Are Biden’s strategic assets for 2024 being undervalued? “In a perfect world, we would not have a presidential election between two men who were born in the WWII era,” Heather Digby Parton writes at Salon. “It’s 2023 and it’s past time to pass the torch. But we are where we are and there are strong reasons to take a breath and realize that Joe Biden is going into this campaign with some serious advantages that would be stupid to toss aside….First of all, the power of incumbency cannot be underrated. In the past 11 presidential elections with incumbent candidates, only 4 were unseated. Both the Clinton and Obama re-elections that everyone was so worried about were helped immensely by the fact that there was no primary and they already had fundraising bases and successful campaign experience….It takes a while for people to catch up to economic good news and Biden has a good story to tell on that front. Reagan, for instance, was underwater in approval in August of 1983 before “Morning in America” and his 1984 landslide re-election. (I’m not suggesting that will happen with Biden — it’s a different world today — it’s just another illustration of how quickly things can improve.)….And there are some other issues in Biden’s favor that are extremely salient at this time such as abortion rights and the attack on democracy, which adds up to a powerful critique of Trump and the authoritarian assault by the Republican party. (Government shutdowns and idiotic impeachments will only help illuminate their extremism) After all, Biden is facing a man who is going to be on trial during most of the campaign next year and could be running as a convicted felon. Yes, his followers will stick with him through it all but the idea that Biden’s age will trump Trump’s criminal status is to suggest that otherwise normal people will prefer an old man who is also a criminal to an old man who has done a good job as president. It’s possible but I’m not convinced it’s likely….It’s in the Democratic DNA to be nervous nellies. And maybe that’s a good thing. It means they won’t be complacent and will work hard to win the election. For the most part it’s paid off in presidential politics for the past 30 years. But it’s 14 months before the election. Nobody should be losing any sleep just yet.”

Ronald Brownstein explains “Why ‘Middle-class Joe’ Biden may need upscale voters more than ever in 2024” at CNN Politics: “Biden’s opportunities with upscale voters are widening because polls show that, compared to working-class voters, they are more likely to view Trump as a threat to American democracy, as well as more likely to support abortion rights. Simultaneously, Biden’s position with working-class voters is eroding largely because they are expressing the most frustration and strain over the economy and inflation….Biden’s opportunities with upscale voters are widening because polls show that, compared to working-class voters, they are more likely to view Trump as a threat to American democracy, as well as more likely to support abortion rights. Simultaneously, Biden’s position with working-class voters is eroding largely because they are expressing the most frustration and strain over the economy and inflation….Biden has some important assets in trying to recapture support from working-class voters, including a moderating trend in inflation, increasingly visible effects of the investments triggered by the trio of big laws he passed in his first two years, and a big campaign budget to saturate the handful of swing states with television advertising burnishing his economic record….But so long as daily necessities in the fall of 2024 cost more than they did when Biden took office – a highly likely outcome – he faces the probability that most Americans, especially those operating on limited incomes, will remain discontent with his economic leadership. If there is a winning coalition for a second Biden term, it may rely on convincing voters who don’t believe the president has delivered for their interests to vote for him anyway because Trump (or another GOP nominee) represents an even greater threat to their values. And that dynamic, almost inevitably, could tilt Biden’s coalition even further toward upscale voters.”

“In the 2020 election,” Brownstein continues, “Biden ran several percentage points better than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 among voters with at least a four-year college education and carried a solid majority of them, according to each of the three data sources cited most often about the results: the exit polls conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of media organizations including CNN, the “validated voters” study by the Pew Research Center, and the estimates by Catalist, a Democratic targeting firm, based on analysis of voter records….That advantage among better-educated voters was enough for Biden to overcome Trump’s narrow edge among all voters without a college degree, according to all three sources. Generally, the analyses showed Biden in 2020 slightly gaining compared to 2016 among White voters without a four-year college degree (though Trump still won them decisively) and Trump gaining somewhat among non-White voters without a college degree (though Biden still carried them decisively)….Compared to his vote share in 2020, Biden’s standing today is weaker among almost every key group in the electorate. But his numbers are especially bleak among voters with less education. In the latest CNN national poll conducted by SSRS, only about one-third of all adults without a degree (and only one-fourth of non-college White adults) said they approved of his job performance as president. Among college-educated adults, Biden’s standing was much more respectable: just over half of them approved of his performance (including just under half of the college-plus Whites.)…not surprisingly, frustration over high prices is especially acute among voters with fewer resources and less financial cushion, which generally include those with less education. “Nobody likes spending more, but the degree to which you can absorb inflation, those at the higher end of the economic scale have less difficulty doing so,” said Democratic pollster Jay Campbell, who studies economic attitudes as part of a bipartisan team that conducts surveys for CNBC….Biden’s ads are emphasizing the slowdown in inflation over recent months. But as Campbell points out, moderating inflation only means prices are rising less quickly; it doesn’t mean prices are returning to their levels before the Covid-19 pandemic. All voters, but especially those of moderate means, are acutely aware of that distinction, Campbell says.”

Brownstein hones in on the economic strategy Biden needs to win next year: “Democratic pollster Geoff Garin says the 2022 midterm elections offer Biden a blueprint for closing that gap. Despite widespread concern over the economy then, he notes, multiple winning Democratic Senate and governor candidates in key swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona won anyway, partly by focusing on tangible actions they had taken to help families confront costs, such as the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act allowing Medicare to bargain for lower drug prices….“When you get into the compare and contrast part of the campaign, Biden has a good story to tell about actions he has already taken and things he will do moving forward to lower prices for people,” Garin argues. “The contrast that Biden is setting up between growing the middle class and trickle-down economics is a good framework for next year.”….Still, Biden will likely face stubborn limits on his ability to win an argument about the economy next year so long as many voters feel that they have less money left at week’s end….Tulchin, the pollster for Sanders, predicts Biden’s effort to make a case for his economic performance “will only have limited impact because he’s an incumbent and people aren’t feeling better off.” Instead, Tulchin says, “The way you win elections as an incumbent is you disqualify your opponent.”….Like most Democrats, Tulchin believes Biden’s best weapons to disqualify Trump, if the two face off again, will be abortion and the fear that Trump would unleash “chaos” if he returned to the White House. And for all Biden’s focus on recapturing non-college voters, those are arguments that inherently detonate more powerfully among those with advanced education – whose support “middle-class Joe,” as Biden called himself at the Labor Day rally in Philadelphia, will likely need more than ever next year to secure another term.” Perhaps a related message could help give Biden – and Democrats – some much needed traction: “Trump and his party have divided, exhausted and paralyzed America.  The only way to restore our national vitality and move forward is a landslide defeat for them in 2024.”

