An excerpt from “Public Opinion About Trump’s Criminality Is Shifting—a Bit” by John Cassidy at the New Yorker:

Will the accumulation of charges and evidence, and maybe even actual trials, gradually turn opinion decisively against the former President, especially among voters who aren’t highly partisan? Will things swing in his favor? Or will things stay where they are now, with views highly polarized on partisan lines?

In thinking about these questions, a good place to start is the latest opinion survey from Bright Line Watch, a group of political scientists that monitors threats to democracy. The survey, which was published last week, was carried out before the latest charges against Trump were filed. On the face of things, it confirmed the familiar picture that, when it comes to anything having to do with the former President, universally acknowledged truths hardly exist. Fewer than one in six Republican voters said they believed that Trump had committed crimes in trying to overturn the 2020 election, in his actions before the January 6th riots, or in making hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels. A few more Republicans said they believed that he committed a crime in the classified-documents case, but the total was still only one in four. By contrast, at least three in four Democrats believe that Trump committed crimes in each of these instances, the results indicated.

Among self-identified independents who don’t lean toward either party, the survey yielded more ambiguous results. Fewer than half of these respondents—between thirty-seven per cent and forty-six per cent, depending on the specific cases—said they believed that Trump had committed a crime. And about half of these respondents said that the charges were politically motivated. But, although these findings seem encouraging for Trump and his supporters, the survey also found that the number of independents who believe that Trump has done something criminal is growing, especially in relation to the classified-documents case. In a Bright Line Watch survey carried out last October, thirty-four per cent of independents said that a crime had been committed in that case. In the latest poll, that number had grown to forty-six per cent.

This suggests that, as prosecutors release more details of the charges and evidence against Trump, opinion is slowly shifting against him among less partisan voters. The survey even showed evidence of movement among Republicans. Since last October, the percentage of Republicans who said they believed that Trump had committed a crime in handling classified documents rose fromnine to twenty-five. “We have to keep two things in mind at the same time,” Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth who co-founded Bright Line Watch, told me on Monday. “On the one hand, the public is incredibly polarized on these cases. On the other hand, the new evidence does seem to be moving the needle.”

In a world of filter bubbles and willful propagating of misinformation, this shift can be viewed as an encouraging development. It’s evident in other recent polls, too. Last week, a survey from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College indicated that the percentage of Republicans who believe that Trump has “done nothing wrong” has dropped from fifty per cent to forty-one per cent since June. Evidently, public opinion isn’t set in stone. “Even among Republicans, it does seem like information is being taken in,” Nyhan noted.

However, he emphasized that there were two caveats to this interpretation. Regardless of Republicans’ views about the charges against Trump, there is still no evidence in the Bright Line survey that large numbers of G.O.P. voters will refuse to support him, Nyhan said. This finding is confirmed by other polls: in a New York Times/Siena College poll that was released on Monday, seventy-one per cent of Republicans agreed with the statement that, in relation to the ongoing investigations, “Republicans need to stand behind Trump,” and fifty-eight percent said that they would vote for him in the primary if it were held today.

Nyhan’s second caveat was that the classified-documents case might be special, because the evidence attached to it is so vivid and compelling. In their indictments and other court documents, the federal prosecutors have included photographs of classified documents strewn around Trump’s compound at Mar-a-Lago, and statements from his own lawyers and employees. “I’m cautious about anticipating the same type of movement we’ve seen in the documents case in the 2020-election cases,” Nyhan said. “I think those cases may play as rehashing old issues and evidence that is familiar to people. If it comes down to secondhand accounts of complicated political events, it is easy enough to talk people into holding with their partisan preconceptions.”

Nyhan’s point is well-taken. Together with the recent survey findings, it underscores the importance of the special counsel Jack Smith and the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, laying out compelling evidence if they indict Trump on charges relating to the 2020 election and January 6th. Regardless of how strong these cases are, they will never persuade Trump diehards. (When he remarked, in January, 2016, that voters would support him if he shot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue, he was right.) But there is now at least some evidence that the public at large is more open to reason and evidence. With the next act of the Trump story set to unfold, this offers some ground for cautious optimism.”

