Tonight we should know the answer to a question Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. poses, “Will Kentucky’s Andy Beshear show Democrats how to win Trump Country?”  As Dionne writes, “Astonishingly, for a Democrat in a state Donald Trump carried by 26 percentage points in 2020, Beshear has become one of the most popular state chief executives in the nation….He did it with a sterling economic record — bolstered by state spending spurred in part by President Biden’s investment programs — and courtesy of an unusually personal link with voters that he forged through empathetic daily briefings during the pandemic. They were so popular that his sign-language interpreter, Virginia Moore, became a beloved celebrity in her own right, and her death this year was mourned across the state. …With polls showing Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron closing fast by rallying his party’s base with attacks on Biden, Beshear is reminding voters that this election is not about a certain white house some 570 miles away….“What you’re seeing is fear and anger, and even encouraging Kentuckians to violate that golden rule and to get one Kentuckian to hate another,” Beshear told the appreciative crowd here. “Listen, this race is about us. It’s about Kentucky. But if we can send one message to the rest of the country, it ought to be that anger politics ends right here and right now.”….It’s a lovely thought, and it’s a reason Tuesday’s gubernatorial battles in Kentucky and Mississippi matter. Neither state is likely to vote for aDemocratic presidential nominee anytime soon. But Beshear and Brandon Presley, the surging underdog Democrat in Mississippi, have shown that their party’s brand can be detoxified on hostile terrain with a focus on jobs, education and health care — and by intensely personal campaigns that encourage voters to forget culture wars and partisan loyalties.”

“The erosion of Democratic strength in rural areas, especially in Appalachia and the western reaches of the state, echoes national patterns,” Dionne explains. “The decline of the coal industry is part of the story. But so is the collapse of an infrastructure of community that once favored Democrats….“There were labor unions in these areas, there were Democratic clubs in these areas,” Contarino said. “People were hearing alternative messages.” Now, as Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol argue in their insightful book, “Rust Belt Union Blues,” the community-binding messages come from talk radio, conservative churches and other local groups that lean right….That’s why Beshear’s pandemic briefings were so important. They allowed him to crack through those barriers by conveying empathy and cultivating solidarity across the state. “We will get through this,” he said over and over. “And we will get through this together.”….His willingness to admit uncertainty helped him develop a reputation for honesty. “They teach you never to say, ‘I don’t know,’” Beshear told the Louisville Courier-Journal in 2021. “And I had to say ‘I don’t know’ a lot.”….One other aspect of Beshear’s appeal that national Democrats might study: an open religious faith grounded in ideas quite different from those of the Christian right. “For me, faith is about uniting all people,” he told me. “It says all children are children of God. And if you’re truly living out your faith, you’re not playing into these anger and hatred games.”….Democratic state Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, who represents a Louisville-based district, grew up in the foothills of Appalachian Mountains. The author of “Hill Women,” a powerful tribute to her native region’s tenacity, Armstrong said rural voters often feel “overlooked by decision-makers in the outside world.” The Democrats’ “brand problem” in rural areas, she argued, will have to be solved by local Democrats who can make a case for “how these larger policies actually impact people’s lives.”….But this is a long-term project, she added, “best done outside the election contest.”….If he prevails, Beshear could be a powerful voice in that argument. No wonder Republicans are working so hard to beat him.”

Ever wonder if  discouraged voters who are influenced to stay at home by horse-race reporting are contributing to election outcomes? At Journalist’s Resource, Denise-Marie Ordway  comments on “Projecting Confidence: How the Probabilistic Horse Race Confuses and Demobilizes the Public” by Sean Jeremy Westwood, Solomon Messing and Yphtach Lelkes at The Journal of Politics: “This paper examines problems associated with probabilistic forecasting — a type of horse race journalism that has grown more common in recent years. These forecasts “aggregate polling data into a concise probability of winning, providing far more conclusive information about the state of a race,” write authors Sean Jeremy Westwood, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College, Solomon Messing, a senior engineering manager at Twitter, and Yphtach Lelkes, an associate professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania….The researchers find that probabilistic forecasting discourages voting, likely because people often decide to skip voting when their candidate has a very high chance of winning or losing. They also learned this type of horse race reporting is more prominent in news outlets with left-leaning audiences, including FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times and HuffPost….Westwood, Messing and Lelkes point out that probabilistic forecasting might have contributed to Clinton’s loss of the 2016 presidential election. They write that “forecasts reported win probabilities between 70% and 99%, giving Clinton an advantage ranging from 20% to 49% beyond 50:50 odds. Clinton ultimately lost by 0.7% in Pennsylvania, 0.2% in Michigan, 0.8% in Wisconsin, and 1.2% in Florida.”

“Is the Israel-Gaza war changing US public attitudes?,” Shibley Telhami asks at Brookings and writes: “To probe the issue, the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll with Ipsos asked several questions focused on the role of the United States and the perception of the Biden administration. The poll did not directly ask about attitudes toward the war itself but probed any shifts in public attitudes on the Israeli-Palestinian issue broadly….Here are three takeaways: First, public opinion on U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue remains divided along partisan lines, with an increasing majority of Republicans wanting the United States to lean toward Israel, while a declining majority of Democrats wants the United States to lean toward neither side. Those who want to lean toward Israel increased since last June, the last time we asked about this issue….A majority of Republicans, 71.9%, say they want the United States to lean toward Israel, compared with 47.3% in June, while a majority of Democrats, 57.4%, said they wanted the United States to lean toward neither side, a drop from 73.4% in June. A 53.6% majority of independents also wanted the United States to lean toward neither side, a drop from 71.4% in June….While those who wanted the United States to take the Palestinians’ side remained relatively constant since June, those who wanted the United States to lean toward Israel increased not only among Republicans but also among Democrats, going from 13.7% in June to 30.9% in October; it also increased among independents, going from 20.8% in June to 37.9% in October….It is notable that there was no statistically significant change in the attitudes of young Democrats (under 35). In June, 14% wanted to lean toward Israel, and this increased to 14.7% in October; 17% wanted to lean toward the Palestinians in June compared to 16.2% in October. Among young Republicans and independents, however, there were significant increases among those wanting to lean toward Israel, but also smaller increases among those wanting to lean toward the Palestinians. Overall, a majority of young Americans, 54.5%, wanted the United States to lean toward neither side.”

