The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Republicans are, in a strict quantitative sense, the party of the American working class. That is, they currently get more working-class (noncollege) votes than the Democrats. That was true in 2022 when Republicans carried the nationwide working-class House vote by 13 points. That was true in 2020, when Trump carried the nationwide working-class presidential vote by 4 points over Biden. Moreover, modeled estimates by the States of Change project indicate that Trump carried the working-class vote in 35 out of 50 states, including in critical states for the Democrats like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as in states that are slipping away from the party like Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Texas.

Another way of looking at this trend is by Congressional district. Currently Democrats dominate the more affluent districts while Republicans are cleaning up in the poorer districts. Marcy Kaptur, who represents Ohio’s working-class 9^thdistrict and is the longest-serving female member of the House in American history, says of this pattern:

You could question yourself and say, well, the blue districts are the wealthiest districts, so it shows that the Democrats are doing better to lift people’s incomes. The other way you could look at it is: how is it possible that Republicans are representing the majority of people who struggle? How is that possible?

How indeed. Kaptur has a two page chart that arrays Congressional districts from highest median income to lowest with partisan control color-coded. The first page is heavily dominated by blue but the second, poorer page is a sea of red. You can access the chart here. It’s really quite striking. Overall, Republicans represent 152 of the 237 Congressional seats where the district median income trails the national figure.

The same pattern of Republican domination of the working-class vote appears to be developing as we move toward 2024. The latest poll for which an overall college/noncollege split is available is the March Harvard/Harris poll. That poll, in which Trump has a small lead over Biden in a hypothetical 2024 matchup, has Trump carrying the working-class vote by 10 points. In a DeSantis-Biden matchup, DeSantis has a similar lead over Biden and an identical 10-point advantage among working-class voters. (There is a slightly more recent Quinnipiac poll that also includes these 2024 matchups, but the public materials only provide a white college/noncollege split.). Earlier polls from this year—where data are available—replicate this pattern of Trump and DeSantis leading Biden among working-class voters.

Why doesn’t this bother Democrats more? After all, they are America’s party of the left and were historically America’s party of the working class. I think part of the reason is that the largest part of the working class, the white working class, is now viewed quite negatively throughout much of the party. They can be put, as Hillary Clinton unforgettably phrased it, in a “basket of deplorables”—“racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic”—and therefore justly ignored by right-thinking Democrats.

Democrats also comfort themselves that they still have very strong support among the nonwhite working class. But of course strong support among a sector of the working class does not make Democrats the party of the overall working class, however much Democrats may wish that to be so. Moreover, in recent elections Democrats’ hold on the nonwhite working class has also been slipping, which is contributing to the Democrats’ widening deficit among the working class as a whole.

In addition, the very supposition that lies behind the dismissal of the white working class is itself suspect. A recent column by Tom Edsall highlights the work of political scientists Justin Grimmer, William Marble and Cole Tanigawa-Lau on estimating the contribution of voting blocs to Trump’s support in 2016 and 2020. In a recent paper, they write:

Decomposing the change in support observed in the ANES [American National Election Study] data, we show that respondents in 2016 and 2020 reported more moderate views, on average, than in previous elections. As a result, Trump improved the most over previous Republicans by capturing the votes of a larger number of people who report racially moderate views.

Grimmer expanded on this point in Edsall’s article:

Our findings provide an important correction to a popular narrative about how Trump won office. Hillary Clinton argued that Trump supporters could be placed in a “basket of deplorables.” And election-night pundits and even some academics have claimed that Trump’s victory was the result of appealing to white Americans’ racist and xenophobic attitudes. We show this conventional wisdom is (at best) incomplete. Trump’s supporters were less xenophobic than prior Republican candidates’, less sexist, had lower animus to minority groups, and lower levels of racial resentment. Far from deplorables, Trump voters were, on average, more tolerant and understanding than voters for prior Republican candidates.

To say this is not how most Democrats think about the Trump-voting white working class is to considerably understate the case. Yet that is what the Grimmer et. al. data say. Notably, the other academics canvassed by Edsall can find little fault with their analysis, despite the post-2016 role of political science in cementing the conventional wisdom on racially resentful Trump supporters. One might summarize their reaction as “now that I think about it, these guys are probably right.” Better late than never I suppose.

All this suggests the Democrats should not be quite so blasé about no longer being the party of the American working class. That they are not represents a real failing on their part, not a noble stand against the barbarians at the gates. Much in American politics going forward will depend on whether Republicans can further strengthen their hold on the working class or whether Democrats can reclaim some of their lost support and become, once again, the party of America’s working class.

Consider what might happen if Republicans do make further progress among working-class voters. Between 2016 and 2020, the Democratic advantage among the nonwhite working class slipped quite a bit while the Democratic deficit among white working-class voters actually improved slightly. But what if both parts of the working class moved in tandem against the Democrats in 2024 and beyond?

This can be tested using States of Change data. Working-class preferences by detailed subgroup (race, gender, age) nationally and within states for 2020 were estimated and then moved toward the GOP by 10 margin points (+5 Republican/-5 Democratic). These preferences (with all else from 2020 held constant) were then applied to the projected structure of the eligible electorate in 2024 and subsequent elections.

In 2024, this shift toward Republicans among the overall working class produces a solid 312-226 GOP electoral vote majority. The states that move into the GOP column are Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada by 3 points, Arizona and Georgia by 4 points and Wisconsin by 5 points. Republicans also carry the popular vote, albeit by just a point.

Thereafter, the GOP starts to lose the popular vote but continues to win the electoral vote through 2040. If that doesn’t concentrate the mind among Democrats, I don’t know what will.

