In “Why Trump is getting more popular,”  G. Elliott Morris writes at 538/abcnews.com:

According to 538’s average of polls of Trump’s favorability rating, 47.2 percent of American adults have a favorable view of the president-elect, compared to 47.4 percent who have an unfavorable view. That means his net favorability rating — the difference between these two numbers — is now the highest it has been since our tracking began on Jan. 30, 2021. It’s also higher than his average net approval rating — a related but different metric that measured how many Americans approved of his job performance while he was president — was at any point after Feb. 2, 2017. Trump, in other words, is at or near an all-time high in popularity.

“Net favorability” notwithstanding, Trump isn’t getting favorable reviews from a majority of respondent in the poll average. He’s probably getting a little pre-honeymoon bump as he approaches Inauguration Day. I’m a bit surprised, however, that more people aren’t bothered by his sorry cabinet picks.

Morris writes more convincingly that “Trump’s rising popularity since Election Day 2024 is particularly notable. He has gained roughly 8 percentage points of net favorability in the average poll since Nov. 5. The president-elect’s net favorability was at -8.6 points then — around where he was for most of last year. An 8-point bounce is quite a feat in this day and age of stable public opinion; in all our tracking,” One has to wonder how many people are not paying any attention, which is the optimistic scenario, compared to the possibility that the public actually likes his cabinet picks.

Morris speculates that “Trump is being evaluated more generously now because of the post-election glow but that his ratings will fall once he assumes office and starts enacting policies and sucking up more oxygen. But only time can bear this theory out.” Sure, Trump could get lucky, particularly if the good will from Biden’s infrastructure upgrades start to kick in.

However, Morris brings it down to earth in writing “similar boosts in the past have not lasted long. Trump’s victory was in fact much smaller than his supporters have mythologized, and some of his promises — like that to pardon the people imprisoned on charges related to the events of Jan. 6, 2021 — are still very unpopular. If his favorability rating follows the usual track, and/or he attempts some of his more unpopular policies, Trump may find himself quickly at odds again with the American public.”

In any case, smart Democratic strategy shouldn’t change much because of Trump’s favorables: Ditch the unpopular culture war policies, ideas and photo-ops, and get more focused on fighting inflation and all  that can help win more support from working-class voters.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

For the last decade, Democrats and the left have ever more eagerly embraced a climate catastrophist narrative on energy policy. That narrative may be summarized as follows:

Climate change is not a danger that is gradually occurring, but an imminent crisis that is already upon us in extreme weather events. It threatens the existence of the planet if immediate, drastic action is not taken. That action must include the immediate replacement of fossil fuels, including natural gas, by renewables, wind and solar, which are cheap and can be introduced right now if sufficient resources are devoted to doing so, and which, unlike nuclear power, are safe. Not only that, the immediate replacement of fossil fuels by renewables will make energy cheaper and provide high wage jobs.

People resist rapidly eliminating fossil fuels only because of propaganda from the fossil fuel industry. Any of the problems with renewables that are being cited, such as their intermittency and reliability, are being solved. This means that as we use more renewables and cut out fossil fuels, political support for the transition to clean energy should go up because of the benefits to consumers and workers.

That’s been the mantra that’s dominated Democrats’ policy commitments on energy and their rhetoric and philosophy on climate issues. Indeed, it is not uncommon for Democrats to apply the term “climate denialist” to those who, while they accept the reality of global warming, refuse to endorse the climate catastrophist mantra and its maximalist policy agenda.

So what have the Democrats gained from their fervent advocacy for climate catastrophism? Not much. Sure, they did manage to pass the misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act which pumped hundreds of billions of dollars—if not over a trillion—into the renewable energy and electric vehicle industries.

But the needle is moving very slowly indeed on a renewables-based clean energy transition. During the Biden administration, the share of renewables in the country’s primary energy consumption has increased only very modestly from 10.5 percent to 11.7 percent. And the share of energy consumption from fossil fuels remains over 80 percent just as it does in the world as a whole.

It is just very hard to bring that share down quickly while keeping an advanced industrial economy chugging along. That’s why, despite the Biden administration’s professed commitments, energy realities have forced them to preside over record levels of oil production (both on federal lands and overall), record natural gas production, and record LNG exports.

Nor have Democrats been rewarded with a political bonanza for their embrace of climate catastrophism. Quite the contrary. They just lost the presidential election to an opponent who says “drill, baby, drill” and whose priority is cheap, abundant energy—not clean energy. And Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Energy is Chris Wright, CEO of a fracking company, who has been forthright in his advocacy of energy realism, or as he puts it, “energy sobriety.”

