough to vote in each of the past three elections — the midterms of 2018 and 2022 and the 2020 presidential race….The results were striking. Among adults who had voted in each of the past three federal elections, Biden led Trump by 11 points, and Biden eked out a narrow advantage among voters who participated in two of the past three races. But, the poll found, Trump led Biden by 12 percentage points among those who voted in just one of the past three elections and by a crushing margin of 18 percentage points among those who came out for none of them….As important, the pattern held across racial lines. In the poll, Trump ran even with Biden among Latinos who voted in two, one or none of the past three elections, while Biden held a nearly 20-point advantage among those who voted in all three. With Black voters, Biden’s lead was just 10 points among those who did not show up for any of the past three elections, but over 80 points among those who participated in all three.”

Brownstein adds, “Using data from Catalist, a leading Democratic voter targeting firm, Michael Podhorzer, the former political director of the AFL-CIO, reached similar conclusions. He found that in 2020 Biden’s margins over Trump were higher among people who voted in the three previous elections of 2018, 2016 and 2014 than those who voted in some or none of them — and that the relationship held across racial lines….Hopkins said the gap between habitual and irregular voters in his latest survey was far greater than the difference he found when he conducted a similar poll early in the 2016 race between Trump and Hillary Clinton. Key to this widening chasm, he believes, may be another dynamic: Adults who are less likely to vote are also less likely to follow political news….“For more infrequent voters, these are often people who pay less attention to politics and whose political barometer is more the question of how is my family doing economically, how does the country seem to be doing,” Hopkins said. “For those voters, Donald Trump…is not especially unusual.” By contrast, Hopkins said, a “sizable sliver” of habitual voters “have a sense that Trump may be qualitatively different than other political candidates with respect to norm violations and January 6.” For less frequent voters, he added, the equation may be as simple as “they don’t love what they see with Joe Biden, and if Donald Trump is the person running against Joe Biden, they want change.”….The NBC polling results buttress that conclusion: It found that among the roughly one-sixth of voters who say they do not follow political news, Trump led Biden by fully 2-to-1….Several analysts caution that while this divergence between high- and low-frequency voters is appearing consistently in polls now, it’s too early to say for certain whether it will persist through Election Day.”

Further, notes Brownstein, “Through the 21st century, as first Millennials and now Generation Z have entered the electorate in large numbers, Democrats have unwaveringly operated on the belief that turning out as many young voters as possible would benefit the party….But that’s a much more uncertain proposition in 2024, as demonstrated by the latest youth poll from the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, probably the most in-depth look at attitudes among young people. In the IOP poll this spring, Biden led Trump by nearly 20 points among young adults (aged 18-29) who said they definitely plan to vote in November; that lead was comparable to Biden’s advantage among all young adults in 2020….But Republicans point out that even if Trump doesn’t win as many of these irregularly voting non-White men as polls show today, he will still benefit if they drift toward third-party candidates or simply choose not to vote. Looking at the Black community, “even if you don’t buy the potential for Trump to flip lots of votes there, it seems there’s considerable risk of a turnout drop-off that will hit Biden’s raw margins out of big cities in the battlegrounds that Democrats usually depend on,” said GOP pollster Patrick Ruffini…. But Trump’s position steadily improved as the likelihood of voting diminished, with the former president leading Biden by 2-to-1 among those who said they probably would not vote….Those who indicated they were less likely to vote tended to be young people without a college degree, non-Whites and the very youngest cohort aged 18-24. John Della Volpe, the Institute of Politics’ polling director, pointed out that those youngest adults probably don’t remember much about Trump’s presidency.” Brownstein concludes, “Democrats can feel confident that at least as many habitual voters are hostile to Trump as committed to him, particularly in most of the battleground states that will decide the election. The decisive variable for 2024 may be how many people beyond that inner core of the most reliable voters show up and whether they break for the former president as decisively as most polls now suggest.”

Sometimes objective reality really does matter in politics, so at New York I raised a question about its impact on perceptions of Biden and Democrats on immigration issues:

There are two big 2024 campaign issues relating to Joe Biden’s job performance that are really hurting his prospects for reelection: the economy, and more specifically inflation; and the surge in migrants crossing the border during his presidency. Polls consistently show Biden getting low marks on handling inflation (34.8 percent approval according to the RealClearPolitics polling averages) and immigration (33.5 percent per RCP). Unfortunately for the president, these two concerns seem to be especially salient in 2024.

Gallup routinely asks Americans what they consider the “most important problem facing the country.” In its most recent report at the end of April, 30 percent said either “Economy in general” or “High Cost of Living/Inflation” were the single biggest problem, and another 27 percent named “Immigration.” This latter number has more than doubled since last fall. That’s not surprising given the drumbeat of news about high levels of border crossings by migrants since Biden took office, and incessant Republican complaints on the subject, particularly from Donald Trump, for whom immigration has long been his signature issue.

So the most recent statistics on border crossings, as reported by CBS News, represent some really good news for the 46th president:

“Illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in May are down by more than 50% compared to the record highs reported in December, giving the Biden administration an unexpected reprieve during a time when migration has historically surged, according to internal government data obtained by CBS News. … May is also on track to see the third consecutive month-over-month drop in unlawful border crossings, the preliminary U.S. Department of Homeland Security statistics show. In March and April, illegal crossings along the southern border dropped to 137,000 and 129,000, respectively, according to public government data. If the trend continues, Border Patrol is on pace to record between 110,000 and 120,000 apprehensions in May.”