At Slow Boring Matthew Yglesias writes: “The widespread ownership of guns in the United States is the predominant reason we have so much more homicide than the developed countries of Europe and Asia. Differential availability of guns also largely explains why, inconveniently for Republicans, there is generally more murder happening in red states than in blue ones….The standard GOP cope is to argue that the murders are happening in “blue cities,” but that just reflects the fact that essentially all cities are blue in the contemporary United States. When you look at the rare city with a Republican mayor like Jacksonville in Florida, you see a lot more homicide than in New York. That’s because criminals aren’t magicians or kung-fu masters; their ability to kill people depends on their access to lethal weapons. And unfortunately there is substantial interplay between the legal market for guns and the black market for guns. The NYT ran a great piece last week about the large number of guns used in crimes that are stolen from parked cars— the more guns floating around, the more people get shot. Morgan Williams has a great paper looking at a gun policy reform in Missouri where the state legislature made it easier to buy guns legally with the result that shootings surged in Kansas City and St. Louis. Non-gun homicides actually fell because assailants were equipping themselves with better weapons. But precisely because guns are more deadly than knives or bats, this generates an overall increase in death….Do note, though, that essentially all of this action is being driven by handguns….The big long guns, including those with features that would get them tagged as “assault weapons” and also long guns without those features, are collected by hobbyists for use in tacky family photos. They’re stockpiled for use in a hypothetical civil war. They’re used for fun. And occasionally (though still far too often), they are used in a rare-but-spectacular spree killing that electrifies the nation because it affects middle-class suburbanites who are unaccustomed to having their lives impacted by violence. These guns are too big and too expensive, though, to be the weapons of choice for “ordinary” crime — the type responsible for the overwhelming majority of gun deaths in the U.S.”

Yglesias continues, “That they are so frequently at the center of our national gun debate strikes me as an understandable reaction to horrific events. I’m a dad with a kid in school and I feel this anguish in my gut and I see it in the eyes of my fellow parents all the time. I get it. But the focus on the very most spectacular events to the exclusion of “normal” shootings generates bad policy analysis. We have policy solutions at our disposal that would address the proliferation of illegal handguns that drives the bulk of gun deaths in this country….Public opposition to banning handguns is overwhelming. It’s also unchallenged by any remotely mainstream Democratic Party politician, which seems like a reasonable response to the reality of public opinion….But that means thought-leaders on the left need to exert some discipline and mindfulness when they post about newsworthy shootings. I fully endorse the implication of this chart Steven Rattner posted, which is that the large aggregate number of guns in the United States is why the United States has so many gun deaths. But a majority of these gun deaths are suicides, and a very large majority of gun homicides are committed with handguns. So as an intervention in the debate about assault weapons, it loses some of its persuasiveness….A federal assault weapons ban, if passed, would have a minimal impact on that “gun deaths” number. A federal assault weapons ban also isn’t going to pass. Sometimes it’s politically constructive to discuss things your opponents in Congress are going to block. But a high-profile national debate about assault weapons doesn’t help Jon Tester and Joe Manchin and Sherrod Brown get re-elected. It’s probably bad for Bob Casey and Tammy Baldwin and Elissa Slotkin, too. We also know that media coverage of mass shootings and post-shooting gun control debates leads to an increase in gun sales….Everyone is entitled to push for small-bore change with modest upsides, and banning assault rifles would absolutely be a good idea. But it’s not a good idea to fool yourself about what’s at stake in your own policy proposal. Meanwhile, if we want to reduce the number of handguns floating around, we have options.” Read Yglesias’s article for a deeper dive into policy options.

Here’s a bit of a demographic shocker from “Latino Catholics eclipse white evangelicals in Southwest” by Russell Contreras at Axios: “Hispanic Catholics last year accounted for the largest percentage of people who identify with a religion in the American Southwest….They surpassed the share of white evangelicals in some of the country’s most populous states — California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, Axios’ Russell Contreras reports from a new survey….Zoom out: Hispanic Catholics’ rise comes despite an overall drop in religious affiliation among all Americans, and a growing number of Latinos who convert to evangelical faiths, according to earlier research….Hispanic Catholics have eclipsed white mainline Protestants in California, New Mexico and Texas. The share of mainline Protestants in Arizona is about the same as Hispanic Catholics — 13% vs. 12%….State of play: Despite their growth, Hispanics — especially Catholics — are underrepresented in positions of power….Few Hispanic Catholics have been elected to the U.S. Senate. Five now serve there — the most in U.S. history….The nation has just one Hispanic Catholic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico. Arizona and California have had only one Hispanic Catholic governor each. Texas has had none.” The chart:

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. shares some of the salient ideas of Cecilia Rouse, President Biden’s Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, who is retiring on Friday: “Part of her job was to advance and defend President Biden’s policies. But in her lectures, testimony and writing, Rouse also sought to advance a public argument about government’s proper role in a well-functioning market economy. Views on that question influence all sorts of policy judgments (and a lot of hollow rhetoric, too). Only rarely do we drill down to its fundamentals….In an interview in her office the day before she left, Rouse spoke as a good economist in insisting that she does not see the government displacing the market. In a $25 trillion economy, she observed, “the idea that one central planner can actually efficiently allocate all of those resources is just too much, right?”….But all by itself, the market is insufficient, she said, and not just because, as we learned again recently, government regulation is essential to keeping banks and other private institutions from flying off the rails. Which government roles really matter?….“The first is for macroeconomic stabilization,” she said. In a recession, “we don’t have a lot of economic activity from the private sector, but people still need to pay bills. They still need to eat.” The “automatic stabilizers” such as unemployment insurance (which she sees as in need of reform) and food stamps not only help people directly, but they also speed revival in an economy where nearly 70 percent of gross domestic product is based on consumption…..“The second is the more classic — where there’s market failure,” Rouse continued. On many questions, market actors worry “about their own benefits and costs” and are not “taking into consideration the benefits and costs for the rest of society.” Pollution in general and the climate crisis in particular are classic cases of this…..The third area is public investment when there is no immediate incentive for market actors to take risks. “Government makes investments … in basic science. Some of them work out, some of them don’t work out. Private companies may not be willing to bear the cost of this research.” Government investment, she noted, sped the production of vaccines by private companies. The basics also include infrastructure, education and public health — along with child care and elder care that make it possible for more people (especially women) to participate in the economy….Finally, government can reduce the inequalities created by the natural workings of the market and by discrimination, including socially and politically divisive regional economic disparities….Rouse’s overall view of government and her particular interest in labor markets undergird her insistence that Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue plan was the right pandemic bet, despite inflation that, she notes, hit other advanced economies, too….She grabbed a small, milky globe she keeps on her conference table. “It’s my cloudy crystal ball,” she said with a smile. In the face of “a lot of uncertainty,” the question before the administration was “where did you want to put your weight?” Her choice, she said, was on the side of “individual well-being and worker well-being.”….Rouse’s colleagues, back at Princeton and elsewhere, will spend years debating the decisions made over the past 26 months. But in a crisis, I’ll take an economist who knows that crystal balls are usually cloudy, is transparent about her values, and does her best to make democracy educational again.”

