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Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

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in “Barriers to voting for people with disabilities: An explainer and research roundup” at Journalists’s Resource, Naseem S. Miller reports on an issue that affects millions of voters and their families, but doesn’t get much attention: “A growing body of research shows that voting and health are intertwined. People affected by poor health or disabilities are less likely to cast a ballot than the general population….When previously disenfranchised people, including people with disabilities, vote, policies that benefit everyone and better health outcomes follow, according to County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a program of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute….About 42.5 million Americans have disabilities, according to 2021 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. ….In the November 2020 election, individuals with disabilities voted at a 7% lower rate than people without disabilities, according to the Disability and Voting Accessibility in the 2020 Elections survey by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and Rutgers University. More than 11% — nearly 2 million people with disabilities — said they faced difficulties voting….Voters with disabilities face a range of barriers, including inaccessible voting places, lack of accessible voting machines, and state laws that restrict voting by mail or criminalize assisting a person in voting, according to the American Civil Liberties Union….When the Government Accountability Office officials visited 167 polling places during the 2016 general election, only 17% were fully accessible for people with disabilities who wanted to vote in person. The most common barriers were steep ramps, lack of signs for accessible paths to the building, gravel parking lots or lack of parking options….In 2023, at least 14 states enacted 17 restrictive voting laws, which will take effect for the 2024 general election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute at New York University. Most of the laws limit mail-in voting, shorten the window of requesting a mail ballot or ban drop boxes. Even though these laws don’t target people with disabilities, they create additional barriers for them….People who live in institutions like nursing homes, those who are under legal guardianship and people with mental illness are also less likely to vote than the general population, research has shown. In some cases, these people are prohibited from voting by state law.” While there is no convincing data indicating Democrats would get moe votes than Republicans by expanded access for these voters, Democrats might benefit by being more visible champions of reforms to make voting more convenient for them.

Some revealing statistics from “What America’s Relocation Boom Means for Election 2024” by Shawn Donnan at Bloomberg Business: “The population shifts are more pronounced in some battleground states than others, and they don’t uniformly favor Biden. But in aggregate, they offer a reason for optimism for the president’s campaign, even as polls showhim trailing his likely opponent, Donald Trump: A Bloomberg analysis of state population forecasts found swing-state counties that Biden won in 2020 will have on net gained almost twice as many people by election day as those that voted for Trump….Counting people is hard, and state demographers’ population forecasts don’t always agree with Census Bureau estimates, which for some states point to smaller gains….Still, by November’s presidential election, around 30 million Americans — the equivalent of the population of Texas — will have moved to a different state since 2020, even if migration recedes to a pre-pandemic pace…..In Georgia, where Biden beat Trump by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020, the population will have grown by almost 395,000, according to state forecasts. Most of that growth is in metro Atlanta counties that Biden won handily in 2020. Likewise, in Nevada, Las Vegas home Clark County will have added almost 125,000 people by the time the election is held…..State forecasts show Maricopa County, Arizona, which Biden won narrowly and where 2 million ballots were cast in 2020, will have 337,000 more residents on election day 2024. Biden’s razor-thin 2020 margin there suggests that capitalizing on that growth may not be as easy as in Wisconsin, Georgia or Nevada….The relocation boom is not a tailwind for Biden everywhere. In North Carolina, the growth in red counties appears to have more than offset the rapid growth in the Raleigh-Durham metro area’s blue suburbs, according to state forecasts….Rapidly growing states like Georgia and North Carolina are seeing major changes in the composition of their electorates, while others like Pennsylvania are becoming more urban as they fight to maintain population.”

Bill Scher explains why “It’s Time for Biden to Learn from Reagan and Go All “Morning in America”: The president has a better economic record than Reagan. He should take a page from the Gipper’s extremely optimistic 1984 reelection ad campaign” at The Washington Monthly: “The Biden economy is by nearly every significant measure better than the 1984 Reagan economy: the unemployment rate is lower, earnings are higher, the poverty rate is lower, inflation is lower, and interest rates are lower. Yet public sentiment towards Biden hasn’t caught up to the economic data, the media continues to harp on his age, and Donald Trump is furiously retconning the economic narrative of the last seven years….The public may come to credit Biden with the improved economy, so long as the improvement continues, in time for Election Day. But with counterwinds, Biden can’t assume credit will organically materialize. Because his challenge is steeper than Reagan’s, he should not wait until September to marshal his best arguments….Granted, an inherent risk with bragging about economic data is that it can go south….But a review of the original Morning in America spot reminds us that emotion, not data, made it resonate….A Biden version of Morning in America could sound like this: It’s morning in America. Today, more Americans will go to work than ever in our country’s history….Why not lift directly from the original’s first line? It’s technically accurate as a matter of raw numbers: in every month of 2023, for the first time, over 160 million Americans were employed. But the unemployment rate has been at 4 percent or below for the last two years, which hasn’t happened in over 50 years. Even if the unemployment rate ticks up some, the line will almost surely remain technically true…And we’re building things in America again…As of January 2024, we have 13 million manufacturing workers (about 8 percent of the workforce), the most in 15 years….We’re enjoying the fruits of our labor, living in safer neighborhoods, and taking more vacations….The 2023 murder rate is down 12 percent from the prior year, according to crime data analyst Jeff Asher, and all violent crime (through the third quarter of 2023) is down 8 percent. ….Then, to close the ad, why change a word?….It’s morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Biden, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?….Ideally, the Biden campaign would tap people from all walks of life—small business owners, PTA presidents, first responders, community bankers, blue-collar workers, stay-at-home parents, community college students, and retirees—from every state or even every county, to echo similar messages in local media about how the economy has turned around. Such a communications effort would till the soil for a national Morning in America campaign, which would not have to consist of just one ad but several versions tailored to different demographics.”