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 forthcoming book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Large segments of the progressive left disgraced themselves by indulging in demonstrations and statements that, directly or indirectly, excused Hamas’s terrorist massacre. For that, they were rightly condemned across the political spectrum, including by many Democrats. But the progressive left has not given up on pushing their “decolonialist” perspective within the Democratic Party, demanding that Biden soften his support for Israel and calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the conflict. This policy recommendation is backed up what is essentially a threat: if Democrats don’t move in the direction recommended by the progressive left, “their” voters, especially young voters, will fail to be “energized” in 2024, endangering Biden’s re-election and Democratic electoral prospects generally.

But is that really true? Leaving aside the question of whether that would be a responsible use of their power (I don’t think so), do they even have that kind of power? I doubt it. In fact, I think the progressive left is more of a paper tiger, claiming power and influence way above what they actually have.

Start with the fundamental fact that the progressive or intersectional left, for whom issues from ending fossil fuels to open borders to decriminalizing and decolonizing everything (free Palestine!) are inseparably linked moral commitments, is actually a pretty small slice of voters—six percent in the Pew typology, eight percent in the More in Common typology. So we should ask whether and to what extent their commitments are reflected in the views of the voter groups in whose name they claim to speak.

Probably the most important of these is young voters, lately lionized as Democrats’ best hope—but also perhaps their downfall, if not appropriately catered to. And it is true that young voters generally lean more left than older voters, including in expressing more sympathy for the Palestinians and more opposition to sending weapons to Israel. But that does not mean young voters’ views are therefore in sync with those of the intersectional left and likely to take their cues from activists’ fury at the Biden administration. Consider these results from a very recent poll by Slingshot Strategies on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

1. Respondents were asked who they blame for the current violence in Israel and Gaza. Among the 18-44 year old age group, which covers the entire Millennial generation and eligible members of Gen Z, just 19 percent blame Israel for oppressing the Palestinians, less than half the 44 percent who blame Hamas for committing acts of terrorism against Israel (36 percent had no opinion).
2. Respondents were also asked what they think about the level of support Biden is showing for Israel. Less than one third (31 percent) of 18-44 year olds think Biden has been showing too much support for Israel, compared to 69 percent who believe he is either showing the right amount (42 percent) or not enough (27 percent) support for Israel.
3. Similarly, only a third of this age group prefers that the U.S. work to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, less than the 36 percent who would prefer that the U.S. support Israel’s attempt to eliminate Hamas’s military capabilities.

The disjuncture between these views and those of progressive activists is striking. Far from speaking for the younger generations, it would appear the intersectional left is, as usual, speaking for itself.

This disjuncture can be seen on many other issues. One such is how to tackle the problem of climate change. The progressive left is in a state of perpetual outrage that the country is not moving faster to get rid of fossil fuels and transition to renewable (e.g., wind and solar) energy, the alleged solution to the problem. This too is supposed to be an issue where the Biden administration is out of sync with younger voters, who therefore will fail to be energized by his re-election bid.

But, again, is this true? In a recent 6,000 person survey by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life (SCAL) respondents were asked about their preferences for the country’s energy supply. By 64 percent to 36 percent, Millennial/Gen Z (18-44 year old) voters favored “Use a mix of energy sources including oil, coal and natural gas along with renewable energy sources” over “Phase out the use of oil, coal and natural gas completely, relying instead on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power only.” This does not seem consistent with the mantra of progressive left activists.

Similarly, in a recent 3,000 voter survey conducted by YouGov for The Liberal Patriot, the following choices were offered to voters about energy strategy:

• We need a rapid green transition to end the use of fossil fuels and replace them with fully renewable energy sources;
• We need an “all-of-the above” strategy that provides abundant and cheap energy from multiple sources including oil and gas to renewables to advanced nuclear power; or
• We need to stop the push to replace domestic oil and gas production with unproven green energy projects that raise costs and undercut jobs.

Among the same Millennial/Gen Z (18-44 year old) voters, the progressive left-preferred first position, emphasizing ending the use of fossil fuels and rapidly adopting renewables, is a distinctly minoritarian one, embraced by just 36 percent of these voters. The most popular position is the second, all-of-the above approach that emphasizes energy abundance and the use of fossil fuels and renewables and nuclear, favored by 48 percent of Millennial/Gen Z voters. Another 16 percent flat-out support production of fossil fuels and oppose green energy projects. Together that’s 64 percent of these voters who are not singing from the progressive left hymnbook.

So the progressive left’s claim that failing to embrace their positions is the death-knell for Democrats among younger generation voters is highly suspect. Of course it’s entirely in their interest to claim that only a bracing tonic of progressive left positions can jolt these voters out of their torpor. But there isn’t much behind this claim; in reality, the intersectional left and the groups and politicians in +25D Democratic districts that support it are paper tigers. Their power derives more from their ability to scare the rest of the party than from their power over actual voters.

Democrats would be well-advised to worry less about the progressive left’s complaints and more about the uncomfortable possibility that the voters who surge into the voting pool in 2024—those who sat out 2022 but may return in 2024—will present a serious persuasion challenge to their party. Gone are the days when higher turnout necessarily bodes well for Democratic fortunes. As Nate Cohn noted in a recent article:

Mr. Biden’s pronounced weakness among less engaged voters is, at least momentarily, disrupting the usual patterns. It has at least temporarily weakened or even reversed the typical Democratic advantage from higher turnout. It has hurt Mr. Biden in national polling of registered voters and all adults, as low-turnout young and nonwhite voters make up a far larger share of eligible voters than the actual electorate.

Even more sobering, consider some findings specifically about Hispanics, the group driving the growth of the nonwhite population and much of Democrats’ hopes for the future. It turns out that Hispanic voters who did not show up in 2022 but did vote in 2020 are much more Republican leaning than 2022 Hispanic voters. According to a study by Equis Research of the Hispanic electorate, Hispanics who were drawn into the 2020 Presidential election but have been skipping congressional elections favor a generic Republican Presidential candidate over Biden by 20 points. Hispanic men under 40 in this group are even more pro-GOP, favoring a generic Republican by well over 30 points.