Some insights from “Why Bidenomics Isn’t Working for Biden:The economy is improving, but Americans aren’t giving Biden credit for it,” a pundit chat at FiveThirtyEight:

Monica Potts: To start at the beginning, Biden inherited a really weird economy. The COVID-19 shutdowns caused a severe and dramatic recession, but then the economy started to bounce back. But people’s behavior had also changed. More people were working from home and moving, they had cash to spend and supply chains were slow to restart. So Americans were generally sour on the economy from the time he took office.

The recovery was afflicted by super-high inflation, as you noted at the beginning, Nathaniel, and a lot of what the Biden administration has done on economic policy is the kind of slow-moving, behind-the-scenes policymaking that voters don’t really notice. Even though inflation is cooling, prices are still much higher than they were before the pandemic; borrowers are still seeing much higher interest rates; etc. So I think a lot of it is that Americans are generally unhappy with the new normal we find ourselves in.

gelliottmorris: I think that last point is a really good one, Monica. The share of people telling pollsters that the broader economic situation is poor is still around the highest it’s been since 2018. At first, that seems hard to square with the rosy economic indicators we talked about. But I think it’s possible that people just have longer-term memories about economic growth and remember a time when prices were meaningfully lower.

Lots of the discussion on this topic is pegged to tracking annual change in the consumer price index or job market or what have you. But if you take a longer view, for a lot of families, things are just permanently more expensive now. Even if their wages are up, I doubt they enjoy spending 15 percent more at the grocery store than they were before the pandemic. And it will take a while for those memories to fade.

Ameliatd adds, “I’m not sure voters were ever going to give Biden credit for an improving economy, especially because the inflation increase happened under his watch. It’s not like he can come in and say, “Look at this mess my predecessor left for me.”

I think Potts hits on a core problem in noting “Even though inflation is cooling, prices are still much higher than they were before the pandemic.” Voters are not impressed that the rate of “inflation is cooling.” It’s more about perception of their family’s economic realities than national statistics. To amplify Morris’s point, not many workers got a 15 percent pay raise during the last year to cover the new normal.

The covid checks voters received during the pandemic have been spent. Here comes a lot of stressful kitchen table budget discussions. Student loan debt outlays will be back soon. The strategic petroleum reserve is looking low, and let’s not count on the Saudis, the petroleum industry or Putin to do Biden any favors. It won’t be pretty.

Some of this downer scenario will be offset by fears among moderate voters in swing states about eradicating reproductive rights and/or the very real possibility that U.S. democracy will become completely dysfunctional if Trump wins, setting up decades of angry polarization and authoritarian rule.

It appears that a patriotism vs. pocketbook conflict may be emerging for 2024 voters. It would be folly for Democrats to bet the ranch on patriotism.

It’s possible that enough voters will get used to sticker shock at the gas pumps and meat counters a year from now, and their memories of better prices will fade away. But fading possibilities are not a solid foundation for campaign strategy.

Admittedly, all of this is close to the bleakest possible scenario. And there is a fair chance that the opposite will happen, good will win the day and Democracy will be preserved for future generations. It’s also possible that the election outcome will fall somewhere between disaster and a newly-functional democracy.

As for the persuasion vs. turnout choices for Democratic campaign strategy, there may not be enough time for the former to have an impact in 2024. But make no mistake, for Democrats, it’s all hands on deck for what may be the most pivotal election in America’s history.

In her article, “How States Can Prevent Election Subversion in 2024 and Beyond,” Alice Clapman reports at brennancenter.org that “the country has made progress toward insulating future elections from subversion attempts. Most notably, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 (ECRA), closing some loopholes and resolving ambiguities that the Trump campaign tried to exploit in 2020. Among other reforms, the ECRA clarifies that only a state’s governor or other predesignated executive official may submit official election results; bars state legislatures from changing the rules for appointing electors after Election Day; and makes it harder for federal legislators to overturn election results. Several states went further. Notably, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, and New York clarified their certification processes and took steps to combat disinformation and protect voters and poll workers from harassment and violence….the United States remains at risk for election subversion (that is, the overturning of an election outcome through disruption or manipulation of the vote counting, canvassing, or certification processes, or other acts of large-scale disenfranchisement)….Election denial is still rampant within federal, state, and local governmental bodies and among segments of the public. Although many of those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, have faced criminal consequences, so far the officials and politicians who incited them to violence have not. Election deniers won numerous congressional and state legislative seats, party chairs, and state and local election administrative positions….Republican activists have recruited poll workers and observers in large numbers with the false and inflammatory message that U.S. elections are being stolen and must be “taken back.””

Clapman continues, “While the ECRA included necessary reforms, Congress has failed to pass broader protections, including baseline national election standards. footnote9_86caho09 This failure puts the onus on states. Each state has different vulnerabilities and different options for addressing them. Every state should start with these five measures:

• Strengthen laws requiring timely certification based solely on verified vote totals, with effective enforcement mechanisms.
• Strengthen laws channeling election disputes through the state judiciary, and set clear standards governing how these disputes are resolved.
• Finalize a plan for putting out accurate information about the election process and preempting disinformation, starting well before Election Day and backed by adequate state resources.
• Bolster election administration with training, written guidance, and investment in equipment, security, scenario planning, staffing, and supplies.
• Enact stronger measures against intimidation of voters and election workers, including gun restrictions and privacy protections for election officials.

In some states, legislatures will be in session again before the 2024 vote; in others, they could be called to a special session. Elsewhere, administrative officials could implement many of these measures. And state policymakers at every level should continue to push for these reforms after 2024, because election subversion will remain a risk.” Clapman provides extensive details for each of her five proposals towards the end of her article.

Clapman has another post at brennancenter.org with co-writer Lauren Miller, entitled “Are Swing States Ready for 2024? Here’s how Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada can stop election subversion.” In this article, the authors focus on specific remedies for vote theft and related scams for the aforementioned states. Here’s an excerpt describing what Georgia can do: As Clapman and Miller write, “Georgia officials must implement best practices for preventing, detecting and confirming physical breaches. These include restrictions on access, reporting protocols, keycard systems, and video and log surveillance, with review, to track access to sensitive equipment. Georgia should also prepare plans to promptly investigate and, if necessary, decommission and replace those systems to ensure that potentially corrupted equipment is replaced before the next election and with enough time for pre-election testing….Most recently, the chair of Georgia’s State Election Board — who sought to debunk unfounded claims of fraud in the 2020 election — announced that he was resigning after just 14 months in office….Georgia should take steps to protect election officials and workers from threats. The state should fund physical security protections and training and revise statutes to offer a broader set of protections against harassment and doxing. Those protections should include, for example, shielding officials and workers’ personal information from public information requests and creating meaningful civil and criminal liability for individuals who intimidate or harass them at any stage of the election process….Georgia must also protect its voters from unwarranted challenges. Georgia’s S.B. 202, passed in 2021, invites people to challenge an “unlimited” number of voters in their county. Predictably, groups and individuals in at least eight counties subsequently challenged an estimated 92,000 voter registrations in the 2022 election cycle. In Gwinnett County alone, the group VoterGA worked with local residents to challenge at least 37,000 voters (over 6 percent of the county’s active voters). Local election officials threw out most of these challenges….Election deniers appear ready to recklessly challenge hundreds of thousands more voters in the next election cycle. To prevent those efforts, Georgia too should consider reforms to constrain baseless mass challenges, including by clarifying that challenges cannot be based on unreliable data and that targeting voters for challenges based on protected characteristics such as race is illegal.”

