Sometimes polling numbers change so slowly that it takes a while to notice an important trend, but Joe Biden’s job approval ratings are still gradually creeping upward, as I noted at New York:

Democrats managed to break pretty close to even in the 2022 midterms despite Joe Biden’s chronically underwater job-approval ratings. But now there’s even better news for Democrats and for Biden’s prospects of winning a second term: His job-approval numbers have been gradually improving since Election Day. And if you look at his approval ratio (the gap between those approving and disapproving of his performance as president), the trends are even better.

According to the RealClearPolitics polling averages, Biden’s current job-approval ratio is minus 7.6 percent (44.1 percent approval, 51.7 percent disapproval). The gap was 12.4 percent on November 8, 2022, and 20.7 percent last July 20 (36.8 percent approval, 57.5 percent disapproval). In the FiveThirtyEight averages, Biden is even closer to being above water in terms of popularity. His ratio is now minus 6.8 percent (44.1 percent approval, 50.9 percent disapproval). Last time he was in positive territory was on August 29, 2021, at FiveThirtyEight and on August 21, 2021, at RCP. There are some outlier polls already showing Biden above water (e.g., a new Economist/YouGov poll that gives him 50 percent approval and 47 percent disapproval among registered voters). More may soon follow.

What does Biden need in the way of popularity to become a good bet for reelection in 2024? Using Gallup data (our best source for comparing presidents over time), recent presidents who won reelection had job-approval ratings between 48 percent (George W. Bush in 2004) and 58 percent (Ronald Reagan in 1984). Obama was at 52 percent, and Bill Clinton was at 54 percent. Losers included Jimmy Carter at a terrible 37 percent and Donald Trump at a meh 45 percent (Trump, of course, came pretty close to pulling off the electoral-vote upset despite losing the popular vote by 4.5 percent).

Biden might note that Obama (whose party did not do remotely as well in the 2010 midterms as it did in 2022) gained six points in job-approval ratings between June and November of 2012. That kind of progress for Biden from now through Election Day 2024 would put him in relatively good standing. And that’s aside from the fact that he could win reelection even with unimpressive job-approval numbers if his opponent has popularity issues of his or her own. Presumably, these are matters that Biden will mull before he makes his 2024 intentions definitively known.

 

From Thomas B. Edsall’s latest New York Times opinion column: “Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, suggested in an email that the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade was a crucial factor in the escalation of conflict within Republican ranks. This split became evident within weeks of the decision in the abortion rights vote cast by a majority of the electorate in Kansas, a red state, in an August referendum. In the Kansas governor’s contest, “moderate Republicans rebelled against an extreme pro-life, anti-tax, antigovernment conservative, allowing Democrats to win the governorship,” Greenberg wrote….Polling conducted by Democracy Corps, Greenberg said, shows that “moderates are Republicans because of race and immigration, but they are more pro-choice and pro-A.C.A. (the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare), and they are providing a base of voters and support for Republican leaders who are starting to shake up the party.”….During the current session of Congress, Greenberg wrote, “I bet that there will be 10 to 20 Republicans who will work with Democrats to pass important legislation. And they will be empowered by the state examples and the perception that McCarthy is just in the pocket of the Tea Party and Trump Republicans.”

Edsall also notes some trends toward GOP moderation at the state level, including: “At the start of this year, Derek Merrin — a hard-edged anti-abortion conservative supportive of so-called right-to-work laws — was assured victory in his bid to become speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives….Merrin had won majority support from the 67-member Republican caucus in the 99-member Ohio House. His ascent would have marked a significant shift to the right in a state Republican Party known traditionally for its centrism….On Jan. 3, however, when the full Ohio House met to pick a speaker, Merrin was defeated by a bipartisan coalition of 32 Democrats and 22 Republicans, a rarity in this polarized era. The coalition supported a less conservative, less confrontational Republican, Jason Stevens, who told the House after his victory, “I pledge to respect and to work with each and every one of us to address the many concerns of our state.”….Let’s look at a third state, Pennsylvania — where the determination of control in the state House of Representatives awaits the results of special elections for three vacancies. Here, enough Republicans joined with Democrats in a bipartisan vote on Jan. 3 to make Mark Rozzi, a centrist Democrat, speaker of the House….“The commonwealth that is home to Independence Hall will now be home to this commonwealth’s first independent speaker of the House,” Rozzi told his colleagues after the vote. “I pledge my allegiance and my loyalty to no interest in this building, to no interest in our politics. I pledge my loyalty to the people of the commonwealth.”…In Ohio and Pennsylvania, the House speaker can, with some restrictions, set the legislative agenda.”