Now that’s a challenge. Instead of worrying about placating the progressive left, Democrats should be scheming about how they can persuade these peripheral voters that the Democrats are better for them than the Republicans. Otherwise, they may “energize” themselves right into a 2024 election loss.

Democrats in Congress and the White House really need to understand how to negotiate with new House Speaker Mike Johnson. I offered some pessimistic thoughts at New York on what he might demand:

On November 17, barring action by Congress and President Joe Biden, nonessential functions of the federal government will shut down, as they nearly did last month. The bullet Washington narrowly avoided in October at the price of Kevin McCarthy’s Speakership will be fired again. And there’s no indication just yet that McCarthy’s successor, Mike Johnson, has a feasible plan to keep the government functioning, or that he even wants to develop one.

Up until now, Washington politicians probably took solace at the news that Johnson wanted to enact another short-term stopgap funding measure that would extend spending authority until January or even later. His right-wing backers seem okay with that — in theory, at least — though it’s not necessarily a solution since the Democrats who control the White House and the Senate would vastly prefer a measure taking care of appropriations until the end of the fiscal year next September and ruling out any additional shutdown threats in the interim.

But it’s important to understand that Johnson has not committed to the kind of “clean CR” — continuing resolution, as stopgap spending bills are known in congressional parlance — that was McCarthy’s fatal concession. He’s talking about demanding an across-the-board spending cut as a condition for keeping the federal government open. And he’s already shown in his ultraconfrontational gambit tying aid to Israel to a demagogic cut in IRS funding that he is even more prone than McCarthy was to placating the hard-right faction in the House GOP (of which he is a charter member).

The latest wrinkle the new Speaker has added to the stopgap spending-bill discussions is a bizarre idea that would immensely complicate matters, as Government Executive explains:

“Federal agencies could face an ongoing series of independent shutdown threats under a proposal put forward by House Republican leadership on Thursday, who pitched the idea with just more than two weeks until current funding expires.

“While details on the plan were not yet made clear, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he was considering rolling out a ‘laddered CR,’ or continuing resolution, that would create multiple stopgap bills that fund different parts of the government and have different end dates. Rather than the normal tact of keeping all agencies afloat under one short-term spending bill, the measures would be more narrowly focused and set up unique deadlines for each bill.”

This approach most definitely does reflect the House Freedom Caucus’s mania for avoiding the comprehensive spending measures it associates with runaway “big government” in favor of passing the 12 individual appropriations bills covering the landscape of federal agencies. Trouble is, in a time of divided government and partisan appropriations, multiplying the number of bills on which highly divisive time-sensitive negotiations must take place from one to 12 is a recipe for gridlock and chaos. A “laddered CR” is most definitely a nonstarter for Democrats and probably many Senate Republicans. It’s alarming to hear Johnson talking about it just a couple of weeks before all hell breaks loose, and it makes you wonder if he even wants to prevent a government shutdown.

Amidst the sound and fury surrounding the war between Israel and Hamas, there’s been some loose talk about Biden imperiling his reelection by standing so firmly with Israel. I looked at the numbers, and wrote a cautionary note at New York:

In the furor over Joe Biden’s response to the Israel-Hamas war, one of the more interesting reactions is the supposition that Democrats are in dire danger of losing large numbers of votes from Arab Americans and/or Muslim Americans, risking their defeat in a number of critical states in November 2024.

The Arab American Institute released a new poll suggesting a serious backlash against Biden in 2024, as The Hill reported:

“President Biden’s support among Arab American voters has sharply decreased since the Israel-Hamas war, plummeting to dismal and unprecedented numbers.

“Support for his upcoming reelection bid from Arab Americans dropped by 42 percentage points, from 59 percent in 2020 to 17 percent, according to a new poll conducted by the Arab American Institute …

“The poll found that if the election were held today, 40 percent said they would vote for former President Trump, the GOP front-runner …

“The institute said the poll marks the first time in the 26 years it has polled Arab Americans that the majority did not claim to prefer the Democratic Party.”

Both support for third-party options (17 percent) and an undecided vote (25 percent) spiked in this poll. And, of course, the sponsors pointed out that “Arab Americans account for hundreds of thousands of voters in several key election states, like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, where the 2024 election battleground will play out.” (At the same time, a group calling itself the National Muslim Democratic Counsel gave Biden and Democrats an “ultimatum” to support an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza or potentially forfeit Muslim votes in “Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, where many of our voters reside.”)

So is this backlash as alarming as it sounds? It’s certainly significant, but there are some important qualifiers to address before weighing the effect on Biden’s and his party’s 2024 prospects.

First of all, there’s a tendency among Americans who aren’t closely in touch with Arab and Islamic communities to conflate the two. That’s a major mistake. Roughly one-fourth of Arab Americans are Muslim (a significant majority are Christian). And roughly one-fourth of American Muslims (or less by some estimates) are of Arab ethnicity. Michigan with its heavy concentration of Arab Muslims is probably an outlier.

Measuring Muslim or Arab political leanings isn’t easy, either, since neither category is deployed regularly by Census takers or exit-pollsters.

Since neither the U.S. Census or exit pollsters break out Arab or Islamic Americans systematically, any analysis of voting preferences for either group is less than completely authoritative, though it is clear both Arab Americans and Islamic Americans trended Democratic following September 11. The Arab American Institute’s portrayal of massive losses of support for Biden ’24 should be taken with a grain of salt since it was conducted by pollster John Zogby, whose methodologies have long drawn criticism from experts in the field.

That is not to say that Democrats shouldn’t worry about evidence of voter estrangement over Biden’s war policies (which will likely extend beyond Arab Americans and Muslims to include self-identified progressives and younger voters). In a close election like 2024 is expected to be, relatively small numbers of voters in battleground states can be crucial.

