In his New York Times column, “When Their Idea of Liberty Is Your Idea of Death,” Thomas B. Edsall discusses the “partisan battle to claim ownership of the ideal of freedom,” and shares insights Democrats can use in their talking points, but also a couple of warnings for Democrats and President Biden. Edsall writes, ” Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, proposed in an email that Biden and the Democratic Party are well positioned to claim the freedom mantle:

I want to suggest two reasons why this focus may not only be warranted but also have great appeal. The first is the battle over abortion rights. The second is the new attitude of Republicans toward the business community.

On abortion, she continued, “I would argue that the ability to choose whether or not to have a child is a fundamental right,” adding her belief that:

Before the Dobbs decision, we had found a workable compromise on this issue: no or limited abortions after fetal viability around 24 weeks. But the kind of six-week limit that is now the law in Florida and Georgia, not to mention the total ban in 14 other states, is an almost complete abrogation of the rights of women.

On the treatment of business, Sawhill wrote: “Republicans have always been the party of corporate America, dedicated to limiting regulation and keeping taxes low. Gov. DeSantis’s attack on Disney and other so-called ‘woke’ companies is beginning to undermine the party’s reputation.”….The bottom line, she concluded, was that “when Democrats talk about freedom, it’s not just rhetoric. There is substance behind the message.”

However, Edsall also quotes William A. Galston, who warns, ““for much of the 20th century, progressives took the lead in both defining freedom and advancing its borders.”….From Teddy Roosevelt’s expansion of “the 19th-century laissez-faire conception of freedom to include the liberties of workers and entrepreneurs to get ahead in the world” to F.D.R.’s redefinition “to include social protection from the ills of want and fear,” to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s appeal to a “civil and political freedom that included all Americans,” Galston maintains that liberals have successfully argued that freedom often can “be advanced only through the vigorous actions of government.”….Liberals began to lose command of freedom in the 1960s, Galston concludes:

What began honorably in the early 1960s as the effort to expand freedom of speech and self-fulfillment was transformed just a decade later into an antinomian conception of freedom as liberation from all restraint. Enthusiasts could no longer distinguish between liberty and license, and so lost touch with the moral concerns of average citizens, especially parents struggling to raise their children in what they saw as a culture increasingly inhospitable to decency and self-restraint.

“As progressives abandoned the discourse of freedom,” Galston writes, “conservatives were more than ready to claim it.”….I asked Galston whether he stood by what he wrote 18 years ago. He replied by email:

Mostly, but some of it is dated. I did not anticipate that a commitment to fairness and equality of results would morph into a culture of intolerance on college campuses and other areas where a critical mass of progressives has been reached.

Regarding the much-cited ABC-Washington Post poll showing President Biden in deep doo-doo, Ed Kilgore has an insightful critique of the poll at New York magazine. Also check out “What the New Poll Favoring Trump Got Wrong and the Pundits Missed” by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian  at Time magazine, who write: “Of course, political professional point out, polls done this far out have little value, and much can and will change in eighteen months by November 2024. In fact, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama are just three recent presidents who rebounded from comparable sagging public polls to ultimately win 18 months later. We acknowledge the polling around 40 percent favorability is nothing for the Biden Administration to gloat over, however, according to the Gallup Poll, it is consistent with almost all the seven prior presidents at this time except for President H.W. Bush following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and President George W. Bush following the 9/11 attack on the U.S. In fact, George H.W. Bush enjoyed a 73% favorability in September 1990 but then went on to lose his reelection to Bill Clinton….In fact, there are piles of contrasting polls. There are some polls where Trump beats Biden – such as the right-leaning Rasmussen polls and Stagwell’s Harris Poll. Trump has consistently dominated across both polls dating back years. But most major opinion polls, on average, Biden leads Trump by 2 percent, including recent polls done by Yahoo News, The Wall Street Journal, Quinnipiac University, and Morning Consult among many others. Even Rupert Murdoch’s right-leaning New York Post grudgingly concedes that “Biden beats Trump big” across early polling….Pollster Cornel Belcher commented “The poll really is trash, and I don’t say that lightly because I’ve had respect for their polling in the past.”