It’s interesting to look at Wright’s actual views on climate and energy because they represent what Democrats’ climate catastrophism is now up against. While Wright has been accused of being a climate denialist, this is not, as noted above, because he refuses to accept the reality of global warming but rather because he does not accept the Democrats’ current climate catastrophist narrative and policy approach. Here is what he actually says:

The expansion of the global energy supply by adding fossil fuels has greatly improved the human condition; it also brought the risk of climate change caused by increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases…. Climate change is a real and global challenge that we should and can address.

And his basic stance on meeting this challenge is:

Two things are required for positive progress on climate change: a sober understanding of the issue and the tradeoffs required, and massive improvements in energy technologies that can deliver low-carbon energy that is also low cost, reliable and secure.

That seems….pretty reasonable. Here’s his own 10 point summary of his perspective:

1. Energy is essential to life and the world needs more of it!

2. The modern world today is powered by and made of hydrocarbons.

3. Hydrocarbons are essential to improving the wealth, health, and life opportunities for the less energized seven billion people who aspire to be among the world’s lucky one billion.

4. Hydrocarbons supply more than 80 percent of global energy and thousands of critical materials and products.

5. The American Shale Revolution transformed energy markets, energy security, and geopolitics.

6. Global demand for oil, natural gas, and coal are all at record levels and rising – no energy transition has begun.

7. Modern alternatives, like solar and wind, provide only a part of electricity demand and do not replace the most critical uses of hydrocarbons. Energy-dense, reliable nuclear could be more impactful.

8. Making energy more expensive or unreliable compromises people, national security, and the environment.

9. Climate change is a global challenge but is far from the world’s greatest threat to human life.

10. Zero Energy Poverty by 2050 is a superior goal compared to Net Zero 2050.

Again, all pretty reasonable and empirically defensible though one could quibble here and there with how he formulates some of his points. But I would not quibble with his last point; it underscores the moral problems with the standard climate catastrophist/net zero approach. Lifting up the billions in the world who suffer from energy poverty and the stunted lives and living standards such poverty produces is or should be a moral imperative—a moral imperative about which net zero definitionally has nothing to say.

But Wright’s approach is more than a strong empirical and moral competitor to Democrats’ approach—it also overlaps in important ways with emerging voter sentiment about these issues. This is particularly true among working-class (non-college) voters where Democrats have rapidly been bleeding support. Consider these data from a YouGov survey conducted for an AEI project comparing scientific understandings of energy and climate with dominant public narratives on these issues and comparing both to the views of actual voters.

The survey found that, by 74 percent to 26 percent, working-class voters prefer an energy approach that uses a mix of energy sources including oil, coal, and natural gas along with renewables to an approach that seeks to phase out the use of oil, coal, and natural gas completely.

In terms of the energy they consume, cost and reliability are way, way more important to working-class voters than possible effects on the climate. Given four choices, 41 percent of these voters said the cost of the energy they use was most important to them and 35 percent said the availability of power when they need it was most important. Just 17 percent thought the effect on climate of their energy consumption was most important and 6 percent selected the effect on U.S. energy security.

In terms of proposals to mitigate the effects of climate change, getting to “net zero” as quickly as possible is relatively unimportant to working-class voters. Asked to consider proposals to reduce the effects of global climate change, these voters were least likely to say “getting the U.S. to net zero carbon emissions as quickly as possible” was very important to them personally (26 percent), fewer than said “limiting the burden of regulations on business” was very important (33 percent). Working-class voters were most likely by far to say keeping consumer costs low (66 percent) and increasing jobs and economic growth (60 percent) were very important aspects of climate mitigation proposals.

Consistent with many other surveys, the YouGov survey found that climate change as an issue has very low salience to working-class voters. Voters were asked to evaluate a list of 18 issue areas and rate their priority for the president and Congress to address in the coming year. As a “top priority,” dealing with global climate change ranked 16^th out of these 18 areas among working-class voters, well behind strengthening the national economy, fighting inflation, defending the country from terrorist attacks, and keeping Social Security financially sound—and also behind reducing health care costs, dealing with immigration, improving the educational system, keeping energy costs low, reducing the budget deficit, reducing crime, improving how the political system works, improving the job situation, strengthening the military, dealing with the problems of poor people, and dealing with drug addiction. The climate issue only ranked above global trade and issues around race.

Finally, by 30 points (59 to 29 percent) working-class voters flat-out favor more domestic production of fossil fuels like oil and gas. But only 15 percent of these voters are aware that the Biden administration increased oil production on federal lands. However, when informed that the U.S. has, in fact, increased domestic production of oil and gas in the last several years, they are delighted. Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of working-class voters said “this is a positive development, which brings good jobs for U.S. workers, ensures our energy supply and helps the U.S. support our allies who need similar resources” compared to 27 percent who thought “this is a negative development, which brings more pollution, climate change, and continued reliance on fossil fuels.”

How about that. Perhaps instead of hiding this achievement away Democrats should have featured it. Their failure to do so obviously has a lot to do with the climate catastrophist narrative they have felt obliged to embrace and defend. That narrative is clearly getting in the way of Democrats’ ability to reach working-class voters and is leaving an open lane for Chris Wright’s version of energy realism.