Without question, Democrats should make it clear that the GOP under Donald Trump is far from representing a safe haven for voters unhappy with U.S. policies toward Israel and Palestinians. Aside from Trump’s abundant history of Islamophobia and encouragement of Israel’s most extreme right-wing elements, he and his party are going to be seriously constrained from any “even-handedness” by their conservative Evangelical electoral base, in which disempowerment of Palestinian Arabs (along with general hostility to Muslims) is theologically blessed and even mandated. Trump as the Republican nominee could make a crucial difference between a mere lack of enthusiasm for Biden and a decision to vote for a third-party candidate or for no one at all.

 

From “An Ohio amendment serves as a testing ground for statewide abortion fights expected in 2024″ by A. P.’s Julie Carr Smyth and Christine Fernando at The Hill:

Abortion access is expected to play a central role in the 2024 elections. The preview comes next week, when Ohio voters decide whether to enshrine reproductive rights in their state Constitution.

The amendment is the only abortion question on any state’s ballot this year, a spotlight that has generated intense attention from national groups and made Ohio a testing ground for fresh campaign messaging — some of it misleading. The amendment has drawn more than $60 million in combined spending so far.

Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said Ohio offers a vital proving ground heading into next year’s presidential election, when Democrats hope the abortion issue can energize supporters in contests up and down the ballot. Initiatives seeking to protect access could be on the ballot across the country, including in the presidential swing states of Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

“When we’re able to see how our messaging impacts independents and Republicans and persuades them that this fundamental freedom is important to protect in Ohio, that’s going to be something that we can implement looking at 2024,” she said.

The battleground on abortion shifted to the states last summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its Roe v. Wade decision, erasing federal abortion protections that had been in place for half a century. Since then, voters in six states — California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont — have either supported measures protecting abortion rights or rejected efforts aimed at eroding access.

Smyth and Fernando note that “The Ohio amendment would guarantee an individual’s right “to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions.” It expressly permits the state to regulate abortions after fetal viability, as determined by an attending physician, as long as any laws regulating the procedure after that point provide exceptions for the life and health of the woman.”

Further, “Its supporters include Democrats in the state, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and a bipartisan coalition of labor, faith and community groups. They portray the measure — one of the most broadly worded so far — as a way to enshrine Roe-era abortion rights in a one-time bellwether state that has turned increasingly Republican and has passed some of the nation’s toughest restrictions on the procedure….AP VoteCast polling last year found that 59% of Ohio voters say abortion should generally be legal.”

“Turnout in the election that concludes Tuesday is expected to be robust,” Smyth and Fernando write, “building on the enthusiasm from the summer, organizers say. Local election officials anticipate 40% to 50% of registered voters will participate, according to the Ohio Association of Election Officials. That’s higher than a typical off-year November election and up from the 39% turnout in August.”

Among the many charms of the new Speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson, is his eagerness, make that determination, to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits for millions of Americans. As Michael Hiltzik explains in his column, “America’s retirement system is mediocre. The new House speaker wants to make it downright awful” at The Los Angeles Times, “Johnson is a long-term advocate of cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits through changes such as raising the retirement and eligibility ages for the programs….He also has advocated scrutinizing the cost of those programs through a “bipartisan debt commission” that inevitably would place them in the deficit-reduction cauldron along with other spending. After his rise to the speaker’s chair Wednesday, Johnson immediately promised to create this panel….“When Social Security was created in the ‘60s, the average life span was somewhere in the mid-70s,” he said. “Now people live to be 100 routinely. So people are on the program for decades, when it was never structured to be able to do that.”….A few things about this. First and foremost, Social Security was created in 1935, not the ‘60s. Even then, the average American life expectancy for anyone reaching the age of 45 or older was more than 70. For 65-year-olds — that is, those who were eligible to begin collecting benefits — the average life expectancy was nearly 78….Today, the average life expectancy for a 65-year-old is about 85….As for Americans living “routinely” to age 100, one wonders from where Johnson could have excavated that fantastical assertion. In 2021, there were 89,739 centenarians in the U.S., out of a total population of 336 million. That works out to about 2.5 hundredths of a percent of the population. You may debate whether that’s a lot or a little, but by any standard, “routine” it ain’t….In measuring Johnson’s record on 10 legislative measures important to retirees, the Alliance for Retired Americans gave him a 0% score for 2022, and 5% for his entire career. He was the lowest-scoring senator or representative from his state.”

John Ward interviews Ruy Teixeira one week out from the release of his and John Judis’s new book, “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes., and asks Teixeira three good questions. Here’s an excerpt with one of Ward’s questions and Teixeira’s answer: “You say that the radical side of the GOP has propensities for violence and contempt for democracy that far outweigh the foibles of the Democrats’ cultural radicals. Basically, you’re saying that your hopes for democracy and American prosperity and vibrancy rests with the Democrats and with the working class?  [Teixeira responds] Yes, absolutely. That’s the correct way of understanding it. We don’t rule out that the Republicans could right the ship, and there are very interesting intellectual currents in and around the Republican Party. That could bear fruit over the medium to long term. But right now, realistically, looking at our political landscape, we still see the Democrats as being the best bet — if they sort of return to the roots as a party of the people — as a party of the common man and woman, if they shuck off some of this cultural radicalism for more of a centrist approach….At the tail end of another question, Teixeira adds, “We’re trying to make people understand how even though the Democrats are plausibly the best alternative at this point — the sort of the Trumpist Republicans are not a great look — here’s why they can’t seem to beat the other side more decisively. And here’s what they might need to be, to be the party we need to have in America.”