From “Not Biden vs. Trump Again! The Disgruntled Voters Who Could Decide the 2024 Election” by Alan I. Abramowitz at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Most Americans do not want to see a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2024. Both Biden and Trump are viewed unfavorably by a majority of voters. Nevertheless, there is a strong likelihood that Biden and Trump will be the Democratic and Republican candidates in 2024. In that case, a group of voters who currently favor “someone else” in 2024 may decide the outcome of the presidential election. These voters make up close to one-fifth of the electorate according to data from the 2022 ANES Pilot Study….According to the data from the ANES Pilot Study, Joe Biden would appear to have a small advantage over Donald Trump in a two-way contest: 51% of registered voters rated Biden more favorably than Trump while 47% rated Trump more favorably than Biden on a feeling thermometer scale. Among those who preferred “someone else” in 2024, 49% rated Biden more favorably while 44% rated Trump more favorably….A plurality of voters who prefer someone other than Trump or Biden in 2024 identify as conservative and identify with or lean toward the Republican Party. The key factor driving these voters toward Biden appears to be their concern about the events of Jan. 6, 2021 and the former president’s role in inciting the riot at the U.S. Capitol….Given the unpopularity of both Biden and Trump, there would appear to be an opening for a third party or independent candidate in 2024 who would appeal to the substantial minority of voters, 15% in the ANES Pilot Study, who dislike both major-party candidates. In 2020, however, third party and independent candidates won less than 2% of the national popular vote. Whether any strong third party or independent candidates emerge in 2024 and, if so, which major party candidate’s support they cut into, may well decide the outcome of the presidential election.”

In looking at the dynamics of the debt limit standoff in Washington, it occurred to me that some Republicans may view this not as a risky situation but as a win-win proposition, so I wrote a warning at New York:

In any high-stakes conflict in which combatants have taken diametrically opposed positions, avoiding a destructive outcome depends on equivalent risks and rewards. If failure to reach an agreement is an unmitigated disaster for one side and something less than that for the other, the latter is very likely to win any game of chicken.

The comforting conventional wisdom about the rapidly impending debt-limit collision in Congress is that the House Republicans (and their largely passive Senate GOP allies) precipitating the crisis have as much to lose as the White House and Senate Democrats. If there’s any doubt that Kevin McCarthy will ultimately find some way to avoid a debt default, it’s because the wildly reckless House Freedom Caucus, whose members seem to relish a national or global economic calamity, hold his continuation as Speaker in their hands. So from the point of view of Democrats and allegedly responsible Republicans, the game has been to find some face-saving way for McCarthy to do the right thing, as he surely wants to do, without losing his precious gavel.

But what if the assumption that we’re in a mutually assured destruction scenario is not exactly right? What if McCarthy or the Freedom Caucus or some other strategically positioned group of Republicans is convinced that disaster for the economy and the country could produce an electoral victory for the GOP? If so, that would destroy any incentives for compromise: Republicans will either win important concessions from Joe Biden and his Democrats that would gratify potentially rebellious MAGA types or they’ll inherit a damaged country in November 2024 amid the sort of radically diminished expectations that ease the burden of governing.

One danger sign Democrats should note is public-opinion research indicating that Americans are inclined to apportion blame equally for the debt-limit crisis even though they favor the Democratic position on how to avoid calamity, according to a new ABC/Washington Post survey (a flawed but nonetheless influential poll):

“A 58 percent majority of Americans say the debt limit and federal spending should be handled as separate issues, down from 65 percent who said this in February. A much smaller 26 percent of Americans say Congress should only allow the government to pay its debts if Biden agrees to cut spending, the same share as February….

“The poll finds 39 percent of Americans say they would blame Republicans in Congress if the government goes into default, and 36 percent say they would blame President Biden and 16 percent volunteer that they would blame both equally. (That dynamic is similar to the 2011 debt limit showdown, when 42 percent said they would blame congressional Republicans and 36 percent said they would blame President Obama. Lawmakers averted a default that year.)”