Democrats have often faulted  evangelical Republican members of congresss for violating the separation of church and state. But Washington Post syndicated columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. reports on a unique challenge Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CONN) has posed to House Speaker Mikie Johnson (R-LA), connecting New Testament teachings to GOP policies. As Dionne, writes, “Because Johnson’s brand of Christianity is decidedly right-wing, he has since faced much criticism and reproof — which is entirely fair for a politician who has chosen to make his religious convictions so central to his public life. But Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), whose progressivism on issues related to economic justice is rooted in her Catholic tradition’s social teaching, has another way of approaching the question….I was not surprised when she recently called me to report that she had been thinking a lot about Johnson’s comment on the Bible explaining his outlook. Her purpose, she said, was not to question Johnson’s commitment to Christianity. On the contrary, DeLauro went out of her way to be respectful to Johnson’s spiritual life….“He is a man of faith, I start from there,” DeLauro said. “And he says his beliefs are rooted in the Bible, and many of us believe that. … The Bible is replete with guidance, of attention to act as a community, to focus in on the poor,” she said. “And the Bible lays out a faith-based policy agenda. It espouses social justice.”….And off she went, citing Exodus’s command not to oppress the poor or the stranger whose cry God will hear; Leviticus on setting aside of a share of the harvest for the poor; the Gospel of Matthew on the need for a living wage; the letter of James on the obligation not to show favoritism for the rich over the needy…..DeLauro wanted to be clear that however much she disagrees with Johnson on a slew of questions, she was not accusing him of anything. Instead, she wants to invite him to a dialogue on what taking the Bible seriously means.”


Teixeira: Fixing the Democrats’ Education Problem

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:

For decades, the Democrats were “the party of education,” ringing up double-digit leads in polls asking Americans which major party they trusted most to handle education. During parts of the Clinton and Obama presidencies, that lead topped 30 points. Now, though, the Dems’ edge has shrunk to just a few points, with the occasional poll showing Republicans nosing ahead.

Why are Democrats fumbling the issue of education, which they dominated for so many years? There are multiple reasons: they mishandled the Covid-related school closures, they are letting the culture wars distract from the core mission of schools, and they are downplaying the importance of merit and academic achievement. Before I discuss how the Dems could effect a turnaround, let’s dig deeper into these missteps and unfortunate trends.

The school closures went on way too long. Democrats, far more than Republicans, worked to keep public schools closed during the Covid pandemic—longer than in other advanced countries and far longer than was justified by emerging scientific understanding of the virus and its effects. Pushed by their allies in the teachers unions, Democrats ignored the justified warnings that extended school closures would severely harm student learning and social development, especially for poorer children. The returns are now in, and it is clear that the warnings Democrats ignored were, if anything, too mild.

This was no minor error made by Democratic officials in the fog of pandemic confusion but a profound tragedy for millions of children that could have been avoided or at least substantially mitigated. To add to the shameful episode, parents in many communities around the country who wanted the schools reopened faster were frequently demonized by progressives as heartless, anti-science right-wingers who didn’t care about public health. The wounds from this still fester today.

Privileging politics over pedagogy. The culture wars rage on in the schools. Democrats argue that it is all the fault of the Right, who they say wishes to “ban books,” prevent children from learning about slavery, and subject gay and transgender-identifying children to bullying and worse. Progressive educators and school systems, on the other hand, simply stand for a modern, inclusive education that no decent, unprejudiced person should oppose.

This is disingenuous in the extreme. Over the last decade, and especially after the George Floyd summer of 2020, there has been a concerted effort by many school systems and educators to promote “anti-racist” education that goes way beyond benign pedagogical practices such as teaching about slavery, Jim Crow, the Tulsa Race Massacre, redlining, and so on. Instead, pedagogy itself is to be infused, from top to bottom and in every subject, with concepts drawn from the anti-racist playbook. As noted by sociologist Ilana Redstone, these concepts include the assertion that “[a]n unwillingness to recognize the full force of systemic racism as determining disparities between groups is a denial of the reality of racism today (and evidence of ignorance at best and racism at worst).” An army of diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants have stood at the ready to assist school systems in training their staff and teachers to implement this creed and incorporate it into their curricula.

This is politics, not pedagogy as traditionally and properly understood. It has little to do with what most parents want schools to do: develop their children’s academic skills and knowledge base so they can succeed in the world. Democrats have been hurt by their increasing identification with this ideological project rather than the traditional goals of public education.

Downgrading merit and educational achievement. Consistent with this ongoing politicization of educational practices, there has been a concomitant downgrading of academic merit and standard measures of educational achievement, especially standardized tests. In the name of fairness and “equity,” school systems in Democratic-controlled states and counties have taken steps to de-emphasize such measures as a means of evaluating students and controlling admissions to advanced courses, programs, and elite schools.

It hasn’t quite reached the “all shall have prizes” stage, but the message to aspiring students and parents who see educational achievement as their route to upward mobility and success in life is clear: students can no longer rely on hard work and objectively good academic performance to attain their goals. Other priorities of the school system may take precedence, reducing the payoff from their performance. This does not sit well with most parents, who see it as public schools’ responsibility to encourage and reward their children’s talent and hard work. Democrats have been hurt by their diminishing association with what parents care about the most.

Getting Their Groove Back

In light of all this, is it possible for Democrats to regain their mojo on education during the 2024 election cycle? I think it is, though it will require changing their approach considerably from current practices. And it’s worth doing so. Even if education is not a central issue in the presidential contest, it is sure to loom large in many congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative races.

Here’s how Democrats can decisively change their current image on education and rebuild their advantage on the issue.

Get ideology, whether from the Left or Right, out of schools. Voters are sick of the culture wars around schools. Overwhelmingly, they just want children to get a good education based on standard academic competencies, not instruction in a politically inflected worldview. Democrats must assure voters that the former is their number-one priority. Just as they oppose attempts from the Right to inject their ideology into schools by restricting critical discussion of American history and society, so they must also oppose efforts by those on the Left to impose their views on curricula and analysis of social issues. Neither is appropriate. The job of schools is to give students the tools to make informed judgments, not tell them what those judgments should be.