Credit Democrat Brandon Presley for making a gutsy run for the governorship of Mississippi, even though many political observers pronounced the state Democratic Party a near-hopeless cause. As AP’s Emily Wagster Pettus elaborates at The Mississippi Link: “They’re sitting up in that governor’s mansion tonight, I bet you money, tinkling their little glasses, smoking their cigars,” Presley said, imitating someone holding a tumbler of whiskey. “And they’re talking about how, ‘Well, nobody’s going to come vote.’ And particularly black Mississippians. They don’t think you’re going to commit.”….Presley, the 46-year-old second cousin of rock ‘n’ roll legend Elvis Presley, will need a bipartisan, multiracial coalition to vote in unprecedented numbers to accomplish his goal of unseating Reeves….Presley is endorsed by the state’s most powerful black politician, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson. One of the most famous black Mississippi residents, Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman, recently joined him at a campaign event….Presley has raised more campaign cash than Reeves this year, and he’s attracting larger and more diverse crowds than any Democrat running for Mississippi governor in a generation….Presley is pushing for robust turnout among black voters, who comprise nearly 40% of the state’s population and are the base of the state Democratic Party. He also needs crossover votes from people who usually support Republicans but are disenchanted with conditions in one of the poorest states in the U.S….Others are making independent efforts to increase turnout….In speeches and TV ads, Presley talks about being in third grade when his father was murdered and then being raised by a single mom who worked in a garment factory and struggled to pay bills….Presley says rural hospitals are hurting because of Reeves’ refusal to expand Medicaid to people working jobs with no health insurance – roofing houses or waiting tables at the Waffle House. Reeves calls Medicaid “welfare” and says he does not want more people on government-funded health insurance….There’s evidence Presley is connecting with white working-class voters.”

If Presley can pull off an upset, future statewide victories for Democrats will become more of a possibility and perhaps lure needed funding and activism for the party’s candidates. Pettus notes one major change in election law which could help Presley: “One source of optimism in the Presley camp is a change in how Mississippi elects its governor. Until this year, winning a governor’s race required overcoming a unique legal challenge that was written into the state constitution during the Jim Crow era and repealed by Mississippi voters in 2020….Under the old method, a gubernatorial candidate had to win a majority of the statewide popular vote and and prevail in a majority of the 122 state House districts. Without both, the race would be decided by the Mississippi House….That process was written in 1890….The separate House vote allowed the white ruling class to have the final say in who holds office, and it fueled lingering cynicism among black Mississippians about whether their votes would ever matter….Mississippi was the only state in the U.S. with this process for electing statewide officials, and the vote to repeal the provision came only after former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sued the state on behalf of some Black residents….Winning a governor’s race now requires a majority of the popular vote. If nobody receives that Nov. 7, the race goes to a Nov. 28 runoff. Although an independent candidate, Gwendolyn Gray, recently announced she is dropping out and endorsing Presley, she did so after the ballot had been set….Presley says the new method of electing a governor gives him a better chance than the old one. He doesn’t have to strategize to win a majority of House districts mostly drawn to favor Republicans….“For the first time, candidates of all political parties can truthfully emphasize voter turnout, where before it had to be such a scattered approach,” Presley said last week at Tougaloo College, an historically black school in Jackson. “This will be the first time particularly that black voters’ votes will count to an extent of 100%, where before, an argument could be made that they were very much diluted.” Here’s a fridge magnet Gandhi quote for Presley and other Democratic underdog candidates: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

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 forthcoming book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The Fox News Fallacy is the idea that if Fox News (substitute here the conservative bête noire of your choice if you prefer) criticizes the Democrats for X then there must be absolutely nothing to X and the job of Democrats is to assert that loudly and often. The problem is that an issue is not necessarily completely invalid just because Fox News mentions it. That depends on the issue. If there is something to the issue and persuadable voters have real concerns, you will not allay those concerns by embracing the Fox News Fallacy. In fact, you’ll probably intensify them by giving such voters the impression that Democrats simply don’t care about their concerns and will do nothing to address them. That undermines the Democrats’ ability to respond to predictable attacks against their candidates and party and increases the likelihood of electoral defeat.

As I have documented, there are many current examples of this fallacy including in such hot-button areas as immigration and crime. In the latest ABC/Ipsos poll, Biden’s job approval rating on handling “immigration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border” is 26 percent, with 70 percent disapproval (net: minus 44) and 33 percent on handling crime, with 64 percent disapproval (net: minus 31). That hurts the Democrats not just on these particular issues but also by bolstering their image as a party that tolerates, if not facilitates, social disorder.

But from a political standpoint, the worst example of the Fox News Fallacy by far is around voters’ number one issue: the economy. Consider these recent data on voters’ views of the economy.

1. In the new CNBC survey, Biden’s approval rating on the economy is an abysmal 32 percent with 63 percent disapproval. This includes some very low ratings among some groups Democrats plan to rely upon in 2024: Just 35 percent among young (18 to 34 year old) voters and among Latinos. And then there’s the working-class problem: 31 percent approval among high school graduates (or less), 34 percent among those with some college and only 32 percent among those who identify as either low income or working class. The latter figure includes a 27 percent rating among low income/working-class whites and, more surprisingly, an anemic 39 percent rating among low income/working-class nonwhites. That’s not exactly what the Biden administration had in mind when they started their Bidenomics offensive.

Perhaps most alarming of all, among voters who currently say they are undecided between Biden and Trump for 2024, Biden approval rating on the economy is just 13 percent. 13 percent! That doesn’t bode well for moving these undecideds into Biden’s column.

2. In a survey of 5,000 voters across seven swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), Morning Consult found that about three-quarters of voters believe the nation’s economy is headed down the wrong track and that, on net, voters were likely to think their personal financial situation was better under Trump than Biden.

And in a direct hit to the Bidenomics campaign, about half (49 percent) of swing state voters say Bidenomics—the economic policy of the Biden administration—has been bad for the economy, compared to just 26 percent who say it has been good for the economy and ten percent who say it has had no impact. Among those currently undecided between Biden and Trump for 2024, views are even more negative: only two percent (!) say Bidenomics has been good for the economy.

Even more damaging to the Bidenomics cause, swing state voters say they trust Trump more than Biden to handle a wide range of economic issues. That includes the economy generally (Trump +14), the stock market (Trump +16), everyday costs (Trump +12), interest rates (Trump +13) and taxes (Trump +10). Even issues like the job market, unemployment, pay raises, housing and personal debts generate Trump advantages of six to seven points.

Of course, conservative media outlets—Fox News and the like—are quick to point to results like these and argue that the Biden economy, especially associated inflation, is to blame. On cue, Democrats are quick to argue that this can’t be right—the economy has been going great guns! Unemployment is super-low, job creation has been strong, inflation has been moderating, real wages have started to rise and (so far) no recession. Therefore, if voters say they’re unhappy with the economy that can’t possibly reflect their “lived experience” as it were but rather how they are being manipulated and misinformed by the media, especially Fox News, etc.