On July 5, New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall shared some insights about the electorate going into the 2024 national elections: “Among the additional conditions working to the advantage of Democrats are the increase in Democratic Party loyalty and ideological consistency, the political mobilization of liberal constituencies by adverse Supreme Court rulings, an initial edge in the fight for an Electoral College majority and the increase in nonreligious voters along with a decline in churchgoing believers….These and other factors have prompted two Democratic strategists, Celinda Lake and Mike Lux, to declare, “All the elements are in place for a big Democratic victory in 2024.” In “Democrats Could Win a Trifecta in 2024,” a May 9 memo released to the public, the two even voiced optimism over the biggest hurdle facing Democrats, retaining control of the Senate in 2024, when as many as eight Democratic-held seats are competitive while the Republican seats are in solidly red states:

While these challenges are real, they can be overcome, and the problems are overstated. Remember that this same tough Senate map produced a net of five Democratic pickups in the 2000 election, which Gore narrowly lost to Bush; six Democratic pickups in 2006, allowing Democrats to retake the Senate; and two more in 2012. If we have a good election year overall, we have a very good chance at Democrats holding the Senate.

However, Edsall added, “The RealClearPolitics average of the eight most recent Trump versus Biden polls has Trump up by a statistically insignificant 0.6 percent. From August 2021 to the present, RealClear has tracked a total of 101 polls pitting these two against each other. Trump led in 56, Biden 38, and the remainder were ties.

Edsall notes further, “Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, documents growing Democratic unity in two 2023 papers, “Both White and Nonwhite Democrats Are Moving Left” and “The Transformation of the American Electorate.”….From 2012 to 2020, Abramowitz wrote in the “Transformation” paper, “there was a dramatic increase in liberalism among Democratic voters.” As a result of these shifts, he continued, “Democratic voters are now as consistent in their liberalism as Republican voters are in their conservatism.”….Edsall believes “The education trends favoring Democrats are reinforced by Americans’ changing religious beliefs. From 2006 to 2022, the Public Religion Research Institute found, the white evangelical Protestant share of the population fell from 23 percent to 13.9 percent. Over the same period, the nonreligious share of the population rose from 16 to 26.8 percent.”….While acknowledging the gains Trump and fellow Republicans have made among Latino voters, a June 2023 analysis of the 2022 elections, “Latino Voters & The Case of the Missing Red Wave,” by Equis, a network of three allied, nonpartisan research groups, found that with the exception of Florida, “at the end of the day, there turned out to be basic stability in support levels among Latinos in highly contested races.” In short, the report’s authors continued, “the G.O.P. held gains they had made since 2016/2018 but weren’t able to build on them.”

Looking toward Electoral College votes in 2024, Edsall writes, “Kyle D. Kondik, the managing editor of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ballat the University of Virginia Center for Politics, wrote in “Electoral College Ratings: Expect Another Highly Competitive Election” …..“We are starting 260 electoral votes’ worth of states as at least leaning Democratic,” Kondik wrote, “and 235 as at least leaning Republican,” with “just 43 tossup electoral votes at the outset.”….In other words, if this prediction holds true until November 2024, the Democratic candidate would need 10 more Electoral College votes to win and the Republican nominee would need 35…..The competitive states, Kondik continues, “are Arizona (11 votes), Georgia (16) and Wisconsin (10) — the three closest states in 2020 — along with Nevada (6), which has voted Democratic in each of the last four presidential elections but by closer margins each time.” So thus far, Georgia, followed by Arizona and Wisconsin, is currently the biggest swing state in terms of Electoral College votes. But that’s not a guarantee that it will still be the top prize 15 months from now. But it may be more useful for Democrats to focus on demographic outreach in particular states.

Edsall continues, “Kyle Kondik’s analysis showed that Nevada (17 percent of the vote was Hispanic in 2020) and Arizona (19 percent was Hispanic) are two of the four tossup states in 2024. This suggests that the Latino vote will be crucial. In “15 Facts About Latino Well-Being in Florida” at The UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute, Taemin Ann, Hector DeLeon, Misael Goldamez, Rocio Perez, Denise Ramos-Vega, Lupe Rengteria Salome and Jie Song write: “Florida Latinos are diverse, especially when compared to U.S. Latinos…Latinos of Cuban descent represent the single largest Latino ancestry group (28%), while Puerto Ricans (21%), South Americans (18%), Mexicans (14%), and Dominicans (4%) round out the top 5 groups by origin. In contrast, U.S. Latinos are majority Mexican (62%), while Puerto Ricans, South Americans, Cubans, and Dominicans respectively represent 10% or less of the Latino population….Florida Latinos are less likely to live below the poverty line than U.S. Latinos (19% vs 21.5%), but are just as likely to live in low-income conditions (25% vs 25.8%)….Over half of Latino children are covered by Medicaid—well above the rate for kids statewide (52% vs. 43% respectively)—while only 39% of Latino children are covered by private insurance (vs. 49% for all children statewide).”

The following article by Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent, is cross-posted from The Seattle Medium:

Democrats are increasingly worried about a potential drop in Black voter turnout next year, particularly among Black men, their most loyal constituency, who played a pivotal role in securing President Biden’s victory in 2020 and are crucial to his bid for reelection.