The 2011 analogy is important for both parties. As Obama advisor Dan Pfeiffer recalls, the 44th president’s standing going into a reelection year was almost fatally damaged even by a near-miss of a debt default:

“In 2011, [Obama] spent months negotiating with Speaker John Boehner to strike a ‘grand bargain’ that would help solve America’s longstanding fiscal problems. But Mr. Boehner couldn’t deliver his caucus in support of the framework, and the nation hurtled toward default. With only a few days to go, negotiators were able to strike a smaller agreement that satisfied no one, left both sides angry about the result and was damaging for the country. The United States’ credit rating was downgraded for the first time in the nation’s history, and borrowing costs for the government went up.

“Mr. Obama’s approval rating slumped, even dipping below 40 percent in Gallup polling. Our internal polling in the White House showed the president losing re-election handily to a generic Republican.”

Barack Obama managed to claw back much of his popularity and was reelected in 2012, but it was a near thing. Republicans may calculate that an actual debt default, likely followed by a recession, would doom any incumbent president, particularly if voters are inclined to blame that president at least partly for a debt default triggered by the other party.

The abiding truth is that chief executives who preside over a major economic contraction do not often get reelected. This phenomenon dates all the way back to the administration of Martin Van Buren and shortened such recent presidencies as those of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and arguably (though a lot of other things were going on) Donald Trump.

The possibility that at least some Republicans may glimpse a silver lining in a debt default is all the more reason that their buddies on Wall Street (who literally cannot afford to be so sanguine about a market meltdown) should be making it very clear the GOP will never see another campaign contribution if it runs Biden and the U.S. economy right off the road.

Norman L Eisen and Ryan Goodman explain “Why the Sexual Assault Verdict Is Actually Bad News for Trump Politically” at Slate:

The unanimous jury verdict on Tuesday that has turned Donald Trump from an alleged sexual assaulter into a proven one may create political shock waves if recent history is any guide. As numerous empirical studies have shown, the American public has come to view sexual assault as a form of abusing power that can disqualify a perpetrator from holding public office. Trump may suffer significant political damage from this new majoritarian understanding.

In November 2017, 61 percent of voters—including 56 percent of men and a nontrivial margin of white men (50–43) and white women (55–37)—said President Trump should be impeached and removed from office if he were proven to have engaged in “sexual harassment,” according to a Quinnipiac poll. That overall support—the eye-popping number of 61 percent—was higher than any poll tracking public support for impeachment and removal from office for the scandalous conduct in Trump’s first and second impeachments. (See FiveThirtyEight’s complete collection of surveys for the first and second impeachment.) What’s more, Quinnipiac asked only about sexual harassment, not sexual assault, in the case of Trump. The latter, which is also the core crime in the E. Jean Carroll verdict, would have presumably produced even greater levels of support for removal from office.

The Quinnipiac poll was not alone.

A December 2017 Public Policy Polling survey found that 53 percent of voters thought Trump should resign because of the “allegations” of sexual harassment against him, and another Quinnipiac poll in December 2017 found that 50 percent of voters already thought Trump should resign because he had “been accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault by multiple women.”

These results are no surprise when taken in context of recent social science studies. Rigorous empirical research shows that Americans generally consider sexual assault incompatible with serving in elected office or positions of public trust (see, e.g., Savani and Collignon, 2023; Stark and Collignon, 2022; Masuoka, Grose & Junn, 2021; Craig and Cossette, 2020). A 2020 study in the journal Political Behavior found that “(1) a significant electoral penalty is likely to be assessed against politicians accused of sexual harassment; (2) the size of that penalty (in terms of lost votes and lower favorability) … is concentrated among co-partisans and, to a lesser extent, Independents.” That study, like many others, concerned “accusations” and “allegations” of misbehavior; the results are likely to be even more pronounced in the event of allegations being proveb—especially in a court and especially by a unanimous verdict.

Eisen and Goodman cite several “caveats and qualifications.” and then write that “It is notable, however, that a candidate’s having engaged in sexual assault has in many instances proven fatal to their holding public office.” According to the aforementioned source:

Matt Dixon and Jonathan Allen report “Democratic donors hope to recruit NBA legends Grant Hill and Dwyane Wade to run for Senate in Florida” at nbcnews.com. But their article is about more than these two former NBA stars potential senate candidacies; it’s really an update on Democratic prospects for taking away Republican Rick Scott’s senate seat next year.