At FiveThirtyEight, Alex Samuels ponders “What Will New Leadership In Congress Mean For Democrats?,” and writes: “House Democrats officially elected New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries to be their leader this past weekend, coalescing around a fresher face as the new Republican majority took control. The new top three leaders will consist of Jeffries, Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark, who will serve as the new minority whip, and California Rep. Pete Aguilar, who will chair the Democratic caucus….While all of these changes are noteworthy, Jeffries, in particular, makes history as the first Black politician to lead any major party in Congress. At 52, he also marks a stark generational shift for House Democratic leadership following two decades under Nancy Pelosi, who is leaving the position at 82 years old….Jeffries still has a choice to make: Will he use his new mantle to advocate for more progressive policies or continue the unspoken tradition of past rising Black political leaders and move more toward the middle?…And while he’s more liberal than most fellow House members, according to DW-NOMINATE, a political-science metric that uses roll-call votes to measure the ideology of members of Congress, Jeffries has tried to assert his independence from the party’s left wing, saying in 2021, “There will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism.” Jeffries is clearly not a guy who is going to die on any ideological hill. But his bell-ringer speech debut as leader of the House Democrats made it clear he is also not a guy who is going to take any guff from the Republican majority. It’s a pretty good look for House Dems.

Looking ahead to the 2023 governor’s races,  J. Miles Coleman observes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball “While it’s easy to begin looking towards the 2024 election cycle, 3 states will have gubernatorial contests this year…. In Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear remains personally popular, but he will be running in a red state with a large GOP bench….Louisiana and Mississippi should be easier contests for Republicans. Term-limited Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA) will be hard for Democrats to replace, while Mississippi, where Democrats have not won a gubernatorial contest this century, will also be an uphill fight for them….The initial ratings for these 3 races are Leans Democratic for Kentucky, Safe Republican for Mississippi, and Likely Republican for Louisiana….Of the 3 states seeing governors races this year, Kentucky will likely see the most vigorous 2-party competition. Four years ago, Kentucky voters ousted an unpopular governor from a popular party. This year, the Bluegrass State will weigh whether to keep a popular governor from an unpopular party….Though the status of abortion in Kentucky is being settled in the courts, from a purely electoral perspective, the anti-Amendment 2 vote may provide something of a template for a Beshear win this year. The state’s 2 largest counties, Louisville’s Jefferson and Lexington’s Fayette, both voted over 70% against the amendment — in 2019, Beshear himself received about two-thirds of the vote in each of those large counties. (Those are the pockets of dark blue on the map.) The 3 northernmost counties, which are in Cincinnati’s orbit, also voted, in aggregate, against Amendment 2. Beshear’s overperformance in northern Kentucky was key to his 2 previous statewide wins. It is hard to transfer every element of a referendum to an actual partisan contest, but a similar vote in Kansas last summer presaged Gov. Laura Kelly’s (D-KS) victory in another red state….Considering the governor’s personal popularity and the potential for uncertainty in the Republican primary, we are starting Beshear off as a slight favorite and calling the Kentucky contest Leans Democratic.” Coleman also provides a detailed analysis of the Guv races in MS and LA.

From “White House turns talk of Medicare, Social Security cuts against GOP” by Alex Gangitano and Brett Samuels at The Hill:

The White House is turning the tables on House Republican lawmakers when it comes to conservative-led spending proposals that Democrats warn could mean cuts to crucial programs like Medicare and Social Security….The Biden administration is already building on a strategy it deployed during the midterm election season in which it highlighted talk from multiple GOP congressional lawmakers about how they plan to use their new House majority to consider cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

It’s also putting a spotlight on the possibility of military spending cuts by Republicans in an effort to balance federal spending and reduce the national debt….The Biden administration has made clear it won’t go along with such proposals, framing Republicans as the party that wants to defund the military and threaten social welfare programs.

“They are going to try to cut Social Security and Medicare. It could not be clearer,” White House chief of staff Ron Klain tweeted Monday, sharing a clip of Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) saying on Fox Business Network that major spending cuts would likely require changes to entitlement programs.

As Gangitano and Samuels note, “The Republican Study Committee’s fiscal 2023 model federal budget included increasing the Social Security eligibility age to reflect longevity. The committee argued that the adjustment would continue the gradual increase of the retirement age, noting that full retirement was raised to 67 in 2022.”

This is a really bad look for McCarthy and other Republican House leaders. “I can’t imagine a less persuasive case to the American people than, ‘Let me hollow out Medicare or I’ll set off an economic bomb that kills millions of jobs overnight,’” one Democratic strategist said.”

But the Republicans won’t be committing political suicide unless Democrats and the media insist they own it. It shouldn’t be hard. It’s up to Democrats – elected officials, party leaders and rank and file – to make sure young voters all across America understand that it is their health care and retirement that is on the GOP chopping block, and only one party is working to stop them.

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

This is the first part of a three part series

The beginnings of the environment as an issue can be traced to the conservation movement of the late 19th and early 20th century associated with figures like Gifford Pinchot, head of the Forest Service under Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club. They were Republicans but many Democrats also embraced the movement; Woodrow Wilson created the National Park Service in 1916. And the New Deal in the 1930’s had a prominent place for conservation activities, most famously in the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) where young men were employed to improve forests and national parks. Trail systems and lodges from that era are still widely used today.