The Washington Post analyzed the Census Bureau’s turnout survey and found that Black voter turnout saw a significant ten percentage-point decline in last year’s midterms compared to 2018, a more substantial drop than among any other racial or ethnic group.

While Democrats initially downplayed these warning signals due to other victories in 2022, such as gaining a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania and Senator Raphael G. Warnock’s reelection in Georgia, the decline in Black turnout has become a significant concern for the party as they look ahead to the next presidential contest in 2024.

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

Back in 2016, neither Trump nor Clinton were widely liked. But Trump got some important help among a key group that amounted to about a fifth of voters: those who didn’t like either of them. Trump’s advantage among these “double haters” helped him win the presidency. This cycle a key role will likely be played by a similar group, also amounting to about a fifth of voters: those who like neither Trump nor Biden.

These “double haters” at this point seem to lean toward Biden. But closer scrutiny of this group, afforded by a 6,000 person survey from the Survey Center on American Life (SCAL), suggests Democrats’ hold on this group is not at all secure. First, while the SCAL survey also finds that double haters lean toward Biden against Trump, a matchup of Biden against DeSantis finds the same group leaning toward DeSantis and even more heavily. So the Biden support here is quite soft.

Moreover, a huge swathe of these double haters—about 40 percent—at this point are noncommittal when asked to choose between Biden and Trump. This group, like double haters in general, displays jaundiced attitudes toward both parties in most areas. But there are some notable divergences in these attitudes that indicate considerable vulnerability for Biden and the Democrats. Consider the following.

1. Undecided double haters consider both parties “too extreme” but more (59 percent) think that about the Democrats than think that about the Republicans (54 percent).
2. Among this group, a mere 28 percent think the Democratic Party “shares my values;” a considerably larger share (42 percent) think Republicans share their values.
3. About half think the Democrats “look down on people like me”. Less (42 percent) feel that way about the Republicans.
4. Just 36 percent think Democrats “look out for the working class” compared to 45 percent who think that about the Republicans.
5. On patriotism and valuing hard work, attitudes toward the parties are essentially inversions of each other. By 63 to 37 percent, undecided double haters say “patriotic” does not describe the Democratic Party. But by 59 to 41 percent they say patriotic does describe the Republicans. Similarly, by 60 to 40 percent, they say “values hard work” does not describe the Democrats. In stark contrast, by 64-36 percent, they believe Republicans do value hard work.

Democrats’ vulnerability is underscored by views among this group on contentious issues dividing Republicans and Democrats. Take the issue of racism in our society. Is racism “built into our society, including into its policies and institutions”, as Democrats contend, or does racism “come from individuals who hold racist views, not from our society and institutions?” In the SCAL survey, by 64 to 34 percent, our undecided double haters chose the latter view, that racism comes from individuals, not society.

Or consider the question of transgender athletes participating in team sports. Should “transgender athletes… be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity” or should they “only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender?” By a staggering 75 to 20 percent, those who dislike both Trump and Biden but currently can’t choose between them, choose the second option, that sports team participation should be determined by birth gender.

The same pattern can be observed on issues ranging from the funding of police departments to the “greatness of America” to the continued use of fossil fuels: views associated with the Republicans are much more popular with this swing group than those associated with the Democrats. On the latter issue, when given a choice between the country using “a mix of energy sources including oil, coal and natural gas along with renewable energy sources” and the current Democratic approach, phasing “out the use of oil, coal and natural gas completely, relying instead on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power only”, they endorse the continued use of fossil fuels by a thumping 80 to 20 percent.

All this suggests Democrats have much work to do—and Republicans have considerable opportunity to take advantage of their vulnerablities. Right now, Plan A for the Democrats seems to rely on the projected success of “Bidenomics,” along with an intransigent refusal to compromise on cultural and green issues beloved by the party’s liberals and aggressive attacks on Republicans as racist reactionaries, if not fascists. The success of Bidenomics, especially as it might translate into a sunny mood about the economy among voters, remains speculative. That puts a lot of weight on the intransigent refusal and aggressive attacks part of the strategy.

Certainly Democrats can point to issues like abortion where Democrats do have an advantage, even with the swing group discussed here. But perhaps they should consider a Plan B, where the success of the Bidenomics pitch is not assumed and compromise is not anathematized. As I have argued previously, Democrats have generally dealt with culturally-freighted issues by some combination of ignore(change the subject) and attack (our opponents are hateful bigots who want to roast the planet). The latter now seems like the preferred Democratic approach. But there is a third way, if you will, that would fit nicely into a Plan B.