As for the idea of running popular “NBA legends” as a shortcut to making Florida a purple state once again, why not? The Florida Democratic Party needs help, and a NBA celebrity candidacy just might help to juice turnout, particularly among black voters. I’ve long believed Democrats could benefit for running more jocks and entertainers. Republicans did alright with Reagan, Sen. George Murphy and Schwartzeneggar. Professional sports brings together voters of all races and athletic stars can help do the same for Democrats running in elections.

Sure, it’s a gimmicky substitute for the hard work of party-building. But consider that famous jocks come with name recognition, a ready-made fan/donor base, charisma and lotsa money. Ditto for big name entertainers. Given the importance of black voters as a pivotal constituency for Democrats, NBA stars like Hill and Wade would also bring significant buzz to a senate candidacy.

African Americans are more than 15 percent of Florida’s population, and nearly a third of the residents of Jacksonville, Florida’s largest city. Concentrated in Florida’s major cities, they can be more cost-effectively mobilized for voter turnout than many other Florida constituencies. It’s not hard to imagine Democratic Hispanic and white stars also boosting voter turnout in Florida.

Dixon and Allen write, ““Grant Hill has great name ID. He would raise a boatload of money and is one of the smartest guys you will ever meet,” said John Morgan, an Orlando-based trial attorney and national Democratic donor, who has spoken directly with Hill about his desire for him to run. “Grant Hill would beat the s— out of Rick Scott.”

“Dwyane Wade is a Florida legend, whose leadership past and present has a lot of folks in our state sending feelers out,” said Ray Paultre, the executive director of the Florida Alliance, a progressive donor group that plays a significant role in Florida Democratic politics. “We have seen former athletes, in both parties, bring something special to the political landscape. He hasn’t been officially approached, but he is on the list of four or five dream candidates to challenge Rick Scott.

Incumbency is always an asset. But it’s not like the Republican Senator Rick Scott is Mr. Popularity. “Everything Rick Scott has done while he was trying to make a name for himself in Washington has made him more vulnerable back in Florida,” DSCC Communications Director David Bergstein said. “His agenda to cut — and to cut programs like Social Security and Medicare — is toxic with the voters that decide a general election in a state like Florida.”

The rest of the article discusses the possible candidacies of five other lesser-known Democratic Floridians from more conventional political backgrounds. Certainly, one of them could emerge as a credible, or even popular candidate. Regardless, Democrats should begin to more actively recruit well-known athletes and entertainers to run for the U.S. Senate and House districts, not just in Florida, but nation-wide.

According to polling data, many people want to move on from the endless legal fallout of January 6th. That’s both understandable and unavoidable. It’s unavoidable because there has to be accountability for those who violate American democracy — if we want to keep it. No doubt many voters have simply tuned out from the coverage of the legal deliberations and decisions. But that doesn’t mean Democrats shouldn’t occasionally remind voters of the tally of legal consequences leading up to the election. After all it’s a Republican mess, which really speaks to the moral decay of their party. Zachary B. Wolf rolls it out in his post, “How 2020 election accountability could hit a 2024 roadblock” at CNN Politics. As Wolf notes, “I asked CNN’s Marshall Cohen what we know about the universe of people charged and convicted for involvement in January 6. Combining data from the Justice Department and CNN, he offered this:

It ought to be obvious by now. But just in case it isn’t, Jeet Heer explains why “Democrats Should Make Abortion a Cornerstone Issue” at The Nation:

Ballot initiatives are the best electoral bellwether for where the abortion fight stands in the United States in the post-Dobbs era. There were ballot initiatives in six states in 2022 and they revealed a remarkable consensus that cut across the usual regional divides: The pro-choice side won not just in blue states like Vermont and California but also in purple states like Michigan—and even in very red states like Montana, Kansas, and Kentucky. In an otherwise polarized country, abortion has become the opposite of a wedge issue. It doesn’t matter if voters are Black or white, women or men, Democrats or Republicans, college-educated or high school dropouts: Overwhelming majorities of most major demographics support a woman’s right to control her own fertility as previously enshrined under Roe v. Wade. When given a chance to vote for it, they will vote for reproductive freedom.