Here’s another excerpt from Clapman’s and Miller’s article focusing on Pennsylvania: “Pennsylvania has seen a number of subversion efforts in recent years: fake electors and legislative interference schemes in 2020, certification refusals in 2022, various lawsuits attempting to invalidate whole tranches of absentee ballots, and a concerted effort by Republican lawmakers acting at the behest of the Trump campaign to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment (successful in one county), to name a few. The state has election deniers in many local positions of power, including officials who previously voted to remove drop boxes and refused to certify valid results, an official who helped the Trump campaign access voting equipment, and even one fake 2020 elector….Pennsylvania is also one of a few states, particularly among battleground states, that bar clerks from preprocessing absentee ballots before election day. Because absentee ballots have skewed heavily Democratic in Pennsylvania in recent years, this unnecessary legal bar often causes a “red mirage,” which in turn fuels election denial. Pro-democracy lawmakers have repeatedly tried to reform the law, including this year, only to be outvoted by Republican colleagues. (The proposed legislation also would have allowed voters to cure ballot defects and have their votes counted.)….Some of the same lawmakers who voted down preprocessing have sued to overturn no-excuse absentee voting, a reform that passed with bipartisan support in 2019. Republican-appointed appellate judges struck the law down based on an originalist reading of the state constitution, but were overruled by a divided state supreme court…Without legislative reform, wrangling over the counting of absentee ballots — including wrangling over whether defects can be cured — will continue. Votes will be discarded if they arrive after election day, or for purely bureaucratic reasons. And another red mirage is also likely. Politicians, officials, media outlets and advocacy groups must continue to call out the partisan gamesmanship over absentee ballots and the repeated efforts to disqualify them en masse. These ballots are not abstractions, or some political football, but actual votes from citizens who are exercising fundamental rights.”

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:

I have written quite a bit about the Democrats’ emerging problem with nonwhite voters (for example, here, here and here), manifest in steadily declining margins among this demographic. Well, now it’s official.

Or at least strongly confirmed. The release of a characteristically thorough analysis by Nate Cohn in The New York Times provides abundant and persuasive evidence that this trend is real and shows no signs of going away. As Cohn notes, Biden leads Trump by a mere 53-28 percent margin among these voters in a merge of 2022-23 Times/Siena College polls. This is not only a sharp fall-off from Biden’s support in the 2020 election, but also from Biden’s and previous Democratic candidates’ support in analogous pre-election polls.

All this has left Democrats scratching their heads, given the nature of their opponent. Cohn points out some of the paradoxes that now confront Democrats:

Democrats have lost ground among nonwhite voters in almost every election over the last decade, even as racially charged fights over everything from a border wall to kneeling during the national anthem might have been expected to produce the exact opposite result. Weak support for Mr. Biden could easily manifest itself as low turnout—as it did in 2022—even if many young and less engaged voters ultimately do not vote for Mr. Trump.

Many of Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities—like his age and inflation—could exacerbate the trend, as nonwhite voters tend to be younger and less affluent than white voters…Issues like abortion and threats to democracy may also do less to guard against additional losses among Black and Hispanic voters, who tend to be more conservative than white Biden voters. They may also do less to satisfy voters living paycheck to paycheck: Mr. Biden is underperforming most among nonwhite voters making less than $100,000 per year, at least temporarily erasing the century-old tendency for Democrats to fare better among lower-income than higher-income nonwhite voters.

The Times/Siena data suggests the emergence of a fairly clear education gap among nonwhite voters, as Mr. Biden loses ground among less affluent nonwhite voters and those without a degree. Overall, he retains a 61-23 lead among nonwhite college graduates, compared with a mere 49-31 lead among those without a four-year degree.

Clearly there’s a very real and very large problem here. Democrats may simply have misjudged what is most important to nonwhite voters, reflecting perhaps the increasing domination of their coalition by white college graduate voters, virtually the only demographic among whom the party has been doing steadily better. The agenda of white college graduates, particularly the progressives who support the party so fervently and fuel the party’s activist base, is less coterminous with that of nonwhite voters than Democrats seem to believe.

Reviewing recent data on the views of nonwhite voters makes it less mysterious why they can contain their enthusiasm for Biden.

1. A May Washington Post/ABC News poll asked, “Who do you think did a better job handling the economy (Donald Trump when he was president), or (Joe Biden during his presidency so far)?” Nonwhite respondents felt, by 48 to 41 percent, that Trump had done a better job on the economy than Biden is currently doing.

2. In an August Fox News poll, two-thirds of nonwhite voters rated their personal financial situation as only fair or poor and barely over a quarter (27 percent) said the Biden administration had made the economy better, compared to 42 percent who thought Biden had made the economy worse. Respectively, 46, 54 and 56 percent of nonwhite voters say gas prices, grocery prices and utility costs are a “major problem” for them and their family. Biden’s net approval (approval minus disapproval) among these voters is minus 25 on handling inflation, minus 22 on handling border security and minus 8 on handling the economy.

3. In a recent 6,000 respondent survey conducted by AEI’s Survey Center on American Life (SCAL) and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), 57 percent of nonwhite voters say Biden has accomplished not that much or little or nothing during his time in office. About half consider the Democratic Party too extreme, think it bases its decisions more on politics than common sense and supports policies that interfere too much in people’s lives. Over two-fifths don’t see the Democrats as sharing their values. And over a third think Democrats look down on people like them, don’t value hard work and aren’t patriotic.

The Democratic Party has been all-in on the idea of “structural racism”—that idea that racism is “built into our society, including into its policies and institutions”, rather than coming “from individuals who hold racist views, not from our society and institutions.” In the SCAL/NORC survey, about half of nonwhite voters choose the latter view, that racism comes from individuals, not society. And two-thirds of these voters reject the idea of reducing police budgets in favor of social services, preferring instead to fully fund police budgets in the interest of public safety.

4. In The Liberal Patriot’s recent survey of American voters conducted by YouGov, most nonwhite voters believe the Democratic Party has moved too far left on both economic and cultural/social issues. On economic issues, 57 percent of these voters say Democrats have moved too far left. On cultural and social issues, 56 percent say the same.

As examples, only about a quarter of nonwhite voters identify with the standard Democratic position on transgender issues—that “states should protect all transgender youth by providing access to puberty blockers and transition surgeries if desired, and allowing them to participate fully in all activities and sports as the gender of their choice”. And only around a third support the standard Democratic position on climate and energy policy—that “We need a rapid green transition to end the use of fossil fuels and replace them with fully renewable energy sources.” The latter finding is intriguing because so much of Democrats’ industrial and economic policy is built around just this transition. But perhaps not surprising because climate change is just not a particularly important issue to the typical voter, including the typical nonwhite voter.