That approach is to defuse. This means moving aggressively to neutralize vulnerabilities in cultural areas by (a) dissociating the party from extreme positions in their own ranks; and (b) embracing a common-sense approach to these issues which typically aligns well with both Democratic values and public opinion.

The defuse approach relieves Democrats of the need to defend a multitude of unpopular, controversial practices—thereby giving voters the impression that Democrats are unwilling to draw any lines anywhere against the activist left—and allows them instead to occupy the moral and policy high ground against Republican attacks on common-sense moderation. That’s way better than the situation they currently find themselves in on many cultural issues where the Democratic image is defined by the most leftward position pushed by activists.

In the hand-to-hand combat likely to define the 2024 election, Democrats can ill afford to leave any swing voter behind. They should accept the fact that many, many voters are likely to dislike both Trump and their own standard-bearer. A little compromise is a fair price to pay for reaching more of these voters and having a better chance of victory—especially when we consider what the price of losing might be.

If this doesn’t work, what will? At Politico, Gary Fineout reports, “Florida Democrats see a possible path to winning America’s once-foremost battleground state: Abortion and marijuana….National Democrats had all but written off Florida as a lost cause — a former purple state turned solid red by the MAGA movement and Gov. Ron DeSantis. But key party leaders in the state, desperate to turn things around in 2024, are confident that citizen initiatives dealing with abortion rights and recreational marijuana legalization could fuel turnout and boost the party’s chances….“It will have a transformative impact on the election,” said former state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando Democrat who was swept out of office last year amid Florida’s red wave and is now running for the state Senate….When Democrats gathered in Miami Beach this month to raise money and strategize about 2024, they were buzzing about the prospect of what such high-profile citizens initiatives could mean. Republicans, they said, could suddenly find themselves at a disadvantage….Democratic volunteers and paid canvassers will help gather signatures for the pot and abortion amendments when they go out into the field….There’s no guarantee right now that either the abortion rights or recreational marijuana initiative will make the 2024 ballot. The pot amendment, funded almost entirely by the marijuana giant Trulieve, has already gotten over 1 million signatures, more than enough to qualify. But Florida’s conservative-leaning Supreme Court still needs to approve the initiative and state Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody has asked the high court to reject the measure….Organizers for the abortion rights initiative, which would create a constitutional amendment banning restrictions on abortion before about 24 weeks, say they have gathered more than 400,000 signatures and are on pace to reach one million in the next couple of months. If approved, it would block Florida’s current ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy and this year’s six-week ban, which remains in limbo until the state Supreme Court decides on a legal challenge to the bans….The hope is also that the abortion and marijuana initiatives will provide an incentive for infrequent voters to turn at the polls. And even if it’s not enough to help Biden win Florida — which Trump won in 2020 — it may make a difference in down-ballot contests.” At present 26 states allow some form of ballot initiative.

Talking Points Memo Editor Josh Marshall provides a fresh take on the “Is Biden too old to run for president?” issue, and writes: “If you’re a Democrat into politics mostly as an observer, Joe Biden’s been carrying the torch for three years. You cheer his victories, of which there have been quite a few. You smack down the unfair criticisms. You share Dark Brandon memes when he pulls a rabbit out of a hat. You’re invested. Certainly not everyone is. But it’s in the nature of partisanship that most are. And by definition the people serving under Biden almost certainly are. And they’re in power….All of this applies almost infinitely more when you’re actually in the midst of the reelection campaign. We can imagine an alternate universe in which a few months after taking office Biden announced that because of his age and the unique mission of the 2020 election he wouldn’t run for reelection. A key reason this doesn’t happen is because people elect a president to be president and a huge amount of a president’s power is bound up in the expected reelection campaign. Have that announcement and I can close to assure you there’s no infrastructure bill or Inflation Reduction Act. It’s not just announcing you won’t seek reelection. It’s basically announcing you’ll barely be in power during your first term….In any case, now we’re in the midst of the campaign. Does it worry you that concerns about Biden’s health could weaken his reelection bid? Yes? Well me too. But certainly the best way to weaken Democratic chances of holding the White House is to suddenly kick off a totally open primary contest, very late on the calendar, with a host of strong and eager contenders and no clear standout winner….Throwing this debate wide open again with no warning would be about the best way imaginable to wrongfoot the party going into a general election and greatly increase the chances of defeat. And this doesn’t even get into the separate though related issue of racial and gender inclusion. Should it be another white man? That’s a tough sell. Can it be easily denied to the black woman who is the incumbent vice president and has the position that would normally have the inside track on the succession?” We could also ask, if Biden quits, will it look like he is caving to ageist prejudices? Would this piss off high-turnout senior voters enough for a big bunch of them to stay home on Election Day, or worse?