Heer dissects the evolving Republican confusion and splintering on abortion rights, then says that “Democrats, however, face their own divisions on abortion.” Heer adds,

In a wide-ranging survey in New York, Rebecca Traister noted that the party is torn “between a calcified leadership that remains ambivalent about making abortion access truly central to a Democratic rhetorical and policy framework, and frustrated politicians who see the fight for reproductive autonomy as both a moral and strategic linchpin.” The main example of “calcified leadership” is Joe Biden, accurately described by Traister as “a Catholic boy from Scranton, first sworn into the Senate weeks before Roe was decided in 1973, who spent the early decades of his career as an opponent of abortion rights.” Over time, Biden has moved into line with his party’s position on abortion—but only half-heartedly and reluctantly.“Calcified leadership” can also be seen in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the health problems of the octogenarian Dianne Feinstein have kneecapped Democratic efforts to rebalance the courts.

As opposed to this “calcified leadership,” Traister points to younger politicians like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer who are pushing to make abortion a cornerstone issue.

Abortion doesn’t exist in isolation, but is tied to many other issues Democrats care about: the need to rescue the courts from reactionary rule, the defense of democracy against an increasingly autocratic GOP that is willing to govern by minority rule, the vision of a more egalitarian country where women are free and equal citizens. But to use abortion as a cornerstone issue, the Democrats first need to advance their own internal reform. The party’s gerontocracy that is reluctant to fight needs to step aside—or get pushed.

Abortion rights may not be the issue of broadest concern for 2024 voters. It could be easily subordinated to economic trends, depending on how the economy performs over the next 18 months, or perhaps even gun violence. But abortion rights will likely remain the issue on which the Democrats have the largest advantage in polls, even in red states, and Democrats should not be shy about making the most out of their edge on the issue.

At Vox, Nicole Narea explains “Why Biden is deploying more troops to the southern border“: “Set to expire May 11, the so-called Title 42 policy was first implemented by former President Donald Trump on dubious grounds that migrants could be turned away to help prevent the spread of Covid-19. But the policy has continued for more than two years under Biden, has led to lawsuits and the resignation of a senior administration official, and has become a political flashpoint on the left….Now, as Title 42 ends, the new troops will be stationed for 90 days alongside the 2,500 military personnel already at the border. Some Democrats have condemned Biden’s decision to maintain the policy for so long and to further militarize the border. But others — particularly those in purple states who could face tough reelection fights — have backed the president’s strategy, which is designed to protect him from right-wing attacks as he runs for reelection….Progressive Democrats and those who have long been working on immigration issues have been openly critical of the president’s move to further militarize the border….Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), however, has long been pushing the Biden administration to take a stronger stance on the border. Last year, he was among a bipartisan group of senators who introduced a bill that would have temporarily preserved the Title 42 policy. And in an interview with Newsweek on Tuesday, Kelly called for tougher border security measures, urging Congress to take up the issue. He proposed increasing the number of Border Patrol agents, improving technology at the border, and constructing new barriers in places “where they make sense” to deter unauthorized crossings….Border security should be a priority for Democrats as they look toward 2024, rather than capitulating to progressives who have previously called for abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy at the center-left think tank Third Way….“It is important for Biden and congressional Democrats to show voters that they care as much about a secure border as they do about the plight of undocumented immigrants in the country and those now seeking asylum,” he said. “Moving troops to the border in an administrative role is a smart move for Biden, particularly as we near the end to Title 42.”