With varying degrees of strictness the conservation movement’s guiding principle was to insulate unspoiled parts of nature from development by market forces, thereby preserving them for healthy leisure and recreation. The movement, like all future iterations of the environmental movement, assumed an unending conflict between man and nature that required good people to take the side of nature.

As development proceeded over the course of the 20th century, the stresses on nature became ever larger and more obvious, leading to the emergence after World War II of an apocalyptic strain in the conservation movement. The argument gained traction that economic and population growth would, if unchecked, destroy the environment and lead to civilizational collapse. Accompanying that strain was a milder version of the idea that directly challenged the old conservation ethos: simply conserving what was left of nature was not enough. The reality of the interdependent natural world meant that man’s activities were having dire effects everywhere on the planet—where people lived and where they didn’t. These activities were upsetting a finely balanced system, resulting in the degradation of both nature, as conventionally understood, and people’s lives. Restoring and preserving that balance was what it meant to be an environmentalist.

This reformist environmentalism gained purchase during the 1950’s, associated with figures like Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith who were trying to expand the remit of contemporary liberalism. Galbraith’s best-selling book, The Affluent Society, dwelt on the ways the mass consumer capitalism was good at meeting basic needs but very poor at producing a healthy society for its citizens. One of the symptoms of the latter failure was the increasing degradation of the environment through pollution of the air and water.

Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, picked up on Galbraith’s concern and vastly amplified it, posing the environmental problem in dire, life-threatening terms. It caught the popular imagination and created a national debate about the environment almost overnight. This was the birth of the modern environmental movement and its instantiation as a movement of the educated middle class, leaving behind the conservation movement’s upper class base.

The movement proved enormously effective as a reform movement. Carson’s book veered toward the apocalyptic, but the movement she inspired was laser-focused on practical reforms that would immediately reduce pollution and safeguard the environment. A raft of legislation in the Johnson administration followed like the Clean Air and Water Quality Acts and, in the Nixon administration, the creation of the Environmental Protection Act and the promulgation of the NEPA (National Environmental Protection Act) standards. This legislation and subsequent action was directly responsible for a radical reduction in pollution of all kinds in the next decades.

But the apocalyptic strain of environmentalism, which saw industrial society as an imminent threat to human life and to the planet, was not eliminated by these reforming successes. Instead a closer relationship evolved between mainstream environmentalism and a radical view of the fundamental dangers of industrial society. The first manifestation of this was the anti-nuclear power movement which arose in the 1970’s and was turbo-charged by the 1979 Three Mile Island incident, Building on public fears of  nuclear meltdowns and radiation poisoning, the movement was successful in stopping the build-out of nuclear power in the United States.

In the 1990’s, as a scientific consensus emerged that greenhouse gases were steadily warming the earth, this movement was superseded by the climate movement. Here was clear proof that industrial society and human civilization were counterposed. Initially meliorist in orientation, the movement has become more radical as it has gathered strength. The quest to eliminate the possibility of dire scenarios has met the reality that industrial societies built on fossil fuels are likely to change only slowly, for both political and technical reasons.

This has promoted a sense that radical action to transform industrial society must be taken as fast as possible. That view has gained hegemony within the Democratic party infrastructure, supporting activist groups and associated cultural elites. Practical objections about the speed with which a “clean energy transition” can be pursued and concerns about effects on jobs and prices are now outweighed for most Democrats by the perceived urgency of the mission. That has set the Democrats apart from the working class voters they aspire to represent for whom these practical objections and concerns loom large. It has become a significant factor in the Great Divide that has opened between postindustrial metros and the rural areas, towns and small cities of middle America.

Read more…

At The Hill, Brent Budowsky writes: “While most commentators, myself included, believe there is an upper limit to what Biden and congressional Democrats can accomplish legislatively, it is wrong to suggest that nothing important can be accomplished, for two reasons….First, there are somewhere between 10 and 30 House Republicans who could be part of negotiating success on some important issues that they believe in and which are important to their districts. …Second, it is already increasingly apparent that the growing image of hard-core House Republican obstructionism, including the super-hostile attempts to humiliate Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), are beginning to brand House Republicans in the eyes of voters as the kind of anti-voter obstructionists that led the GOP to electoral disaster in 2018, 2020 and 2022….One can envision significant bipartisan agreements in the Senate that 10 or more GOP House members would accept, such as on a broad immigration bill that would strengthen border protection, improve border security, provide relief for the “Dreamers” and more. Remember when everyone believed bipartisan infrastructure was impossible to pass?….It could be similarly possible to reach agreement on lowering prescription drug costs for a far wider group of patients than could be achieved last year, or to pass some version of the widely popular child tax credit and other measures to support working women.”