[Editor’s note: Read the rest of Ruy’s prescription for the Democrats at Education Next.]


Biden Considers Bold Immigration Order

Hans Nichols an Stef W. Kight report at Axios that “The Senate’s bipartisan border negotiations are dead. But the  “dramatic actions that Biden is considering on the southern border – including an executive order that would restrict the ability of migrants to claim asylum — don’t require congressional approval.”

Nichols and Kight add thatThrough executive action, Biden would attempt to turn asylum seekers away at the border if they cross illegally, similar to what the Senate compromise plan contemplated, as first reported by CNN.… Trump repeatedly tried to restrict access to asylum – and is planning to do so again if he returns to the White House.”

However, Nichols and Kight note that “The actions under consideration will inflame Latino groups and the progressive wing of Biden’s party, which has expressed alarm about some of the policy changes Biden has been mulling.” But, “a White House official cautioned that a final decision has not been made on any potential executive actions.”

Camille Montoya Galvez adds at CBS News that “Mr. Biden is weighing citing a law dating back to 1952 to severely restrict access to the U.S. asylum system, which has buckled under the weight of record levels of migrant arrivals along the border with Mexico, the sources said, requesting anonymity to discuss internal government deliberations….That law, known as 212(f), allows the president to “suspend the entry” of foreigners when it is determined their arrival is not in the best interest of the country.”

Myah Ward writes at Politico that “The administration is also discussing tying that directive to a trigger — meaning that it would only come into effect after a certain number of illegal crossings took place, said the three people, who were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations….The administration is also discussing ways to make it harder for migrants to pass the initial screening for asylum seekers, essentially raising the “credible fear standard,” as well as ways to quickly deport others who don’t meet those elevated asylum standards. Two of the people said the policy announcements could come as soon as next week ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech on March 7.”

Ward warns that “There are other complications as well. The implementation of any action from the White House would come without the finding and resources that could make implementation easier, though the administration is looking into ways to unlock additional funding. The actions would likely face legal challenges as well.”

Noting that “The Administration spent months negotiating in good faith to deliver the toughest and fairest bipartisan border security bill in decades because we need Congress to make significant policy reforms and to provide additional funding to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system,” White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández explained that “Congressional Republicans chose to put partisan politics ahead of our national security, rejected what border agents have said they need, and then gave themselves a two-week vacation,” Mary Bruce and Molly Eagle report at ABC News. However, noted Hernandez “no executive action, no matter how aggressive, can deliver the significant policy reforms and additional resources Congress can provide.”

The political value added of such immigration restrictions to President Biden’s campaign would come from the President appearing tough and decisive on immigration policy, which is emerging as a top concern of working-class voters who fear a threat to their job security if nothing is done. The political value subtracted would come from anger expressed by progressive groups which favor a less restrictive immigration policy. But it is unlikely that many supporters of a less restrictive immigration policy would vote for Trump, or even not vote, if President Biden initiates the reforms under discussion. Given the large number of working class voters – more than half of the electorate – it appears that the greater risk to Biden and the Democrats is doing nothing.


Democrats Need to Refresh the Recollections of Low-Information Voters

I ran across a story on faulty focus group memories of Trump, and I wrote about the implications at New York.

As an unpopular president facing a sour electorate, Joe Biden really needs to make 2024 a comparative election rather than a straight referendum on his presidency. Luckily for him, his likely general-election opponent, Donald Trump, is equally unpopular for reasons that are quite vivid. He’s as well known as Biden, and he works very hard to reinforce the traits that might make an undecided voter (even one unhappy with Biden) reluctant to put him back in the White House. So half of Biden’s work in drawing contrasts is done for him, and part of the other half is made easy for him by Trump’s strongest supporters, the “deplorables” (to use the Hillary Clinton term that has become a MAGA badge of honor) who enjoy shocking the world by advertising their hero’s most questionable characteristics.

It is becoming apparent, however, that Trump’s potential coalition is being augmented by low-information voters with a hazy understanding of the Trumpier features of the 45th president’s record, character, and agenda. By that I do not mean the non-college-educated voters who make up so large a part of the Trump base. Many if not most of them are pretty educated about their candidate. But there’s evidence that disengaged and/or deeply alienated folks who may nonetheless vote in a presidential election (if not any others) don’t know as much about Trump as you might assume, as the New York Times’ Patrick Healey has observed:

“Our latest Times Opinion focus group discussion with 13 undecided independent voters included a striking result: 11 of the 13 said they would vote for Donald Trump if the election were held now, and only two said they would vote for President Biden. The reason: overwhelming concern about the economy.

“But I was less surprised by the big vote for Trump than by this: The group didn’t blame Trump for things he was responsible or accountable for.

“For instance, several people linked their economic troubles to COVID, but they didn’t put any blame on Trump for that. Some were upset with the end of abortion rights nationally, but they didn’t tie that to Trump’s Supreme Court appointments. Several wanted bipartisanship, but they didn’t blame Trump for his hand in sinking the recent bipartisan border deal. One person, a Latina, blamed Trump for worsening racism in the country and recounted a searing incident that happened to her — but she was among the 11 who would vote for him anyway.”

Healey concludes that “a lot of our focus-group participants — and many voters — see Trump as an acceptable option in November, yet they don’t know or remember a lot about him.” This makes them, of course, highly susceptible to Trump campaign messaging asserting that the economy during his presidency was the greatest ever; that he’s a natural peacemaker who inspired respect for the United States everywhere; and that he’s a decent, law-abiding businessman (and family man!) whose near-constant forced court appearances are uniformly the product of his persecution by the other party.