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes about the downer vibe the GOP has successfully deployed to darken the public’s perception of President Biden’s victories. No, it’s not a majority of American voters; but it could be a big enough slice of the electorate to do the needed damage. Dionne writes, “Republicans might be damaging their long-term prospects with extremist tactics, but Democrats must confront an unhappy reality: The GOP’s merciless personal and ideological warfare, particularly in the House, is making it much harder for President Biden to sell his achievements….The poisonous nature of our politics nurtures a sense of exhaustion with public life that works against any incumbent, especially one trying to convince voters that the government is making their lives better. As members of the party that believes in public action, Democrats are especially hurt by a mood of frustration and cynicism….The GOP’s efforts to insert often unsupported accusations into the news cycle muddle Biden’s comeback campaign. “If you’re Biden, you have a really good story to tell,” [pollster Geoff] Garin told me, “but it’s almost impossible to communicate effectively in this media environment.”….”Biden is also consciously rebuffing Reagan’s trickle-down economics, arguing that government intervention in the economy is essential to “growing the middle class,” the magic words meant to appeal to the diverse coalition the president needs to assemble….If Biden is to have a recovery akin to Reagan’s, his campaign will have to reverse the perceptions of the two parties and dispel 2022’s memories….This will not be an easy climb.” Of course the real progenitor of the “exhaustion” is Trump, who has done more to make U.S. politics a bickering hellscape than anyone. It’s not just the volume; it’s the relentless echo chamber, trying to blame all discontents on Biden and Democrats.

Dionne continues, “A Morning Consult poll this month found 68 percent of Americans saying the country is on the wrong track; only 32 percent think it’s on the right track….The promising news for Biden is that the “right track” number was up eight points from about a year ago, and it rose 13 points among Democrats, from 41 percent to 54 percent….Preventing this trend from taking hold is why Republicans are doing all they can to accentuate the gloomy. If their over-the-top attacks on Biden make you want to give up on politics, GOP leaders will be able to declare “mission accomplished.”….Getting this message across is vital, said Navin Nayak, president of the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund. His group’s research shows Republicans have a “built-in, decades-long advantage as the party that’s focused on the economy that makes it harder for Democrats to break through.” Democrats, he added, “don’t talk enough about the economy,” and their economic goals are unclear to voters…..Democrats have to do a better job of confronting the  GOP propaganda and pinning the “divisive” label on Republicans. Dems must also brand the Republicans as phonies, who show up at ribbon-cutting events for projects they voted against. Big media is doing a good job of publicizing Trump’s responsibility for the January 6th mob violence/coup attempt, his confiscation of top secret documents and his outrageous phone call urging the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” enough votes to flip the Electoral College. But big media is not good at holding the Republican Party accountable, partly because they are afraid of appearing one-sided. It falls to Democrats to do more to place blame on Republicans who are enabling Trump. They must say that in interviews. Crank up the volume and the frequency of political ads, craft irresistible memes for social media and script sound bites that will be repeated because they are catchy. Brand the GOP as corrupt whiners. They will provide the material. The trick is to do all this while making substantial, steady, positive leadership the Democratic brand. It’s a tall order. But it must be filled. Such a messaging campaign doesn’t have to persuade everyone, just enough swing voters.

Like most Democrats, I’m annoyed by Republican pols who brag they will kick our butts in a general election. I’m glad to report the most annoying braggart of them all, Ron DeSantis, has been getting his comeuppance, as I noted at New York:

As Ron DeSantis tries to catch up to Republican presidential primary front-runner Donald Trump, the Florida governor’s campaign has been making aggressive assertions that he has an advantage in terms of his “electability” against Joe Biden. The case for DeSantis being the better Republican general-election candidate has had less to do with any direct evidence than with the fading memories of his strong reelection performance in 2022, compared to the mixed results of Trump-endorsed midterms candidates and, of course, his loss to Biden in 2020.

But truth be told, a lot of DeSantis’s electability claims are more about Republican voters’ presumed lack of trust in Trump, which isn’t all that well established. In fact, a new Monmouth survey of Republicans shows Trump has an electability advantage over DeSantis. It’s not even very close. If you directly ask Republicans which candidate is stronger against Biden, Trump wins pretty clearly:

“Regardless of whether you currently support Donald Trump, which of the following statements comes closest to your view about which Republican has the best chance to win in 2024.”

Forty-five percent said Trump was definitely stronger and another 24 percent said Trump was probably stronger. Only 13 percent said any other Republican is definitely stronger, and 18 percent said some other Republican is probably stronger. Directly comparing Trump and DeSantis, 47 percent said the Florida governor was weaker than the former president; 22 percent said he was stronger.