You wouldn’t know it from the social media gloatfest, but smarter Democrats are carefully measuring their verbal responses to Trump’s indictment. For example,

From “Democrats hail, Republicans blast Trump indictment” by Michael Schnell and Emily Brooks at The Hill:

“The indictment of a former president is unprecedented. But so too is the unlawful conduct in which Trump has been engaged,” tweeted Rep.Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who served as lead impeachment manager during Trump’s first impeachment trial. “A nation of laws must hold the rich and powerful accountable, even when they hold high office. Especially when they do. To do otherwise is not democracy.”

….“There should be no outside political influence, intimidation or interference in the case,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “I encourage both Mr. Trump’s critics and supporters to let the process proceed peacefully and according to the law.”

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tweeted that “No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence. Hopefully, the former President will peacefully respect the system, which grants him that right.”

“We must allow the judicial process to continue unimpeded and free from any form of political interference or intimidation,” said Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.).

….Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), who served as an impeachment manager during Trump’s first impeachment, said Thursday was “a somber day for our nation.”….“Former President Trump’s indictment reminds us that no one is above the law and that we are all afforded due process and equal protection under the law,” he added on Twitter.

….“Just a reminder that there is no rule that you have to express your opinion before reading the indictment,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote on Twitter.

In “Democrats React to Trump’s Indictment,” Virginia Allen reports at The Daily Signal:

“The news of Trump’s indictment is a testament to one of the most fundamental ideals of our country: no one is above the law – not even presidents,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., tweeted.

Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., reacted to Trump’s indictment writing, “Our democracy rests on the rule of law. When someone—no matter how powerful they are—is suspected of a criminal act, our justice system investigates, charges, and convicts them in accordance with due process.”….Omar went on to say she hopes her fellow congressional members join her in “supporting justice and accountability—regardless of party—for the sake of our democracy.”

“I have faith in our legal system to handle former President Trump’s case without interference and with the seriousness it deserves,” Rep. Rob Menendez, D-N.J., wrote on Twitter. “As the legal process plays out, we must continue to focus on doing the work of the American people. And that is exactly what Democrats will do.”

….Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., tweeted, “Our independent, impartial judicial system is the cornerstone of our democracy. Nothing Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy do can change that.”

“Our justice system has an obligation to pursue the facts & law wherever they lead,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., tweeted. “Former President Trump will have the same rights as any criminal defendant & the justice system will presume him innocent until proven guilty.”

“While there are many unknowns, we know a few things to be true,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in a Twitter thread, adding the “Manhattan District Attorney must be allowed to continue his investigation without interference. Any attempt to undermine this process is contrary to the rule of law; and [p]olitical violence or threats of violence cannot be tolerated.”

Alejandro A. Alonso Galva, Megan Verlee, and The Associated Press report at Colorado Public Radio news that “The Colorado Democratic Party put out a statement saying they “welcome the news of Trump’s indictment and believe it’s important that he’s treated the same as every American. In his very privileged life, he learned he can ignore the law and often get away with it. If regular people did what Trump did they would already be serving time in jail.”

All wise comments, since we don’t even know the specific charges against Trump, and even the most obnoxious of political adversaries is entitled to the presumption of innocence until convicted.

Monica Potts and Mary Radcliffe probe a question of increasing interest for parents of students in  “Politicians Want Universal School Vouchers. But What About The Public?” at FiveThirty Eight, and write: “Earlier this week, Florida became the fourth state this year to enact a bill that would allow parents to receive taxpayer-funded vouchers to send their children to private schools, joining Iowa, Utah and Arkansas. At least 18 other states have introduced similar bills this term….But public opinion doesn’t suggest there’s a mandate — it suggests that support for such bills is complicated, varying by state, program design and how the polling questions are asked. Still, these bills are being considered at the same time that support for public schools is declining, especially among Republicans, which could be helping them gain momentum across the country.”….National polls on universal vouchers or education savings accounts, as they’re sometimes known, reveal that opinions are mixed — and that often has to do with how pollsters present the questions. According to February polling from Morning Consult/EdChoice, American adults support a voucher system by 28 points (43 percent support its use in K-12 education and 15 percent oppose, with an additional 26 percent saying they never heard of school vouchers), but that figure jumps to 44 points (65 percent support and 21 percent oppose) when the pollster defines vouchers as a system that “allows parents the option of sending their child to the school of their choice, whether that school is public or private, including both religious and non-religious schools. If this policy were adopted, tax dollars currently allocated to a school district would be allocated to parents in the form of a ’school voucher’ to pay partial or full tuition for the child’s school.”