Can Democrats wean themselves away from climate catastrophism and their obsession with net zero? It could be difficult. Their net zero commitment stems from the extremely high priority placed on this goal by the educated elites and activists who now dominate the party. These elites and activists—unlike working-class voters—believe that nothing is more important than stopping global warming since it is not just a problem, but an “existential crisis” that must be confronted as rapidly as possible to prevent a global apocalypse. President Biden said in September, 2023:

The only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening than a nuclear war is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next 20—10 years. That’d be real trouble. There’s no way back from that.

He also said in November of that year:

I’ve seen firsthand what the reports made clear: the devastating toll of climate change and its existential threat to all of us. And it is the ultimate threat to humanity: climate change.

More frightening than nuclear war, eh, from which there ispresumably a way back? Up and down the Democratic Party, rhetoric has been more similar than not to Biden’s absurdly histrionic take. That’s an awful lot of rhetoric to walk back.

It also seems unlikely that the climate movement, with its intransigent radical wing, is going to do much to help Democrats do a reset on on these issues. Instead it seems like they’re inventing new ways to make their movement irrelevant to normie voters. A recent innovation is “intersectional environmentalism” which emphasizes how “injustices happening to marginalized communities and the earth are interconnected”. Somehow that’s going to result in a movement “rooted in joy and radical imagination and community building.”

Intersectionalism and a radical politics of joy? This does not sound like a movement prepared to grapple with reality. The reality is that climate change policy, to be politically successful, must be embedded in and subordinate to, the goal of energy abundance and prosperity. In other words, as energy abundance is pursued, efforts to mitigate climate change should be undertaken within those constraints, rather than pursuing climate change as the paramount goal and trying for energy abundance within those limits. There’s a big difference and only the former approach offers a viable way forward for Democrats.

Such an approach will require Democrats and the left to develop a more realistic understanding of what is feasible in terms of climate action. There is no point in setting goals and timelines that cannot be met. Discarding these will make it much easier to pursue an energy abundance path that also includes reasonable progress on reducing emissions over what will undoubtedly be a very lengthy time period. Democrats would be well-advised to develop this path—their own version of energy realism—rather than pursuing the dead-end of climate catastrophism. The latter is and has been a loser. Energy realism will beat it every time.

Watching Jimmy Carter’s state funeral on January 9 was a sad and sometimes inspiring experience. But given what’s about to happen on January 20, it also served as a reminder about presidential conduct, as I explained at New York:

The state funeral of the 39th president, Jimmy Carter, at the National Cathedral in Washington had all the trappings of the traditional suspension of political warfare in the face of death. Every living ex-president (and most of their vice-presidents) was there, which led to hallucinatory moments like Barack Obama amiably chitchatting with Donald Trump as they sat next to each other in the pews. Among the many eulogies to the Georgian, one that definitely stood out was one written before his own death by the 38th president, Gerald Ford, Carter’s Republican opponent in 1976, who wrote movingly of the partnership and friendship the two men formed during their long post–White House years. It was both sad and touching that the current chief executive, Joe Biden, reached back nearly a half-century to his own endorsement of Carter’s presidential candidacy in the year he defeated Ford.

But it was impossible to forget for a moment that the solemn event that brought this disparate audience together was occurring just 11 days before the re-inauguration of Donal Trump. The incoming president differs in so many respects from Jimmy Carter, and his return to power is a living repudiation of so much of what Carter believed in.

In his own view, Carter’s inveterate truthfulness was his most important personal virtue; “I’ll never lie to you,” he often said when running for president in a country anguished by Tricky Dick Nixon’s administration. Whether or not Carter was able to live up to this lofty commitment to honesty, it contrasts dramatically with Trump’s extremely flexible attitude toward facts and refusal to take personal responsibility for the consequences of his sins (on one infamous occasion, he could not come up with a single thing he had ever done that required divine forgiveness).

Carter’s great legacy in international affairs was his effort to anchor U.S. foreign policy in universal human rights. Trump rejects any standard for foreign policy other than the most naked national self-interest and has gone out of his way to dismiss global standards banning the torture of prisoners of war and military strikes on civilian populations.

Carter had a wonk’s passion for tinkering with government operations to make them more efficient and responsive. Trump is indifferent to the minutiae of governing, and his big reform initiative is to give tech bros Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy license to blow up whole agencies and radically reduce spending as ends in themselves.

In the long arc of political history, Carter is renowned for leading his own southern region out of the darkness of Jim Crow and building a mind-blowing coalition of civil-rights activists and ex-segregationists. Even if you believe Trump is without personal prejudice, he has very clearly made politics safe for a resurgence of racism and has made the pursuit of racial justice and equality a target of legal action and mockery.