It’s not just Monmouth showing DeSantis’s loss of an electability advantage (if he ever had one). As the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake notes, this problem shows up in early state polls as well:

“Fox Business polls in the key primary states of Iowa and South Carolina tell the same tale.

“In Iowa, 45 percent said Trump would be the most likely to defeat Biden, while 23 percent picked DeSantis. And in South Carolina, Trump’s edge on this measure was threefold: 51 percent to 17 percent.”

In recent weeks, DeSantis has deemphasized the argument that he’s more appealing to swing voters and instead focused on out-Trumping Trump by running to his right on immigration, crime, COVID-19, and federal spending. It’s possible he’s abandoning his once-obsessive electability pitch altogether and is going after hard-core “very conservative” and/or ultra-MAGA voters. Some right-wing Republicans believe, improbably, that swing voters actually want stridently ideological candidates rather than any sort of squishy centrists. And in the end, a candidate can’t win the general election at all without winning the nomination. More likely, Team DeSantis is going after today’s Trump voters by abandoning anything like moderation and perhaps making electability an afterthought. It’s a good way to make yourself unelectable altogether.

Nathaniel Rakich reports “16 States Made It Harder To Vote This Year. But 26 Made It Easier” at FiveThirtyEight, and writes:

Two years ago, the biggest battles in state legislatures were over voting rights. Democrats loudly — and sometimes literally — protested as Republicans passed new voting restrictions in states like Georgia, Florida and Texas. This year, attention has shifted to other hot-button issues, but the fight over the franchise has continued. Republicans have enacted dozens of laws this year that will make it harder for some people to vote in future elections.

But this year, voting-rights advocates got some significant wins too: States — controlled by Democrats and Republicans — have enacted more than twice as many laws expanding voting rights as restricting them, although the most comprehensive voter-protection laws passed in blue states. In all, 39 states and Washington, D.C., have changed their election laws in some way this year….

Some political commentators have argued that making it harder to vote matters less than the integrity of vote counting. Although Republicans are louder complainers about vote theft, Democrats may have more reason for concern. Indeed, since both Trump and Putin are heavily-invested in Trump winning the presidency in 2024, it’s hard to imagine their minions not doing whatever they can to corrupt the count.

But no political commentators have provided a persuasive analysis that Democrats should simply ignore voter suppression, although there are legitimate questions about the amount of resources to commit to fighting against it. Rakich continues,

….According to data from the Voting Rights Lab, a pro-voting-rights organization that tracks election-law legislation, state legislators introduced 566 bills restricting voter access or election administration that year, 53 of which were enacted. This year hasn’t been quite so busy, but as of July 21, 366 laws with voting restrictions had been proposed and 29 had been enacted.

All but one of those 29 new laws¹ came in states where Republicans have full control of the lawmaking process: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana,² Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming. Five of the laws include provisions that tighten voter-ID requirements, 11 include provisions that interfere with election administration and 13 have at least one provision that targets mail voting.

For Democrats the most worrisome state has to be Georgia in terms of presidential electoral votes, since Trump won all of the others in 2020. But Democrats could lose even more Senate and House of Reps seats in the other states through voter suppression and partisan redistricting.

But there is good news for Democrats in terms of recent electoral reforms, as Rakich notes:

….As of July 21, according to the Voting Rights Lab, 834 bills had been introduced so far this year expanding voting rights, and 64 had been enacted. What’s more, these laws are passing in states of all hues. Democratic-controlled jurisdictions (Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island and Washington) enacted 33 of these new laws containing voting-rights expansions, but Republican-controlled states (Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming) were responsible for 23 of them. The remaining eight became law in states where the two parties share power (Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia).

Events permitting, Democrats should be able to pick up at least a few House seats in 2024, thanks to these reforms. The Senate is a bit trickier to suss out.  The caveat, according to Rakich: “That said, not all election laws are created equal, and the most comprehensive expansive laws passed in blue states.” In any case, hard-fought battles over redistricting will continue into the foreseeable future.

Clearly, there is every reason for Democrats to strengthen their state parties as an essential precondition to building a working majority in congress.

As a political history fanatic, I quickly read and then wrote about this history-based insight on 2024 at New York:

There isn’t much question that the likeliest scenario for the 2024 presidential election will be a rematch between 2020 winner Joe Biden and 2020 loser Donald Trump. Allegedly, this is a pairing most Americans don’t want (it’s actually a bit hard to tell since Democrats nearly all despise Trump and Republicans nearly all despise Biden, meaning a “rematch” begins by displeasing half of the electorate). But the polls show Biden crushing Robert Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson in the primary and Trump far ahead of 12 intraparty opponents, so anything other than a rematch would be quite a surprise.