None of this means that nonwhite voters are now going to become a Republican constituency, despite these voters’ concerns about the Democrats and cross-pressures on issues. Hardly; Biden will likely carry these voters by a healthy margin in 2024. But it does mean that Democrats’ hold on these voters may well slip further in 2024, cutting Democrats’ margins dangerously among a group that has been the bedrock of Democrats’ electoral strategy.

That strategy has been based around the presumed effects of rising racial diversity. This demographic change is generally understood to be beneficial to the Democrats’ electoral fortunes (as John Judis and I argued in our 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority). That’s a reasonable viewpoint based on a very simple idea: If voter groups favorable to the Democrats (nonwhites) are growing while unfavorable groups (whites) are declining, that should be good news for the Democrats. This is called a “mix effect”: a change in electoral margins attributable to the changing mix of voters.

These mix effects are what people typically have in mind when they think of the pro-Democratic effects of rising diversity. But mix effects, by definition, assume no shifts in voter preference: They are an all-else-equal concept, as we were careful to stress two decades ago. If voter preferences remain the same, then mix effects mean that the Democrats will come out ahead. That is a mathematical fact.

But voter preferences do not generally remain the same. Therein lies the reason why, in some cases, rising diversity has not produced the dividends for Democrats that many activists and advocates anticipated. And why it may not pan out for the Democrats in 2024, judging from the data reviewed above.

Democrats may have thought that they were on the right track in the wake of the “racial reckoning” of 2020. Surely if Democrats went all-in on social justice and racial “equity,” that would lock down the nonwhite vote. That was a chimera as a careful examination of actually-existing opinions and priorities among actually-existing nonwhite voters would have quickly revealed. Perhaps now that declining nonwhite support for the Democrats is “official”, that much-needed examination can take place.

Monica Potts explains why “Aging Politicians Are Only Going To Get More Common” at FiveThirtyEight:

Presidents are getting older and older. Former President Donald Trump was the oldest person to assume office when he was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017, and President Biden broke that record four years later. If either is elected again next year, at ages 78 and 81, respectively, they will be older than the previous record holder, Ronald Reagan, was when he left office at the age of 77.

The possibility of an octogenarian on the presidential ticket is worrying many Americans — perhaps because it’s not just the presidency that’s aging. The current Congress, with a median age of 65 in the Senate and 58 in the House, is the oldest in history. Last week, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, 81, seemed to freeze while speaking for the second time in two months, there were renewed calls for him to step aside, and 90-year-old California Sen. Dianne Feinstein has been under similar scrutiny after a series of health issues. Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who is 51 and running for the Republican nomination, has called for competency tests for candidates older than 75, and her opponent Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old entrepreneur, has said it’s time for a new generation to step up and lead.

Voters are worried about the age of candidates and elected officials, especially when it comes to Biden. The vast majority of American adults, 77 percent, say he is too old to be effective for another four years, according to an AP-NORC poll in August. Fifty-seven percent of registered voters thought age severely limited President Biden’s ability to do his job in an Economist/YouGov poll from August. Similar questions were asked about Feinstein and McConnell, about whom 60 percent said the same.

But will voters actually start rejecting candidates because of their age? There are plenty of reasons why older politicians continue to hold the levers of power — and the structure of our political system makes it hard to force them to let go, even as Americans’ concerns about the country’s aging political leadership mount. That’s why Americans may continue to support older politicians when they’re in the voting booth, even as they say they prefer a younger leadership cohort.

Potts notes, further,

Some voters, though, think we should have clearer rules about when a politician is too old to serve. Sixty-seven percent of respondents strongly or somewhat supported an age limit for serving in the Senate in a YouGov/UMass Amherst poll from June, and 58 percent of adults thought age limits for serving as president would be a good idea in a Marist poll from last November. Sixty-eight percent of respondents favored mental competency tests for candidates over 75 in a YouGov/Yahoo survey from February. A plurality, 48 percent, think the job of president is too demanding for someone over 75, according to a CBS/YouGov poll from June. And overall, Americans’ preference for younger leadership is clear: About half of Americans think the ideal age for a president is someone in their 50s, according to the Pew Research Center.

….“I think the biggest reason that younger Americans want younger lawmakers is they feel they’re not well represented by older Americans, both from a standpoint of the things that older representatives might focus on or talk about that are different from what a younger candidate might talk about,” but also because, like all Americans, they want to see themselves represented in government, [University of Utah political scientist James M.] Curry said. Younger Americans are missing that representation now. “It makes them less satisfied with their representative government and less satisfied with their democracy,” he said.

Potts has more to say about the graying of America’s political leaders, and you can read more of her post here.

In “Democratic group writes a poll-tested playbook to fight impeachment in Biden districts,” Sahil Kapur reports at nbcnews.com that “A Democratic-aligned group commissioned a rare poll across the 18 Republican-held districts won in 2020 by President Joe Biden about a potential House impeachment inquiry, seeking to fine-tune a strategy to impose maximum political pain on GOP lawmakers if they go down that path….The poll, conducted by the liberal firm Public Policy Polling on behalf of Congressional Integrity Project and first reported by NBC News, will be distributed to Democratic lawmakers as a playbook for how to battle an inquiry that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called a “natural step forward.”….Congressional Integrity Project’s executive director, Kyle Herrig, said impeachment would be “a political stunt designed to hurt President Biden and help Donald Trump.” He added: “We’re going to make sure the Biden 18 know that voting for an impeachment inquiry would be a costly political decision.”….The results showed two-thirds of respondents in those key GOP-held battleground districts said Republicans shouldn’t impeach Biden without “evidence” that he “received any bribes or changed government policies in relation to the activities of his son, Hunter Biden.” That includes an even greater share of independents, the firm said. Meanwhile, only one quarter of respondents said they should proceed either way….When given two options, more than half of those surveyed said impeachment would be more of a “political stunt,” while just over four in 10 said it was a “serious effort to investigate important problems.” Majorities of respondents also said it was more about “damaging President Biden politically” than “finding the truth,” when presented with those two options….Notably, the PPP poll found that Biden is not particularly popular in those key 18 districts.”