Potts and Radcliffe note further that “A month later, a survey from Reuters/Ipsos found support for vouchers underwater by 15 points (36 percent support and 51 percent oppose). But the way the question was asked may have a lot to do with the dramatic difference in results: Americans were asked if they supported “[l]aws allowing government money to send students to private and religious schools, even if it reduces money for public schools.” This language emphasizes reduced funding to public schools, which is broadly unpopular, without mentioning potential benefits for parents and students….At the state level, results depend not only on question wording but also how the programs in question are designed. In Texas, for example, a RABA Research poll asked 512 adults on March 17 to 18 if they supported “diverting tax revenue away from neighborhood public schools to use for private school vouchers” — 66 percent opposed while 34 percent supported. This was the only statewide survey to show the voucher program underwater, and also the only survey to note that tax funds might be diverted away from public schools. In nearly every poll in which the question has been asked, respondents say public schools are underfunded, so including this language may impact the results….a Des Moines Register poll earlier this month — which specified the amount of funding, that it was taxpayer-funded, could be used for private school tuition and that it had been debated or passed in the state legislature — found only 34 percent support, a net unfavorable of 28 points.” Cutting through the fog, it certainly sounds like public support for school vouchers in polls is very much affected by whether or not survey respondents are reminded that the vouchers mean less money for public schools.

Florida Governor Ron Desantis is quickly turning his state’s educational system into a disaster of unprecedented proportions. In “Who Wants to Teach in Florida? Gov. Ron DeSantis’s culture warmongering has helped produce the highest teacher vacancy rates in the country,” Lucy Goldmansour explains at The American Prospect: “Gov. Ron DeSantis wants Florida’s K-12 educators to do as they’re told. On top of low pay, difficulties in securing long-term contracts, the stress of high-stakes testing, and increases in student mental health issues, public school teachers must stick to the governor’s conservative script or risk being fired. That script includes the Parental Rights in Education Act, colloquially known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, the Stop WOKE Act, and the recent statewide ban on College Board’s Advanced Placement African American studies curriculum….These developments have contributed to the highest teacher vacancy rate in the country by creating a climate of paranoia that has exasperated many teachers, chased others out of the profession entirely, and deterred aspiring educators. Culture-war turmoil combined with the pandemic era’s tight labor market means that Florida and most Deep South states have struggled to recruit teachers. When the far-right Republican became governor in 2019, there were 2,217 vacant teacher positions in Florida. As of early January, there were about 5,300 openings statewide….In 2022, Florida allocated an additional $250 million over the previous fiscal year to increase teacher salaries. While the funding boosted the base salary for new teachers to $47,500, the pay increase for experienced teachers did not even cover cost-of-living increases. Overall, the pay raise bumped the state up from 49th to 48th in average teacher pay nationwide, according to the National Education Association. DeSantis has proposed $200 million in more funding for teacher pay in his fiscal 2023-2024 budget, which according to the FEA, will hardly move the needle. “Pay in the third-largest state can and should rank in the top 10 nationally,” FEA President Andrew Spar said in a statement.” None of this bodes well for DeSantis’s chances to win the presidency, and it provides the state Democratic Party with a potentially-pivotal issue.

Ryan Tarinelli reports on possibilities for congressional action to address gun violence at CQ Roll Call, and writes: “The shooting at a private school in Nashville has reignited a debate in Congress over American gun violence, but there’s still no clear line for lawmakers to pass further legislation on the issue….The deaths of three children and three adults at the school Monday prompted President Joe Biden and some congressional Democrats to renew calls for legislation to ban assault weapons or bolster the background check system, which Republicans have opposed….In the House, Democrats expressed a desire to act to address gun violence — and alluded to the minority party needing some Republicans to join on something like a discharge petition to force a floor vote on a bill. Such a move would need support from a majority of the House members….Congress sought to address school shootings and other forms of gun violence through a bipartisan legislative package passed last year after public outrage over a mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas. The law, which required more thorough background checks for gun purchasers under 21 years old but also invested in school-based mental health services and school safety, got support from 14 of the 207 House Republicans who voted….Democrats this year are pushing for more to be done on the issue of gun violence. Earlier this month, Mr. Biden rolled out an executive order aimed at upping the number of background checks on firearm sales. In particular, he said the executive order directed Attorney General Merrick Garland to take every lawful action possible to move “as close as we can to universal background checks without new legislation.”….Senate Judiciary Chair Richard Durbin, in the hours after the shooting Monday, urged his colleagues in a floor speech to come together and ban assault weapons that can shoot 83 rounds in a minute.” No one expects anything stronger than a very modest strengthening of background checks requirements, if that. While Democrats are debating the strategic value of getting Republican Senators on the record regarding the sale of AR-15 style weapons, there will be no legislative action in the House under Republican leadership.

If you are feeling a sense of deja vu about where the current budget debate in Congress is headed, you aren’t alone, and I offered an explanation at New York:

In the partisan messaging battle over the federal budget, Joe Biden seems to have Republicans right where he wants them. Beginning with his State of the Union Address in early February, the president has hammered away at GOP lawmakers for plotting to gut wildly popular Social Security and Medicare benefits. This has driven Republicans into a defensive crouch; they can either pretend their proposed cuts aren’t really cuts or forswear them altogether. It’s a message that Democrats would love to highlight every day until the next election, or at least until Republicans figure out a better response than lies, evasions, and blustery denials.

But as Ron Brownstein points out in The Atlantic, there is a logical path Republicans could take to counter Democrats’ claims that GOP policies threaten popular retirement programs. It’s based on pitting every other form of federal domestic spending against Social Security and Medicare, and on making Democratic support for Big Government and its beneficiaries a political problem among seniors:

“Republicans hope that exempting Social Security and Medicare [from cutbacks they are demanding for raising the federal debt limit] will dampen any backlash to their deficit-reduction plans in economically vulnerable districts. But protecting those programs, as well as defense, from cuts—while also precluding tax increases—will force the House Republicans to propose severe reductions in other domestic programs … potentially including Medicaid, the ACA, and food and housing assistance.

“Will a Republican push for severe reductions in those programs provide Democrats with an opening in such places? Robert J. Blendon, a professor emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health, is dubious. Although these areas have extensive needs, he told me, the residents voting Republican in them are generally skeptical of social-welfare spending apart from Social Security and Medicare. ‘We are dealing with a set of values here, which has a distrust of government and a sense that anyone should have to work to get any sort of low-income benefit,’ Blendon said. ‘The people voting Republican in those districts don’t see it as important [that] government provides those benefits.’”