But Biden vs. Trump: Part II will not simply be a replay of the 2020 election. Most obviously, conditions in the country have changed with the winding down of the COVID-19 pandemic and the winding up of the economy, along with renewed Russian aggression against Ukraine and all the partisan controversies that have accompanied this latest phase of divided U.S. government.

Perhaps most important, there will be a new incumbent president on the ballot in 2024. But as Jonathan V. Last observes, Biden won’t be the only president on the ballot if Trump wins the GOP nomination:

“No one living has seen an election in which two presidents have run against one another.

“And that changes everything …

“One of the (many) advantages an incumbent president has is that he has proven that he can do the job.

“This sword has two edges: An incumbent’s presidential record can be attacked. Some voters may like it. Some may not. But at the lizard-brain level, they have all seen him sitting at the big desk in the Oval. They know what he looks like as president.

“At the risk of stating the obvious: Joe Biden is president of the United States. Donald Trump used to be president of the United States.”

So in a Biden-Trump rematch, both candidates will have already passed the plausible-president threshold, and both have a recent presidential record to defend. As Last points out, this hasn’t happened since 1892, when former president Grover Cleveland faced incumbent president Benjamin Harrison, who had narrowly defeated Cleveland (while losing the popular vote) four years earlier. Then as now, the rematches came in an extended period of closely contested presidential elections. Then as now, the electorate knew both candidates very well.

But there are some big differences between the 19th-century and 21st-century rematches. For one thing, Harrison’s 1892 defeat was preceded by a financial panic and recession that cost his Republican Party an incredible 93 House seats (out of a total of 332) in the 1890 midterms. The 2022 midterms, by contrast, were a near dead heat with modest Republican gains in the House. But the even bigger difference is that the Cleveland-Harrison transition in 1889 was peaceful. The 2021 transition was perpetually contested by the loser and eventually by a mob that invaded Congress and tried to stop the final certification of the winner. Indeed, those events are an important — to many voters, a central — part of Trump’s record as an incumbent.

The horrific culmination of the first Biden-Trump election has frozen the vast majority of partisans in place as a rematch approaches, with most Democrats regarding Trump as a lawless rogue who had to be impeached twice, and most Republicans regarding Biden as a usurper who stole the White House from its rightful occupant. Conversely, most Republicans view the Trump administration as an era of peace and prosperity, while most Democrats view the Biden administration as a return to normalcy and constitutional governance. It’s unclear how many voters will engage in any judicious comparison of the records of the two presidents, and it’s entirely possible the result will be determined by voters who must decide which of them they dislike the least.

But beware of anyone telling you there is some infallible historical precedent governing a 2024 rematch. As has been so often the case since Trump won the 2016 election in an upset that overturned previous infallible historical precedents, we’re in unexplored political territory.

“The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization transformed the politics of abortion, turning an issue that once mattered mostly to conservative Christians into a powerful voting issue on the left,” Amelia Thomson-Deveaux writes at FiveThirty Eight. “But new polling suggests that the decision could also be reshaping the way abortion-rights supporters think about the issue — specifically, whether abortion is something that should be regulated by the government at all….A new and intriguing finding from PerryUndem, a nonpartisan research firm, suggests that a significant chunk of abortion-rights supporters may now oppose anygovernment restrictions on abortion — even limits on later abortion that were largely uncontroversial before Dobbs. The researchers asked 4,037 registered voters if they supported a constitutional amendment establishing reproductive freedom. Half of the sample read an amendment identical to the ballot measure that passed in Michigan in 2022; the other half read the same amendment except the researchers removed language that allowed the state to regulate abortion after viability, or when a fetus can live outside a woman’s body….PerryUndem found that respondents who received the version of the ballot measure with no government regulations included were 15 percentage points more likely to say they would “definitely” vote for it: Forty-five percent said they would “definitely vote yes” on the version with no restrictions, while 30 percent said they would “definitely vote yes” on the version with a viability restriction. The results were particularly pronounced among Democrats and women of reproductive age (ages 18 to 44), who were much more likely to support the version of the amendment without restrictions….While just one initial finding, this survey lines up with other public opinion research suggesting that over the past few years, a subset of Americans have gotten more supportive of unrestricted abortion in the late second and early third trimester of pregnancy. That’s a big shift from just a short time ago, when pressing to expand viability limits was a political lightning rod for Democratic politicians in states like New York and Virginia. And if that shift turns out to be real, it may create new opportunities — and new challenges — for abortion-rights supporters who are pushing for ballot measures like the one that passed in Michigan last year.”