Some observations from a FiveThirtyEight chat on “What Are The Swing States Of The Future?”: “nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, senior elections analyst): I think an underrated swing state is Florida. People have written it off after it swung unexpectedly to Republicans in 2020 and after Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis won reelection by almost 20 percentage points in 2022. But people forget that former President Donald Trump won it in 2020 by only 3 points. If the 2024 election is shaping up to be a rematch between Trump and Biden, I think it’s reasonable to think Florida could be tight again. Do I think Biden will win it? No, probably not. But I think it’s still a better investment for Biden’s campaign dollars than, say, Texas….geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, senior elections analyst): I think a lot of this comes down to how you define a swing state. I tend to think about one larger group of battleground states that, under a set of realistic but more favorable conditions, couldflip to one party. Then you have a smaller group of core swing states that are actually most likely to decide the outcome of the election….We’ve mentioned a bunch of states from my larger list so far, so I’ll mention a place that’s in my core group of swing areas but isn’t a state: Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District. Under the new congressional lines, Biden carried it by a little more than 6 percentage points in 2020, not far from his 4.5-point national win. But under a number of scenarios, that one little electoral vote from the Omaha-based seat could play a role in bringing about — or avoiding — a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College. To me, that makes it underrated…. gelliottmorris: Well … if I’m picking a sleeper swing state, I’m picking Alaska or Utah. Alaska is on the list because its use of ranked-choice voting has highlighted a potential ideological shift in the state, where moderate Democrats are increasingly favored. Mary Peltola, the representative for Alaska’s At-Large Congressional District, is sometimes called a “pro-guns, pro-fish” Democrat for her pro-gun and pro-conservation stances. And then I’d pick Utah because of severe aversion to Trump among the state’s Republican voter base. In 2016, independent candidate Evan McMullin was able to win 22 percent of the vote in the state. In 2018, Utah voters elected Trump-skeptic Mitt Romney to the Senate. And then McMullin won 43 percent of the vote against incumbent Sen. Mike Lee in 2022.”….geoffrey.skelley: We talked earlier about Democrats feeling too sure about a state like New Hampshire. I wonder if Virginia might fall into that category, too. It does seem to have moved just outside the truly up-for-grabs states, having trended about 6 points to the left of the country in 2020. However, Republican Glenn Youngkin carried the state in the 2021 gubernatorial election, so I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily out of reach for Republicans. To be clear, the trend has not been great for Republicans at the presidential level in the Old Dominion. But it’s still got some purple mixed in with its blue.”

From “Democrats question whether it’s the economy anymore, stupid” by Alex Gangitano at The Hill: “Bruce Mehlman, former assistant secretary at the Commerce Department under President George W. Bush, said the economy seems less of a factor today than it once did….“Over the past two decades, traditional economic metrics have increasingly detached from presidential approval numbers and right-track or wrong-track sentiment, with the 2022 midterms the ultimate example,” said Mehlman, a founding partner at Mehlman Consulting. “The data screamed ‘giant wave,’ but many anxious voters preferred known incumbents over frightening disruptors.”….Josh Bivens, research director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said his “gut” tells him Biden may eventually benefit from the economy….He predicted that with 3 to 4 percent inflation or lower and consistent low unemployment for another year could lead to higher ratings for Biden. Unemployment currently sits at just 3.6 percent….“The ratchet-up of inflation in 2021 and early 2022 very much unsettled people, and they are only now really recognizing that the ratchet has started to reverse pretty decisively,” Bivens said….Polls show the public has doubts about Biden on the economy….Only 34 percent of Americans in a Monmouth University poll last month saidthey approve of his handling of inflation, and Biden received a split rating on his handling of jobs and unemployment, with 47 percent approving and 48 percent disapproving of it.”

“Can Reverse Coattails Save the Democrats in 2024?,” Robert Kuttner asks at The American Prospect and writes: that “Biden and the Democrats can benefit from reverse coattails. The conventional wisdom is that the presidential candidate has the coattails, the ability to excite voters and help down-ballot candidates of the president’s party. Conversely, down-ticket candidates can’t affect turnout very much. Well, none of that is the case this time….Several senators up in 2024 are, to be blunt, more popular than Biden and are better politicians. Sherrod Brown will probably run well ahead of Biden in Ohio. Likewise Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and Bob Casey in Pennsylvania. In Arizona, Ruben Gallego will pull lots of progressive voters to the polls. He’s a lot more exciting than Biden….Ohio is probably beyond Biden’s reach in 2024, but Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Arizona are prime swing states. Effective candidates for the Senate and House can mobilize voters and in turn help the national ticket. Yes, it’s possible to imagine voters splitting their tickets to vote for, say, Tammy Baldwin and Donald Trump, but precious few of them….The 2018 midterm election was the epic example of down-ticket races energizing voters to the Democrats’ advantage, and of course no presidential candidate was on the ballot. If Democrats and grassroots activists do their jobs well, 2024 could be like 2018….Running local candidates can boost national turnout for Democrats. Yoni Landau, a respected grassroots strategist who founded the group Contest Every Race, points out that there are hundreds of thousands of down-ballot elected posts at the county and town level that Democrats fail to contest. Simply fielding candidates raises national Democratic turnout….In 2021, the group Run For Something did a detailed statistical analysis comparing turnout in local legislative races where the Democrats fielded a candidate with those where the Republican ran unopposed. They found that even in deep-red states and districts where the Democrat lost, having a Democrat in the race helped the national ticket. In Georgia, the fact that more Democrats contested local elections may well have helped Biden eke out his 12,000-vote victory margin….According to the study, Biden did 0.3 percent to 1.5 percent better in conservative legislative districts where Democrats ran challengers than in districts where the Republican was unopposed. The analysis used precinct-level data in eight states—Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Kansas, and New York—to compare contested and uncontested races.”

As America begins sorting out accountability for the January 6th violence, some nuggets from “Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says” by Rachel Kleinfeld at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace should be of interest. As Kleinfeld writes:

American voters are less ideologically polarized than they think they are, and that misperception is greatest for the most politically engaged people. Americans across parties share many policy preferences. There is some overlap even on hot-button issues, such as abortion and guns, and more overlap on how to teach American history.¹ It is important not to make too much of this overlap, however. For instance, a majority of Democrats as well as four in ten Republicans support banning high-capacity ammunition magazines and creating a federal database to track gun sales; nearly as many Republicans support banning assault-style weapons. But only 18 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners feel gun violence is a major problem (versus 73 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners). So despite the significant policy overlap, only one side is motivated to put the issue on the agenda.² Democrats have moved to the left on racial issues and some social issues over the last decade, and Republicans have moved to the right on immigration under Joe Biden’s administration, though there remains overlap on these issues as well.³ In some cases, Republicans appear to be slowly adopting more progressive views on some social issues, resulting in what looks like polarization but is perhaps better characterized as faster moves by the left.⁴

However, most partisans hold major misbeliefs about the other party’s preferences that lead them to think there is far less shared policy belief. This perception gap is highest among progressive activists, followed closely by extreme conservatives: in other words, the people who are most involved in civic and political life hold the least accurate views of the other side’s beliefs…..

American politicians are highly ideologically polarized. In other words, they believe in and vote for different sets of policies, with little overlap. This trend has grown in a steady, unpunctuated manner for decades.⁵ One reason that the most highly politically engaged Americans may misunderstand the other side is that they correctly estimate the extreme ideological polarization among politicians.