Li Zhou explains why “McCarthy’s speaker chaos could make Democrats more powerful” at Vox: “Rep. Kevin McCarthy has become speaker of the House, but only did so by offering offered a series of concessions that effectively mean his speakership will consistently be under threat from his own caucus….McCarthy’s agreement to weaken the role of the speaker is likely to lead to extreme gridlock within the ranks of the GOP. But it could also present an opening for Democrats. If far-right lawmakers in the GOP follow through on their promises to hold up pivotal spending and debt ceiling legislation, Republicans may well have to rely on Democrats’ help to get any bills across the finish line — a dynamic Democrats could capitalize on….“The deal is, if they want to get stuff done, they’re going to have to work with us,” says Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee. “And we’re not going to be a cheap date.”….Ultimately, House Republicans will need to get a majority to pass bills including an increase to the debt ceiling, spending legislation, the farm bill — which authorizes many Agriculture Department programs — and a defense bill that lays out funding for the military. Were conservative members to withhold their support for such policies, the GOP wouldn’t be able to pass the bills on their own. If they aren’t able to, they risk scenarios like the country defaulting on the national debt and causing an economic crisis, as well as a potentially interminable government shutdown….The best case for Democrats is that they’re able to slip a few of their priorities into must-pass legislation. But, as Scanlon alluded to, there’s a worst-case scenario as well: utter gridlock.”

“Democrats’ political success comes down to a pretty simple equation,’ Amy Walter writes at The Cook Political Report. “When those millions of “new voters” show up, Democrats can win. When they don’t, Democrats fall short….Using Catalist modeling, Podhorzer calculated the percent of the vote Democrats could expect from “regular voters” and from the “new Midterm voters” in each battleground state. …In every state but Michigan, regular voters—those who voted in 2014—are more GOP leaning. For example, in Arizona, just 46 percent of “regular voters” would vote Democratic, while in Florida it’s 43 percent. But, in every state except Texas, new Midterm voters are majority Democratic. In Nevada, for example (where regular voters are just 45 percent Democratic voting), a whopping 57 percent of new voters are modeled Democratic voters…. In other words, if only those who voted in 2014 showed up to vote last year in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, Democrats would likely have fallen short of winning in those states. But, with the addition of these new voters, Democrats were victorious….However, this also illustrates the challenge for Democrats to win once critical battleground states like Florida and Ohio, as well as the still-uphill fight to turn Texas blue. Florida, Ohio and Texas have the most GOP-leaning “regular voter” pool of the battleground states. Plus, in Ohio and Texas, the new Midterm voters are divided evenly between Democratic and Republican leaning. So, to win statewide in those two states, Democrats will need to not only drive up their new voters, but will have to hope that the GOP base voters stay home as well.”

The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuval writes, “Even while giving Republicans a narrow margin in the House of Representatives, voters elected a historic cohort of insurgent progressive newcomers, adding at least 11 new members to the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The CPC, which just reelected Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal as its leader, had numbered 101 members, making it the largest ideological caucus in the last Congress. It will grow in the new one, even after losing members to retirement (like Eddie Bernice Jackson of Texas), election to other offices (Karen Bass as Los Angeles mayor, Peter Welch as senator to Vermont), or election reversals (including, regrettably, one of the true champions of working people in Congress, Michigan’s Andy Levin, brought down by reapportionment and a multimillion-dollar dark money assault in the Democratic primary waged largely by AIPAC and Emily’s List)….What’s behind this new wave? Slowly, insurgents are turning blue districts progressive. That isn’t easy: 2022 saw an unprecedented flood of dark money mobilized by corporate and conservative interests intent on defeating progressives in primary battles….Fortunately, citizen movements and community organizing gave Democrats the base to counter corporate money. They also put forth bold ideas to address an economy that doesn’t work for working or poor people. All are staunch advocates of progressive reforms—from the Green New Deal and Medicare for All to police and gun reforms, abortion rights, and more. They are also bolstered by a growing progressive electoral infrastructure: Our Revolution, the Working Families Party, MoveOn, Indivisible, People’s Action, the Progressive Congress Campaign Committee, and the CPC PAC, among others….With Democrats losing control of the House, the newly emboldened progressives will be forced to take on an even greater role. They will need to consolidate their inside/outside strategies with grassroots groups across the country—and to push hard for an aggressive executive-order strategy from the Biden White House. They will sharpen the reform agenda and contrast it with the chaos and venom that will mark the Republican caucus. And they’ll continue to build—challenging a corrupted Democratic establishment. “You can win or lose elections,” Representative-elect Casar said, “but you don’t ever lose a movement. Our work is on a much greater horizon than one election.”