As every eulogist at Carter’s funeral emphasized, he was a man of deep and abiding Christian faith, teaching Sunday school back in Plains for many decades. He wasn’t transactional in his religiosity; he took positions on social and cultural issues that led his fellow evangelical Protestants to abandon him and his party, and he led his own congregation out of its traditional denomination when that larger church refused to treat women equally. If Trump has any personal religious convictions, they are largely a secret, and he has formed a highly transactional relationship with conservative Christians, who are forever rationalizing his manifest impiety. Until his wife’s death, Jimmy Carter closed every day reading the Bible in Spanish with Rosalynn. Trump’s relationship with Holy Scripture (other than misquoting it) is mostly limited to hustling expensive Bibles to his devoted followers.

The American presidency is a collection of men with all sorts of varying personalities and backgrounds, and it’s entirely possible someone wildly different from Jimmy Carter is what this country needs. But it’s hard to undertake comparisons of the ex-president who just died and the ex-president who is about to re-enter the White House and see anything other than a devolution in integrity, fidelity to civic and religious traditions, and willingness to work with others peacefully. As Biden succinctly said in his eulogy, Carter’s “enduring attribute” was “character. Character. Character.” What sort of character is Donald Trump?

In the current issue of Washington Monthly, Editor-in-Chief Paul Glastris spotlights “Ten New Ideas for the Democratic Party to Help the Working Class, and Itself,” and writes, “For many years, outside observers, including the editors of this magazine, have warned that the Democratic Party cannot win if it continues to hemorrhage the support of working-class Americans. The results of the November election should put an end to any debate about this….

The tragedy is that as president, Joe Biden did a lot to try to bring back these voters. He openly supported unions and was the first sitting president to walk a picket line. He pushed through major legislation to fund infrastructure and manufacturing projects that would produce, he said again and again, good-paying jobs that you don’t need a college degree to get—and by design these projects were disproportionately located in red areas. He signed other bills that put cash in the pockets of average Americans, including a short-lived but successful child tax credit. He began a revolution in competition policy that took on corporate power and greed in favor of small businesses and employees. When he dropped out of the race, Kamala Harris picked a running mate with working-class rural roots and proposed to help ordinary Americans buy a first home, start a new business, and secure protection from corporate price gouging…. Yet despite all of this, Donald Trump not only won the election but also gained ground with working-class Americans of every race and gender and in every part of the country.”

Here’s a teaser from one of the ‘ten new ideas,’ “Medicare Prices for All: Want a real raise? Slash health care costs by tying employer plans to Medicare rates” by Phillip Longman:

….Everyone complains about the high price of drugs and hospital stays. But few people are aware of how hidden health care costs that don’t show up in the Consumer Price Index are profoundly eroding their purchasing power.

To understand how this giant rip-off works and how to fix it, you need some background. Most working- and middle-class Americans receive their health care coverage through employer-sponsored insurance plans. Most of us covered by such plans know full well that we are perpetually being asked to pay higher deductibles and co-pays. Most of us also know when our premiums go up. Individual workers covered by such plans typically pay around 20 percent of the cost of the premium in the form of a paycheck deduction. Workers who insure a spouse and two children under an employer plan typically see about 32 percent of the cost of the premium deducted from their paycheck.

….The employee-benefits expert Syl Schieber has calculated how much rising health care costs have lowered what he calls the “kitchen table” income of workers with employer-sponsored health care plans—that is, the income they have available each month to pay for housing, groceries, gas, and other day-to-day expenditures. He finds that due to the wage suppression caused by the rising cost of their health care plans, lower-income workers with family coverage had $2,500 less kitchen table income in 2019 (adjusted for inflation) than they brought home two decades earlier. In effect, health care inflation gobbled up all of the meager raises they received as they gained seniority, and more.

….Since 2010, health care costs for the average family of four with an employer-sponsored plan have risen by more than $13,000, or over 71 percent. Currently, the cost for individuals covered by such plans is rising by 6.7 percent a year, roughly double the official rate of inflation. No wonder so many Americans, even those “privileged” enough to have employer-sponsored health insurance, feel like the economy is not working for them.

….What can be done? Abolishing our employer-based health care finance system and replacing it with something like a government-financed, “Medicare for All” program might be a good idea. But it hardly needs saying that it is a political nonstarter at the moment.

….So here’s the solution. Just mandate, going forward, that all employer-sponsored plans pay providers the same, or close to the same, prices Medicare does. And further mandate that employers share the enormous resulting savings with their workers.”

Read more here.