“Can Biden Win Over the ‘Meh’ Voters Again in 2024?,” Amy Walter asks at The Cook Political Report. Her response: “For the first time in memory, low approval ratings of a sitting president didn’t cause a disaster for his party in a midterm election. Many Democratic candidates in 2022 succeeded in winning over voters who “somewhat” disapproved of Biden — a group I dubbed last fall as the ‘meh’ voters. Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden both came into their first midterm election with similar job approval ratings (44% approve to 55% disapprove). But, according to exit polls, among those who “somewhat” disapproved of Biden, 49% voted for the Democrat and 45% voted for the Republican. In 2018, those “somewhat” disapprovers of Trump voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate (63% to 34%)….Today, Biden’s job approval ratings aren’t any stronger than they were in 2022. That leads us to wonder if these ‘meh’ voters will again be critical to Democrats’ success in 2024. And, if so, is a president’s job approval rating — once considered a critical metric in assessing his reelection chances — no longer pertinent…” Walter cites several polls indicating President Biden’t unimpressive approval ratings, but writes that “as we saw in 2022, those who “somewhat” disapprove of the job Biden is doing overwhelmingly back him for reelection. According to the Quinnipiac survey, the 13% of voters who “somewhat” disapprove of Biden say they’ll vote for him by an 11-point margin (48% to 37%) over Trump. The Wall Street Journal poll showed similar results. The 8% of respondents who “somewhat” disapprove of Biden on job approval pick Biden over Trump in a head-to-head matchup, 66% to 19%….Trump, meanwhile, does not get support from the “somewhat” disapprovers. According to data from the Wall Street Journal, those who “somewhat” disapprove of Trump picked Biden over Trump, 56% to 18%….Even up against DeSantis — who is not as well known as Trump — Biden still wins over most of the “somewhat” disapprovers. In the Quinnipiac survey, “somewhat” disapprovers supported Biden over DeSantis by 19 points (54% to 35%). In the Wall Street Journal survey, those who “somewhat” disapprove of Biden picked him over DeSantis, 50% to 32%.” Dems won’t find much comfort in the rest of Walter’s article. True, Biden and Democrats’ re-election prospects could be worse. But Dems have plenty of work to do to make their prospects better.

Most politically-attentive people know that the GOP opposes labor unions because their corporate contributors reap billions of dollars in profits by keeping wages low. But Republicans do their best to crush labor unions also because they know that unions make substantial financial contributions to Democratic candidates, and even more important, unions provide significant manpower to boost Democratic voter turnout. So Republicans are not going to like a new study by the Center for American Progress which provides compelling data showing that “being part of a union is associated with greater wealth for working-class families—defined as households without a four-year college degree—and especially working-class families of color. Because of this effect, unions are a crucial means for building wealth among the working class and reducing racial wealth gaps for workers without four-year college degrees. The key findings of this report include:

• Working-class union households hold nearly four times as much median wealth ($201,240) as the typical working-class nonunion household ($52,221), suggesting that membership vastly increases wealth for working-class families.
• Union membership helps close the wealth gap between working class and college-educated households. While the median wealth of working-class nonunion households is just 17 percent that of college-educated nonunion households, the median wealth of working-class union households is 67 percent that of college-educated nonunion households.
• Union membership is tied to large dollar gains for all workers, but working families of color enjoy the largest percentage of gains. White working-class union families hold more than three times as much wealth as working-class nonunion households, while Black families hold more than four times as much wealth, nonwhite Hispanic families more than five times as much wealth, and families of other or multiple races or ethnicities have in excess of seven times as much wealth.
• Working-class families of all races and ethnicities are far more likely to own their own homes when part of a union.

The study concludes:

Unions offer a crucial means for strengthening the wealth of working-class families and narrowing racial wealth gaps among the working class. Policymakers have made strides in starting to craft policies to create quality jobs for the working class, most notably through the economic legislation passed by the Biden administration as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act….While it is possible that union members are simply more likely to work in higher-paying jobs or industries, as union density can vary considerably across sectors, a large body of research has shown that unions increase wages and other factors that allow households to build and maintain wealth.

For a deeper dive into the study, read  “Unions Build Wealth for the American Working Class: Union membership not only increases wealth for working-class families but also narrows racial wealth gaps and offers a path to the middle class” by Aurelia Glass, David Madland and Christian E. Weller at americanprogress.org.