And so Republicans will very likely return to the messaging they embraced during the Obama administration. Back then, self-identified Tea Party conservatives constantly tried to convince elderly voters that the real threat to their retirement programs stemmed not from GOP budget cutting, but from Democratic-backed Big Government spending on younger people and minorities, with whom many conservative voters did not identify. Then as now, a partisan budget fight — and the threat of a debt default of government shutdown — let Republicans frame funding decisions as a competition between groups of beneficiaries, rather than a debate over abstract levels of taxing or spending.

The big opening shot in the anti-Obama campaign was Sarah Palin’s wildly mendacious but highly effective September 2009 Facebook post claiming that the Affordable Care Act would create “death panels” that would eliminate Medicare coverage for seniors or disabled children deemed socially superfluous (the barely legitimate basis for the attack was an Affordable Care Act provision to allow Medicare payments to physicians discussing end-of-life treatments with patients).

Soon Republicans would come up with slightly more substantive claims that Obamacare threatened Medicare. In 2011, House GOP budget maven Paul Ryan, whom Democrats hammered for his proposals to partially privatize both Social Security and Medicare, claimed that Obama administration projections of health cost savings in Medicare represented a shift of resources from Medicare to Obamacare. By 2012, when Ryan became Mitt Romney’s running mate, Ryan was campaigning with his mother in tow, claiming that Republicans wanted to protect her from raids on her retirement benefits by the redistributionist Democrats.

Romney and Ryan didn’t win, of course, but they did win the over-65 vote by a robust 56-44 margin, a better performance in that demographic than Trump registered in 2016 or 2020. As Thomas Edsall explained in The New Republic in 2010, the Tea Party–era Republicans understood they had to mobilize their federal spending constituents against alleged competitors:

“Republicans understand that one axis of the resource war will be generational. All of their vows to defend Medicare are coupled with attacks on Obama’s health care reform. They implicitly portray Democrats as waging an age war—creating a massive new government program that transfers dollars to the young at the expense of the elderly. Republicans have cleverly stoked the fear that Obama is rewarding all his exuberant, youthful, idealistic supporters by redistributing resources that are badly needed by the old.”

In a 2024 campaign in which Democrats are going for the jugular with seniors, a reprise of the GOP’s 2012 Medicare counterattack, dishonest as it was, might make sense.

During this year’s budget skirmish in Congress, House Republicans are expected to take a claw hammer to domestic spending outside Social Security and Medicare, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reports:

“This spring, House Republicans are expected to release an annual budget resolution that calls for large health care cuts, and Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) marketplace coverage are likely to be prime targets. House Republican leaders are calling for cutting the deficit and making the Trump tax cuts permanent, while saying they will shield certain areas of the budget (Medicare, Social Security, and military spending) from cuts. To do all these things at once, it is highly likely they will propose cuts in health programs that provide coverage to millions of people.”

The House GOP has also already called for deep cuts in nondefense discretionary spending, including food stamp and nutrition programs. It’s likely the GOP’s state-based crusade against “woke” public education will lead to a renewal of ancient conservative demands to deeply cut or kill the U.S. Department of Education. Maybe those representing energy-producing areas will go hard after EPA or the Department of the Interior’s programs. Almost certainly, the GOP as a whole will embrace across-the-board cuts in federal employment or federal employee benefits under the guise of “draining the swamp.” Any and all such cuts can also be rationalized as necessary to avoid reductions in spending for Social Security, Medicare, and national defense, not to mention tax increases.

Whatever formula they adopt, there’s little doubt Republicans will find ways to present themselves the true defenders of Social Security and Medicare, just as many of them will always keep scheming for ways to damage or destroy these vestiges of the New Deal and Great Society. Biden seems committed to his effort to make seniors fear the GOP, and this is the only way Republicans can counter-punch.

From “Republicans don’t really care about crime — and the Nashville shooting proves it” by Charles F. Coleman, Jr. at MSNBC Opinion:

Just 6 months ago, high-profile midterm election races pushed the conversation about America’s crime problem into the national spotlight stage. GOP challengers were parroting talking points around a sensationalized narrative that painted Democrats as anti-police and ultimately responsible for rising crime rates. This, despite the fact that many of the areas where violent crime is highest across the United States are in red states and, more specifically, GOP-led districts. But there was another missing piece in the conversation: mass shootings….Republicans are very protective of their guns — more than they are of the children and educators forced to leave in fear of these weapons.

….Finally, of course, is how easy it is to access weapons in this country and, specifically, how easy it is to access and abuse assault weapons. GOP House members proudly wore AR-15 lapel pins to espouse their commitment to protecting Second Amendment rights during the State of the Union. Do they remain proud today? Probably. Worse, some conservatives have already gone on the offense, stoking fear and attempting to score political points by characterizing President Joe Biden and others who advocate for sensible gun legislation as “gun grabbers.”  This despite a majority of American voters being in favor of some type of assault weapons ban.

Coleman, a former New York prosecutor, notes further, “The bravado and self-righteous rage is designed to deflect the conversation away from real solutions. American lawmakers appear incapable of loosening the chokehold that the gun lobby maintains on the GOP, preferring to pacify loyalists and gun nuts.” Further,

We have known ever since Sandy Hook that the double-speak around school shootings in America is engagingly duplicitous. No amount of bloodshed appears capable of moving the needle — at least in the Republican Party, which now controls the House and almost half of the Senate (to say nothing of the legislative bodies in states like Tennessee). These men and women refuse to take meaningful steps to protect our youth.

And importantly, we now understand even more clearly that the feigned concern about crime that overtook the nation’s airwaves in the summer of 2022 was just a passing moment for the right. Crime stats are only worth mobilizing around when they fit a specific narrative, namely that Democrats are soft on criminals.