One of these days, when everyone gets tired of yelling at each other about cultural violations, some smart political leader is going to pick up the long-neglected torch of industrial policy, figure out how to sell it to the public and mobilize a majority consensus for a new industrial policy. Meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt for Democrats to educate themselves about the possibilities. Toward that end, a new book, “Industrial Policy for the United States” by liberal Marc Fasteau and conservative Ian Fletcher is getting some buzz. Consider this teaser from the publication’s web page: “Industrial policy is based on viewing the economy not as one single thing, which is the usual way to view it when people talk about inflation being X% or economic growth being Y%, but as an intricate network of specific industries, some of which are more important than others….The key here is that nations are locked in a ruthless rivalry to possess the most valuable industries. These are not only those important for national security, like aircraft building, but those that generate the highest profits and the most good jobs….foreign nations like China, Japan, Germany, and others use a wide range of policies to grab and hold onto the best industries. For example, they lock America out of their markets with trade barriers, often hidden, to keep the sales for themselves.  They subsidize their exports, overtly and covertly, to build volume and destroy American competitors. They fund not just pure science, but the development of new technologies right down to the factory floor. (Sometimes, they steal technology from us!) They rig their banking systems to build up industry, not financial speculators. (Why don’t we? See Chapter 18.) They don’t try to send all their people to college, but teach them the skills for sophisticated, modern manufacturing industries….Industrial policy is neither liberal nor conservative, and this book is forthrightly bipartisan. Both Trump (tariffs) and Biden (the CHIPS Act) took some small steps in the direction of industrial policy. These moves were a success, but America needs to go much further in this direction and probably will. ​Therefore, this book is the key to understanding how much of the economic agenda of the next 30 years will unfold, what will work and what won’t, and why.”

We can be confident that President Biden will do all that he can in the few remaining days of his presidency to help Los Angeles County recover from the devastation caused by the seven fires which are creating a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions in southern California. President-elect Trump, however, is already using his bully pulpit to blame Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom for the disaster, as if there was something he could do about the freakish weather and ocean conditions that fed the ferocious windstorms. Los Angeles County is the largest County in the U.S., with more than 9.6 million people. Only 10 of the 50 states have more people than L.A. County, and one of them is California. Nobody knows how much money the recovery from this disaster will cost, when all of the recovery expenses are paid, nor what portion will be covered by private fire insurance. But the devastation is so vast that taxpayers will surely pay a large proportion of the final expenses. What Democrats must do is unify against all Republican efforts to short relief aid and foment chaos in L.A. County, hoping that voters will blame California Democrats for Republican failure to fund the recovery. Democrats have always stood for supporting recovery efforts following natural disasters, as a fundamental principle of national patriotism, and now, more than ever, they are challenged to honor that commitment, as they have so often done in red states like Florida.

From “The Federal Reserve Thinks Trump is Going to Make Inflation Much Worse” by Malcolm Ferguson at The New Republic: “Officials at the Federal Reserve are worried that Trump’s policies will cause inflation to rise once again. Recent meeting notes included four separate mentions of the economic impact of changes on immigration, inflation, and trade policy, according to CNBC reporting….“Almost all participants judged that upside risks to the inflation outlook had increased,” the minutes said. “As reasons for this judgment, participants cited recent stronger-than-expected readings on inflation and the likely effects of potential changes in trade and immigration policy.”….Trump has been making broad threats about hardline tariffs against China, Canada, and Mexico, as well as promising mass deportations and deregulation. All of these things are causing the Fed to move carefully….Officials noted that they still expect inflation to get down to 2 percent, but not until 2027 at the earliest.” High inflation, or diminished consumer purchasing power, if you prefer, was the leading cause of Trump’s election victory in November. But soon high inflation will be his to own, and it’s up to Democrats to make sure that happens. it will likely be the pivotal issue of the 2026 midterm elections. If Democrats don’t seize the opportunity, there will be no one else to blame.

In “Sanders doubles down on attacks on Musk over H-1B visas: ‘Dead wrong,’ Lauren Irwin writes a The Hill: “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is doubling down on his attacks against tech billionaire Elon Musk over H-1B visas, telling him he’s “dead wrong” about the employment visa….In an op-ed published Wednesday on Fox News, Sanders highlighted the ongoing debate about H-1B visas and other guest worker programs as President-elect Trump prepares to implement his immigration plan….The H-1B visa is a temporary, non-immigrant work permit that’s become part of the political debate. …Some say the visa attracts professional talent to the U.S., and others say the program allows employers to hire outside the country and pay workers less than they would if they hired an American citizen….Sanders said that H-1B visas are not intended to employ the “best and brightest” but instead replace American workers with people who can be paid lower wages and people who “often live as indentured servants.”….“If there is truly a major shortage of skilled tech workers in this country, why did Tesla lay-off over 7,500 American workers last year – including many software developers and engineers at its factory in Austin, Texas – while applying to hire thousands of H-1B guest workers?” Sanders wrote.”