This is a huge mistake—a textbook and very damaging example of the Fox News Fallacy. It’s still the case that real hourly wages and weekly earnings are lower now than when Biden took office (though they’re comparable with pre-pandemic levels). The latest income data from the Census Bureau also show continued decline in real median household income in the first two years of the Biden administration, leaving it 4.7 percent lower than its pre-pandemic peak. In contrast, the pre-pandemic years of the Trump administration saw an increase of 10 percent in household income.

And, critically, as Bill Galston notes in a new article, “$8.99 Cereal Could Rock the Globe:”

In the current election cycle, the central economic issue isn’t growth and jobs, but inflation. The most recent Economist/YouGov poll asked a random sample of Americans, “Which of the following do you consider the best measure of how the national economy is doing?” Four percent selected the stock market; 11 percent picked their personal finances; 15 percent chose unemployment and jobs reports. But 56 percent said the best measure was the prices of the goods and services they buy.

When economists talk about “inflation,” they are referring to the rate at which prices are increasing. They have naturally been puzzled by the continued intensity of public concern about inflation, given that the rate of inflation has declined significantly. But surveys show that average Americans are at least as concerned about price levels as they are about the rate of price increases.

That brings us to the price of breakfast cereal. “I almost had a heart attack the other day when I saw a box of cereal for $8.99,” said an Illinois house cleaner. “I was like, ‘Does that come with a gallon of milk too?’” I’m sure she’s speaking for many Americans; I know she’s speaking for me. My sense of what things should cost at the grocery store is anchored at pre-pandemic levels, and I find it hard to accept that so many items have risen in price by 30 percent or more. My wife and I can afford the higher prices, though we sometimes choose not to pay them and do without items we regard as outrageously expensive. What about families with children who are trying to get by on $75,000 a year?

Galston goes on to talk about the prices of cars and homes but you get the idea. This is voters’ lived experience. No amount of banging on about Bidenomics and new green jobs is going to make much of a dent in these feelings. The only thing that might is focusing intensely on voters’ chief economic concern and stop trying to talk them into believing the economy and Bidenomics are actually great when they clearly don’t think so. They are not just being manipulated by the evil conservative media—that’s the Fox News Fallacy. They’re trying to tell you what they really think. It might not be a bad idea to start listening.

And if not? I’ll give the last word here to Dave Wasserman from a Twitter thread:

How is it Dems are cleaning up in special elections/referendums if their national poll numbers are so bad? Because in the Trump era, Dems are excelling w/ the most civic-minded, highly-engaged voters.

Their biggest weakness? Peripheral voters who only show up in presidentials.

A big reason Dems beat pundit/historical expectations in the midterms? Only 112M people voted, including a disproportionate turnout among voters angry at Dobbs/abortion bans (many of them young/female).

But there will be ~160M voters in 2024. So who are those extra 48M voters?

They skew young, unaffiliated, nonwhite and non-college. They’re also more likely to base their choice on a simplistic evaluation of whether the economy was better under Trump or Biden.

On this question—and on immigration/age concerns—Biden is routinely getting clobbered.

Keep in mind: in 2020, when Biden’s favorability was above water and Trump was at 41 percent job approval (and Biden was ~7 pts ahead in the final polling averages), Trump still came within 42,915 votes in AZ, GA & WI out of ~160M cast nationally of winning a second term.

Now fast forward to 2024 with tied national polls, 40 percent Biden approval, equally dismal Biden/Trump favorability, more economic pessimism, growing migrant/intl crises and the potential for RFK/West to double Jill Stein’s pull on campuses, etc.

Biden is in absolutely dire shape.

Gulp.

Some nuggets from “The races to watch next week and why 2024 is already here” by Daily Kos Staff:

It’s not a midterm or a presidential year, but voters in Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, and other states all face important state or local elections, and everyone should watch closely to see what the results presage for 2024.

In blood-red Kentucky, Republicans are struggling to gain traction in the governor’s race, where popular Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear remains the favorite. Indeed, after months of trying to make “the radical transgender agenda” a thing, the Republican candidate is now claiming that “Andy Beshear is a nice enough guy.” Attacking transgender people remains an electoral loser for Republicans, even in one of the most evangelical states in the country.

In Ohio, a ballot initiative to guarantee a right to abortion is headed toward a landslide victory, with a Public Policy Polling survey finding support at 55-38. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine must be looking at similar polling: He’s now trying to convince people to vote against the measure by saying he’ll loosen Ohio’s oppressive abortion restrictions. Are there any abortion-rights supporters brainless enough to fall for that trap? Hopefully not. After all, DeWine signed the state’s six-week ban, which lacks exceptions for rape and incest. Why would anyone trust him to do better? This election will demonstrate the continued potency of reproductive rights heading into next year.

In Virginia, Democrats can retake control of the state House of Delegates by picking up just a handful of seats. You can still make a difference in these races by supporting these five great Democratic candidates. And by doing so, you can help quell the insufferable Beltway narratives that somehow it is Democrats who are currently in trouble.

You know who is in trouble? Republicans. And not just because they picked a radical weirdo as their new House leader. There are few states more conservative than Mississippi, where its racialized politics means that roughly 90% of white voters vote for Republicans no matter what. Yet infighting among Magnolia State Republicans could offer Democrat Brandon Presley an opening for a surprise victory. And like the GOP civil war happening inside the U.S. House of Representatives, a divided Republican Party could pay big electoral dividends for Democrats next year.

The post didn’t really address New Jersey’s election, in which Republicans hope fallout from Sen. Menendez’s indictment will help them. As Matt Friedman notes at Politico,

New Jersey Republicans are practically giddy at a prospect that had been virtually unthinkable until now: Could they retake control of one or both houses of the state Legislature?….It’s a longshot scenario in a state where Democrats have a nearly one million voter registration advantage and have controlled the Statehouse for two decades….buoyed by Republicans’ surprising gains in the 2021 election — and the sudden fallout of Sen. Bob Menendez‘s indictment — GOP leaders see a narrow path to scoring key upsets that could put them on top in Trenton….“We are looking at a razor-thin proposition of holding the majorities in both houses this year. It’s going to come down to a few districts,” Kevin McCabe, the Middlesex County Democratic chair and one of the leading power brokers in the state, said at a party meeting in June….Democrats hold a 25-15 majority in the Senate and a 46-34 majority in the Assembly. Flipping either chamber would take an extraordinary run in swing districts and at least some upsets.