Because mass murder against children is an inevitable cost of doing business….Because Republicans don’t really care about crime, or about keeping our kids safe.

Coleman concludes, “And that’s why this keeps happening.”

In 2022 Congress did pass the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” which expands background checks for individuals under the age of 21 purchasing firearms and prevents individuals who have been convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor or felony in dating relationships from purchasing firearms for five years. But a large majority of  Republicans opposed this ‘bipartisan’ legislation. Meanwhile President Biden has taken some bold initiatives on his own, including a March 14th executive order increasing background checks and expanding  “red flag” laws.

President Biden and other Democrats have proposed legislation “banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, requiring background checks for all gun sales, requiring safe storage of firearms, closing the dating violence restraining order loophole, and repealing gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability.” Thus far Republicans have blocked all such proposals.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

It’s not a secret that Democrats have been doing ever better with white college graduate voters, even as they have been slipping with nonwhite and working-class voters. Between the 2012 and 2020 elections—two elections with essentially identical popular vote margins—Democrats’ performance among white college graduates improved by 16 points, while declining by 18 points among nonwhite working-class voters.

Less well-appreciated is how polarized white college graduates have become in their political views as these trends have unfolded. Patrick Ruffini’s analysis of data from the 2020 Cooperative Election Study (CES), an academic survey with over 60,000 respondents, demonstrates this vividly. Across 50 policy items, white college Democrats are highly likely to give consistently liberal responses, while white college Republicans give consistently conservative responses.

Ruffini explains:

[G]iving the conservative or liberal answer more than 75 percent of the time places you in [ideological] camps. Otherwise, you’re in a non-ideological middle ground. The 75 percent cutoff is an important one. Above we find Assad-like margins for Donald Trump or Joe Biden in 2020 of more than 98 percent. If you’re above this threshold, you’re not persuadable in the slightest. In the middle, your vote is basically up-for-grabs, progressing from one candidate to other in sliding scale fashion according to your policy views.

This approach leaves relatively few white college voters—38 percent—in an ideological middle ground where their responses are significantly mixed across the 50 items. In contrast, black, Hispanic and Asian voters are much less polarized, including within education groups, and have far more voters of mixed orientation in their ranks. This middle ground includes 83 percent of black voters, 77 percent of Hispanic voters, 69 percent of Asian voters, and even 58 percent of white non-college voters, despite the fact that they skew conservative.

Putting this together with the trend data, this means that, as the Democrats have picked up more white college voters, they are adding many more ideologically consistent liberals, while shedding less ideological nonwhites with mixed policy preferences. Strikingly, among the most liberal voters—those who agree with liberal positions more than 90 percent of the time—there are 20 times more white college than black voters.

These developments can only push the party toward being uncompromisingly and uniformly liberal in its policy orientation and that is indeed what we’ve seen. Moreover, the cultural outlook of highly liberal white college graduates, given the heavy weight of this group in the Democratic party infrastructure and in sympathetic media, nonprofits, advocacy groups, foundations, and educational institutions, has inevitably come to define the culture associated with the party.

Here are some other findings that underscore the salience of Ruffini’s analysis:

1. Among white Democrats, there has been an astonishing 37-point increase in professed liberalism between 1994 and today according to Gallup. White Democrats are now far more liberal than their black and Hispanic counterparts, who are overwhelmingly moderate to conservative.
2. White liberals are now more liberal on many racial issues than black and Hispanic voters.
3. White liberals now outnumber the nonwhite working class among Democratic voters.
4. Recent Pew data found that of the 21 policy priorities tested, protecting the environment and dealing with global climate change ranked 14th and 17th, respectively, on the public’s priority list. But among liberal Democrats, these issues ranked first and third, respectively. The story was basically the same among white college-educated Democrats who, as noted, are heavily dominated by liberals.
5. Gallup data indicate that two-thirds of white college Democrats are liberal while 70 percent of black working-class and two-thirds of Hispanic working-class Democrats are moderate or conservative.
6. By 13 percentage points, white college liberals disagree that there are just two genders, male and female. But moderates and conservatives from the nonwhite working class agree by 31 points that there are in fact just two genders.
7. White college graduate liberals support providing government financed health insurance to immigrants who enter the country illegally by 22 points while this is opposed by 16 points among the moderate and conservative nonwhite working class.
8. On granting reparations to the descendants of slaves and reducing the size of the US military, white college liberals are solidly in favor, while nonwhite working-class moderates and conservatives are not.

While the Democratic party is a complex entity, it really is true that it has increasingly become a party whose positions and image are defined by the burgeoning ranks of white college-educated liberals who have made the party their political home. In the process, it has become much harder for many working-class voters, white and nonwhite, to feel comfortable in the party, given their more mixed policy views.

This is a problem. As Ruffini remarks:

[White college graduates are] less than 30 percent of the American electorate. If everything seems polarized these days, it’s probably because of the circles you run in. Not everyone is like this. And the people that aren’t—the multiracial working class—are wildly underrepresented in political media.

True that. Democrats would be well-advised to look past the political media they typically consume and set the controls for the heart of the multiracial working class. That’s the way—the only way—out of the current political stalemate.