I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that Donald Trump’s grip on political history is slippery at best. But at New York I went to the trouble of demolishing his claim that the Panama Canal Treaty cost Jimmy Carter the presidency:

In his rambling press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, Donald Trump said some very curious things, to put it mildly. One claim about Jimmy Carter is just wrong. Following up on his recent threats to retake control of the Panama Canal if Panama doesn’t lower shipping fees and eliminate any Chinese involvement in managing the passageway, the president-elect twice asserted that Carter lost his reelection bid in 1980 primarily due to his sponsorship of the treaty that returned the canal to Panama.

I have no idea where Trump got this idea, but it makes little sense. The Panama Canal Treaty, initially negotiated by Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, was signed and ushered through the Senate by Carter in April 1978. It was ratified by a 68 to 32 margin, with Republican Senate leader Howard Baker playing a key role (conservative icon William F. Buckley was another key backer of the treaty). Yes, the treaty was initially unpopular, but it became less so after its ratification. And while Ronald Reagan opposed the treaty, and made it a campaign issue against incumbent Republican Ford during the 1978 GOP primaries, it wasn’t a big deal at all by 1980, as Ron Elving recently observed at NPR:

“Reagan remained opposed to the Panama deal but ‘noticeably muted his rhetoric in 1977 when the treaties were finally signed by President Jimmy Carter,’ according to Lou Cannon, the reporter and biographer who covered Reagan more closely and for longer than anyone. In President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, Cannon reports that ‘Reagan’s interest in the Panama Canal declined after the issue had served its political purpose.’ Cannon has written that Reagan’s pollster told him the issue was primarily of interest to hard-core conservatives. By 1980, Reagan had that category locked up.”

If the treaty had been calamitous for Carter, you’d think he would have paid a big price during the 1978 midterm elections that immediately followed the Senate debate on the subject, but in fact, Republican gains in those midterms were modest, despite a lot of other issues bedeviling Democrats, along with a historic realignment that was already underway in Carter’s home region. Indeed, contra Trump’s assumption that foreign policy cost Carter the White House in 1980, there were plenty of more prominent reasons for the outcome aside from the much-discussed and deeply embarrassing hostage crisis. The economy was in terrible shape in 1980, with an unemployment rate of 7.1 percent, an average inflation rate of 12.67 percent, and average home-mortgage rates of 13.74 percent. That alone almost certainly doomed Carter’s reelection. But aside from that, he had to weather a tough primary challenge from Ted Kennedy; a third-party candidacy from ex-Republican John Anderson that wound up taking away more votes from the incumbent than from the challenger; and an inevitable loss of support in southern-inflected parts of the country following his precedent-breaking win in 1976.

Subsequently Reagan did nothing to unravel the Panama Canal Treaty, and by the time the canal was fully turned over to Panama at the end of 1999 (with Carter present), it was a largely noncontroversial event.

For his own mysterious reasons, Trump clearly wants to inflate the significance in American politics of the Panama Canal issue, past and present. Unfortunately, the main participants in the debate over the Canal Treaty aren’t around to dispute his claims. It’s a shame that Trump has chosen to cast a shadow on Carter’s state funeral later this week by mischaracterizing one of his key accomplishments as a career-ending disaster.

The following article, “Key elections to watch in 2025” by 538’s Geoffrey Skelley is cross-posted from abcnews.go.com:

The 2024 election may be over, but the electoral hamster wheel will keep on spinning in 2025. In the past, elections that occur the year after a presidential race have often presented opportunities for the party that lost the White House to make gains or hold onto power in places it already controls, and 2025 is no different.

Statewide races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey sit at the top of the 2025 marquee, and Democrats and Republicans, respectively, will hope that recent trends in those states point to success this fall. Meanwhile, Wisconsin will host a race that will determine whether liberals or conservatives control the state’s highly contested Supreme Court. Millions of other voters will also decide on the next mayors of their cities, including the country’s largest city, New York. Lastly, we can already anticipate at least three special elections in the House. Here then is an early look at what’s to come now that the calendar has turned to January.

State elections

Virginia

Virginia’s gubernatorial elections are unique because the Old Dominion is the only state that prevents incumbent governors from seeking immediate reelection. As a result, these races are always open-seat contests that test each party’s strength just a year after the presidential contest — which has usually benefited the party not in the White House. Dating back to 1977, that party has won all but one of 12 gubernatorial contests in the state, with Democrats’ narrow win in 2013 serving as the lone exception. And in each of those contests, the national opposition party has gained ground relative to its statewide performance in the presidential election a year earlier.

House Minority Leader Jeffries got a big applause and a lot of media coverage when he told House members that Trump won the election fair and square, and then added that “there are no election deniers on our side of the aisle.” It was an effective comment, and one that shut down the House Republican gloatfest, as Dems rose up to cheer their leader.

Inauguration day, January 20th, however, does present Dems with an opportunity. No, not angrily protesting the inauguration. There will be some of that. But it doesn’t serve the Democratic cause. Just as Democrats are not election deniers, it behooves Democrats to remember that theirs is not the sour grapes party. It’s a bad look and Democrats shouldn’t wear it.