Listening as I did to the House Speaker’s election saga, I heard a lot of rhetoric that brought back very bad memories, and I wrote about them at New York:

One of the more interesting things about the weeklong right-wing revolt against Kevin McCarthy’s ascent to the Speakership that has paralyzed the U.S. House has been the rebels’ conceit that they, rather than the other 414 members of the chamber, exclusively represent the “will of the American people.” They have passionately and redundantly appealed to this self-designed mandate during their remarks on the floor. A good example was Thursday’s speech by Virginia congressman Bob Good in nominating his obscure Oklahoma colleague Kevin Hern for the Speakership:

“The greatest reflection of where the people of this country are is the House of Representatives. The people spoke back on November 8 and gave the majority by some 3 or 4 million votes to the Republican Party. It’s not the White House; it’s not the Senate. It’s the People’s House that reflects where the American people are, and they trusted us on this side of the aisle with the leadership of this House. And we have a window of opportunity to validate that trust, to do whatever we can to save this Republic.”

That salvation, Good continues at some length to assert, requires “transformational change” in the Republican Party and in the Congress, meaning above all no more cooperation with the White House, with House Democrats, or with either party’s leadership in the Senate, as they all represent the despised “swamp” in the MAGA imagination.

When you deconstruct this train of thought, its arrogance is pretty breathtaking. The notion that the House majority holds an exclusive popular mandate is not one that Good or any of the rebels would have embraced during the eight years that Nancy Pelosi was Speaker. As for 2022, the more than 54 million Americans who voted for House Democratic candidates are given no voice at all. And the idea that Republicans carried the House out of some frantic cry from the electorate for “transformational change” is less compelling than the entirely commonplace metronomic trend against the party controlling the White House — a trend that was, in fact, weaker than any we have seen since 2002 and among the weakest ever. And the anti-McCarthy rebels had little or nothing to do with preventing a completely catastrophic midterms outcome for Republicans. As FiveThirtyEight notes, most of them barely had to run in the 2022 general election:

“Unlike the Democrats who voted against former Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2019 — who hailed exclusively from competitive districts — McCarthy’s foes tend to come from solidly red turf. Only three of the 20 were elected in districts with FiveThirtyEight partisan leans bluer than R+15 [districts 15 points more Republican than the country as a whole].”

Yes, arch-rebel Lauren Boebert won the closest House race in the country. But that’s because she very nearly lost reelection in an R+7 district, not because she was identified with “the swamp” or with Kevin McCarthy. Conversely, it’s hard to blame GOP underperformance on RINO squishes. Republicans lost the Senate thanks to unimpressive results posted by MAGA stalwarts like Blake Masters, Don Bolduc, Herschel Walker, and Adam Laxalt. If Mitch McConnell (the object of nearly as much rebel spleen as McCarthy this week) still stands athwart the Senate Republican conference like an ancient colossus, it’s because candidates who share the worldview of Bob Good and Matt Gaetz and Andy Biggs bombed at the ballot box. Closer to home, notable House flops included right-wing insurgents Joe Kent of Washington, J.R. Majewski of Ohio, and John Gibbs of Michigan.

Listening to the anti-McCarthy hardliners, you get the sense that they believe themselves to represent the popular will independently of mere elections. And that makes sense when you plumb the depths of their conspiracy-theory-laden points of view. Most of them are 2020 election deniers who are willing to discount a sizable number of votes as putatively fraudulent. Many believe leaders in both parties (along with the news media and social-media platforms) are complicit in preventing many millions of voters from making informed candidate choices. And at a time when they and other Republicans routinely accuse Democrats of socialist extremism, conservative hardliners counterintuitively continue to assert (as they have done during the Speakership fight) that there is too little difference between the two parties.

In this, the fringe characters of the political right resemble their counterparts on the left; both tend to assume there is a hidden majority for their points of view that somehow never breaks through in actual elections thanks to the perfidy of the Establishment. But let’s be clear: There’s zero equivalence in conduct. The fringe elements of the left, to the extent they exist in Congress, aren’t holding the chamber hostage; they have joined their Establishment colleagues in supporting Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker, though many consider him too “centrist.” And it’s not the left that spawned an assault on the Capitol just two years ago or whose votes to overturn the 2020 election results represented an endorsement of the rioters’ motives, if not their violent excesses. (All of the anti-McCarthy rebels then in Congress, along with McCarthy himself and a majority of House Republicans, voted against counting state-certified Biden electors.) In a very real sense, the men and women who have prevented the swearing in of the 118th Congress for so long represent not “the American people” but an anti-democratic faction that recognizes no authority but its own will to power.

Recent years have witnessed lots of hand-wringing about the Democratic “brand,” paired with anxieties about a lack of clarity regarding the Democrats’ mission, along with questions like “what do the Democrats stand for?” It’s a fair gripe – it hasn’t been easy for Dems to project a clear, concise message that gives them a positive image. But now that the Republicans are in glorious 3D ‘disarray,’ it’s time for Democrats to craft some new GOP branding irons, so Republicans will have to display a deeper imprint on their foreheads.

Branding is not a one-way strategy. It’s just as important to brand the adversary as oneself.