Democrats, of course, will have opportunities (and increasingly, an obligation) to set the record straight about Trump and his presidency. But the difficult thing is that low-information voters also tend to be low-trust voters, which means they don’t tend to believe traditional arbiters of objective reality like the mainstream news media, and may not grant more truthful politicians superior credibility. Further distorting understanding of the Trump administration (and thus its possible return) is the huge trauma associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, which gives everything that immediately preceded the disaster an undeserved glow, while immolating memories of less powerful traumas associated with the former president’s tenure.

In other words, low-information voters who dislike politics so much that they are not inclined to dig into facts and evidence touching on political topics are highly vulnerable to the kind of disinformation that benefits Donald Trump. And if they are in a bad mood in November, they could help turn the election into a negative referendum on Joe Biden even if they are inviting something — and someone — far worse. Democrats will have to work hard to break through with the truth.


Political Strategy Notes

NYT Opinion essayist Thomas B. Edsall addresses a question of overarching consequence for the 2024 presidential election, “Does Biden Have to Cede the White Working Class to Trump?” An excerpt: “A chorus of political analysts on the center left is once again arguing that the Democratic Party must reclaim a significant share of racially and culturally conservative white working-class voters if it is to regain majority status….John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira have made this case repeatedly in recent years, most exhaustively in their 2023 book, “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?”….They are not alone….“For Victory in 2024, Democrats Must Win Back the Working Class,” Will Marshall, the founder and president of the Progressive Policy Institute, wrote in October 2023. “Can Democrats Win Back the Working Class?Jared Abbott and Fred DeVeaux of the Center for Working-Class Politics asked in June 2023; “Democrats Need Biden to Appeal to Working-Class Voters” is how David Byler, the former Washington Post data columnist, put it the same month.” Edsall quoters a number of academics who have expertise on issues related tot he topic, including Judis, who says: “Democrats have won and could win elections without winning back many of the working-class voters that deserted the party over the last decades. Democrats did so in 2022 by decrying Republican attacks on abortion rights and on gun control and by decrying Donald Trump’s leadership and his threat to democracy. Democrats could win on these issues again in 2024.” However, notes Edsall, “Judis argued, however, that this approach is not adequate to “establish solid majorities capable of upending the balance of power in American politics.” For Democrats to return to their position as the dominant political party, Judis maintained that “they have to win back working-class voters.”

Edsall also quotes William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who contends: “1. The lines between the white working class and the nonwhite working class are eroding. Donald Trump received 41 percent of the non-college Hispanic vote in 2020 and may well do better this time around. If this turns out to be the case, then the old Democratic formula — add minorities to college-educated voters to make a majority — becomes obsolete….2. The share of young Americans attending and completing college peaked a decade ago and has been fitfully declining ever since….3. The “stop chasing the working-class vote” approach flunks the most important test — Electoral College math. The stubborn fact is that working-class voters (especially but not only white) form a larger share of the electorate in key battleground states, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, than they do nationally….Galston provided The Times with data showing that while the national share of white working-class voters is 35 percent, it is 45 percent in Pennsylvania, 52 percent in Michigan and 56 percent in Wisconsin, all battleground states Biden won in close contests in 2020 and states that the Democrats are very likely to need again this November.” Edsall also quotes Dartmouth political scientist Sena Westwood, who observes, ““it is foolhardy for Democrats to count on higher education to offset the growth of more conservative minority populations….The number of students entering the nation’s colleges, Westwood wrote, is about to fall off an “enrollment cliff,” while “the nonwhite portion of America is on track to continue surging. The undeniable truth is that the future of America and of both parties rests in the hands of America’s minority population.”

Edsall notes further, “Robert Borosage, a founder of the Campaign for America’s Future and the issue director of Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign, argued in an email that white working-class voters are crucial to the ideological coherence of the Democratic Party, You can’t build an enduring majority for progressive change vital to sustaining a democracy without a broad coalition that includes white working-class support. Without the effort to appeal to the white working class, you will watch more and more erosion of working people of all races and genders.…Candidates, Borosage continued, “who lead with a populist economic agenda can, in my view, sustain their social liberalism. Candidates that lead with their social liberalism and eschew a populist economic agenda pay a severe price for that failure — Hillary Rodham Clinton as signature example.”….Politically speaking, in Borosage’s view, Democrats have suffered more because of their economic policies than from cultural liberalism and identity politics: Where Democrats have been losing is that their economics hasn’t worked for working people. It is far more destructive to be the party of Wall Street and multinational corporations (the neoliberalism from Carter to Clinton to Obama, with Clinton the worst offender) than to be the party defending abortion or D.E.I.  Edsall; adds, “While the call coming from Judis, Galston and others for the Democratic Party to do all it can to retain and expand its working-class support has merit, I think [Jacob] Hacker’s case for Democrats’ continued reliance on an upstairs-downstairs coalition will be the party’s de facto strategy.”

At 538, via abcnews, Monica Potts shares some observations about divided GOP state parties in key swing states: “In Michigan, Arizona and Georgia, intense internal battles are tearing through the state Republican parties. The fights largely pivot around divisions that opened up in the wake of the last presidential election. A new cadre of Trump-loyalist party leaders, in many cases propelled into power based on their defense of the Big Lie that former President Donald Trump actually won in 2020, have found themselves at war with more establishment-aligned Republicans … and, increasingly, with each other….These rifts in three potential swing states are one of the many ways that Trump’s hold on the GOP and the rise of election denial in the aftermath of the 2020 election are defining not only the election this fall — when Trump loyalists could be looking at their 2020 playbook for ways to influence the outcome — but also the Republican state party organizations that will shape their states’ politics for years to come….State parties traditionally don’t play a huge formal role in presidential elections, but they can certainly have an impact. While national candidates and party organizations have their own turnout and fundraising machines, state parties filter money from the national parties, recruit local and state candidates, and play a role in driving turnout. Even more directly, in some states, including Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, state parties also choose electors for the Electoral College vote, an issue that has become newly salient in the wake of 2020 election denial. “If there’s a question about who gets on the ballot as electors … [state party leadership] comes into play, because a lot of times the state party rules specify how electors are chosen,” said Douglas Roscoe, a political science professor at UMass-Dartmouth….With election deniers helping to shape state parties, another battle could open up if election results in a state are close and subject to court challenges, in which these organizations traditionally play a role….More broadly, state parties play a major role in selecting candidates for down-ballot races. A dearth of young Republican leaders seems to be an emerging challenge for the GOP, as support for Trump and the Big Lie remain a litmus test for those who would run for office — these younger, Trump-aligned Republicans are often less experienced than their more establishment peers, more focused on grandstanding than policymaking.”