It’t undoubtedly too much to hope for that Dems will pull the inside straight and win all five elections. But three or four out of five would be something to crow about.

How is the war in Gaza affecting public opinion of President Biden’s policy toward the conflict? The most recent polling data indicates a significant decline in young voter support, although it is unclear how these attitudes will play out a year from now. Alexander Sammon notes in “Biden Has a Youth-Vote Problem. His Israel Policy Is Making It Worse” at Slate that “A recent Quinnipiac poll underscores Biden’s disastrous standing with the youth vote. The president’s favorability rating has cratered out at an almost-unbelievable 25 percent among registered voters under 35 years old. A few weeks prior, a Washington Post–ABC poll had Trump winning voters under 35 by 20 points. (The Post’s story notes that the poll differs from others taken recently, and that it may be an outlier. It’s not the only recent presidential poll that’s made publishers raise an eyebrow.)….In 2020, 60 percent of 18-to-29-year-old voters, by far the most Democratic-voting group by age, threw in for Joe Biden….That same Quinnipiac poll found that 51 percent of voters under 35 say they disapprove of the United States’ sending weapons and military support to Israel—a much higher figure than the 28 percent of Americans who oppose such a policy. Only 21 percent of voters under 35 say they approve of Biden’s Israel policy; 42 percent of voters across all age brackets approve….A CBS News poll conducted last week came to an even starker conclusion. When asked if the U.S. should send weapons and supplies to Israel, 59 percent of respondents under 30 said it should not. An even more resounding 64 percent of those between age 30 and 44—a bracket more likely to vote that carries the whole millennial generation and part of Gen X—said the U.S. should not….Earlier this year, Gallup polling found that among Democrats, net sympathy for Palestinians outweighs net sympathy for Israelis, a change that has occurred during Biden’s time in office. The aforementioned CBS News poll shows that a slim majority of both Democrats and independents feel that the U.S. should not send weapons and supplies to Israel. Data for Progress found that 80 percent of Democrats currently believe that the “US should call for a ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza.”

Sammon continues, “Although the data seems overwhelming on this point, the anecdotal evidence in Washington appears to mirror it. An open letter, signed by 411 congressional staffers, took the rare move of calling publicly for a cease-fire. Meanwhile, HuffPost has reported that the State Department is in turmoil over Biden’s unequivocal support for Israel. “There’s basically a mutiny brewing within State at all levels,” one department official told the outlet….those 400-odd staffers are overwhelmingly not senior-level or senior age. They’re young people expressing a widespread conviction of their generation….Look, too, at the slowly growing list of representatives sponsoring the House’s cease-fire resolution. They’re not all young, but the list includes the House’s most prominent left-wing millennial in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the chamber’s only Gen Z member, Maxwell Frost….If Biden hopes to win reelection, he desperately needs to run up the score with the youth vote as he did in 2020; we can comfortably say, even 13 months from Election Day, that there are only narrow, unlikely paths back to the White House for any Democrat without that….Meanwhile, joining the congressional calls for cease-fire is hardly a safe bet. Certainly, significant percentages of the electorate would welcome that, but the same polling indicates that nontrivial percentages would also be enraged. It’s a divisive issue, and domestically, there’s no “safe” option for a U.S. president.” At The Guardian, Lauren Gambino reports that “A Gallup poll released on Thursday found that Biden’s approval rating among Democrats plummeted 11 percentage points in one month, to a record low of 75%. According to the survey, the drop was fueled by dismay among Democratic voters over Biden’s support for Israel….Meanwhile, a poll released last week by the progressive firm Data for Progress found that 66% of likely US voters strongly or somewhat agree that the US should call for a ceasefire.” Gambino adds that “So far no senator has backed a ceasefire. Warren, Sanders and several other Democratic senators have urged a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid, food and medical supplies to flow into Gaza after Israel ordered a “complete siege” of the territory.”

“Today’s polls aren’t predictive of an election that’s more than a year out,” Will Marshall writes in his article, “For victory in 2024, Democrats must win back the working class” at The Hill. “But they are indicative of how little headway the president and his party have made since 2020 on their central political challenge: enlarging their party by winning back working class voters.” Marshal, founder and CEO of the Progressive Policy Institute, adds “…it’s not unreasonable for Democrats to believe that, despite his abysmal approval ratings, Biden could yet parlay public anger at the Republicans’ anti-abortion crusade and Trump’s accumulating legal wounds into a second presidential term next November….Yet even if he manages to eke out a win, a Biden-Trump rematch would likely leave the parties at rough parity. Until that changes, Democrats’ path to victory will be exceedingly narrow….  To break this political deadlock, Democrats need to start reaching across the “diploma divide.” They’re doing fine with college graduates; Biden won 61 percent of them in 2020…. But Trump won white non-college voters by a massive, 25 point margin. The New York Times reports that “In nearly 20 Western and Southern states, Democrats are virtually shut out of statewide offices largely because of their weakness among the white working class.”….What Democrats really need is more voters. The only way to break today’s partisan stalemate and build a solid center-left majority is to target non-college voters, who are expected to be nearly two-thirds of eligible voters in 2024. Democrats must whittle away at Trump’s huge margin with white voters and stop hemorrhaging support among Black and especially Hispanic non-college voters….The push for loan forgiveness also highlights a glaring disparity between Democrats’ solicitude for college students, who are already on track toward higher lifetime earnings, and their comparatively modest investments in the majority of young Americans who don’t have college degrees….  Educational polarization also manifests itself in cultural politics. As the liberal political demographer Ruy Teixeira has documented, the progressive left has saddled Democrats with “genuinely unpopular positions” on crime, immigration, race, gender and schooling….it’s not too late for Democrats to start reorienting their cultural and economic policies around what working families actually want rather than what progressive elites think they should want. Their ability to keep Trump or a Trump clone out of the White House just may depend on it.”