The Washington Monthly’s Bill Scher is pretty confident that “Despite Age, Inflation Biden Is (Probably) Going to Win,” and writes that “Historical evidence suggests that a lot must go wrong for an elected incumbent president to lose.” Scher provides a review of past elections, including the seven times presidents were defeated in their re-election campaigns, and observes “Biden’s economic performance does not resemble any of these examples. Gross domestic product has grown approximately three percent during each of the last two quarters (following two quarters of negative growth at the beginning of 2022 but strong growth in 2021). Unemployment hit a record low of 3.4 percent in February and is only a tick higher in March….Some forecasters see negative growth for 2023, such as Bloomberg’s in-house economists, who project, “Our baseline outlook is for an impending recession—and we see no shortage of additional downside risks.” But other presidents who have been reelected weathered periods of contraction during their first terms. These include Dwight Eisenhower (late 1953 and early 1954, as well as the first and third quarters of 1956), Richard Nixon (parts of 1969 and 1970), Ronald Reagan (late 1981 and much of 1982), and Barack Obama (first and third quarters of 2011, not to the mention the harrowing declines of the Great Recession in 2009). Eisenhower, Nixon, and George W. Bush each had higher unemployment rates when they faced voters for the second time than when they began their presidencies. Despite the imperfections, these presidents could still credibly claim that by Election Day that voters were better off economically than they were four years earlier.” However, “The Biden record does have a glaring weak spot: inflation, which peaked last June at 9.1 percent (meaning prices in June 2022 were 9.1 percent higher than in June 2021). But thanks to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate increases and the restoration of global supply chains, that inflation metric as of March has declined to 5 percent. The Fed’s rate hikes may contribute to weak or negative GDP growth this year. However, if inflation is contained, prompting the Fed to lower interest rates by early next year, healthy growth could resume just in time. As Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove noted in response to the recession forecast, “If a recession hits in coming months, the economy could be back on the upswing by the middle of next year. The conventional wisdom is that’s when voters start making up their minds.” Scher presents more data and analysis to undergird his argument. I always worry about overconfidence leading to complacency, which feeds defeat. But Scher’s article can be milked for well-stated talking points Democratic campaigns can use to good effect.

When you’ve been following presidential elections as long as I have, you realize that yesterday’s battleground states can become today’s deeply red or blue states. So at New York I wrote up some thoughts about which states may matter most in 2024.

Close presidential elections are a defining feature of our political era. And thanks to the Electoral College system, that means each contest is really waged in a handful of battleground states, which draw the bulk of campaign spending and candidate elbow grease. There is nothing preordained about battleground states’ location or number. The map has already shifted several times in just this century, and several states we think of as battlegrounds today may be noncompetitive in 2024.

A look back at the shifting battlegrounds in recent presidential elections is instructive. Using the most common definition of a battleground state as one decided by less than 5 percent of the vote, the 2000 election had these 12 battleground states: Florida (of course), Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

In 2004, another close election, there were again 12 battleground states. But Missouri and Tennessee dropped off the list while Colorado and Michigan joined it.

We can skip past the 2008 election, which Barack Obama won by a popular-vote margin of more than 7 percent. Obama’s 2012 reelection victory was much closer; there were only four states decided by less than five points, and only Florida and Ohio were battleground states in both 2004 and 2012. North Carolina and Virginia joined the list of close states.

In 2016, when Trump lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College in a shocker, the battleground map shifted again. The number of closely contested states blossomed from four to 11 with Ohio and Virginia dropping off the list and Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin joining the list.

And finally, in 2020 there were eight battleground states in an election that Joe Biden won by a comfortable margin of the popular vote but a much closer Electoral College margin. Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, and New Hampshire dropped off the battleground list and Georgia joined it.

Florida is the only state that was decided by less than 5 percent of the vote in all five of the elections we’ve examined. Yet if you were going to pick the 2020 battleground state most likely to drop off the list in 2024, it’s probably the rapidly Republican-trending Sunshine State. Perhaps the second-most likely to become less competitive in 2024 is Democratic-trending Michigan. Both of the areas saw statewide sweeps in 2022 by the increasingly ascendant party.

To be clear, ultimately the battleground states are determined by where the presidential campaigns choose to “play” and, more to the point, to spend money. The map is determined not just by the results of the most recent presidential elections but by the number of electoral votes at stake, the relative cost of advertising, and the opportunities to strategically outmaneuver the opposing party (e.g., by forcing the party to expend resources and candidate time where it really would prefer to take a pass). That process has already begun for 2024.

It’s all another reason to pay at least as much attention to state as to national polls, even though the former tend to be less accurate than the latter.

But it’s also important to recognize that there’s a risk of perpetually fighting the last war in focusing on the previous election’s battlegrounds. In living memory, such highly noncompetitive states as California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Texas have been presidential battleground states. The map never stops changing. We may be reminded of that again in 2024 when things don’t go as expected.