Biden administration officials concede that a lot of this improvement is attributable to much tougher enforcement efforts by the Mexican government. But the drop in crossings is happening at the same time — coincidentally or not — that the administration is toughening its own rhetoric on illegal immigration, a trend that really began in February after congressional Republicans (reportedly at Trump’s insistence) rejected bipartisan border control legislation.

The major political question is whether this is happening too late to change perceptions of Biden’s job performance on immigration and migration, which Republicans tend to combine with complaints about (largely imaginary) spikes in crime into a law-and-order pitch that treats Democrats as weak and feckless, or perhaps even consciously lawless (that’s the heart of the “Great Replacement Theory” which no less a personage than House Speaker Mike Johnson has echoed, arguing that Biden plans to undocumented immigrants into illegal voters). After all, inflation has significantly abated in 2024, but voters don’t seem inclined to give Biden much credit for it, or even to tamp down their unhappiness with him over the high prices of food, housing and gasoline. It’s also possible that immigration has simply become an issue (much like abortion for Republicans) where Democrats have lost public trust and may not regain it for a good while. It hasn’t been that long since immigration policy divided Republicans and benefited Democrats, but those days seem to be gone for the immediate future.

Team Biden may not be able to hope for a big improvement in job performance assessments on immigration. But a reduction in its salience is feasible, making it an issue that decides voting preferences for a far smaller segment of the electorate. If border crossings continue to drop until election day, hyperbolic Republican claims that Biden has “opened the border” will begin to ring hollow, and Trump’s second-term plans to undertake a massive armed deportation drive will begin to sound as cruel as the former president himself.

In “Senate Democrats are polling well. That could help Biden,” Nathaniel Rakich writes at 538:

As Democrats wring their hands over their poor polling numbers in the presidential race, there is one spot of good news for them: U.S. Senate races. Democratic candidates have led in most recent polls of key Senate races like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin* even as President Joe Biden trails former President Donald Trump in the very same polls.

I went back and looked at every state-level poll that has asked about both the presidential race and a U.S. Senate race over the past six weeks. The table below shows a simple average of these polls by state; as you can see, Senate Democrats are outrunning Biden’s margin by an average of 5 percentage points:

Senate Democrats are outpolling Biden

Average margin in each state’s presidential race versus Senate race in polls that have asked about both since April 12

Table with 5 columns and 11 rows.

		AVERAGE MARGIN FOR…
STATE	NO. OF POLLS	PRESIDENT	SENATE	DIFF.
Arizona	5	R+4	D+6	+10
Pennsylvania	5	R+3	D+4	+7
Wisconsin	4	R+2	D+7	+10
Florida	3	R+10	R+13	−3
Nevada	3	R+8	D+6	+15
Maryland	2	D+23	D+10	−13
Michigan	1	R+1	D+2	+3
Minnesota	1	D+2	D+14	+12
Texas	1	R+9	R+13	−4
Virginia	1	D+1	D+12	+11
Average		R+1	D+4	+5

When a poll released multiple versions of the same question, we used the version among likely voters over the version among registered voters; the version that asked about third-party candidates over the version that asked a head-to-head; and the version that included the most likely Senate nominees in states that have not yet held their primaries.

It isn’t hard to figure out why this is the case. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Biden is unpopular; meanwhile, most Democratic candidates for Senate are popular incumbents, like Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, and/or have a track record of outperforming the top of the ticket, like Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Lo and behold, the only three states where Republican Senate candidates are polling better than Trump are the two states where they are incumbents (Florida and Texas) and Maryland, where the GOP’s candidate is popular former Gov. Larry Hogan, who had an astounding 81 percent approval rating among Democrats at the time he left office.

So it’s not exactly a mystery why there’s a presidential-downballot gap. The more interesting question is what, if anything, that gap means for November. There are basically three theories to answer that:

1. Biden’s support right now is artificially low; there are plenty of traditionally Democratic voters who are telling pollsters they support Senate Democrats but, for whatever reason, aren’t ready to get behind Biden yet. So Biden’s support will rise as we get closer to the election and those voters get on board, leaving both Biden and Senate Democrats in good shape.

2. Senate Republicans’ support right now is artificially low. Since most of them aren’t incumbents, they aren’t as well known as their opponents, but their support will rise as Trump voters learn that they are on the “right team” in these Senate races. Therefore, both Trump and Senate Republicans will do well in November.

3. Senate Democrats are just more popular than Biden, and this gap will persist through the election: Many states will vote for both Trump and a Democratic Senate candidate.

Right off the bat, I’m skeptical of No. 3. If the current polls end up being exactly correct, Democrats would win at least five Senate races in states Trump carries. That wouldn’t have been unusual 20 years ago — in 2004, seven states voted for different parties for president and for Senate. But today, split-ticket voting is quite rare. In 2016, every state voted for the same party for Senate that it did for president, and in 2020, every state but one (Maine) did.

The median difference between the presidential and Senate margins in a state has also shrunk drastically over that time — from 20 points in 2004 to just 3 points in 2020.

Read the rest of Rakich’s article here.