Will Biden Create an “Open Convention?” Nah.

There’s been a lot of buzz about a recent Ezra Klein podcast spinning a particular fantasy about the 2024 presidential race, so I examined it from a historical perspective at New York:

Pundits once loved the idea that somebody might challenge and defeat Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. However, those hopes died after primary deadlines came and went while the Dean Phillips candidacy went nowhere very fast. The 46th president is going to lock up enough pledged delegates to make him the nominee very soon, and for all the private kvetching about the polls and the incumbent’s age, Democrats are for the most part publicly gearing down for a good, vicious Biden-Trump rematch.

But fantasies of something different happening haven’t totally gone away, and they don’t entirely depend on the remote possibility of Donald Trump being denied the GOP nomination because he’s a convicted felon or a bankrupt loser. The New York Times’ Ezra Klein has suggested Democratic fears about Biden’s age could be addressed by a real unicorn of a development in August: a wide-open Democratic National Convention that would choose a Biden replacement based on who wowed the delegates in Chicago.

Klein doesn’t go into great detail about how this would happen (he promises to do so in a future podcast), but his premise is that Biden would voluntarily withdraw from the contest and release his delegates not too long before the convention without dictating a successor (like, say, his hand-picked vice-president, Kamala Harris, who would presumably have to fight for the nomination if she wanted it without a heavy-handed presidential assist). In that case, Klein says, Democrats could choose from a deep bench of talented politicians in an unscripted televised drama that would capture a nation that had been dreading a 2020 rematch.

The first thing to understand about this scenario is that it would be entirely unprecedented. Yes, as Klein notes, conventions rather than primaries chose major-party nominees from 1831 through 1968 (from 1972 on, nearly all states have chosen delegates via primaries or caucuses with the limited exception of the Democratic experiment with “super-delegates”). But in each and every case, the conventions were preceded by carefully planned candidacies, some as sure a bet as any multiple-primary winner; the apparent spontaneity of the choice of a nominee was often as contrived as the bought-and-paid-for “spontaneous demonstrations” for candidates that abruptly ended in 1972. In addition, long before primaries dominated nomination contests, they still on occasion had a big impact on the outcome (way back in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft slugged it out in a long series of primaries before dueling in a closely divided convention that wound up splitting the GOP).

The last major-party convention in which the presidential nominee wasn’t known in advance (putting aside a few convention “revolts” that were doomed to fail) was the 1976 Republican confab. And there the gathering was the very opposite of “open”: All but a handful of delegates were pledged to Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan, and the battle was over that undecided handful. Most delegates had zero “choice” over the nominee. There was “drama,” but no sense in which the party was free to choose from an assortment of possible candidates who proved their mettle at the convention itself. The only surprise was Reagan’s decision to announce a proposed running mate (Pennsylvania senator Richard Schweiker) before the presidential balloting. This was an innovation at the time, which (as it happens) failed.

Yes, the further back you go, there were plenty of major-party conventions that were “deliberative,” in the sense of the nomination not being locked up in advance. Occasionally, the outcome was something of a surprise, most recently in 1940, when a whirlwind propaganda effort by a few wire-pullers and packed galleries produced Indiana utility executive Wendell Willkie as a Republican nominee. But again, the delegates themselves weren’t generally free to deliberate, since many were controlled by state political leaders and others were chosen in primaries.

If you want a truly wide-open convention, the eternal ideal is the Democratic convention held one century ago in New York. The 1924 gathering featured 103 ballots before the exhausted remainder of delegates who hadn’t run out of money or patience chose dark horse James W. Davis as its nominee. Davis went on to win a booming 29 percent of the general-election popular vote and lost every state outside the former Confederacy.

That brings to mind another note of caution about the idea of an “open convention”: a nominee chosen not by primary voters or by a consensus of party leaders is just as likely to produce a calamitous general-election campaign as some burst of enthusiasm among united partisans. The last multi-ballot Democratic convention nominated Adlai Stevenson in 1952. He lost. The last multi-ballot Republican convention chose Thomas Dewey in 1944. He lost. The record of nominees chosen by deliberative (much less contested) conventions isn’t that great generally. Gerald Ford (winner of the aforementioned 1976 Republican convention) lost. His vanquisher, Jimmy Carter, lost in 1980 after a tough primary challenge and then a convention full of buyer’s remorse. The biggest general-election winners in living memory (Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1984, Bill Clinton in 1996, Barack Obama in 2008) were the products of conventions that were virtual coronations.

The 2024 convention will end on August 22 (assuming it doesn’t go into overtime like the 1924 affair), leaving ten weeks before the general election on November 5. Would a Democratic Party fresh from an “open convention” be able get its act together in that span of time, particularly if the nominee is someone other than a universally known figure? What if there are Democrats who are unhappy with the nominee? When does that get sorted out?

I’m interested in learning more about “open convention” scenarios. But at first and even second blush it seems a far riskier proposition for Democrats than just going with the incumbent president of the United States.

 


Navalny Assassination Underscores ‘GOP Soft on Putin’ Meme

Kelly Eleveld explains why “Democrats have an opening as Trump rolls over for Putin at Daily Kos: ”

It’s worth remembering here that, despite Trump’s bromance with Putin, the vast majority of Americans have no love for Russia. In fact, last year, Gallup found Russia’s favorability rating among Americans was at an all-time low of 9%, as former Obama White House aide Dan Pfeiffer noted in his “Message Box” Substack.