From “Hispanic voters have soured on Biden. Now he needs to win them back” by Marissa Martinez at Politico:

The stakes for Biden are high. As he launches his reelection, there are doubts about whether he’ll be able to replicate that multiracial excitement, even if he might face off against Trump again. His favorability has dropped across the board since last year, falling nearly 30 points among Latinos in some polling.

There’s evidence that Hispanic voters helped deliver Democrats big Senate wins of 2022 in Arizona and Nevada. A coordinated effort by Democratic groups focused on turning out more voters in a non-presidential election year and ramping up spending on Spanish-language advertising. By doing so, the demographic stretched several margins during the midterms, tipping the scale for Democratic senate and gubernatorial candidates. Hispanic voters are the second-largest voting bloc in the country, which means improving margins among this group can pay dividends in key states.

So what should Democrats do to hold a stable majority of Hispanic voters? As Martinez writes,

“They need to engage these voters more deeply, earlier, and focus on strengthening their economic message,” said Janet Murguía, president of Latino advocacy organization UnidosUS. “Not all of the achievements and outcomes and impacts that have resulted from the Biden administration’s proposals and policies are clearly understood to be connected to the president.”….Murguía said the party’s strategy should focus on touting Biden’s economic policies, consistently the top issue among Latino voters. The impact of the child tax credit and pandemic-era stimulus checks were important for financially boosting Hispanic households, she added. Though those policies are all in the rearview mirror. Officials close to the campaign said lower healthcare costs, job creation and decreasing unemployment rates will also be top messaging priorities this year.

It won’t be easy, as Martinez explains:

Though the Biden administration is less than a week into the campaign, some polls show the slight majority of Hispanic registered voters have a negative impression of the president. He has an average of about 35 percent favorability across the last three relevant Quinnipiac polls with Hispanic voters. That’s even with his performance among white voters, where he had a 36 percent favorability rate within the same period.

Those numbers among Latinos are a stark drop from a sweeping poll conducted by UnidosUS following the 2022 midterms that showed Hispanic support at a 64 percent approval rate compared to 42 percent of white respondents who approved of Biden’s performance.

However, “Favorability at this point doesn’t always track with vote share,” Martinez notes. “Former President Barack Obama’s approval fell to 49 percent at the end of 2011, though he rebounded to garner 71 percent of the Hispanic vote during his 2012 reelection.

Yet, Dems should keep in mind that unforeseen factors like a spike in inflation can sour voters of any and every community. There are encouraging signs that President Biden is prioritizing Latino voters, including his designating Julie Chávez Rodríguez, granddaughter of Cesar Chavez, as his campaign manager. And by now, we can hope at least that President Biden understands that it is not enough to propose and enact popular reforms and legislation; Dems have to remind voters that they passed all of these measures and their opponents tried to kill all of the reforms — and that’s what Republicans will do if voters let them.

An excerpt from “Working-Class Politics. How to Get Beyond the Identity Trap to Bring About Big Social Change” by Richard D. Kahlenberg at The Liberal Patriot:

There’s been a lot of talk about Joe Biden’s promulgation of a “blue-collar blueprint” for America. The commitment is a natural for Amtrak Joe, who placed a bust of Bobby Kennedy, one of the last national Democrats to show strong appeal with working-class white voters as well as with black and Hispanic Americans, in the Oval Office.

But if Biden is serious about advancing a blue-collar agenda, he needs to do more than push a series of concrete ideas to improve the material conditions of working-class Americans—important as those programs are for people. He must also distance himself from the race essentialism on the far left that elevates racial disparities over economic inequality and pushes divisive ideas that alienate many working-class voters of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.

That’s the big takeaway message of a significant new book, No Politics But Class Politics, by University of Pennsylvania political scientist Adolph Reed and University of Illinois literary critic Walter Benn Michaels. Michaels and Reed argue that, “Racism is real and anti-racism is both admirable and necessary, but extant racism isn’t what principally produces our inequality and anti-racism won’t eliminate it.”

Reed, who is black, and Michaels, who is white, are leftists who are far more radical than Biden and most Democrats (or me.) But the series of essays and interviews compiled in their book has an important overall message: the fashionable views of highly-educated whites on how to address racial inequality are backfiring, particularly for poor black people.

Kahlenberg has lots more to say about the ideas in “No Politics But Class Politics,” and you can read it here.