In “The group Biden and Trump both want, because it might win them the presidency,” Los Angeles Times syndicated columnist Doyle McManus writes, “The battle for working-class voters is on, and it could well decide the outcome of the 2024 election….The battle for autoworkers’ hearts is a microcosm of a larger struggle for working-class voters, a category typically defined by pollsters as voters without a college degree. They make up about 60% of the electorate….Working-class voters, especially union members and their families, were once the cornerstone of the Democratic Party. But over the past half-century, as Democrats became more liberal, millions of white, non-college-educated voters moved toward the GOP and its conservative social policies — a phenomenon political scientists call a “class inversion.”….In 2016, Trump won the presidency partly by winning almost two-thirds of white non-college voters, a major reason he prevailed in former Democratic strongholds such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton won only 28% of those voters….In 2020, Trump won 65% of white working-class votes, but Biden improved on Clinton’s dismal performance by winning 33%, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. That was enough to move Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania into the Democratic column….So Biden doesn’t need to win a majority of non-college-educated voters to keep his job in 2024, he just needs to do about as well as he did in 2020….He especially needs to maintain his support among union members and their families, most of whom still vote Democratic. In 2020, Biden carried union households in Michigan by a whopping 25-percentage-point margin, 62% to 37%….Census Bureau estimates suggest that real household income, which began falling in 2020, hasn’t yet returned to its pre-pandemic high….Biden’s answer has been an array of economic stimulus, investments in infrastructure and clean energy, and policies to promote higher wages — a package he has dubbed “Bidenomics.”….”The term ‘Bidenomics’ seems perfectly designed to annoy voters rather than win them over,” said Ruy Teixeira, a centrist Democratic political scientist….Better, he suggested, for Biden to focus his pitch on the ways he’s nudging businesses to raise wages, including federal regulations requiring overtime pay for more workers.”

There are few topics more complicated and fraught with emotion than abortion politics and policy in the post-Roe era. At New York I addressed a Republican effort to turn the tables on this subject.

When a close and potentially historic election is on the horizon, political analysts invariably try to read entrails from off-year and special elections. This November, Beltway pundits are especially focused on elections in nearby Virginia, where Republican governor Glenn Youngkin is trying to gain control of the state legislature. The GOP currently controls the House while Democrats control the Senate, and thus have a veto on Youngkin’s agenda. Beyond the alleged significance of who wins and loses in Virginia, Youngkin is being widely credited with attempting a new party position on abortion that will get Republicans out of the defensive crouch they have assumed amid a widespread public backlash against the abortion restrictions made possible by U.S. Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade.

As the New York Times explains, Youngkin believes he’s come up with a silver bullet for his party on this issue: a ban on abortions after 15 weeks:

“Legislative races across the state will offer a decisive test of a strategy led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has united Republicans behind a high-profile campaign in support of a ban on abortion after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. The party calls it a ‘common sense’ position, in contrast to Democrats, who it says ‘support no limits.’

“The strategy is meant to defuse Republicans’ image as abortion extremists, which led to losses in last year’s midterms and threatens further defeats next month in an Ohio referendum and the Kentucky governor’s race.”

This 15-week “compromise” idea should be understood from several perspectives. First of all, existing Virginia law, based on Roe v. Wade, allows abortions without restrictions up until fetal viability, or about 26 weeks of pregnancy. The Roe standard is pretty popular in Virginia and nationally, so the Youngkin strategy is to chip away at it incrementally, for now at least, and look for a more strategic time to go much further. It just so happens, moreover, that a 15-week national ban is the litmus-test demand of the most hard-core anti-abortion groups. To be clear, that doesn’t mean a national standard of allowing abortions prior to 15 weeks, but a 15-week floor that enables red states to ban abortions entirely or at a much earlier stage of pregnancy, as most of them have already done (at least where voters haven’t overruled them, as they have in Kansas and Kentucky).

Yet another dimension of the Youngkin gambit is to draw a new line between the parties in which Republicans favor “reasonable” abortion restrictions (at least in those states where they cannot secure unreasonable abortion restrictions) while Democrats favor “abortion on demand” up until the moment of live birth. There’s no question that the plan is to seize on the growing sentiment among many reproductive-rights advocates in favor of abandoning the old gestational framework of Roe (originally based on “trimesters” and now on different rules for pre- and post-viability abortions) and replacing it with more straightforward defense of abortion rights, as my colleague Irin Carmon recently explained:

“[Abortion rights advocate Erika] Christensen believes this moment of outrage provides an opportunity to stop debating about gestational age and instead focus on enshrining abortion as an absolute right. Using the old frameworks, she says, ‘accepts the premise that there’s a reasonable point in pregnancy in which the state should be given authority to compel breeding.'”

Much as the debate among Democrats over police reform following the murder of George Floyd was caricatured by Republicans as representing a demand to “defund the police,” Youngkin and the entire GOP are clearly disregarding the Roe framework that most Democratic policymakers still support in order to depict the opposition as especially devoted to complete legalization of late-term abortions. The full “abortion on demand” position, rightly or wrongly, remains unpopular, especially among swing voters, but more to the point, it’s not the position of Democrats fighting red-state pre-viability abortion bans.

If Virginia Republicans do win in November, you can expect the 15-week “compromise” position to become wildly popular within the GOP, particularly since a fake compromise on abortion is what Donald Trump has been calling for, while lying about where Democrats stand, as he made clear on Meet the Press last month:

“‘Let me just tell you what I’d do. I’m going to come together with all groups, and we’re going to have something that’s acceptable,’ Trump said when asked about a 15-week ban Sunday.

“’I would sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate something, and we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years. I’m not going to say I would or I wouldn’t,’ he added.

“Trump also called Democrats ‘radicals’ on abortion, claiming that some Democrat-led states like New York allow for abortions after birth.”

Republicans will continue to press for total or near-total abortion bans whenever and wherever they can get away with it while labeling Democrats as extremists, even though most Democrats are simply asking for the legal standard that was in place nationally for 49 years before the Supreme Court struck.

If Youngkin fails, then the forced-birth lobby may have to go back to the drawing board.