January 20th is also the Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday, a day of nationwide community service projects. The King holiday, as enacted and signed into law in 1983, always falls on the third Monday of January, and sometimes that third Monday is January 20th, Inauguration Day, as it will be this year.

So, Democrats who are looking for an alternative to grumbling about Trump’s inauguration, have an interesting alternative: Get involved in the community service projects that are occurring all across America. It’s a much better look for Democrats to  be doing something to actually help people, and to do it in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.,  than it is for Dems to be whining and grinding teeth on the sidelines.

There is a lot in Trump’s stated plans which merit protest. Those who feel they must protest the inauguration should feel free to do so. But not all of those in the the majority of Americans who voted against Trump are comfortable with going negative on January 20th. It’s kind of like going to an opening day baseball game and focusing on insulting the visiting team, instead of rooting for your home team.

The MLK holiday presents a positive way for Democrats to express their hopes for a better America – to reaffirm their commitment to MLK’s great dream for our country by helping people in need in community service projects. It’s a good look.

Some of the amazingly-diverse MLK Day community service projects undertaken by groups and individuals in cities, counties and small towns in recent years include:

• Blood donor drives
• Cleaning up trash in parks and local rivers
• Collecting food for feed the hungry projects
• Painting and refurbishing shelters for homeless people
• Collecting guns for disposal by the police
• Tutoring kids
• Planting trees
• Reading to vision-impaired seniors
• Yardwork help for people with disabilities
• Fixing broken playground equippment
• Running errands for homebound people
• Shoveling snow for elderly homeowner walkways
• Collecting clothes for family violence shelters
• Organizing free medical care clinics for MLK Day
• Sponsoring teach-ins about MLK’s nonviolence

Such community service projects and many others have been launched on the King holiday every year since the first MLK holiday was observed in 1986. Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden have all personally volunteered to serve communities on MLK Day. Countless public service organizations and private sector businesses have also sponsored such projects. More multi-racial community service projects are completed on MLK Day than on any other holiday, and Democrats who want to do something positive on January 20th are encouraged to help fulfill the Dream.

There will be mass marches, community breakfasts, dinners and other activities in hundreds of cities and towns all across the nation on the MLK holiday. But community service will always be the heart and soul of this holiday.

In “Immigration is no longer the key to securing America’s millions of Latino voters. What is?,” Laurie Carillo writes at USC Annenberg Media that, ” According to the Pew Research Center, U.S. births are the main drivers of the growth of the Latino population, not new immigrant arrivals. Getting further and further away from the immigration experience, there isn’t much holding this diverse community together….“The more Americanized the Latino voter is, the more right-wing they become, the more Trump-supporting they become,” Madrid said. “The closer Latino men are to the country of origin, the more they have supported Black and female candidates.”….The Latino population is largely working class. One in five Latino men work in construction. For some Latinos, labor, not immigration, drives their votes….Although the Republican Party has never been known for supporting unions, labor leader Sean O’Brien of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters appeared at the Republican National Convention in July, demonstrating weakening political cohesion among working-class voters….For millions, the prospect of an improved economy was enough to cast a vote for Trump, despite his platform of mass deportation. If a Latino voter is a citizen, and no one in their family is undocumented, a plan like Trump’s might even sound like a good thing.” Marcelino Quiñonez, a former member of the Arizona House of Representatives, said “I’ve heard from folks who are on the ground and working to get out the vote that men would say, ‘Well, I don’t believe everything that Trump is saying, but at least he’s talking about the things that I want to hear about,’” Quiñonez said. “From a campaigning standpoint, people want to feel like, ‘Oh, if I vote for this person, my life is going to change….“We’re often playing the defense, responding to what’s being said about us, and I think what we need to do is really focus on the things that we’re good at,” Quiñonez said. “We need to go back to some of the bread and butter issues.’”

When a politician loses a U.S. Senate race, he or she frequently fades into obscurity, rarely to be heard much from again. In the case of Rep. Tim Ryan, who lost his senate race to J. D. Vance in 2022 and in 2020 mounted a failed presidential campaign, that would be a shame, because Democrats have few leaders who have as solid an understanding of working-class voters as does Ryan. So, when Ryan argues  that “‘Our brand is toxic’: Former US Democratic lawmaker calls for ‘complete reset’ of party after Harris loss to Trump,” as reported at msn.com, Democrats should listen. Ryan may have indeed lost his seat as part of the trend punishing individual Democrats for their party’s sins against working-class voters. “You start with a complete reset. We need a rebrand. I think you and I have been talking about this since 2016, like, our brand is toxic in so many places and it is like, you are a Democrat? That’s the stuff we get like in Ohio. So it needs — we need a complete reboot. We need a complete reboot with the DNC. We need a complete rebranding,” Ryan said, as reported by Fox News. He believed the party hadn’t offered enough to voters in the political middle ground who were reluctant to vote for Trump….Ryan suggested the Democrats should focus on policies that resonate with working-class voters, like reindustrialization and American competitiveness. He questioned the party’s stance against the crypto industry and called for a return to “bread and butter policies.” He contrasted his view with a focus solely on redistribution….“We are going to tax the bad guys who are rich, which we want people to aspire to make money in America. We will tax them because they’re really bad people and we’re going to give you money. No, it is about growing the pie,” he added.” Can Ryan bounce back after losing high-profile elections to win the presidency? Stranger things have happened in America.