G.O.P. stands for “Gridlock, Obstruction and Paralysis” is a particularly good fit at the moment. That’s fine for bumper stickers and headlines. But it’s also time for Dems to sear the “do-nothing GOP” and “Chaos party” brands deeply into the Republican public image. Pair it with a reminder that the The GOP leaders are marinating in their own chaos to the point where they can’t even get newly-elected members, most of whom are Republicans, sworn-in, let alone do the peoples’ business.

As Stephen Collinson put it at CNN Politics, “McCarthy is becoming the latest example of a political leader consumed by a revolution the “Make America Great Again” radicals helped to stage. For the radical lawmakers now blocking his ascent to his dream job, he’s become the political establishment he once condemned….The Californian, who has lost a stunning 11 consecutive House roll call votes in his bid to become speaker, was the first major GOP leader to embrace ex-President Donald Trump after the January 6, 2021, insurrection.”

“The speakership stalemate is not just a fresh indication of the turmoil still racking the GOP after the far-right forced out two previous GOP speakers,” Collinson adds. “It suggests the new GOP House majority will be perennially dysfunctional and – given the capacity of a few lawmakers to grind the chamber to a halt at any moment – chaotic political crises are likely to dominate the next two years.”

What Dems must do is something more than sit on the couch enjoying the spectacle and noshing on popcorn. Every single Democratic elected official ought to be out there branding the Republicans as the incompetent do-nothing party. It’s long been true. But never before has there been a better political moment for making the brand stick. Some Democratic leaders are doing this. But all of them need to make it the ‘message du jour.’

Eventually, the Republicans will elect a speaker and they will be able to make Democratic reforms D.O.A. in the House, no matter what Dems are able to accomplish in the senate. They will launch investigations targeting Democrats, and they will dominate the media narrative when it comes to House coverage. For Dems not to take full advantage of this political moment, would be political malpractice. Attack, attack, attack.

The worst part about the McCarthy meltdown is that the Republican dissenters causing it are even worse than him. Many are wondering why the Democrats can’t hook up with a half-dozen or so Republican moderates to elect a more moderate Republican speaker. The answer is that it’s not so easy to find enough GOP moderates who have the gonads to to take such a stand. At The Week, Peter Weber notes, “Incoming House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who won a plurality of votes in all three rounds, said Republicans have not yet reached out to his caucus. And he didn’t sound overly eager to make a deal. “We are looking for a willing partner to solve problems for the American people, not save the Republicans from their dysfunction,” Jeffries said. “We need a partner in governance” and haven’t found one in McCarthy’s Republicans….Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) seemed a little more amenable. “Democrats are here, we’re not going anywhere, and if they want to play ball, we’re open to that,” she told MSNBC Tuesday night….”I do not believe that Kevin McCarthy has the votes, I believe that a lot of the opposition to him is very personal,” and if no Republican can get 218 votes, “McCarthy’s team may have to come to the Democratic Party,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And if that’s the case, then what would that even look like? It’s rather unprecedented. Could it result in a potential coalition government? Could we get Democratic chairs of committees as a result? We don’t know.” New York Times columnist Perry Bacon, Jr. argues that “Democrats should back a centrist Republican for speaker.” For most House Democrats, however, the prevailing attitude seems to be pass the popcorn and enjoy the demolition derby. No telling how it’s going to shake out.

Writing at The Hill, Mike Lillis also doubts that Democrats are going to get involved. “Democratic leaders said Wednesday that Republicans are on their own amid the conservative revolt that’s prevented Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — or anyone else — from becoming the next Speaker in the new Congress….“This is on them,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), the incoming chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said during a press briefing in the Capitol….Aguilar said he hasn’t been approached by any lawmakers about a search for a potential consensus candidate, nor have Democratic leaders presented that possibility to their rank-and-file members, who are united behind Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the incoming minority leader who got all 212 Democratic votes on Tuesday’s three ballots….With Republicans flailing in their effort to seat a new Speaker, outside centrist groups are agitating for lawmakers in both parties to unite behind a moderate figure — perhaps one outside of Congress — to fill the void. This week, former Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), a centrist who is popular on both sides of the aisle, said the idea that he might be that figure is “an intriguing suggestion that I have not rejected.”….Yet even those Democrats who have supported the idea of a consensus candidate don’t appear ready to jump on board. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who has been open to that strategy, is also downplaying that idea this week amid the Republicans’ struggles to seat a new Speaker….Yet even those Democrats who have supported the idea of a consensus candidate don’t appear ready to jump on board. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who has been open to that strategy, is also downplaying that idea this week amid the Republicans’ struggles to seat a new Speaker….“At the end of the day, this is a Republican mess,” he told CNN Tuesday night. “This is a failure of them to govern. This is their problem to fix.”