Newly released polling from Pew Research Center also found that 74% of Americans view the war in Ukraine as important to U.S. national interests, including 43% who describe it as “very” important….The combination of Russia’s abysmal favorability rating, Americans’ understanding that the fate of Ukraine has implications here at home, and Putin’s likely role in Navalny’s death—his biggest political threat at home—leave Trump and Republicans more vulnerable than ever to attack on the issue.

Eleveld urges that “Biden and Democrats should keep rallying around Navalny’s death, Putin’s thuggery, and Trump’s cowardice. For House Republicans, failure to act on the Senate-passed aid package will likely play terribly in the 17 Biden-won districts they need to hold in November to keep control of the House.”

In “Schism over Russia drives Republicans apart” at CNN Politics, Zachary B. Wolf notes that “In recent days, Haley has made passionate arguments about the need for the US to stand up to autocrats and bristled at Trump’s attempt to compare himself to Alexey Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in jail.”

Further, notes Eleveld, “And on Tuesday, the Biden administration said it plans to announce a new sanctions package against Russia on Friday over Navalny’s death.” Quite a contrast from Putin’s lapdog. As Eleveld writes, ” Biden is taking charge, using the tools at his disposal to hold Putin to account, while Trump is whining on the national stage and promising to give Putin free rein “to do whatever the hell they want” to our NATO allies.”

It’s too early in the ’24 election campaign to assess whether the Navalny assassination will continue to deepen the divide among Republicans leading up to the election. But Democrats certainly can get plenty of video footage showing beloved Republican leaders, including Presidents Eisenhower and Reagan and Republican presidential nominee John McCain warning Americans – and their fellow Republicans – to be wary of the malevolence of Russian leaders. Hell, Reagan called the Soviet Union, which Putin wants to restore under his control, “the evil empire.”

The conventional wisdom is that foreign policy doesn’t win or lose elections because the economy overshadows all international concerns, although historians can name a few exceptions. But the steady improvement in  economic indicators just might give Democrats enough room to make what they can of the GOP’s shamefully epic cave to Putin, and pick up a point or two in key swing states.


Teixeira: The Way of the Fetterman

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:

If Democrats lose Pennsylvania, they will have a lot harder time winning the 2024 election. Sure, there are non-Pennsylvania paths but it becomes a way heavier lift, closing off, for example, holding the “Blue Wall” as a sufficient path to victory.

Right now, Biden leads Trump in the RCP running average by three-tenths of a percentage point. Too close for comfort! (Plus the running average has Biden behind in every other swing state.)

So: how to do it—make sure Pennsylvania stays blue in 2024? Well, in 2022 there was exactly one Democrat who managed to flip a Senate seat: John Fetterman, who captured Pennsylvania’s Class 3 seat by a solid 5 points. Famously, Fetterman has a distinctive persona which makes him seem like not-a-typical-Democrat at all. This undoubtedly helped him with working-class (noncollege) voters among whom he did significantly better than Biden.

But there’s more to Fetterman’s persona than his massive stature, hoodie, and shorts. He’s also a straight-talker in a lot of areas where standard-issue Democrats fear to go. When he ran for Senate, while he wobbled a bit, he wound up declaring decisively:

Any of the issues that I ever had with fracking is really around environmental regulations and once those were passed and they were addressed…you know, I support fracking…I absolutely support energy independence and making sure that we can never be held by a country like Russia and making sure that we produce as much American energy as possible, and I fully support fracking.

Not too many Democrats are willing to go on record these days with full-throated support of producing fossil fuels! And since his election, he’s continued to carve out an independent path. Like this:

…I’m not a progressive, I’m not that kind of a label or anything like that…I said that before the primary in ’22, and that’s how I’ve always believed. And I think these have all been very easy calls. I follow the moral clarity, not the polls or any silly labels.

Or this:

We do have a crisis on the border—and we have to look at the numbers that are the size of Pittsburgh showing up on the border. You can’t just say, ‘Oh yeah, OK. It’ll all work itself out’…I think if you really want to address immigration in the way that it deserves, we first must also have a secure border.

Or this joint statement with Pennsylvania’s other Senator, Bob Casey, on the Biden administration’s decision to freeze approvals for liquified natural gas (LNG) export permits:

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.

And just in case anyone out there doesn’t “get” where he’s coming from relative to many in his party:

What I have found out over the last couple years is that the right, and now the left, are hoping that I die…There are ones that are rooting for another blood clot. They have both now been wishing that I die…

It’s just a place [the “progressive” label] where I’m not…I don’t feel like I’ve left the label; it’s just more that it’s left me.

Clearly, Fetterman has declared his independence from the progressive left. He’s modeling a combination of strategic flexibility, honesty, and courage, I will dub The Way of the Fetterman, in a nod to the ancient Japanese way of the samurai.

Looking at the situation in Pennsylvania today, you can see how The Way of the Fetterman is very much in order for Democrats in the Keystone State. In 2024, around two-thirds of Pennsylvania eligible voters will be working class, which projects out to around three-fifths of actual voters. Because we now live in the Upside Down, Democrats reliably win the college-educated but lose the working class. That means that, given the disproportion between the two groups, Democrats need to win the college-educated by way more than they lose the working class to win the state.

In 2020 Biden managed to do this, though by barely enough to win the state. In 2022, Fetterman did much better, almost breaking even among working-class voters and romping to victory. So far (where data are available), this pattern is not evident in Pennsylvania polling this cycle. In the high quality New York Times/Siena poll from the fall, Biden carries college voters by 18 points in Pennsylvania but loses working-class voters by an identical 18 points. That’s a sure recipe for defeat.