It is easy to assume that polarized voters are selecting more polarized leaders—and that theory may hold true for recent primary elections. However, that is not the main story. The process begins long before voters get a choice: more ideologically extreme politicians have been running for office since the 1980s.⁶ Among the pool of people wishing to run, party chairs more often select and support extreme candidates, especially on the right. (In 2013, Republican party chairs at the county level selected ten extreme candidates for every one moderate; the ratio was two to one for Democrats.) The increase in “safe” seats, in which one party is overwhelmingly likely to win, explains candidate and party preferences for more polarizing platforms, but it does not explain the depth of the Republican preference.⁷

Parties and candidates clearly believe that more polarizing candidates are more likely to win elections. This may be a self-fulfilling prophecy: voters exposed to more polarizing rhetoric from leaders who share their partisan identity are likely to alter their preferences based on their understanding of what their group believes and has normalized—particularly among primary voters whose identity is more tied to their party. ⁸ However, only about 20 percent of each party votes in primaries, and 41 percent of Americans are independents who may not have strong party identity and are barred from voting in some states’ primaries.⁹ That leaves the majority of voters with a relatively low ability to pick a less polarizing candidate of their party. Philanthropists and prodemocracy organizations attempting to reduce polarization often assume that the problem they must grapple with is polarized voters, but their interventions should also take into account the fact that that some of the ideological extremism and polarization since the 1980s is candidate- and party-driven. While at this point, candidates and parties may be responding to polarized primary voters, candidates and parties have been driving the polarization, and not all voters are ideologically polarized.

The disparity between where leaders are ideologically and where their voters are precludes legislative policy agreement on many issues. Average voters are not able to assert their (often weak) policy preferences because they do not have an effective way to vote out representatives who do not accurately represent their constituents’ views, particularly on the right where party chairs are likely to substitute one extreme candidate for another.

Even though Americans are not as ideologically polarized as they believe themselves to be, they are emotionally polarized (known as “affective polarization”). In other words, they do not like members of the other party. Americans harbor strong dislike for members of the other party (though they also dislike their own parties, as well).¹⁰While social media is often blamed for this phenomenon, affective polarization started growing before the internet: its onset more closely correlates with the rise of cable news and radio talk shows.¹¹ It is also growing most swiftly among Americans over sixty-five years old, a demographic that uses the internet less, but watches television and listens to talk radio far more, than younger age groups who are less polarized.¹² These findings and other studies about the effects of social media suggest that all media, not just social media, may be playing a role.

….Studies have found that telling people in a believable way that they share policy beliefs and similar demographics and creating a sense that there is a shared identity (though the latter is complicated for minorities who prefer dual identities) are interventions that can reduce affective polarization.¹⁴ Often, bringing people together across difference is used to accomplish these ends, and this contact between groups may reduce affective polarization.

Kleinfeld notes further, “What is unique about political violence is that it does not arise from interpersonal friction. Instead, for people with low self-control (a large pool that includes, for instance, teenage boys and anyone who has drunk in excess) and aggressive personalities (which limits that pool somewhat) to turn to violence, they need to be enraged and have that anger directed at a group of people they don’t know. They also need to believe that they will not face severe consequences or not care about consequences (because they are too impulsive to care or because they think the consequences are worth it)…..the normalization of violence by political leaders, in particular, may provide a sense that acting violently against those groups will be permitted, may not be punished, or could be lauded and turn one into a hero (such as how Kyle Rittenhouse was supported monetarily and publicly embraced after he traveled to Wisconsin to offer “protection” from a Black Lives Matter protest and shot and killed two people).” Also,

….As political leaders gin up anger and reduce the sense of consequences, and as affective polarization creates a sense of community and belonging for aggressive, more authoritarian personalities, all types of targeted violence are increasing. Not only are American politicians (from school board members to representatives in Congress) receiving more threats, but also, threats against judges are up, hate crimes are at the highest recorded point in the twenty-first century, and mass shootings are spiking, with perpetrators adopting some political rhetoric into their manifestos or targeting scapegoated groups…..Unfortunately, much prodemocracy programming enhances fear that the other side poses an existential threat to democracy. The attempt to use fear to get voters to pay attention to serious threats to democracy is understandable, particularly raising alarms in certain states or about certain politicians given the degree to which the Republican Party is being taken over by an antidemocratic faction. However, the broad sweep of fear may encourage people to vote while also building support for antidemocratic behavior. This is a real problem the prodemocracy community must consider seriously, possibly by experimenting with more positive, aspirational mobilizing strategies rather than relying on threats. The effects on younger voters, who are already less attached to the democratic system than other demographics, may be particularly harmful over time.

…The affective polarization conversation misses the reality that a portion of angry, low-trust Americans do not simply dislike the other party but distrust nearly every institution in American life: big business, schools, newspapers, television news, Congress, the criminal justice system, and organized religion, among others.⁴⁰ In reality, they are polarized from a political and economic system that feels separate (hence “elite”) and insensitive to their needs. While polling geared toward affective polarization has found them disgusted with the other party, they in fact feel frustrated and hopeless about the entire U.S. political and economic system in general. Instead of focusing on polarization, the alienation they feel needs to be addressed by enabling agency around problems they—and the people they are often pitted against in more simplistic media accounts—both want solved…. Understanding which problems are shared and solvable cannot be guessed beforehand: it requires discussion and trust-building.

….Polarization is a highly nuanced field, and small assumptions can lead to big mistakes. Practitioners and philanthropists should be particularly careful about assumptions regarding moderation. People who poll as moderates may also be antidemocratic or supportive of political violence, especially on the right. On the left, support for democracy may coincide with support for violence.

Many people think of Americans as arrayed along a straight line, with the far left on one side and the far right on the other. They assume that the people at the edges are the most polarized, the most partisan, hold the most extreme ideological views, and are the most supportive of antidemocratic actions and violence. This is not the case. Consistent conservatives and liberals who are more politically engaged are both more affectively and ideologically polarized and more prodemocracy than those in the middle.

It is a common assumption that people who hold views from both sides of the aisle are economically conservative and socially liberal—the profile of many in the upper-middle-class political elite trying to reduce polarization. In fact, a 2016 study showed that this type of moderate ideology was held by only 3.8 percent of the electorate. Instead, the preponderance of Americans who respond to ideological survey questions with answers on both sides of the aisle (28.9 percent of the electorate) tend to be pro–economic redistribution while also upholding the belief that American citizens should be White, Christian, and born in the United States.⁴⁴ That mix of views led this group to be swing voters for many years, although since 2016 many have moved more decisively into the Republican Party.

….the antidemocratic right is a plurality of somewhere between a quarter and a third of the Republican Party.⁴⁹ The proviolence left is tiny and composes an insignificant part of the vote share of Democrats, especially since many may vote for third parties. Both are surrounded, however, by a penumbra of apologists and soft supporters who normalize their behavior. This has allowed the antidemocratic faction of the right to achieve a nearly complete takeover of the Republican Party that is giving it significant political power. Maverick activists on the left hold virtually no political power at any level of government, but their views have achieved outsized cultural sway. Despite their asymmetry, the bogeyman of these two groups is fueling the other and is the main force tearing the country apart—not a more generic or symmetrical polarization.