In “4 Things That Were Changed (Forever) By 2022” at Campaigns & Elections, Sean J. Miller writes, “There was a time when digital consultants felt it was, well, just a matter of time before they took their rightful place at the head of the campaign strategy table. Remember Brad Parscale’s appointment as campaign manager for President Trump’s reelect? Digital was going to be in charge. Since 2020, that inevitability has appeared far less certain. Sure, digital spending is still increasing — as platform companies’ stock prices are plummeting — but look at how much money went to broadcast in 2022: Pre-election projections had it hitting just under $5 billion , the biggest advertising category by far. And the reason for that is clear: it still works….“Broadcast television builds the most reach, quickly, and there’s nothing that comes close to it,” said Hadassa Gerber, chief research officer at TVB, a trade association representing America’s local broadcast television industry….Gerber’s group recently released a study  that had 41 percent of voters saying broadcast TV was motivating them to get out and vote. Cable TV was second at 27 percent, followed by social media at 24 percent….“People just write off that television can’t reach young adults (18-34 year olds), but 78 percent [of those voters] saw an ad on TV for a candidate or ballot issue,” Gerber told C&E. “They also trust it.”….She added: “Are they [campaigns] using the other platforms? Yeah they are. But nothing has the reach of television.”

I know. I too hate to see Mitch McConnell get credit for anything good. After all, the senate minority leader served as Trump’s most important enabler for years. He could have checked Trump’s worst proclivities numerous times. He could have been a force for moderation, or at least sane conservatism. He could have raised some hell about January 6. He betrayed long-standing bipartisan consensus on procedural traditions to pack the Supreme Court into a reactionary majority. His list of coulda shouldas and crimes against human decency is too long to document here. But all of that was then, and this is now. So when Mitch and Biden do a joint appearance to claim credit for an infrastructure upgrade, it’s sigh and smh time. As MJ Lee, Kevin Liptak and Sam Fossum report in “Biden and McConnell show off their bipartisan bonafides in Kentucky“at CNN Politics: “A rare scene unfolded Wednesday in Covington, Kentucky: President Joe Biden stood alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as the two men promoted a major bipartisan legislative accomplishment they achieved together….The president’s visit to McConnell’s home state to herald the implementation of the massive $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that McConnell and 18 other Senate Republicans voted for, and that Biden signed into law in 2021, marked his first domestic trip of the new year. The trip was aimed at sending an unmistakable message as Biden kicks off the second half of his first term: Even in a newly divided Congress, the Biden White House still sees room for bipartisanship….Biden thanked McConnell for working across the aisle on the law….“It wouldn’t have happened without your hand. It just wouldn’t have gotten done and I want to thank you for that,” Biden said to McConnell during his remarks….He added that while he and McConnell don’t agree on a lot, the Kentucky Republican is someone you can trust….“He’s a man of his word. When he gives you his word, you can take it to the bank, you can count on it, and he’s willing to find common ground to get things done for the country. So thank you, Mitch. Thank you,” Biden said.” Wince. But Democrats have to be about the future, if they want to build an electoral coalition that actually gets things done. Sure, Biden could be playing Charlie Brown to Mitch’s Lucy holding the ball. But Democrats are stuck. If they want to be perceived as the grownups going forward, they have to give the leader of their party and the nation enough room to be viewed as a force for bipartisanship.

Just as America can not function well without at least two healthy political parties, both committed to democracy, rational debate and bipartisanship, the Democratic Party can’t grow and prosper without both progressive and moderate voices making their best arguments. TDS contributor Ruy Teixeira has done as much as anyone to make sure the moderate perspective gets a fair hearing.  No Democratic writer has worked harder to find the best data, analyze it and make a data-driven case for thoughtful policy choices, rooted in opinion polls, election returns and demographic analysis. As we await his next contribution, here’s a few excerpts from some of his recent articles:

“With all the Democratic back-patting going on, I’m not sure they’re really facing up to an emerging problem that severely undermines their electoral theory of the case. I speak of their declining margins with the nonwhite working class. That’s not to say they don’t still carry the nonwhite working class vote, it’s just they carry it by a lot less. That wasn’t in the “rising American electorate” battle plan….As I have previously noted, AP/NORC VoteCast estimates the decline in Democrats’ advantage among the nonwhite working class as 14 points between 2020 and 2022, 23 points between 2018 and 2022 and (splicing in some Catalist data, which are consistent with VoteCast data where they overlap) an astonishing 33 point drop between 2012 and 2022.” – from The Democrats’ Nonwhite Working Class Problem.

“Democrats lost the House popular vote overall by 3 points in this election. That’s bad enough but they also lost the statewide House vote in seven (7!) states with Democratic-held Senate seats up in 2024. That includes four Biden states (Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) and three Trump states (Montana, Ohio and West Virginia). But the Biden states were all carried by under 3 points (.3, 2.4, 1.2 and .6, respectively) while the Trump states were all crushing Democratic losses (16, 8 and 39 points, respectively). It defies logic to think Democrats can compete successfully across these House Republican-supporting states in 2024, especially if Republicans run halfway sane candidates, without burnishing their common sense, distanced-from-the-national-party credentials. More progressivism ain’t gonna do it. Moderation = Democratic votes.” – from Ten Reasons Why Democrats Should Become More Moderate.