In his post, “Donald Trump Is Running to Stay Out of Prison. Say It, Democrats!,” at The New Republic’s ‘Soapbox,’ Editor Michael Tomasky writes: “As we anticipate the third and fourth indictments of Donald Trump, both of which look like they might land before school starts, I am reminded that presidents all think about their place in history. George Washington did—he was careful, for example, not to do certain things that would carry the whiff of monarchical ambition. He eschewed a third term that he could easily have won because he knew that he was setting the precedent for all who would follow him….But let’s be clear about Trump’s main motivation. Yeah, he wants to be president. He wants to corrupt and destroy democracy, bask in the radioactive glow of his sycophants’ blubbery praise over his perfect phone calls to Putin, start the mother of all culture wars, and all that. But mostly: He wants to stay out of prison….As we know, it is official Justice Department policy that sitting presidents can’t be prosecuted. So for Trump, being president for the next four years would in essence wipe these indictments off the books. As for criminal trials that started before he was sworn in on January 20, 2025, should he win? Easy peasy. He can pardon himself. Come on. You think he wouldn’t do it? You think he couldn’t count on the right-wing media to endorse it as no big whoop and look at those stupid fulminating libtards, along with a chorus of right-wing, Leonard Leo–anointed constitutional “scholars” to explain why it’s all fine?”

From “Biden looks to put North Carolina on ’24 map: Without the Tar Heel state, Democrats say, Republicans don’t have a path to the White House” by Myah Ward at Politico: “Biden lost the Tar Heel state to Donald Trump by just 1.4 percentage pointsin 2020, and a Democrat at the top of the ticket hasn’t managed to turn North Carolina blue since Barack Obama did in 2008. Now Biden’s team sees opportunity in 2024 amid a fresh abortion ban, a contentious, expensive gubernatorial race and steady population growth that has ballooned urban and suburban areas….State and local party leaders are pointing to North Carolina as the next Arizona or Georgia for Democrats. They’re calling on the Biden campaign and DNC to invest heavily in the state because without it, they say, Republicans don’t have a path to the White House….“I think the road to reelection will run through North Carolina this time. And we’re encouraged by the [Biden] campaign’s early commitment to our state,” said Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, a member of the president’s national advisory board. “It’s pretty clear that they have decided that North Carolina is going to be one of their targeted states … I told the president that this investment is going to be critical to his reelection, and that I believe we can win this state for him.”….The Biden campaign came out early in May with a strategy memo outlining its 2024 path to victory, including its plans to target the Tar Heel state. The DNC and campaign have already run ads in North Carolina this cycle, including on television and on two billboards in Charlotte and Rocky Mount highlighting Biden’s economic agenda.”

At Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Mike Lux responds to “deliverism” — the notion that “if Democrats deliver genuine, tangible benefits to working-class and poor people, they will win more elections.” In his article, “Bidenomics, Storytelling, and Community,” Lux writes: “Democrats will have to overcome long-term cynicism and bitterness about the decline in economic fortunes for the two-thirds of voters without a college degree (as well as a whole lot of people with college degrees). And the Republican spin machine that vilifies not only Democrats but any government effort to lift up regular folks won’t be easy to overcome either. But the combination of Biden’s economic policy wins and a successful reframing of the trickle-down versus Bidenomics debate gives Democrats their best opportunity in a long time to begin to win the hearts and minds of working-class voters….Writers Matt Stoller and David Dayen coined the term “deliverism,” which argues that if Democrats deliver genuine, tangible benefits to working-class and poor people, they will win more elections. Stoller and Dayen have plenty of cautions and caveats to that formula—especially that policies need to be more far-reaching than most legislative measures for voters to notice—but the fundamental idea of deliverism is a critical one that the Biden team is counting on….I would add that part of our challenge is to expand progressive media, especially at the local level, and that our organizing needs to include community building to address the isolation voters are feeling….Passing big policy changes is not the only thing we have to do, but it is the first big thing we have to do. The path to electoral success still has to have at its center the enactment of policies that truly and deeply improve working-class voters’ lives….This isn’t either/or. We need good progressive policies, but we also need deeper organizing, better storytelling, more innovative ways of getting the story out, and a long-term vision of a better society for working families….Over the long run, a decade of fully flowered Bidenomics—where we build on the good things that were passed in 2021-22 and add important components like child care, affordable housing, a higher minimum wage, and a permanent expanded child tax credit—gives us an opportunity to change the dynamics. If we combine these policies with deep organizing, good storytelling, and innovative ways of delivering the story, we will have real potential to break loose big chunks of working-class voters. Democrats could start to consistently compete again in states like Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, and more of the South, as well as winning in more of rural America….An America where progressive policy wins make a better life possible for most people will restore our democracy for the long term, and make the Democratic Party the party of working people again.”