We’ve probably seen most of the post-mortems about the presidential election. Now, get ready for the flood of post-mortems regarding President Joe Biden’s term in the White House. Here’s a handy poster meme from demcastusa.com:

“On paper, the 2026 midterms should be a good year for House Democrats,” Emily Singer writes at Daily Kos, explaining “How House Democrats are plotting their comeback. “They need to flip just three seats in order to win back control of the House—something they came painfully close to doing in 2024. Democrats fell short this year in the three districts that determined the majority by a combined total of just 7,309 votes….And given that the party in the White House almost always loses seats in the first midterm election, that puts Democrats in prime position to oust Johnson from the speaker’s office….Democrats will have the added advantage in 2026 of being able to run against what is sure to be Republican dysfunction in Congress, as the GOP will struggle to pass its agenda with a historically small majority and fractious caucus of members who love to vote against legislation and refuse to make the compromises necessary to pass bills….”It has become increasingly apparent that many of my House Republican colleagues want to jam big tax cuts for the wealthy, the well-off and the well-connected down the throats of the American people and try to pay for those tax cuts, which will not benefit everyday Americans, by cutting Social Security and Medicare,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a Dec. 11 news conference on Capitol Hill….“This is not a hypothetical. It’s not hype. It’s not hyperbole. It’s happening before our very eyes because extreme MAGA Republicans in the House are telling us, publicly and repeatedly, that’s exactly what they plan to do to the American people,” Jeffries warned. “House Democrats are clear we will oppose any effort to end Social Security and Medicare as we know it.”…. Expect to hear that message a lot over the next two years.”

As a political history buff I became fascinated with the history of presidential state funerals, and soon realized why Jimmy Carter’s commemoration on January 9 will be unique, so I wrote about it at New York:

There have been 14 official state funerals in Washington for presidents and ex-presidents since the first, for William Henry Harrison, was held in 1841. Until the 1930 funeral of former president (and sitting chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) William Howard Taft, this particular honor was reserved for presidents who died in office. The upcoming January 9 memorial in Washington for the 39th president, Jimmy Carter, will be the fourth ex-presidential state funeral of the 21st century, but the first ever to coincide with the transition of power from one president to another.

Though President-elect Donald Trump regularly mocked Carter as a failed chief executive, his reaction to his predecessor’s death was surprisingly gracious, and he quickly indicated that he would attend the funeral. And as Joe Biden first revealed back in March 2023, Carter asked him to deliver a eulogy. So potentially, this state funeral will mark President Biden’s last big moment in the spotlight and a bit of a prequel to the second Trump inauguration. While Trump skipped Biden’s swearing-in in 2021, Biden will be present on January 20 to formally relinquish the office to his bitter rival.

It could be a moment of transition soon to be forgotten, but there are a number of symbolic implications that might be drawn from this crossing of diverging paths. This will be the first state funeral for a Democratic president since the one in 1973 for Lyndon Johnson, another Oval Office occupant who, like Biden, was pressured into withdrawing from a reelection bid. Could the 2024 election, like that of 1968, represent the beginning of an extended period of Republican domination of presidential elections? (The first was interrupted, as it happens, by Jimmy Carter’s one term in the White House.)

We can’t know that for a while, but we can likely rule out another possibility: that Trump and Biden will use the occasion of the ceremony honoring Carter to bury recent partisan grudges. They could probably both find something nice to say about Carter without offering much of an olive branch to their contemporary political foes. For Trump, Carter was an outsider who tried to shake up the federal government and his own party, while Biden (who actually supported Carter’s 1976 presidential bid as a freshman U.S. senator) can rightly view himself as a fellow centrist Democrat who was nonetheless a fierce partisan warrior. But Biden will have the unique opportunity to stand behind the pulpit of the National Cathedral and pay tribute to his predecessor in a way that adds a punctuation mark to his own one-term presidency.

One thing both Biden and Trump (and, for that matter, the other living ex-presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama) can agree on is to hope that they will enjoy a post-presidency that competes with Carter’s in length, distinction, and the approbation of his fellow citizens. The 39th president certainly left this world more appreciated — and loved — than he was when he left the White House.