Read more…

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:

In the wake of the first GOP primary debate, it would not seem that Republicans are making a strong case for their party as America’s common-sense, normie voter alternative. And the craziest one of the lot, Donald Trump, wasn’t even there!

But how much stronger is the Democrats’ case in this regard? For partisan Democrats, the answer is “infinitely stronger”—but it is not among partisan Democrats that the next election will be decided but among more persuadable voters for whom this is a tougher call. This is reflected in the continuing failure of Biden to open up much of a lead over Trump, his probable general election opponent, and even tighter polling in the generic congressional ballot for 2024.

This should worry Democrats a great deal. Given the dysfunctional and weakened nature of today’s Republican Party, why isn’t their party an easier sell? The simplest answer is that they, themselves, are not that attractive. What might it take for Democrats to get over the hurdle and make themselves the clear and easy choice as America’s common-sense, normie voter party and not just in the friendly environs of the country’s cosmopolitan metro areas?

Below are ten statements that I first formulated a couple of years ago that encapsulate some of what “Common Sense Democrats” might stand for. Since then these statements have been tested in statewide polls in the very blue state of Massachusetts and the purple state of Wisconsin and received overwhelming support. (I should note that the statements were simply tested as is, rather than reworded for survey purposes, but the results were striking nonetheless.) Most recently, the ten statements were tested nationally from April to June among over 18,000 registered voters by RMG Research.

Here are the results:

• Equality of opportunity is a fundamental American principle; equality of outcome is not. (73 percent agree/13 percent disagree)
• America is not perfect but it is good to be patriotic and proud of the country. (81 percent agree/14 percent disagree)
• Discrimination and racism are bad but they are not the cause of all disparities in American society. (70 percent agree/24 percent disagree)
• No one is completely without bias but calling all white people racists who benefit from white privilege and American society a white supremacist society is not right or fair. (77 percent agree/15 percent disagree)
• America benefits from the presence of immigrants and no immigrant, even if illegal, should be mistreated. But border security is still important, as is an enforceable system that fairly decides who can enter the country. (78 percent agree/14 percent disagree)
• Police misconduct and brutality against people of any race is wrong and we need to reform police conduct and recruitment. More and better policing is needed for public safety and that cannot be provided by “defunding the police.” (79 percent agree/15 percent disagree)
• There are underlying differences between men and women but discrimination on the basis of gender is wrong. (82 percent agree/12 percent disagree)
• There are basically two genders, but people who want to live as a gender different from their biological sex should have that right and not be discriminated against. However, there are issues around child consent to transitioning and participation in women’s sports that are complicated and far from settled. (73 percent agree/17 percent disagree)
• Racial achievement gaps are bad and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism and standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races. (74 percent agree/16 percent disagree)
• Language policing has gone too far; by and large, people should be able to express their views without fear of sanction by employer, school, institution or government. Good faith should be assumed, not bad faith. (76 percent agree/14 percetn disagree)

It could be argued that these statements are too easy to agree with and are just common sense. But if they’re all just common sense, why do so many Democrats have trouble saying these things? Indeed, how comfortable would most Democratic Party politicians be endorsing the full range of these views? Would Joe Biden? I don’t think so.

Read more…

From “Just in time for Labor Day, the best and worst states for worker-friendly policies” by Levi Sumagaysay at Marketwatch: “Some states that rank in the middle of Oxfam’s annual index of the best and worst states for workers are making progress….In 2018, the global charity rolled out the index as a way to track the impact of a general lack of federal laws addressing the needs of low-wage workers and working families, it has said. Since then, states in the Northeast and West Coast have consistently ranked at the top of the index, and Southern states have ranked at the bottom….The index covers all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, and, most recently, Puerto Rico….California took the top spot this year, with a score of 86.01 out of 100, because of its strong unemployment benefits and minimum wages and for being one of the only states with a heat standard for outdoor workers, the report said. The rest of the top five, in order, were Oregon; Washington, D.C.; New York; and Washington….The state that came in last was North Carolina, with a score of 7.57, followed by Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama. All these states have a minimum wage of $7.25 — the federal minimum wage — and right-to-work laws. None of these states mandates paid leave, which the report’s author said benefits women the most, because they are usually the caregivers of their families and communities….Oxfam senior research adviser Kaitlyn Henderson, the author of the 2023 report, said in an interview with MarketWatch that she’s excited by improvements for workers in states in the middle of the rankings, including Minnesota and Michigan….“Minnesota had the most productive legislative session in the country since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal,” including the passage of a paid-leave law for both family and sick leave, Henderson said. “They’re weaving a social safety net there that’s really inspiring, and something the federal government should pay attention to.”

Sumagaysay continues, “Another win for workers was Michigan repealing its right-to-work law in March, Henderson said, marking the first time since the 1960s that a state’s right-to-work law has been overturned. Worker advocates oppose right-to-work laws because they don’t require employees to join and financially support unions as a condition of employment, therefore making it harder for employees to form unions and collectively bargain. Twenty-six states currently have these laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures….In the report, Henderson also lamented some setbacks in worker protections, including child-labor laws. For example, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, signed legislation in March eliminating requirements that the state verify the age of children under 16 and require them to obtain a work certificate before they are hired for a job. Her spokesperson said at the time that the governor believes it’s important to protect children, but the permit requirement created an arbitrary burden for parents….The differences between the states at the top of the index and those at the bottom are “stark,” the report said. The research also found a correlation between the rankings and measures of poverty, food insecurity, infant mortality, median household income and more….Oxfam based its rankings on more than two dozen policies across wages, worker protections and rights to organize in each state. All rankings were based on laws and policies in effect as of July 1….“Our goal is to inspire a race to the top,” Henderson said. “We want to encourage states to do more for working families.”….The Oxfam report included an index for the best states for working women, which mostly corresponded with the highest-ranked states for workers overall. In the index for women, the top five states in order were Oregon, California, New York, Illinois and Washington. The bottom five had North Carolina coming in last, followed by Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Texas….The index for women, Henderson said, put a stronger emphasis on tipped wages because women disproportionately make up the tipped workforce. Another key factor in the rankings was the ability for public-school workers to organize in a state, because public-school teachers overwhelmingly are women, she said. Of the five states ranked lowest for women, only Mississippi gives workers the right to organize.” Here are the rankings, which total 52 because of the inclusion of D.C. and P.R. Quibble with the ranking criteria if you will, but Democratic candidates in the bottom-ranking states may be able to gain some traction by focusing on needed labor reforms.:

The Best States to Work Index: How the states rank overall and by policy area

At In These Times, Nick French argues “If Democrats Want to Win Elections, They Should Bring Back the Covid Welfare State: By many measures, Bidenomics is working great—but most Americans are still down on the economy. That’s in large part because the U.S. government let its temporarily generous social safety net unravel.” As French observes, “Real GDP has grown 5% since 2019. Unemployment has fallen to a low of 3.7% after a peak of around 15% in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. And inflation, although still higher than pre-pandemic levels, appears to be receding. Real wages are up by 3.5% since Biden took office, with low-wage workers seeing the biggest of those gains between July 2022 and July 2023….Yet many Americans still seem decidedly unhappy with economic conditions today. Several recent polls have found that people in the United States hold negative views of the economy and of how President Biden has been handling it, despite the rosy macroeconomic indicators. For instance, the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, which has been measuring consumer confidence levels nationwide since 1978, found that consumers’ feelings about the economy and their personal finances — although up from an all-time low last summer — were still quite negative in August 2023. And a July New York Times poll found that only 20% of Americans would rate economic conditions today as ​“excellent” or ​“good.” (By contrast, 49% rated the economy ​“poor.”).”