At Vox, Nicole Narea gathers comments from four political strategists/pollsters in response to a question of current speculation: “Would Trump’s indictment help or hurt his 2024 campaign?” Some excerpts: GOP pollster Whit Ayers – “I am skeptical that a charge about a years-old event that everybody has already known about for years is likely to have much impact on anything, other than it will probably rally Republicans and supporters of Trump around him, at least in the short term. This would be a very easy case to frame as a partisan political indictment. Much easier to frame that way than, say, the Georgia voting case or the classified documents or January 6.” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg – “I think it will help [Trump] in the Republican primary, but will continue to degrade him with the broader electorate. MAGA has underperformed in three consecutive elections, and we know it doesn’t work in the battlegrounds. And if the Republicans present themselves as the party all for MAGA in 2024, they’re gonna have a very, very hard time winning the presidency….Trump coming in as the nominee, having been indicted potentially two or three times — there’s no scenario where that’s helpful to him in a national election. It perhaps will help him crowd out DeSantis and other challengers in the primary. But of course, that would be a disaster for the Republican Party. I’d much rather be us than them heading into this next election.” Matt Dole, Ohio Republican strategist: “Trump faced an uphill battle before this for the nomination. I think [his indictment] probably just adds to that. A lot of folks in the Republican coalition want an option that espouses [Trump’s] policies without bringing the antics. Ron DeSantis, obviously, is the model for that….Over the long term, I think this probably helps Trump’s opponents in the Republican primary. There’s certainly a lot to be said for political attacks on President Trump. But I think throughout the entire Republican coalition, this probably hurts him more than it would help….There is a subset of Republicans who are going to support Donald Trump to the very end. And they are loud. And they are well-covered by the media. There will certainly be blowback. But again, all of this is feeding into the fatigue about Donald Trump.”

Pranab Bardhan shares some perceptive insights in “What Will It Take to Save Democracy?,” his review of Martin Wolf’s The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism at The Boston Review. Bardhan, author of  “A World of Insecurity: Democratic Disenchantment in Rich and Poor Countries,” notes that “the cultural narratives used by the right have been more effective in influencing public opinion than the economic narratives of class politics used by left-liberals. Survey results have shown that people tend to vastly overestimatethe size of immigrant and minority populations but dramatically underestimate the extent of wealth inequality and the racial wealth gap. The narrative of a besieged cultural majority and the spell of white nationalist conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement are difficult to break, fueling a victimization complex and toxic cultural forms of status anxiety. The whole situation is exacerbated by social media, where the right seems to have an advantage in spreading falsehoods; the more outrageous they are, the more viral they are likely to go (and the more profits the social media companies make). There is evidence that in the three months before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, false stories on Facebook favoring Trump were shared about 30 million times, whereas false stories favoring Hillary Clinton were shared about 8 million times….The decline of unions has hollowed out a shared sense of meaning and identity among workers. Into this cultural void the demagogues have stepped with their racist, xenophobic culture war agenda. In a world of virulent disinformation and fake news and with social media amplifying anger and resentments and creating echo chambers of extremism, labor unions—in collaboration with other community organizations—can try to be active in providing links to public information services and news provided by demonstrably independent agencies.”

“Biden kicks off ‘Invest in America’ tour next week,” Jeremy Diamond reports at CNN Politics: “As he gears up for a likely reelection campaign, President Joe Biden on Tuesday will kick off a three-week tour to highlight the impact of his signature legislative accomplishments as the impacts of those laws begin to be felt around the country, according to a White House official….The “Invest in America” tour will see Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden and nearly a dozen Cabinet members hit more than 20 states – including key battleground states like Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania – over the next three weeks….The tour is the White House’s most coordinated, concerted push to date to accomplish what White House officials see as their central task this year: implementing legislation and making sure Americans know what Biden has accomplished. Polling published last month indicated the White House has its work cut out: 62% of Americans said they believe Biden has accomplished “not very much” or “little or nothing,” according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll….Biden will make his first of multiple stops on Tuesday with a visit to a semiconductor manufacturer in Durham, North Carolina, which has announced plans to build a $5 billion chips manufacturing facility that will create 1,800 new jobs, spurred on by passage of the CHIPS and Science Act, which incentivizes domestic semiconductor manufacturing….Biden will head to North Carolina a day after convening a meeting of his “Invest in America” Cabinet, which is comprised of key Cabinet officials working to implement the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan….Biden and his Cabinet will highlight the direct and indirect impacts of those laws – including private sector investments spurred on by pieces of legislation – and the impact on state and local economies at each stop.” Sounds like a good plan. But I hope these Democrats will also share some soundbites showing that Republicans are more committed to supporting investments in other countries.

Sherrilyn Ifill reports at slate.com on “The Republican Plan to Make Voting Irrelevant,” and writes, “The ability of the governor to appoint a nominee to fill the unexpired term of a senator without restrictions is the law in 35 states….This effort—to remove powers from elected representatives who are Democrats—has become the new method of disenfranchising voters and maintaining perpetual Republican political power. And it is being undertaken with alarming frequency and speed across the country,” Ifill warns. Further, “This may be the most dangerous and efficient structural attack on our democracy. Its threat, and pernicious ingenuity, lies in its ability to make voting itself irrelevant. Voters may turn out in high numbers and elect their candidates of choice, but if the official is not one whose views align with those of the Republican Party, they may find that their powers of office are removed by antagonistic GOP-controlled legislatures.” Ifill notes “Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, not widely regarded as a reform prosecutor, made the presumably unpardonable decision to convene a grand jury to investigate the effort of Donald Trump to compel Georgia officials to fraudulently award him votes he did not win in the 2020 election. In the wake of what were reported to be “imminent” indictments resulting from Willis’ investigations, the Georgia Legislature passed a legally dubious bill that would create commissions empowered to remove elected prosecutors from office….It was [Sen. Mitch] McConnell who, in essence, removed the power of a sitting president to fill an open seat on the United States Supreme Court when he refused to allow hearings and consideration of President Obama’s nominee, then-Judge Merrick Garland. In essence, the Republicans declared that a Democratic president would be denied the constitutional power to appoint justices to the Supreme Court as long as the GOP controlled the Senate….This is an efficiently sinister effort to solidify one-party rule. Its geographic breadth and reach to offices both high and low requires a national legislative response….this should be powerful motivation for congressional Democrats—and, indeed, for all Americans who wish to live in a democracy—to turn out and vote this year and next, in essence to save the framework of democracy while there’s still time. It should be clear now that for the foreseeable future, democracy remains on the ballot.”