In a more recent (January) Bloomberg/Morning Consult Pennsylvania poll, Biden actually carries college-educated voters by less than he loses the working class. Not good. In the same poll, working-class Pennsylvania voters prefer Trump over Biden by 19 points on the economy, 15 points on crime, 25 points on immigration, 17 points on the cost of everyday goods, and 17 points on gas prices.

This calls for The Way of the Fetterman! Convince these voters that you, like Fetterman, are a different kind of Democrat. Instead, as Matt Yglesias puts it:

[W]e continue to see incredible levels of over-emphasis on turnout and mobilization…To win the election, the important thing is to reassure people who are to Democrats’ right on key issues.

The Way of the Fetterman means not being afraid to offer such reassurance, in the recognition that this is strategically wise and that voters’ concerns on these issues are real and not just made-up by conservative media (the Fox News Fallacy). Oddly, as Yglesias also points out, Biden’s instincts are probably in this direction, so it is a shame he doesn’t follow them.

No doubt part of the reason for this faint-heartedness lies in his fear of displeasing the very vocal progressive left, which is well-represented both within and outside of his administration. He believes displeasing them would weaken him and his re-election bid. But the opposite is true. As Janan Ganesh astutely observes in the Financial Times, comparing Biden’s conduct to Keir Starmer’s:

For swing voters, a leader who disappoints their own party is bold. Holding the line against internal dissent is proof of vision and virility. When Starmer drops a commitment to spend an annual £28bn on the green transition and declines to reopen the question of Brexit, politicos suspect a faint heart. The public sees someone answering one of the central questions about an aspiring national leader: is he or she the master of their party, or the creature of it?…

Biden has hardly addressed the master-creature question. Democrats entertain all sorts of explanations for his low ratings—an inadequate White House spin operation is a favourite—except that he has given them too much….Outside of foreign affairs, where his support for Israel upsets a generation of progressives, there are few cases of President Biden displeasing liberal Democrats. (Unlike Senator Biden, who did it all the time.)

Very recent results also suggest the potential efficacy of The Way of the Fetterman. Democrat Tom Suozzi easily dispatched Republican Mazi Pilip in the special House election in New York’s 3rd congressional district. He was mercilessly attacked by Pilip on immigration and crime. And how did he respond? Like this, as reported in The New York Times:

If I run my campaign and just say, ‘I’m Tom Suozzi, I’m a Democrat and my opponent is a Republican,’ I’ll lose this race,” Mr. Suozzi told union carpenters on Saturday at a rally on Long Island. “People are upset Democrats haven’t been tough enough on things like the border.”

“Exactly!” “That’s right!” “Yes, sir,” some in the crowd hollered in approval.

“I’m tougher than you’ll ever be,” Mr. Suozzi razzed back….

At events across the district, he has bucked liberal orthodoxy to call on President Biden to lock down the border. He said a group of migrant men charged with assaulting police officers in Times Square should be deported: “That’s outrageous. Kick ’em out!

It’s The Way of the Fetterman! Time for Democrats to declare independence from the progressive left and follow in Fetterman’s footsteps.


Political Strategy Notes

Adriana Gomes Licon and Jonathan J. Cooper of Associated press report that “Biden’s rightward shift on immigration angers advocates. But it’s resonating with many Democrats,” and explain: “In his 2020 campaign, Joe Biden vowed to undo former President Donald Trump ’s immigration policies, specifically expressing frustration with a policy setting limits on the number of asylum seekers accepted each day at the southern border….This year, Biden backed a Senate proposal that would have set daily limits on border crossings — and Democrats are planning to campaign to reelect him by emphasizing that Republicans caused the deal to collapse….Democrats are reframing the immigration debate, going from embracing more welcoming policies in response to the Trump administration’s programs at the border — including its separation of hundreds of immigrant children from their parents — to declaring that they can get tough on border security and adopt policies long sought by Republicans. Biden’s rhetorical shift risks straining his support from immigrants and their advocates who campaigned for him in 2020, but it appears to be working for Democrats after they won a special election in New York….“We need to lean into this and not just on border security, but, yes, tough border security coupled with increased legal pathways,” said Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist….Democrat Tom Suozzi, who won Tuesday’s special election in New York for the House seat once held by ousted Republican Rep. George Santos, ran ads calling for more border security and featuring an interview he did on Fox News in which he supported U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement….His district includes parts of Queens, a diverse New York borough that has received thousands of migrants bused from the border.” However, note the authors, “More than 130 organizations from around the country sent a letter to Biden opposing the deal and the tougher standards for asylum. Some immigration activists expressed frustration with Biden and a lack of enthusiasm to go knock on doors for him at a recent gathering of more than a dozen advocacy groups in Arizona.”

Licon and Cooper continue, “Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor and secretary of housing and urban development who ran against Biden for the presidential nomination in 2020, suggested Biden and his allies were adopting the terms of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell….“Democrats, you’re never going to be cruel enough, ‘tough’ enough, anti-immigrant enough or able to deport your way to the negotiating table with McConnell and MAGA,” Castro said. “Stop playing their game.”….The border proposal would have included for the first time a right to counsel for vulnerable asylum seekers such as children 13 and younger and would have raised the cap on immigrant visas available by 250,000 over the next five years. The National Border Patrol Council and the Chamber of Commerce supported it….“The President stands with the overwhelming majority of Americans who demand action from Washington to address our long-broken immigration system,” Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for Biden’s campaign, said in a statement. “MAGA Republicans, led by Donald Trump, have opted to abdicate their responsibilities so they can demonize immigrants to score political points.”….Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat and the only Hispanic woman in the upper chamber, said her constituents want to see an “orderly process at the border.” She said they still demand broad immigration reforms that legalize the status of “Dreamers” and others who only have temporary protections from deportation. “We can work on a broken immigration system but also secure our border,” Cortez Masto said in an interview. “Many of the Nevadans that I talked to, including in the Latino community, get that because they want safe communities. They understand that. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to continue to work on fixing this broken immigration system.” Cortez Masto said she hopes that after the collapse of the border deal, the public sees that Republicans were not looking for solutions….Gabriel Aldebot, a 66-year-old union electrician in Las Vegas, said he felt lawmakers must secure the border, and a compromise that includes more resources for enforcement is the best way to do it….“The more bipartisan, the more it’ll seem like it’s fair to people,” Aldebot said after voting for Biden in Nevada’s Democratic primary.”