“Democrats’ hold on the suburban vote—such as it is—is far more tenuous than might be implied by the popular image of socially liberal, college-educated suburban voters who can no longer countenance voting for the GOP under any circumstances. Democrats’ target suburban voters must necessarily include legions of moderate and/or working class voters who might not draw as much sustenance from a steady diet of anti-MAGAism as Democrats anticipate….And just how much hold do the Democrats have on suburban voters anyway? In the AP/NORC VoteCast survey, the most reliable election survey available, Democrats carried suburban voters nationwide by a single point in 2022. That’s a slippage of 9 points from the Democrats’ 10 point margin in 2020. Interestingly, the slippage in Democratic support from 2020 to 2022 was actually larger among nonwhite than white suburban voters….These data indicate strongly that Democrats might not be in quite the catbird seat they think they are with suburban voters and therefore with the 2024 election.” – from The Democrats’ Tenuous Hold on the Suburbs.

“Democrats lost the nationwide popular vote by 3 points (48-51), along with control of the House. Working class Democratic supportdeclined…..again (down 9 margin points). Hispanic support declined….again (down 11 points). Black support declined….again (down 14 points). Republicans got 40 percent of the Hispanic working class House vote and 45 percent among Hispanic men. They got 19 percent among black men, According to an AARP/Fabrizio Ward/Impact Research post-election survey, Democrats did not do any better among these demographics in competitive House districts. The did however clean up in these districts among white college graduate women, carrying them by 34 points….This does not sound like a ceiling being broken. It’s more like the sound of stalemate.” – from The Cultural Left (Still) Puts a Ceiling on Democratic Support.

“…It’s worth considering the possibility that Democrats did not, in fact, fix all their problems in 2022 and that some of these may be lurking beneath the surface to undermine their chances—perhaps fatally—in 2024. One such problem is the Democrats’ Hispanic voter problem. In 2020, Democrats’ advantage among Hispanic voters declined nationwide by 16 points relative to 2016. Democrats had hoped to stop the bleeding in 2022. Did they?….It does not appear so. Prior to the election, the AEI demographics tracker, which averages poll subgroup results, found the Democratic Congressional margin among Hispanic voters consistently 7-9 points below its 2020 level and 17-19 points below its 2018 level. Results from AP/NORC VoteCast indicate that the drop in the 2022 election was actually larger than that foreshadowed by the pre-election data. These data show Democrats carrying Hispanics nationwide by just 56-39 in 2022, a 12 point decline in margin relative to 2020 (18 points relative to 2018). For what it’s worth, the less-reliable network exit polls, show an identical decline in Hispanic support between 2020 and 2022….AP VoteCast estimates the decline in Democrats’ advantage among the nonwhite working class as 14 points between 2020 and 2022, 23 points between 2018 and 2022 and (splicing in some Catalist data, which are consistent with VoteCast data where they overlap) an astonishing 33 point drop between 2012 and 2022.,,,I’d say that qualifies as a problem—and one that’s very, very far from being fixed.” – from Democrats’ Hispanic Problem — The Sequel.

It’s not easy to find equally well-argued, data-driven cases for progressive Democratic policy choices. if you have any, send them our way.

At The Washington Monthly, Bill Scher weighs in on the importance of swing voters:

Swing Voters Exist: “Modern elections don’t turn on capturing a mythical ‘center,’ they turn on activating, expanding, and mobilizing your base and demoralizing the opposition,” wrote the progressive commentator Jamelle Bouie for Slate in 2018. Fresh from her first primary election win in that same year, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “Our swing voter is not red-to-blue. Our swing voter is the voter to the non-voter, the non-voter to the voter.”

The jolt of Donald Trump’s fluky 2016 Electoral College victory turbocharged such simplistic conclusions, though they initially sprang from more nuanced data-driven analyses, like Alan I. Abramowitz’s 2011 book The Disappearing Center and the 2012 academic paper from Andrew Gelman, David Rothschild, Sharad Goel, and Doug Rivers titled “The Mythical Swing Voter.”

The academic debate has ideological overtones. If elections are primarily won with base turnout, then Democrats should move farther to the left without fear of alienating moderates. If not, then Democrats need to be more careful about their mix of issue positions.

In 2022, we got a crystal-clear answer: Swing voters exist, and they swung.

As Nate Cohn reported, “Final turnout data shows that registered Republicans turned out at a higher rate—and in some places a much higher rate—than registered Democrats, including in many of the states where Republicans were dealt some of their most embarrassing losses,” particularly Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia. Cohn also notes that preliminary data suggests that the African American share of the electorate might have “sank to its lowest level since 2006.” Without swing voters, Democrats would have lost the Senate.

“Knowing that swing voters exist doesn’t mean that progressive ideas must be jettisoned to win them over,” Scher concludes. “But just because wooing swing voters is tricky doesn’t merit waving them away as mythical unicorns.”