There’s another turn in a story we’ve all been following for over a decade, so I wrote it up at New York:

The Affordable Care Act was signed into law 13 years ago, and the Medicaid expansion that was central to the law still hasn’t been implemented in all 50 states. But we are seeing steady, if extremely slow, progress in the effort to give people who can’t afford private insurance but don’t qualify for traditional Medicaid access to crucial health services. The U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld the ACA also made Medicaid expansion optional for states. Twenty-four states accepted the expansion when it became fully available at the beginning of 2014, and that number has steadily expanded, with the most recent burst of forward momentum coming from ballot initiatives in red states like Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Utah. Now a 40th state is in the process of climbing on board: North Carolina. As the Associated Press reports, legislation is finally headed toward the desk of Governor Roy Cooper:

“A Medicaid expansion deal in North Carolina received final legislative approval on Thursday, capping a decade of debate over whether the closely politically divided state should accept the federal government’s coverage for hundreds of thousands of low-income adults. …

“When Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, a longtime expansion advocate, signs the bill, it should leave 10 states in the U.S. that haven’t adopted expansion. North Carolina has 2.9 million enrollees in traditional Medicaid coverage. Advocates have estimated that expansion could help 600,000 adults.”

So what changed? Basically, over time the fiscal arguments North Carolina Republicans used to oppose the expansion began sounding increasingly ridiculous, AP suggests:

“GOP legislators passed a law in 2013 specifically preventing a governor’s administration from seeking expansion without express approval by the General Assembly. But interest in expansion grew over the past year as lawmakers concluded that Congress was neither likely to repeal the law nor raise the low 10% state match that coverage requires.

“A financial sweetener contained in a COVID-19 recovery law means North Carolina also would get an estimated extra $1.75 billion in cash over two years if it expands Medicaid. Legislators hope to use much of that money on mental health services.”

In other words, the GOP Cassandras warning that the wily Democrats would cut funding for the expansion in Congress once states were hooked turned out to be absolutely wrong. Indeed, the very sweet deal offered in the original legislation got even sweeter thanks to the above-mentioned COVID legislation. States like North Carolina appeared to be leaving very good money on the table for no apparent reason other than partisanship, seasoned with some conservative hostility toward potential beneficiaries. In this case, GOP legislators finally reversed course without much excuse-making. The AP reports:

“A turning point came last May when Senate leader Phil Berger, a longtime expansion opponent, publicly explained his reversal, which was based largely on fiscal terms.

“In a news conference, Berger also described the situation faced by a single mother who didn’t make enough money to cover insurance for both her and her children, which he said meant that she would either end up in the emergency room or not get care. Expansion covers people who make too much money for conventional Medicaid but not enough to benefit from heavily subsidized private insurance.

“’We need coverage in North Carolina for the working poor,’ Berger said at the time.”

That, of course, has been true all along. Final legislative approval of the expansion was delayed for a while due to an unrelated dispute over health-facility regulations. And the expansion cannot proceed until a state budget is passed. But it’s finally looking good for Medicaid expansion in a place where Democrats and Republicans are bitterly at odds on a wide range of issues.

There remain ten states that have not yet expanded Medicaid; eight are Republican “trifecta” states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming) and two others have Republican-controlled legislatures (Kansas and Wisconsin). Perhaps the peculiar mix of stupidity and malice that keeps state lawmakers from using the money made available to them by Washington to help their own people will abate elsewhere soon.

In his NYT column, “The Unsettling Truth About Trump’s First Great Victory,” Thomas B. Edsall discusses books and studies showing the role of racial attitudes in the current Republican front-runner’s 2016 upset victory in the presidential election. Edsall quotes several high-quality surveys addressing aspects of white Americans’ attitudes toward African Americans and white identity/victimhood and how they affected voting behavior in that year, compared to other years.

Edsall leans into a study by Stanford researchers Justin Grimmer and Cole Tanigawa-Lau and William Marble of the University of Pennsylvania, which found that much of Trump’s support came form voters who harbor only ‘moderate’ racial resentments. That is significant because of the widespread, but apparently mistaken assumption that most of his support comes from those who harbor more virulent racial animosities. The underlying idea is that ‘moderate’ racial resentments can be changed through interracial contact and education.

All of the studies Edsall references look pretty solid. But the quote Edsall provides which makes the most sense to me came from Daniel Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, who wrote in an email:

The 2016 presidential election included ballots cast by more than 128 million Americans, and so any one narrative used to explain that election will be partial and incomplete. So I think it’s critical to avoid the idea that there is a single skeleton key that can explain all the varied undercurrents that led to Trump’s 2016 victory, or that any one paper will provide a definitive explanation….

My guess is that the percentage of voters who cast ballots for Trump solely, or even mostly, because of their racial resentments was likely pretty small. I would like to see a survey that ranks 2016 voting reasons, which also includes such variables as dislike for white liberals or Hillary Clinton, peer and family leanings and preference for an ‘outsider’ candidate. There are very few ‘single issue voters,’ and there is not much that can be done to sway them in a different direction anyway.

The reason 2016 is not old news is that Trump is still around, mining many of the same themes. But no matter what happens in the 2024 presidential election, it will be impossible to isolate the role of racial attitudes in the popular vote in light of Trump’s complex legal problems, his bizarre presidency and his role in the January 6 riot, as well as the usual complex of issues.

In his conclusion, Edsall writes,

In fact, the new analysis suggests that Trumpism has found fertile ground across a broad swath of the electorate, including many firmly in the mainstream. That Trump could capture the hearts and minds of these voters suggests that whatever he represents beyond racial resentment — anger, chaos, nihilism, hostility — is more powerful than many recognize or acknowledge. Restoring American politics to an even keel will be far tougher than many of us realize.

Of course it is always worth noting that in 2016 Hillary Clinton got about 2 million, 868 thousand more popular votes than Trump nationwide, although her popular vote margin in California alone was about 4 million, 270 thousand. Most analyses that address Trump’s 2016 upset are mostly about his non-California vote totals. But California stubbornly remains part of the U.S.