Rehan Mirza explores “How AI deepfakes threaten the 2024 elections” at Jounalist’s Resource: “Deepfakes already have affected other elections around the globe. In recent elections in Slovakia, for example, AI-generated audio recordings circulated on Facebook, impersonating a liberal candidate discussing plans to raise alcohol prices and rig the election. During the February 2023 Nigerian elections,an AI-manipulated audio clip falsely implicated a presidential candidate in plans to manipulate ballots. With elections this year in over 50 countries involving half the globe’s population, there are fears deepfakes could seriously undermine their integrity…. Media outlets including the BBC and the New York Times sounded the alarm on deepfakes as far back as 2018. However, in past elections, including the 2022 U.S. midterms, the technology did not produce believable fakes and was not accessible enough, in terms of both affordability and ease of use, to be “weaponized for political disinformation.” Instead, those looking to manipulate media narratives relied on simpler and cheaper ways to spread disinformation, including mislabeling or misrepresenting authentic videos, text-based disinformation campaigns, or just plain old lying on air.…As deepfakes continually improve in sophistication and accessibility, they will increasingly contribute to the deluge of informational detritus. They’re already convincing. Last month, The New York Times published an online test inviting readers to look at 10 images and try to identify which were real and which were generated by AI, demonstrating first-hand the difficulty of differentiating between real and AI-generated images. This was supported by multiple academic studies, which found that “faces of white people created by AI systems were perceived as more realistic than genuine photographs,” New York Times reporter Stuart A. Thompson explained….Listening to the audio clip of the fake robocall that targeted New Hampshire voters, it is difficult to distinguish from Biden’s real voice.”

“The media narrative is grim for president Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats,” Susan Milligan writes in “Democrats Are Trailing Everywhere But at the Ballot Box: Democrats aren’t getting a lot of encouraging news from 2024 opinion polls these days. But elections are painting a much different picture” at U.S. News: “Biden’s too old and his mental acuity is questionable, sayeth the pundits and the polls. Democratic base voters, particularly Black voters, are disenchanted with the president, leading a generally cranky Democratic rank-and-file to stay home this November….Actual elections, however, paint a much different picture. Democrats scored a big win in New York on Tuesday, and the numbers were extremely encouraging for the party. Not only did Democrats add a seat to their caucus in Washington, but it wasn’t even close: Tom Suozzi, a former House member who reclaimed his old job, beat Republican Mazi Pilip by 8 percentage points – a 16-point swing from 15 months ago, when former GOP Rep. George Santos took the district by 8 percentage points….Across the country, Democrats are winning special elections and overperforming in elections they have predictably lost. And it’s fueling optimism among Democrats looking at a challenging election year for both the White House and Congress….”Polls don’t vote. People vote. And that’s what’s been happening,” says Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern, a veteran lawmaker from Massachusetts who has served in both the minority and the majority. Despite what the polls say, “people have been voting, and they’ve been voting Democratic. I feel really good about November – and not just about the president. I feel really good about us taking back the House.”….Experts caution that a special election win in New York – particularly a district Biden won in 2020, albeit when the district was drawn to be more Democratic-friendly – does not a national movement make. The president still has abysmally low approval ratings, and national and battleground state polls show him in a tight race with his likely fall opponent, former President Donald Trump.”


That Other Joe (Manchin) Not Running in 2024

You might have missed a potentially significant political story involving a non-candidate for president, so I wrote about it at New York:

One variable in the fraught and complex 2024 presidential election has now been put to rest: Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has announced he will not pursue an independent or “unity ticket” candidacy for president this year, as USA Today reports:

“Manchin made the announcement during a speaking engagement at West Virginia University for his recently created nonprofit group Americans Together, which is aimed at connecting and empowering moderate voices.

“’I will not be seeking a third-party run, I will not be involved in a presidential run,’ Manchin, 76, told the crowd. ‘I will be involved in making sure that we secure a president who has the knowledge, has the function and has the ability to bring this country together.’”

He argued that “the system right now is not set up” for candidates not affiliated with either major political party to win the presidency but said that in the “long game” there could be room to make a third party viable.

Manchin’s vow not to be “involved in a presidential run” seems also to preclude a vice-presidential candidacy, which had seemed a possibility if No Labels, the nonpartisan organization with which Manchin has been closely associated, winds up sponsoring a ticket headed by a Republican. His subsequent comment about the kind of president he wanted to help the country secure could indicate that for all his third-party flirtations and ideological heresies, Manchin might endorse a second term for Joe Biden. He could not possibly have been talking about Donald Trump by referring to a president who had “the ability to bring this country together.”

In any event, Manchin’s decision was good news for his party’s 2024 prospects. There’s likely a ceiling on Trump’s support well short of a popular majority, so it’s a strategic imperative for Biden to corral anti-Trump voters without too much competition from minor candidates, and particularly from a well-known Democrat.

The announcement obviously takes away one option for No Labels, which is reportedly in the process of interviewing potential candidates, even though the group has not formally decided whether to undertake a campaign (it has, however, secured ballot access in 13 states so far).

It also likely means Manchin has run his last campaign. He chose not to run for a third full term in the Senate this year, likely because West Virginia had turned so bright red that even a relatively conservative Democrat would have no real chance of winning, particularly in a presidential-election year. With no electoral base, the 76-year-old former governor will wind up his Senate service and presumably retire to his houseboat. His family already dodged one calamity this year when Manchin’s wife, Gayle, survived a serious car accident. A futile presidential run would not have improved their quality of life.