French continues, “This disconnect has led many pundits to wonder what’s going on, with some chalking up Americans’ low opinion of ​“Bidenomics” to partisanship or ignorance….But Biden still has opportunities to help working people, and there are plenty of actions that he and national Democrats could take now to make people’s lives better and to shore up political support. That will mean making aggressive use of executive power. First and most obvious, the Biden administration should extend the student loan repayment pause, and it should also use all powers at its disposal to actually make good on its promise to cancel student loan debt. This spring, the Congressional Progressive Caucus put forward a list of other items that Biden could enact through executive orders. These include providing generous sick leave and vacation by strengthening Service Contract Act regulations, and expanding access to healthcare premium subsidies…. Biden could also make the overwhelmingly popular move of legalizing marijuana on the federal level. The administration just announced a plan to negotiate lower prices on a number of drugs for seniors under Medicare, but Biden could take even more aggressive action to lower pharmaceutical prices across the board….Democrats should take Americans’ negative views of the economy seriously. This means taking action to provide material benefits to working people while improving their economic security. It also requires offering an exciting, positive alternative political vision to counter the GOP’s grievance-mongering. It will be up to progressives and the Left in and outside of Congress to articulate such a vision — and demand that Biden and the Democratic Party act on it.”

Kyle Kondik and Carah Ong Whaley have a warning, “How generative AI tools can make campaign messages even more deceptive” up at Saboto’s Crystal Ball. The messaging tools they are talking about are available for any political party. But it’s the Democrats who should worry about them the most, given the moral decay of the GOP, which was not all that reluctant to deceive voters in the first place. Some of Kondik’s and Whaley’s observations:

Winter is coming. We are rapidly moving from “alternative facts” to artificial ones in politics, campaigns, and elections.

In July, a campaign ad from Never Back Down, a group that supports Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in the 2024 presidential race, attacked former President Trump. The ad featured a soundbite of what sounds like former President Trump’s voice. But it wasn’t. Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) is a tool that is used by humans, but it poses several dangers to elections and to democracy. Leading into the 2024 election, we are already seeing the use of “deepfakes,” computer-created manipulation of a person’s voice or likeness using machine learning to create content that appears real. We spoke with UVA Today about the challenges deepfakes pose to free elections and democracy, and we are sharing some key points that we made in the piece:

Candidate comments out of context, and doctored photos and video footage, have already been used for decades in campaigns. What Gen AI tools do is dramatically increase the ability and scale to spread false information and propaganda, leaving us numb and questioning everything we see and hear at a time when elections are already facing a crisis of public confidence. Such tools also open up the ability to spread mis-, dis-, and malinformation to any person in the world with a digital device. On top of that, depending on how Gen AI tools have been trained, they can amplify, reinforce, and perpetuate existing biases, with impacts on decision-making and outcomes.

Most of the the public is only dimly aware at best of what is coming, and even those who deploy these weapons may not be so well-informed about the potential for harm they bring to our politics. As the authors note further:

For some voters, exposure to certain messages might suppress turnout. For others, even worse, it could stoke anger and political violence. It’s worth noting here it’s not just the United States having elections in 2024 — there are some 65 elections across 54 countries slated for 2024. So, the potential harms extend globally. I am especially concerned about the use of AI for voter manipulation, not just through deepfakes, but through the ability of Gen AI to be microtargeting on steroids through text message and email campaigns. Indeed, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, stated in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that spreading one-on-one interactive disinformation was one of his greatest concerns about the technology.

With significant changeover in leadership at social media companies, especially at X (formerly Twitter), policy and technical teams may not be fully prepared to detect, assess, and prevent the proliferation of mis-, dis-, and malinformation across platforms. This is particularly troubling given that malinformation online and organizing online can spill over into political violence in the real world. Think Charlottesville 2017 or Jan. 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol, but much, much worse.

Democratic researchers are looking into it, and it is encouraging, as Kondik and Whaley note, that “Congress and the White House are deliberating how to balance the harms and advantages of Gen AI” and “Seven leading tech companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI — recently signed a voluntary commitment with the Biden administration to manage risks created by AI.” These companies have promised ““robust technical mechanisms to ensure that users know when content is AI generated, such as a watermarking system,” but it would be folly for Democrats to bet their survival on such agreements being honored.

There are ways Democrats could use the AI tools with integrity guidelines, and Dems should explore the possibilities. Budget-strapped campaigns, however, may not have adequate resources to hire the needed talent, which may be a limited pool in high demand in the months ahead.

Kondik and Whaley urge that “candidates, campaigns and PACs, issue groups, etc.” be required “to report the use of Gen AI, in the same way they are required to report campaign expenditures or lobbying activities. Candidates and campaigns should also be required to clearly label not just videos, but also emails and text messages microtargeting different demographic groups.”

The Federal Election Commission is also chewing on a range of such proposals and hopes to get some public feedback by October 16th of this year. The University of Virginia Center for Politics is also soliciting ideas from the public to be emailed to clo3s@virginia.edu. Kondik and Whaley flag episodes of their ‘Politics is Everything’ podcast, “A Regulatory Regime for AI? ft. Congresswoman Yvette Clarke; Neverending Cat and Mouse: Are Online Companies Prepared for 2024 Elections? ft. Katie Harbath; Saving Democracy from & with AI ft. Nathan Sanders; and How Congress Is Addressing the Harmful Effects of AI ft. Anna Lenhart.”

They also direct interested readers to Bryan McKenzie’s “Is That Real? Deepfakes Could Post Danger to Free Elections” at UVA Today.

These are good resources. Democrats, however, would do well to remember that Republicans are unlikely to have deeply-felt internal debates about the morality of using the new AI tools. They are probably already busy planning how to use them in forthcoming campaigns at the federal, state and local levels. Of particular concern will be roll-outs of outrageous fakes and audiovisual distortions in the final days of campaigns in swing states and districts, so that it’s too late for an effective response. To not have a plan for dealing with such an onslaught would be political negligence with potentially-dire consequences.